General D&D question - worth of 1 GP in USD

[Blayne]

Well dragonlance stuff explodes is just Rule of Funny made cannonical part of the setting :p because Mount Nevermind Gnomes over engineer everything and feel that if it actually *works* then its a failure of science because if it works how can they advance SCIENCE! There was a "cursed" tinker gnome where everything he built always worked and it traumatized him.

I know it says in Drow of the Underdark splat book the Drow actually have several times discovered and invented stuff like guns and the steam engine but because of societal reasons it never catches on (because they are so competitive and secretive that instead of proliferating it stays "buried").

I know that in the cleric quintet Cadderly reversed engineered from a drawing a Drow handcrossbow but improved on it to make it semi automatic while firing explosive arrows.

That and between magic and advanced unobtainium materials like mithril, abundant spidersilk and adamantine the quality of materials I don't think is that big of an issue. As for the gods intervening I don't buy realistically speaking that they would even know what technology is or how it would affect and transform the world for better or worse. Can someone from the 1500's imagine 2012 information age? It's like our "singularity" and should be fundamentally beyond comprehension. Since the gods aren't omniscient I don't think they could know unless its actually WotC canon that they can see "Earth"** but have somehow never decided to try to actively convert the 7 billion potential followers meandering around here.

The "Gods says no" I feel we can reasonably discount as nonsensical canon discontinuality and the real reason is because having modernish technology introduced would radically change nearly any setting to be unrecognizable from its roots and no longer a "D&D" setting. (As dragons taking an RPG-7 to the face will probably wear thin its novelty value very quickly) I agree with this, Dragonlance got rid of all the gods for a while in the move to 4e and it split the fanbase, if we were to have an Urban Fantasy D&D setting I'ld prefer it be a "new" setting without Faerun's or Dragonlance's baggage.

If anyone knows of a Urban Fantasy setting that is basically Greyhawk/Faerun with guns aside from Shadowrun let me know.

My question though was not really meant as an in setting question though, but more a question of mechanics as in if I wanted to invent as a character a breech loading rifle or a steam engine and make a tank what sort of steps would a reasonable DM let me do/have me do to achieve it?

**There may have been a short story or something of Mordenkainen and Elminster meandering on Earth but typically I believe the broader WoTC player base considers Dragon Magazine as 'non canon' unless bound in an anthology; and never to my knowledge ever been stated if Earth is a part of the Great Wheel anthology.

[someone_else]

As of D&D standards, GPs from second edition and beyond weight a third of a standard ounce (whatever that may mean) or 9 grams each. That's 52.62 modern USD if it is the purest kind of gold available (according to this calculator).

But since gold value depends on how much gold is extracted and how expensive it is to do so (and D&D does not have a "canon" just a bunch of different settings and random nonsensical shit in the PHB.....

You can also look at prices of bulk stuff in standard prices as from D&D 3.5 PHB, page 112 or here if you're lazy. The same page and link contain the PHB's references about the GP's weight. At page 168 of PHB is a depiction of a greyhawk gold coin at its natural size.

Posting the content of the link, just in case
1 cp One pound of wheat
2 cp One pound of flour, or one chicken
1 sp One pound of iron
5 sp One pound of tobacco or copper
1 gp One pound of cinnamon, or one goat
2 gp One pound of ginger or pepper, or one sheep
3 gp One pig
4 gp One square yard of linen
5 gp One pound of salt or silver
10 gp One square yard of silk, or one cow
15 gp One pound of saffron or cloves, or one ox
50 gp One pound of gold (also the weight of 50 GP)
500 gp One pound of platinum

And again the prices of these things vary wildly in our world depending on where you are.

As for realistic-ish medieval-ish pricing in D&D I use the A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe as a template. It explains a lot of the inner workings of a medieval-ish economy, and the fundamental differences with our own economic system. Also has a cool economic simulation system to have the prices fluctuate in a more medieval-ish and realistic-ish way.

And lots of other interesting stuff which is tangential for this thread, but very cool for a setting that does not look like the shit in the PHB.

A common D&D joke is that if a spell calls for XGP worth of Y and you bargain the merchant down and got a deal the DM would still argue that you still don't technically have XGP but the bargain price of Z, so you still can't cast the spell until you have X.

Your master fails reading comprehension. You fail at reading comprehension as well if you don't call out his idiocy.

The GP value stated in the spell description is THE VALUE of the good (which is absolute in D&D, which is madness in a modern setting and completely idiotic in a medieval-ish setting where everything is more or less a barter and if you want specific stuff not of common use you have to wait someone to make it for you), not how much the PCs payed for it.

How good is the guy evaluating it to and the bargaining skills used to buy-sell stuff affect only how much the item is payed/valued by PCs and NPCs. How much they think (hope) the thing is worth. The ABSOLUTE VALUE should be a well-guarded DM's secret (for treasure anyway, any player can reverse-engineer a magic object to get its price).

Spells as all other kinds of other game-mechanic-driven shit work with the ABSOLUTE VALUE don't work if your dumbfuck spellcaster thinks he has the required X GP of gems (either because he failed identification checks or a merchant scammed him), if that's only X-1 of ABSOLUTE VALUE.

Which adds a lot of fun for the DM since the players have little way to know such ABSOLUTE VALUE without divination (or very fucking high skill ranks).

That said, about 70% of my party's gems were aquired without any sort of payment (usually by the thief ). And worked still perfectly fine as spell components.

My question though was not really meant as an in setting question though, but more a question of mechanics as in if I wanted to invent as a character a breech loading rifle or a steam engine and make a tank what sort of steps would a reasonable DM let me do/have me do to achieve it?

If anyone knows of a Urban Fantasy setting that is basically Greyhawk/Faerun with guns aside from Shadowrun let me know.

There is this, that tries to make a magitech that does not sound totally lame and talks about how the standard-ish D&D setting can become (very good parts on that) This is a chapter that was cut from it and released afterwards as standalone book. If you like the former, you'll like this as well.

there is also this charachter class that to me looks a bit crappy without a discount in the magic item creation cost, but you may like as well.

My question though was not really meant as an in setting question though, but more a question of mechanics as in if I wanted to invent as a character a breech loading rifle or a steam engine and make a tank what sort of steps would a reasonable DM let me do/have me do to achieve it?

I can only tell what I'd do if I were the DM. Anything mildly magic will ass-rape you.

Relatively realistic steam and gunpowder totally suck balls when compared to what the average 10th level wizard can do, nevermind what anything with a CR of 10 can do to you. You need to bring history above medieval times

To make a fast example, in my D&D setting there is an "industrial revolution", where magic energy is the "coal" to have machinery work and do whatever is needed.

Too strong or too pointless beasts got flattened under hails of whatever decades ago, and relatively weaker critters like say fairies, undead with powers, magic beasts, rogue spellcasters and whatnot are either in "magic farms" where their spells (or spell-like abilities) are milked every day, and bred if possible.

In some nations these farms are like concentration camps, in some others the milked things enjoy a somewhat better status up to full citizen.

[Blayne]

Your master fails reading comprehension. You fail at reading comprehension as well if you don't call out his idiocy.

You do realize this is a common joke right? Order of the Stick even lampshaded it.

Here dude top left: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0677.html

(and D&D does not have a "canon" just a bunch of different settings and random nonsensical shit in the PHB.....

When I referred to canon I meant in response to the setting specific question whether the Gods would meddle in technological progress.

I can only tell what I'd do if I were the DM. Anything mildly magic will ass-rape you.

If a bullet does the same damage of an arrow, then you only need to give it the same magical enhancements as an arrow/bow to have it outedge middle ages weaponry.

Suppose an assault rifle can fire 30 rounds in a round ("Lets go down a level", "Why would you want to do that!?") and each round does 1d6; (arrows I think typically do 1d8, but arrows being slower do more grievious wounds while a bullet tends to be less likely to kill from shock) thats 30d6 to an average of 90 damage then a move action to reload. If you enchant the bullets with say mini Anti magic fields I would imagine that could ruin someone's day.

Or since lack of Geneva, use explosive penetrator rounds to bump it up to 1d8's; make it so that they don't bypass damage reduction without specific and special rounds and you got something still balanced against BAM's like Dragons but could tear up your bread and butter encounters effortlessly.

Like it all abslutely depends on how you model the damage but I see no reason to not apply archery feats to firearms for instance.

[Erik von Nein]

Where in the world are you getting your figures for assault weapons? The DMG's got some blurb about modern weapons where they do only 2d10 and fire 1/round (unless you have a higher BaB). Hell, if you want to nab d20 Modern firing automatic weapons on auto just means you attack an area and deal the weapons normal damage. Wee!

[someone_else]

If a bullet does the same damage of an arrow, then you only need to give it the same magical enhancements as an arrow/bow to have it outedge middle ages weaponry.

It's a flintrock rifle goddamnit. Not a AK-47 with modern brass cartridges. Its raw damage may be more or less comparable, but its accuracy is crap, its range is crap, it takes lots of time to reload, it's much harder to make than a bow, can and does blow up if you fuckup the reload stage, and requires you to carry significant amounts of black powder that can be spoiled or ignited by more or less anything (yay fireballs on those musketeers!). Also smoke and bang give off your position.

But D&D is NOT middle ages. There is magic, and it plays a significant part.

Regardless of the weapon techlevel (even stuff you pull from PL9 in D20 future books) from above charachter level say 6-8 the actual physical damage a weapon deals becomes irrelevant (the enemy has buttloads of hp or DR or plain doesn't give a shit about phisical damage), the only things that keep mattering of a ranged wepon are range, accuracy, fire rate and kind of damage (for DR or weaknesses).

So, flintrocks suck and would waste magic slots (or require crazy high-level guys in gun-symbiotic classes) to unsuck. No sane wizard would go this way.

But let's see what a sane wizard would do.
Now, given that none gives a shit about the weapon's damage beyond the lower levels, Air rifles do look damn good. They do without gunpowder and require materials that in D&D are readily available (alumin... I mean mithril, or adamantium).
As for the "air reservoir" (major pain in the ass in the real world) just use that magic object that gives infinite water at command (that has the high pressure "water hose" setting). You can also use this object instead of a BIG and DANGEROUS steam engine.

The damage the bullet deals is likely on par with a bow (or slightly better, depending on how much perssure the magic object is pushing the bullet with), but that requires magic enhancements in any case anyway.

Voilà, something that can seriously kick ass. Still not something the average paesant can buy and use, but offers far better range and accuracy (especially with rifling which is something they are likely to discover since even the base weapon does not totally suck) than anything else they could make, without wasting magic to make it unsuck.


The real revolution would be stuff that peasants can acquire and use with little training. Like it was in the real world.

[Blayne]

Well by bullet I meant a brass cartrige. My understanding is that D&D isn't meant to realistically or accurately represent how combat works, it's an abstraction that prioritizes game balance so obviously using stuff from D20 modern isn't likely to compete well with high level characters or magic.

I speculate about things like inventions like steam engines and the like because a good DM who presumably lets you would let you use it advantageously.

For example, invent a steam engine, and say you own a dwarven mine use it to accelerate mining or dig deeper.

So yeah, actual rule books aside if we take it as a fact that a round is supposed to be 6 seconds I think reasonably that's 1 to 2 shots with a bolt action rifle. For realism I would for actual damage inflicted bump it up to 1d12; D&D is heavily focused on melee combat and so the damage modeling works to reflect HP as your Plot Armor with damage being anywhere from near misses, light scratch to grievious injuries but a successful hit and damage roll doesn't actually mean you actually "hit" him.

While bows are quite lethal in real life, D&D seems to model Hollywood archery, not that archery in D&D can't be lethal but it takes a more dedicated build; gunnery would since its percieved to be a more lethal form of combat should have the mechanics reflect this with higher damage rolls when you do successfully hit, since the public perception is that even a wound in a non vital area can make you come to a stop.

Apply archery feats to guns such as multishot, point blank shot, precise shot, enchanted bullets, enemy specific magazines and things get interesting.

An assault rifle, under the 6 seconds=a round ruling I would argue that you could deplete an entire magazine in that amount of time, but for balance reasons obviously accuracy should plummet after the first 3 rounds or so. But if you have a room full of enemies or fighting a BAM or a gellatinous cube what does it matter? So I think you could fire three to four rounds with an AK, and 9-12 rounds in an M16 on burst fire.

The DM would probably hate having to track the attack roll of each individual bullet and as a practical matter I would imagine there would be a lot of averaging and other time saving measures. However if we did do a few mechanical concessions to realism within the framework of 3.5e rules, then there's no real reason why they couldn't stack up.


Regardless, questions like inventing modern stuff in D&D come up because there are good reasons, for example I'm working it out with my current DM how to invent/improvise a flash bang. Because my character is from the military of the country he's from (He's a Draconian from Teyr; dragonlance) and we're doing a lot of dungeon crawls and I figure, if I could sneak up to the entrance of a room and not get caught, why not toss in 2-3 flash bangs and hopefully stun the room for a few rounds and charge in?

There's got to be plenty of other little improvements modern innovations can bring to the table.

[Simon_Jester]

It's a flintrock rifle goddamnit. Not a AK-47 with modern brass cartridges. Its raw damage may be more or less comparable, but its accuracy is crap, its range is crap, it takes lots of time to reload, it's much harder to make than a bow, can and does blow up if you fuckup the reload stage, and requires you to carry significant amounts of black powder that can be spoiled or ignited by more or less anything (yay fireballs on those musketeers!). Also smoke and bang give off your position.

Point of order: all the rest is totally 100% true, but a rifled musket really isn't that much harder to make than a good bow. You can't just take a stick of wood, tie a string on, and call it a bow: it has to be configured just so, the wood allowed to cure in a certain pattern, there may be multiple layers of material to bond together if this is going to be a fancy bow with a long range...

And a rifled musket can be made by basically any competent village blacksmith- if they have gunsmith's tools, which they'd be able to make on their own.

Gunsmithing doesn't get more difficult than the bowyer's trade until the Industrial Revolution and the rise of machine tools in factories that individual craftsmen can't duplicate.

But D&D is NOT middle ages. There is magic, and it plays a significant part.

Regardless of the weapon techlevel (even stuff you pull from PL9 in D20 future books) from above charachter level say 6-8 the actual physical damage a weapon deals becomes irrelevant (the enemy has buttloads of hp or DR or plain doesn't give a shit about phisical damage), the only things that keep mattering of a ranged wepon are range, accuracy, fire rate and kind of damage (for DR or weaknesses).

If you had a firearm which enabled full attacks (this would basically require a bolt-action rifle), the raw physical damage would start to matter again, because three times 2d10 damage (plus three times bonuses) beats three times d6+strength damage (plus three times other bonuses).

But this doesn't undermine your point about flintlocks. Hell, in real life people kept carrying swords, spears, knives and so on even while carrying firearms. Guns made swords less important, but didn't make them obsolete until (again) the Industrial Revolution.

[someone_else]

First, just to clarify, Dungeon Master Manual 3.5, page 145:

Flintrock pistol : 1d10 damage, range increment 50 ft
musket : 1d12 damage, range increment 150 ft

Then there is other stuff, but it's modern or even futuristic.

but a rifled musket really isn't that much harder to make than a good bow.

Just a few things that are easily forgotten:
Iron is NOT anywhere near as cheap as it is now in the middle ages. (yes, a sword should cost MUCH more than a bow due to material costs alone)
Iron working was not very advanced in middle ages, casting iron (required to make decent firearms) was a relatively new addition in later middle ages.
To work iron you need fucktons of coal. It is expensive and adds to the cost.

A bow's components are pretty damn cheap to get and you don't need fancy equipment nor fancy fuel, in comparison. The dreaded Longbows for example were pretty simple affairs (stick of curved wood and animal tendon). Not that they had any kind of accuracy to speak of, and the higher cost was training the men in their use.

Even fancy composite bows use tendons or bones or wood, all easily available to even the poorest commoner, since every now and then they do kill some animal or travel in a forest.

This also raises the issue of making more gunpowder. That's pretty damn annoying to make (go find saltpeter in the middle ages! you have to literally distill it out of crap, human or animal, both much more prized as manure, about sulphur... no fucking idea), and prone to blow up your facilities.

If you had a firearm which enabled full attacks (this would basically require a bolt-action rifle)

That's quite a feat if you use gunpowder and middle age tech.
If you use that magic canister that can create and shoot water at will, even machineguns become easy.

Then again, while it's certainly awesome and very useful since magic damage will stack, the number of attacks does not make the physical damage less irrelevant for a critter with DR or that has fucktons of hp.

Well by bullet I meant a brass cartrige.

Sorry, if you want to use modern guns you should play d20 modern. It's basically D&D set in modern times.

Adding brass cartridges in D&D-ish setting makes as much sense as adding lOx-lH2 rockets and EKVs in Spelljammer.

It has different rules (it has MAGIC). Instead of trying to force real life into it just for fuck's sake try to think what an inventor in the game world would do.

For example, invent a steam engine, and say you own a dwarven mine use it to accelerate mining or dig deeper.

My PC will laugh their asses off this. The most sold magic item in my setting is a magic object that casts a permanent "invisible helper" spell, for 1000-ish GP and you have a "ghost" that can move up to 2 kg of material wherever ordered. Tirelessly, forever. Looks like merlin's automated washery in Sword in the Stone, but anyway...

I'm working it out with my current DM how to invent/improvise a flash bang

The hardest part is how to find the components in the middle ages, but making it isn't particularly hard.

Besides, a modification of the thunder rocks + the matches from the alchemist's things in the PHB should do...

[Blayne]

*blink* you are aware Dragonlance is a low magic setting?

Though you wouldn't know this but I would also go on to specify that we're also playing in that pesky period of time in the lore where there are no tier 1 primary spellcasters and 90% of the world's magic items are consumed by now.

Heck even during the time when there WAS magic the Dwarves and Gnomes of Dragonlance distrust and eschew magic almost entirely.

Sorry, if you want to use modern guns you should play d20 modern. It's basically D&D set in modern times.

Adding brass cartridges in D&D-ish setting makes as much sense as adding lOx-lH2 rockets and EKVs in Spelljammer.

It has different rules (it has MAGIC). Instead of trying to force real life into it just for fuck's sake try to think what an inventor in the game world would do.

Fun is not about "Why?" but "Why not?!"

[Simon_Jester]

Just a few things that are easily forgotten:
Iron is NOT anywhere near as cheap as it is now in the middle ages. (yes, a sword should cost MUCH more than a bow due to material costs alone)
Iron working was not very advanced in middle ages, casting iron (required to make decent firearms) was a relatively new addition in later middle ages.
To work iron you need fucktons of coal. It is expensive and adds to the cost.

None of this stopped anyone from making huge numbers of firearms, to the point where they outnumbered bows, in the 16th and 17th centuries, a time when iron mining was really no more advanced than in "the middle ages." A lot of the obstacles to iron mining in "the middle ages" are social, not technological, and so need not apply to a D&D campaign of any kind.

A gun barrel doesn't actually use much more metal than, say, a halberd either. So no, "iron is expensive" does not equal "guns are harder to make than bows" unless you also wish to argue that "swords and spears are harder to make than bows," which is really not true.

A bow's components are pretty damn cheap to get and you don't need fancy equipment nor fancy fuel, in comparison. The dreaded Longbows for example were pretty simple affairs (stick of curved wood and animal tendon). Not that they had any kind of accuracy to speak of, and the higher cost was training the men in their use.

English longbows were made by professional bowyers. You can't just cut down a stick and expect it to work as a bowstave. The materials may be cheap, but the labor is not.

You're reminding me of a story Eleventh Century Remnant once mentioned- a reenactor blacksmith making nails at a renaissance fair. A woman walking by said to her son "now, this isn't accurate, because they didn't have nails back then."

The blacksmith's reply? "Aye, and they stuck Christ to the cross with fucking duct tape."

Metal was expensive, but that didn't mean it was so precious you couldn't afford to use a few pounds of the stuff to make a weapon, whether that weapon was a sword, a mace, or a gun barrel.

This also raises the issue of making more gunpowder. That's pretty damn annoying to make (go find saltpeter in the middle ages! you have to literally distill it out of crap, human or animal, both much more prized as manure, about sulphur... no fucking idea), and prone to blow up your facilities.

17th century Europe managed well enough, with roughly the same medieval tech base and only slightly higher level of social organization.

[Blayne]

Didn't the Song dynasty have gunpowder at roughly the same time as the middle ages?

[someone_else]

in the 16th and 17th centuries, a time when iron mining was really no more advanced than in "the middle ages."

First, the middle ages are a pretty long period, techlevel varied greatly from beginning to end and even from place to place.

Second, most relevant inventions, like say mining in more advanced ways than strip mining and casting iron are both of the later middle ages, and took time to be perfected AND widespread enough to matter (they had crappy communication and basically no education system).

an article with sources about the matter.

So no, "iron is expensive" does not equal "guns are harder to make than bows"

True. Also true that bows (especially longbows) are much simpler affairs than casting a gun barrel from scratch.

For example, anyone can DIY a longbow which works like it should. (ancient) compound bows are a bit harder but you can still DIY your own. The thing made of carbon fiber with all the pulleys and weird crap bolted on it, that is a pain in the ass to DIY.

Again, in middle ages iron scarcity decreased as time passed, from pretty fucking expensive to relatively expensive.

Metal was expensive, but that didn't mean it was so precious you couldn't afford to use a few pounds of the stuff to make a weapon, whether that weapon was a sword, a mace, or a gun barrel.

Depends from the time period within middle ages.

As far as stories go, I heard that iron was precious enough that all old houses were burned/dismantled to find and recycle even the last nail it was used to build it.

*blink* you are aware Dragonlance is a low magic setting?

No, this makes your venture less gunwanking and more OMG THEY WILL STOMP US AT HIGH LEVELS.
I understand you. Assault rifles are actually very needed if magic is crappy and monsters are usual D&D stuff.

Though you wouldn't know this but I would also go on to specify that we're also playing in that pesky period of time in the lore where there are no tier 1 primary spellcasters and 90% of the world's magic items are consumed by now.

I suggest to go and look for genius guide to loot-4-less (there are a lot of books about various items, look for all of them, don't look at the book about carts since it's crap), they list magic items you can have for less than 2500 GP, so it's the consumer-good-grade ofg magic items.

Also, go find the chapter about creating custom magic items (it's in the butt end.. ahem last pages of the DMG, also here), and gather all spellcasters you have in the party (and a gearhead or two) to start bending the rules into making magic objects that can be used as components for your guns/weapons. Single components cost less than a BIG magic object with all the powers, then you bolt them to each other and you start PWNING anything.

It's still rule-bending, but imho much funnier than just dropping assault rifles out of fucking nowhere.

Heck even during the time when there WAS magic the Dwarves and Gnomes of Dragonlance distrust and eschew magic almost entirely.

See? You even have idiots to go plunder with your superior firepower. What else you want?

Fun is not about "Why?" but "Why not?!"

If you keep wanting to go ahead with your project, I suggest to go plunder the gun arsenal from d20 modern and future manuals, which is the fastest way to do what you want to (they are already in D&D stats).

[Purple]

A gun barrel doesn't actually use much more metal than, say, a halberd either. So no, "iron is expensive" does not equal "guns are harder to make than bows" unless you also wish to argue that "swords and spears are harder to make than bows," which is really not true.

But they were. That is the reason why swords were the traditional weapon of noblemen all around the world regardless of culture or religion. A mace will go through armor much better. And a spear/glave will murder a man on horseback or even just infantry (see phalanx) much more effectively. But a sword was expensive and thus bling. It's the same reason why you don't see medieval armies of regulars clad in full plate either. And why most regular troops had to contend with axes, spears or stuff like that across the world. Simply an axe or spear head needed a fraction of the iron. And thus could be made at a fraction of the cost.

Metal was expensive, but that didn't mean it was so precious you couldn't afford to use a few pounds of the stuff to make a weapon, whether that weapon was a sword, a mace, or a gun barrel.

Different quality metal here. It's one thing to make a nail or an agricultural tool and quite another to make sword quality steel. Let alone the kind of stuff that will actually make a musket superior to a longbow or crossbow let alone a fireball wielding maniac. If anything armies should be looking to stalk up on magical wands that anyone can use just like guns. But that won't blow up in your face if used incorrectly. And that require just as much expert labor to make but none of the expensive materials.

17th century Europe managed well enough, with roughly the same medieval tech base and only slightly higher level of social organization.

Why not just use a magical substitute or something? I mean this is D&D. Surely one can find some sort of blow up when lit fairy dust or something. Something that does not require such a complicated process.

[someone_else]

I have issues posting what I wanted to post. PM-ing a mod for assistence. Feel free to delete this as it was an attempt to post by posting a dummy and then editing it into the full post.

[D.Turtle]

This post brought to you by someone_else:

Didn't the Song dynasty have gunpowder at roughly the same time as the middle ages?

Yes, but didn't make good use of the stuff. You have to wait 1500-ish AD and the europeans for a decent gun.

Btw, you can make barrels of bronze, which fuses at 950° C instead of 1500° C like iron and has no issues with rust (fuck rust eaters!), the bulk of really high caliber guns were made of bronze for a while, and in places like navy (obvious rust issues) had to transition to steel only because they were running out of components to make bronze (copper? don't remember).

In case you want to follow my footsteps, I'll make an example of how to make a technomagic item.

WARNING: possible D&D wanking ahead.

For example, take the above ancient air rifle, it's pretty damn cool, the only annoying part is that the air canister has to be reloaded, requiring valves and stuff which makes mainteneance a pain (also takes a while to pump enough air into it).

Magic to the rescue! this spell (only 2nd level! any spellcaster at 4th level may know and cast it and the wondrous item creation feat can be taken at third level) generates a 50 mph wind in a cylinder 1.5 meters of diameter (lenght of 6o feet, but it's irrelevant), for a full round (if you are smart you see already what this means).

Now, I don't remember the exact calculation since it was stuff made 4-5 years ago, but this seems to say that a 50 mph wind exterts a 7.65 pounds pressure per square foot, which becomes 366.29 newtons/m2 on an area of 1.77 m2 (the roughly circular area of the "line effect" in D&D).

So that spell gives you a total force of 648 newtons in compressed air for a time duration of 6 seconds (a D&D round).

Since a bullet is going to weight somewhere between 10 (modern rifle bullet) and 40 (modern .50 bullet), that's an acceleration of

a=F/m = 648/0.01= 64'800 m/s for the ten-gram bullet

a=F/m = 648/0.04= 16'200 m/s for the forty-gram bullet

Totally out of fucking scale.

For the sake of making this less rule-bending let's say we restrict the area of effect of the spell by a factor of 10 to an area of say 1700 cm2 of the magic object's surface (a circle with a radius of 24 cm, or a couple cylinders with a diameter of 14 of and height of 12 cm, so that it looks like a drum magazine like this), so that the above speeds go down to 6'480 m/s and 1'620 m/s respectively

But anyway the bullet can have whatever speed we want, as long as it does not go hypersonic.

Now, back to D&D rule-bending. Rules taken from here

Magic object kind: Wondrous Item
Kind of effect: Permanent, Use-activated (the trigger that is pulled by the rifleman to shoot the rifle does activate this magic object)
Cost : Spell level × caster level × 2,000 gp --> 2 X 4 X 2000 = 16'000 GP "market price" or just 8'000 GP to make your own.

Theoretically we don't need it to either last 6 rounds, and the D&D standard "Linear" effect is greatly decreased. Both can be used to assign significant ad-hock discounts, but that's your DM's choice, so prepare money diplomacy to convince him/her they are worth a discount.
I'll keep the cost as-is for the example, in my setting the price has been knocked down by half since this is basically an hair dryer on steroids (it's dangerous, but only at melee range, and there are far better melee magical weapons than this) if not bolted to some piece of tech that uses the air pressure to do more useful stuff. Its capabilities were not altered to get the discount. The main discount is due to the "magic power packs" it needs to use to work.

Now, add the barrel and little else (a fully functional musket costs 500 GP in the DMG, its cost is kinda irrelevant if you coughed up 8 or 16 thousands GPs for this magic object) since the weapon's trigger already activates the magic object.

Since it has the raw power to shoot even .50 bullets at any speed the spellcaster making the magic object wants it to, range will be likely comparable to modern firearms. As long as the engineer part of the team learns how to make decent bullets and rifle the barrel, anyway.

If you feel you need autofire, you can have it too. Since the effect lasts 1 round (6 seconds) that's plenty of time (and energy for mechanical systems) to add more bullets in the firing chaber and fire them. like whith this.

Since its effect is so strong and lasts so long, you can have any fancy recoil-compensation systems you want by just diverting some of the air to shoot in the opposite direction.

IF you cannot have all this, at least get a discount on the magic item price. Non-autofire-capable guns (the ones that have the spell work for only 1 second instead of one round) cost 3 times less than base price, for example.

The De-Luxe version ships with a modified version of the Efficient Quiver and a belt magazine for only 2000 GP more.

For the sake of making it totally ludicrous, let's say I make FIREBALL BULLETS that explode on impact. Caster level capped at minimum (6th) or it gets too expensive.

Magic object kind: Wondrous Item
Kind of effect: Single-use, Use-activated (the trigger that is pulled by the rifleman to shoot the rifle does activate this magic object)
Cost : Spell level × caster level × 50 gp --> 3 X 6 X 50 = 900 GP "market price" or just 450 GP to make your own.

There is a magic object that does a similar effect, it says that the market price would be 150 GP per d6 of damage, so the above formula is correct.

So, yes, in D&D you can have a .50 caliber caseless MG in your hands firing FIREBALLS at modern rifle ranges in full-fucking-autofire WITHOUT-FUCKING-RECOIL, that DOES-NOT-OVERHEAT, nor corrode (it's made of brass, fuck rusteaters) or get filled with the crap gunpowder leaves when ignited, nor make flashes or smoke! (will still make lots of noise) The DeLuxe version even pulls slugs directly form its ass (they don't weight, but you have to refill it every now and then).

FOR ONLY 16'000 GP (or 9'000 GP if you buy the kit to make your own)!!!!!!!!!!! It's less than a crappy +3 long sword (or a +2 sword for the kit)!!!!!! What the hell are you waiting for? Buy/assemble yours NOW!!!

The same air canister (depending on the pressure of the air generated) can become an all-purpose tool (basically whatever can be operated with compressed air), a chainsaw, an engine for something, a fucking jetpack.


Of course it won't work in antimagic fields, but you can reverse-engineer a clay golem into a tiny engine with roughly a normal human levels of strenght (if you scale it down that is what happens to its STR 25) to operate an adamantium air pump refilling an adamantium air canister. Will require 11th level divine casters but should have roughly the a price around 20'000 GP total. Otherwise (say you have only 8th level arcane spellcasters) a couple tiny flesh golems (in a sealed canister) doing the same should be enough for about the same price.
But this is very likely restricted military hardware.

Btw, what about making a wheeled (look down for "improved speed") Greater stone golem? You have a fucking self-propelled tank with a speed of 40 ft per movement action (= 3 seconds --> 5 m/s or 18 km/h, cannot run) for 200'000 GP and a 14th level caster.

The real fun is with mithal golems though. 70 ft per movement action (= 3 seconds --> 21 m/s or 75 km/h, can run as a full-round action, going at 300 km/h in a straight line for 6 seconds or a bit less depending on what is loaded on it, a helluva charge) for 250'000 GP and a 25th level caster.

You were wondering how anything that didn't have a use for the (human) Empire got nuked in my D&D setting?
They got out of the dark ages long ago.

If anything armies should be looking to stalk up on magical wands that anyone can use just like guns.

Which is, if you know a modicum of middle age mindset, precisely what the average king would do (the ones that don't usually have a short reign).

Wizards (the ones most inclined to make magic objects) have a significant start-up cost (they have to be sent to magical schools where they are a significant cost for decades). But good kings need magic objects or they get flattened by the first punk that goes above 5th level (or a random middle-CR monster), so they likely sign a contract with the most promising guys in their area, "I pay for your training and initial equipment and give you a special discount on usual non-spellcaster taxes (there were a fucking lot at the times), you will produce a magic object worth at least X GP per month when you are able to, and serve in my army when I need you for X years.
If you fail the spellcaster training I'll sell you and your family/friends as slaves to pay the investment back".

In a magic medieval period like D&D, kings don't fill their coffers of gold, they fill them with fucking magic objects.

You can also bet your sorry ass that even the most low-level guard of a crappy noble (nevermind the king's) castle has fucking costly magic equipment to detect thieves and spies (and be a pain in the backside for even mid-level attackers), and that there are multiple VIP-evacuation procedures similar to those for the POTUS ready to be enacted in case of a high-intensity magic attack.

Because you never know when the next high-CR monster will arrive, and how to take it down safely.

[Simon_Jester]

WARNING: possible D&D wanking ahead.

For example, take the above ancient air rifle, it's pretty damn cool, the only annoying part is that the air canister has to be reloaded, requiring valves and stuff which makes mainteneance a pain (also takes a while to pump enough air into it).

Magic to the rescue! this spell (only 2nd level! any spellcaster at 4th level may know and cast it and the wondrous item creation feat can be taken at third level) generates a 50 mph wind in a cylinder 1.5 meters of diameter (lenght of 6o feet, but it's irrelevant), for a full round (if you are smart you see already what this means).

Now, I don't remember the exact calculation since it was stuff made 4-5 years ago, but this seems to say that a 50 mph wind exterts a 7.65 pounds pressure per square foot, which becomes 366.29 newtons/m2 on an area of 1.77 m2 (the roughly circular area of the "line effect" in D&D).

So that spell gives you a total force of 648 newtons in compressed air for a time duration of 6 seconds (a D&D round).

Physicist-sense... tingling!

Ah, there's the problem. This assumes that you can concentrate the area of effect of a Gust of Wind spell into a volume as small as a rifle chamber, without decreasing the total amount of physical force exerted by the spell.

Is the chamber going to be a 1.5 meter wide funnel? Because that sounds more like a siege engine than a personal weapon.

Now don't get me wrong, the idea of Magic Pneumatic Weapons (and Magic Pneumatic Power Tools, and Magic Pneumatic Engines, and so on) is pretty cunning and a good basis for a 'magitech' campaign setting. But let's not kid ourselves into thinking it's baseline D&D. If someone tried this in a campaign I was running, I'd have to say it wouldn't work: you'd need to research a whole new spell with a name like Verone's Shock Wave Inna Can to provide the devices that act as power sources. Just using Gust of Wind gives you a device that, when activated, creates a meter-wide gust of wind around the shooter/engine/whatever, which is useless for your purposes.

Shock Wave Inna Can would probably have a higher spell level than Gust of Wind too, because of its greater effective power.

[Purple]

You just gave me a scary thought. If you shrink the area of effect but keep the strength of the spell the pressure rises. Since pressure is what actually pushes the round. If physics are observed you might end up with something that has much more power than he calculated. Say we are using a 7.62mm round like modern rifles. 1500mm/7.62mm = 198.85. I don't think I need go further.

[someone_else]

Thanks a lot D.Turtle! This time the forum accepted the post at the first attempt... weird things happening...

Ah, there's the problem. This assumes that you can concentrate the area of effect of a Gust of Wind spell into a volume as small as a rifle chamber, without decreasing the total amount of physical force exerted by the spell.

You stopped reading there?

It was just the first feasiblity check, to see if the spell at 100% power could provide enough force to be worth shit.

Turns out that the spell without modifications can send a .50 bullet to the moon and a rifle bullet to jupiter in a few months (read the post above, speeds in excess of 15 km/s for .50 bullet and in excess of 60 km/s for rifle bullet).
But we don't need so much power. So I'm crippling it by dumping the linear effect and downscaling the area generating the wind by a factor of 10 withoutn increasing the pressure power as Purple ssuggested

None will have nothing to say if you heavily cripple spells to make a magic object (as I said, the magic object alone is a hairdryer on steroids, not particularly threatening), it's the contrary that is suspicious. If you look a bit down you can read:

For the sake of making this less rule-bending let's say we restrict the area of effect of the spell by a factor of 10 to an area of say 1700 cm2 of the magic object's surface (a circle with a radius of 24 cm, or a couple cylinders with a diameter of 14 of and height of 12 cm, so that it looks like a drum magazine like this), so that the above speeds go down to 6'480 m/s and 1'620 m/s respectively

and to clarify, normal weapons need just a single cylinder, since hey, even 6.48 km/s is a bit too much for a projectile supposed to work in an atmosphere.

The spell effect is generated by the inner surface of the cylinder, and does not go beyond the cylinder. Since the cylinder is strong enough to hold the air's force, the air in it is suddenly pressurized and allows the air gun to work.

Just using Gust of Wind gives you a device that, when activated, creates a meter-wide gust of wind around the shooter/engine/whatever, which is useless for your purposes.

This isn't a Wand/Staff/Scroll/Potion (they do what you just said, with different flavours, but they just store and cast a spell in the end). It's a Wondrous Object. The spell used as component in the creation of a Wondrous Object is just moderately linked to the effect of the magic object as a whole.

For example Lyre of building can pull weird shit that has much more to do with the spells that move/shape earth and stone than with the spell Fabricate.

the Instant Fortress that requires mage’s magnificent mansion (or mordekainen's magnificent mansion in D&D 3.5), even though it is a fucking empty tower with adamantium walls that can shrink to a portable size while the spell creates an extradimensional heaven with food and searvants for a certain time.

or the portable hole, that is basically a huge bag of holding without a mass limit (it has a volume limit) but requires a spell that is used to move between planes.

If you shrink the area of effect but keep the strength of the spell the pressure rises.

May or may not be depending how that spell works (have to ask the PCs ). As you noted, this is totally overkill for a gun, so it's kinda irrelevant.

[Xess]

So that spell gives you a total force of 648 newtons in compressed air for a time duration of 6 seconds (a D&D round).

Since a bullet is going to weight somewhere between 10 (modern rifle bullet) and 40 (modern .50 bullet), that's an acceleration of

a=F/m = 648/0.01= 64'800 m/s for the ten-gram bullet

a=F/m = 648/0.04= 16'200 m/s for the forty-gram bullet

Totally out of fucking scale.

For the sake of making this less rule-bending let's say we restrict the area of effect of the spell by a factor of 10 to an area of say 1700 cm2 of the magic object's surface (a circle with a radius of 24 cm, or a couple cylinders with a diameter of 14 of and height of 12 cm, so that it looks like a drum magazine like this), so that the above speeds go down to 6'480 m/s and 1'620 m/s respectively

But anyway the bullet can have whatever speed we want, as long as it does not go hypersonic.

You've found the acceleration provided by the force, not the end velocity of the bullet. The 10 gram bullet would be accelerated at 64,800 m/s^2 and the 40 gram at 16,200 m/s^2, they'd only have the velocities you say if they were accelerated for a complete second. If they were accelerated for a complete second well...

d = 1/2 * a * t^2 = 0.5 * 64,800 m/s^2 * (1 s)^2 = 12, 960 m

I hope you have a hell of person to carry the damn thing as it would have 12.96 km long barrel! Hell even the less powerful versions have 3.24 km and 810m long barrels respectively.

For a 2 meter long barrel, the 10 gram and 40 gram bullets would have muzzle velocities of:

t(10 gram) = sqrt(2d/a) = sqrt(4m/64800m/s^2) = 0.008 s
t(40 gram) = sqrt(2d/a) = sqrt(4m/16,200m/s^2) =0.02 s

v(10 gram) = a *t = 64800 m/s^2 * 0.008 s = 518 m/s
v(40 gram) = a *t = 16200 m/s^2 * 0.02 s = 324 m/s

That's certainly lethal velocities, but a super gun in velocity terms it is not, bonus it would have less recoil than modern weapons due to reduced muzzle velocity. Once you add in enchantments to essentially turn it into an automatic grenade launcher though ...

[madd0ct0r]

what about steam pressure?

have a top canister imbued with frost slowly casting up ice cylinders from atmospheric water vapour (plus funnel for emergency reload situations).
Pull bolt back moves the bottom cylinder into the barrell.
When trigger is pulled a pin imbued with fireball slams into back of of the ice cylinder, causing a steam explosion throwing the rest of the ice out of the gun at decent speed. Nowhere near as dense or as effective as the previous example, but a good deal cheaper and less game breaking.

[Cykeisme]

I think in 3.5 a gp is a 50th of a pound

Hmm if 10 gp weighed a pound, assuming the gp were solid gold coins, one coin would have a volume equivalent to 2.3ml, or less than half a teaspoon (5ml).
At 50 gp to a pound, that'll be 1/20th of a teaspoon. Even assuming it's not pure gold, and had a density somewhere between iron and gold, those are still some tiny (or really thin) coins..
Yes, I realize it's just a game system.

Also, I'm finding the quantification of Gust of Wind pretty interesting!