Do Guns Belong in Dungeons and Dragons?
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- čas přidán 13. 06. 2024
- DND is typically a game of sword and sorcery, high fantasy with limited technology, imitating (for the most part) medieval or even primeval times. But… guns are cool, man. Bang bang. Hard to hate it. The topic of guns in Dungeons and Dragons is a highly contested one, so today we want to hear YOUR thoughts: Do Guns belong in DND? Leave your answers in the comments below.
Do Guns Belong in Dungeons and Dragons?
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A gun is just an advanced crossbow that throws metal.
Aren't bolts metal?
@@fakeosis not always.
for real. ppl so scared.
Depends on the setting I say. If it fits the story you want to tell and the technological development of the world you want to play in, then go for it!
This is what a DM should say.
If the Artificer can create a Nuclear Device, then the fighter can wield a Shotgun.
So, only if the DM says they can. Got it.
@@CooperAATE I AM the GM, so i say... yes.
@@mr.critical5523 that's what we both said
The invention of gunpowder is a thing that happened before the Medieval period, and guns were around for some time. The Turkish were known for their gunsmith artistry, with some of the best engravings on pistols to ever be seen.
I accept such considerations into my setting. Firearms such as flintlock pistols and muskets are a thing. Rifling adds to the price, but extends range. Due to their price, firearms are tools of nobilities and the military. Artisan crafters make their mark by engraving pistols and rifles, adding to the value.
Bullets can be purchased in premeasured paper packets, but it’s cheaper to carry a horn and lead balls with you.
I like this mate, not entirely historically accurate but perfect for adding them in, and I only say not entirely accurate (cause it might offend you) is the only relevant thing I've found with guns and medieval is they werent used till after cannons/original rocket, and instead was most used on arrows still or as fireworks and other mildly life improvement things, if I'm wrong I'd love to know where I can find what your talking about, I know of Turkish Artisanal crafts of flintlock muskets but that was past medieval and is closer to the Exploration Expansion period
Id draw the line at muskets, tbh. The process of rifling requires machining because it takes an extreme amount both technical skills and effort to make even in a fantasy setting.
Also bullets as we know them wouldnt exist - they also require machining to manufacture.
The only time rifling would be acceptable is when youre making big off cannons you can physically get inside of to work in. The only time bullets would be acceptable is when youre using magic to replace the gunpowder.
Honestly, the way Pathfinder 2e handles guns is in my opinion, the best way to handle them. To put it simply, it deals damage similar to other ranged weapons of that level. Until you crit, then the damage dice goes up a size AND you double the amount of dice. In other words, when guns crit, they crit hard.
The guns I've slipped into my general complicating of the weapon rules have a similar element to them. Often featuring Loading and Reload in tandem, and denying damage modifiers at base, many of them also feature the taglines for Improved Criticals, Brutal critical for +1 damage die on crit, forced two-handed unless specific STR levels for the pistols, and some degree of Misfire to force a field-repair to unjam it. There's various extended complications atop many of them, especially as I run three different 'tiers' of blackfire weapons (early-era flintlocks so basic you can give them to a peasant with a Simple proficiency), Forged weapons (which go to like... industrial but not modern and includes basically old west items from HeavyArm's gunslinger) and Clockwork (which can mimic many of the modern gun quirks and are naturally the most expensive and hard to find).
Guns have been around for over 7 centuries, with some primitive artillery dating back to 10th-11th century China. A paladins plate armor is more modern than a basic single shot smoothbore firearm is. If a campaign is set in a Renaissance or steampunk like setting they're right at home, and would still be plausible in many medieval settings, for example the earliest standardized usage of firearms dates back to the 16th century where pike and shot formations were used to hold back armored cavalry.
my DM made the mistake of giving me creative liberty when creating the homeland of my character and now he has the steampunk USSR to deal with.
band kid moment
@@datboi1546 ha no I'm still in there and working towards creating rune powered combustion engines.
If you are running a pirate campaign, guns absolutely belong.
Imo, guns in general belong as a rarity. Artificers can make them, Giff have them, some wealthy people or high enough level adventurers can get their hands on them. But the general population has no idea they even exist
If the DM's setting allows, then yes.
That's the whole answer.
Primitive guns? Yes.
My glock 17 is primitive
It's the setting which helps justifies if a gun should be present of not. With there being ways for a gun to be incorporated into them. Here are some examples I have
A world filled with magic and gods, a gun could be introduced as a recent invention that's considered as either barbaric or a symbol of status. Plus having the bullets have a spell contained within them would allow for a spell caster who uses a gun, albeit rare, to be a thing.
A steampunk setting that has a bit of magic? Yes, guns would make sense to be included. As long as they're a somewhat uncommon item.
For an Urban fantasy world, it's just natural. As it's just our world, with fantasy elements in it.
In the homebrew setting I useguns are allowed but balanced by not being something you can just go *buy*
They're still new enough that you essentially need to have each major component built by various "kissing cousin" trade specialists (eg, stock from a carpenter, barrel from a smith and the lock from an artificier or clock maker) and assemble it yourself.
You make your own ammo, including powder.
Magic *can* cause issues, but specifically any magics that increase the ambient static charge or can create heat discharge can auto ignite powder.
This has actually led to a *decrease* in magic use during mass conbat in preference for musketeers and grenadiers due to the time & cost of capable magic users.
Plus there was that time a player wiped out a quarter of his own force and himself with an errant "Chain Lightning" spell.
The dice woke up and chose "Screw You" that day...
If gunpowder exist in your game so yes guns would exist in the games?
Artificer exists. Guns belong, just depends on the gun
When an artificer makes a gun, I always imagine it to look like it was made in ww1. Where the concept of firing more than 1 bullet started to catch on
@@jackmack4181
I can go with the 1800s Winchester riffles
Also the setting. Forgotten Realms? Not really, even tho they kind of do. Dark Sun. No. Dragonlance? No. Spelljammer, Eberron, or Urban Arcana? Of course.
That's the other thing; WotC would _really_ like us to believe that Artificer does not exist. It will never be featured in a core Player's Handbook purely because of how divisive it is, because the existence of an Artificer brings the entire science/magic paradigm into question. The default setting of 5e is FR, and in FR magic is magic, pure and simple.
@@abadidea5984 To the point that they messed with chemistry and even just outright destroyed the only people that understood FR gunmaking, jeweller's rouge, and all of their reasearch and records.
I feel like a better debate would be about vehicular combat. In a world where magic can cause all sorts of interactions to take place between matter and energy, what exactly was stopping a wizard from going full “Karl Benz” and attempting to create a functional car? If horse-drawn carriages fit the setting, but a simple steam engine or basic ICE don’t, where exactly is the cutoff between a glyph to cast fireball on a person, versus casting it on a tank of water? The artificer is literally the definition of magitech. So I’d argue an armored car ain’t out of the question in the D&D universe.
The best arguments against are rather in the weeds. The problem with a lot of DnD tech is the material sciences needed to support it just doesn't exist.
Medieval steel just wouldn't hold up to the stresses of an ICE engine. IF they could even successfully cast pieces that dense.
It's the same for most electronics. A gnome artificer would need roughly 200 years of IRL material research into the very few materials that exist they could use to make a circuit board. And even with that, they would still need access to some pretty advanced electronics to actually build it.
But most people just don't make those connections or understand how much impact such tiny things have
Fun Idea! Have Kobolds invent it and you have a certain tribe who specialize in ammunitions and explosives. Have them fools people into believing they have fire magic.
New conspiracy just dropped: Kobolds have a monopoly on guns, black powder, and canons
@@Nyghtking Fake news. Pay no attention to our heavily-trapped mines, surface-dweller.
I think they are fine. But I am the guy who made a gun that turned scrolls of touch spells into ranged attacks.
Our Hexblade uses a flintlock pistol and it has been fine.
Oooh this is exactly the character I want to build next
I've always hated the explanation of the first one. Because, I could understand that electronics (which are way more sensible to energy being around) would fail around magic users.
But a gun? A gun is just gunpowder and a piece of metal. There's no reason why something so simple would fail around a wizard and a crossbow wouldn't.
It also seems like a very good way to fck with the guy who wanted to play a warforged. Sorry bro, if you go with the party you just fcking die on the spot; make another character.
Especially since in the referenced Dresden Files books, most guns worked perfectly fine around wizards and the main character carried and regularly used a big revolver. The only guns that'd have trouble would be more advanced ones (automatics tended to jam and things like electronic sights would short out).
@@Xarestrillthat's actually the major issue with the explanation used in the Dresden books. He says it's based on the guns complexity. Which means for the most part Dresden's gun use is backwards.
Revolvers and other mechanical repeaters are the *most* complicated types of firearms you can make. A revolver averages around 20 moving parts.
Submachine guns can have as few as 4.
In general, while the MATH to make a semi auto is more complex , the guns themselves are brutally simple.
Which is why you find more diy semi autos & smgs than homemade revolvers
It also kinda reeks of "I want to address what is largely an irrelevant point but can't think of a good way for these two things to coexist."
If you want to make a fantasy story without guns you can just show someone get shot and it doesn't do much at all because magically enhanced bodies are tough enough to resist bullets.
@@Zetact_ That's basically what I did in my campaign. Guns are a thing, but they're a response to people using magic to enhance their bodies, as guns can deal more damage than a sword. The only issue is that bullets are hard to make so they're scarce. As such, a gun slinger is a valid strategy, but only against magical enemies, other than that they're just a very expensive ranger.
Warforged are not robots. They don't run on electronics; they are a magical construct.
I remember making a setting where guns break magic. Like if you cast a fireball and someone sees the fireball coming towards them, they can pull out a pistol and just shoot the fireball. The fireball will break apart like a glass panel. Guns are very common, and most people have it. This is not a "oh guns will break dnd" thing this is a "I have seen to many players shit on martial classes and skills for not being magic". As for should guns be in DnD I feel like it is a rule of feel approach like having a musketeer, pirate, and possibly cowboy. If I want to play a ttrpg about guns I would play something like twilight 2000 or cyberpunk.
Mine don't do that, but if you fire one while someone's casting and they aren't used to it they need to make a save or lose control of the spell.
In my setting disrupted magic is a wild and dangerous thing.
Why not have early firearms in D&D and/or other medieval fantasy RPGs? They're historically accurate if the setting has plate armor. They're not as ridiculous as the full casters bending reality with fancy words and jazz hands. And, finally, guns would be a fun new toy for the martials to try out during their futile attempts to match the casters.
Certainly depends on the type of gun. In my current campaign I’m in, we have steampunk ones that aren’t anywhere near efficient, giving a good balance. You could also make it rely on more complex feats to be very viable.
This phobia of including firearms of any kind in a fantasy setting is one that I've always found to be ridiculous, and I'm not even taking the fact that the Artificer class exists into account.
Firearms aren't exactly a high-tech piece of equipment. At the end of the day it's a combination of three things: a hollow metal tube, a projectile, and a chemical/powder mixture to propel the projectile down the tube. The most complicated part of that setup is the propellant... which honestly shouldn't be _that_ hard to make considering how many fantasy settings incorporate the use of _basic chemistry_ for things like alchemist's fire. Hell, the fact that the Fireball spell exists in its current form is enough proof of concept thanks to its material component: bat guano has been used *in real-life chemistry* as an ingredient for gunpowder!
If anything, firearms should be _more_ viable to create in a setting with access to magic:
- Real-world crafting methods would could be easily streamlined and improved upon with the use of Transmutation magic.
- Divination enchantments would allow for greater accuracy at longer distances.
- You can alter the gun to shoot different types of ammunition, or elemental shots.
- Silence spells would make for far better silencers than what is even possible in the real world.
- Extradimensional spaces can be used for ammo storage and possibly even implemented in such a way that you could use them to automatically load a new round into the chamber after each shot.
Another thing that the naysayers don't seem to realize is that firearms being a common threat would also lead to people developing magic to _defend against bullets._ Tell me, why would we have spells like Protection from Arrows if mages didn't think archers were a threat? For what reason would someone invent the Resist Energy spell, if not to defend themselves from things like elemental spells and the breath weapons of monsters?
I have them in my home brew setting. They are rare, expensive and usually used as signs of office or rank in the military. The tech to make guns like you'd find IRL has been lost and rediscovered many times but there are also mage-guns. Basically wands that work more like guns that use scrolls or magical ore as ammo.
Literally the only time I see it becoming a problem is when guns are juiced up to be so much better than literally everything else that it makes the rest irrelevant. Like....having a blunderbuss hit for 4d12 is just ridiculous.
I would say that… well, according to my Guts And Blackpowder knowledges of a blunderbuss and those “G&B inaccuracies”, such weapons would shoot once and take a reloading time of… 2 minutes. 20 turns, so, a lot.
And then there’s even more stuffs.
But yeah, if it’s just 4d12 piercing damages, it is way too overpowered.
im sick of this question
GUNS AND LASER WEAPONS ARE IN THE DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE!! READ THE BOOKS!!
Guns belong because dnd isnt made to reflect medieval times(in which guns STILL existed) all dnd worlds have their OWN timeline inwhich guns exist
EXTREMELY RARE Magic crossbow bolts. Higher the level, the more shots you get out of one bolt without having to reload. (Once at its limit it needs three full actions to cool down or “reload” like a six shooter.) There’s even rarer bolts that have different effects on impact as well. Like an ice bolt that freezes the target for one turn, or fire bolts that do one d6 fire damage per turn, ETC.
Before the inclusion of the Giff and the Gunner feat, the firearms listed in the DMG were pretty balanced as, though they were more powerful than most weapons, the primitive firearms all had the loading property, which couldn't be ignored by the crossbow expert feat, or all other firearms relied on the DM to give you the proper ammunition to fire it reliably.
I had an idea for explaining the lack of firearms on the mainland for a GURPS game with the optional rules of aspected mana and fire elementals being attracted to gunpowder. With those two options in the campaign, firearms only become viable to use on coastlines and at sea as the water aspected mana will keep the fire elementals away. So, you have your standard fantasy adventure of swords and sorcery inland and your swashbuckling pirate adventures at sea.
Proto guns and the start of modern guns existed in the later medieval ages (1100-1300AD). They were mostly hand cannons and I think they were first called fire lances? Anyways Europeans at first associated them with the devil cause of their sulfur smell, but they were damn good at their job and were popular for war.
Honestly it depends on you and how you wanna play. I still have an idea for an artificer that presents themselves as a wizard and uses a gun while screaming "I CAST LEAD!"
Also possibly carries a cast iron skillet and says "I CAST IRON!" While smacking the shit out of someone with the skillet.
If I were a DM/GM and a player wanted guns, I would restrict it to smooth boar flintlock guns. Accuracy is terrible but damage would be very high. You would need plate armor to deflect pistol shots but would be down by muskets. Blunderbuss guns would do blunt damage to plate armor and restrict breathing. The player would also be down due to broken bones but would have to shed their dented armor. Any part of the player hit by a shot would be stunned and have to be crippled based on where hit.
Roll for accuracy then roll for where the target is hit. Limbs only result in not using that limb for combat. Arms don't stop the enemy. Legs reduce movement drastically.
As mentioned earlier, hits stun targets. The target will lose their turn. I wouldn't give enemies these weapons early on in a campaign but later when players are more effective and higher level. I would have enemy leaders be armed with similar guns and the hit chance as well as damage will be equally fair.
If players say they want more accurate guns then I'll tell them that they will need to take into consideration what weapons are available to them because chances are enemies will have guns similar to them. The more accurate and advanced the guns, the greater the chance of enemies having them. This also means finding melee weapons and enchanted gear will be modified because more people will have guns.
Basically the more advanced the weapon tech, the less medieval the campaign.
Don't see why not.
Even if its a medieval setting, there are Artificers who have the fusion of magic and (steampunk) technology.
Then there is also the whole thing of the spheres and other worlds.
Somebody traveling on a spelljammer might have found a very high advanced weapon from a technologically advanced universe, making its way to where your campaign is situated.
Guns are older than full plate armor.
Like anything, firearms must add to the world and campaign they're brought into, without taking away the (figurative) magic.
One of my campaigns I DM'd introduced an evil empire that grew so sick of existing at the whims of gods, demons, dragons and otherworldly monsters that they decided to use technology as well as powerful magic to even the odds, and in many regards overcome them. It definitely threw my players for a loop the first time they saw a powerful demon get dumpstered by a cruise missile, and the campaign against an army using essentially ultramodern weaponry - not just assault rifles, but tanks, warplanes, attack helicopters, etc. - remains one of the favourites I've ever run to this day, among my players and myself.
Unfortunately, A LOT of people are uncomfortable with guns in general. Guns have become so politicized that it genuinely scares people who don't really understand that they're just tools like swords or shovels. I'm a military worldbuilder who is fascinated with military technology and I've been ostracized from *two* different worldbuilding communities just because I go into detail about how my FICTIONAL weapons work. It's a little hypocritical that they love to glorify swords and spells and the combat aspects of a medieval world but when you bring up the topic of guns it suddenly makes you the crazy one. I'm paraphrasing a famous firearms lawyer here but they roughly said, "You cannot remove politics from firearms in this day and age."
The real question is what type of gun. Old cannons (first appeared in the 12th century), or Matchlocks (15th or 16th century), took time to develop. Then, you have to apply where it would appear. All that fine metallurgy will be produced by a master smith shop, not any village smith. No, we are talking about top metallurgy for the weapon to handle the explosive force of gunpowder.
Then you have where the gunpowder comes from. Saltpeter, aka Potassium nitrate, is something, not something a woodsman would quickly obtain. I would think, given the requirements, that Dwarves would develop guns first. They have the expertise of metallurgy and ease of access to the Potassium, suffer, and carbon to make the powder. Given some lore, they would rely on magic less than other races. Gunpowder might been invented as blasting powder for mining.
Bows and Crossbows would be cheaper and far easier to get, whereas guns would be something noble or wealthy merchants would have access to.
Personally I think a form of gunpowder can be used in D&D like the Huarache since enchanting arrows already exists in D&D you can make missiles instead of just guns
Doc Holiday spell slinging but instead of TB he suffers from a disease that affects his ability to draw magic & it’s increasingly more taxing mentally & physically. So he prepares spell in advance and stores them in easy to carry round. Outlaw Star is a sci-fi setting in space that gave me the idea.
Have the gun do loads of damage BUT make the firing mechanism a contained abyssal ant and some holy water. Holy water is poured on the ant, the ant pops or explodes as it dies and the resulting explosion fires out the musket ball. Meaning the gun is limited by these exotic and expensive components.
I enjoy making Artificers or Alchemists, which in D&D basically involve turning magic into technology.
So if I can make a magic projectile, some crazy engine of death, or a bomb, I don't see what's so bad about adding physical pew-pews as well.
In my story's world (and the last setting I've done as a DM), only the rich have the means to purchase guns. Doesn't mean that there aren't cannons on ships, mind you. It's just that the technology to actually make weapons of the sort was lost after the rulers decided that such weapons were too commonplace and too dangerous. To help with construction, most firearms were melted down and made into Constructs - the world's equivalent of Warforged, but with more human-like features. So far, only the High Queen has firearms... but she mostly collects ancient artifacts from a bygone era (ours).
Personally, guns do belong in fantasy. However, I usually limit it to renaissance era, like the flintlock and blunderbuss
Also will allow players to use a revolver if in lore they created it and have to spend money and resources to craft bullets if they are not in a town that does also contain a shop that works with firearms
the campaign i’m in right now has renaissance firearms. it adds some really fun opportunities in combat!
Guns have been around since the 1300s I do believe. Gunpowder is a thousand years older than that. Guns make perfect sense in a Medieval fantasy setting so long as said gun isn't anything newer than like a ball and cap gun. Preferably you'd want a shoulder mounted hand cannon, matchlock, or wheel lock.
One of my settings has so-called "elemental tides" where the elemental planes briefly cross over with the material plane whenever energetic processes are taking place. As an example, torrents of flowing water might start to cross over very slightly with the planes of water, while storms might cross over with the plane of air. If you stare into the flames of a superheated fire, you might catch a glimpse of the plane of fire.
Most of this won't affect anyone under normal circumstances, but as soon as you start messing around with something like a firearm, all bets are off. There's a decent chance that the charge igniting will open a tiny channel to the plane of fire, which might leech away all of the energy from the shot (Leading to a misfire), or might instead channel ten times the explosive power you expected (Blowing the gun open, and likely not doing the shooter any favours). The same thing happens when you start messing around with steam power, where the heat and compression are very likely to cause the engine to either suddenly lose power, or to explode violently. Electricity would have the same kinds of results, only less predictable. On the flipside, actual magic spells like fireballs don't have to worry about any of this, as the spell is already worked in such a fashion as to close off any channels to another realm, leading to relatively predictable results.
Theoretically you can get around all of this mess by casting an anti-magic sphere, which blocks off the inter-planar connections. Doing so would allow technology to work just fine in a given radius. The issue is, that spell is extremely complex, and if you can afford to hire a wizard to cast it, you can pay them to do whatever you wanted the technology for in the first place. As a result, your options are: Pay a wizard to cast an anti-magic shield; pay said wizard to enchant your devices so they either can resist the explosion, or won't trigger it in the first place; just do without the technology; or, and this is the one certain races have picked, just make everything from far stronger metal than you would ordinarily need, and make it far thicker, so that explosions won't tear it in half. As a result, there are a lot of mountain forts with immensely large cannons that fire relatively small caliber projectiles; inefficient, but they work.
> On the flipside, actual magic spells like fireballs don't have to worry about any of this, as the spell is already worked in such a fashion as to close off any channels to another realm
If the spell is protected why cant they make a gun with this protection built in, where the firing process completes a magic circuit for the briefest of moments?
Also, how far does that protection last in normal spells? Is it until the physical effects of a spell dissipate (like say a fireball hits a bed of straw; Does the resulting hayfire cause this crossover effect, or is it still magically protected?) or until the magic that created the spell dissipates?
@@SorrelYT you absolutely can make a gun like that, but you have to be a solid enchanter in order to pull that off. There would definitely be a few guns in the world that work on that principle, but due to the complexity in making them, they wouldn't be mass-produced.
As for when the spell's protection breaks, by the time you've set fire to the haystack, bits of it might momentarily burn super hot, or temporarily gutter out as the dimensional instability hits them, but frankly it won't change the fact that the barn is going to burn down one way or the other 😆
The way i balance guns is with the logic that you can't shoot a gun harder but you can swing a sword harder. So for players to get strong guns, they need to magically enhance the ammo, or get unique ammo that's very expensive. Also, piercing resistance is logically more prevalent with a world with guns.
Guns are VERY loud and if you don't have proficiency, you really don't want to use one. (-2 to hit without proficiency). May get snuck up on within a short period of firing one since you couldn't hear the approaching enemy.
Bullets can explode. Rogue gets hit by a fireball and lives? Well, the extra magazines in their vest may become a lot less desireable.
that said, a player bought some force enhanced ammunition to have some limited use, very strong, rounds and it's a fun limited resource to think about. l
Reloads are a bonus action. You can only have so many magazines on you at once so like some players refill spell slots on rests, characters can reload their magazines. (I dont' make them keep track of regular ammunition, but they must be mindful of their magazines and what is prepped.
Also... if players want guns then guess what enemies can have. They're excited about a deagle they found, but wait till they run into the 50. cal sniper wielding mercenary with magical rounds.
Oh, and one player almost got herself shot by 30 enemies at once while trying to assassinate someone surround by her body guards. She would have become instant swiss cheese but on of the guests of the bad guys who juts wanted to go back to his research gave her a death glare as she entered his true sight. Maybe the player could dodge some arrows and bolts, but definitely not 30 revolvers and hand guns.
One of my previous campaigns ended when my fighter disintegrated the final boss with a Railgun. It was pretty rad.
valda's spire of secrets guns actually goes hard if you are finding it hard to balance for guns. just a bit of heads up for you dm's out there.
absolutely , when treated right as just annother ranged weapon or a mythical limited use artifact
I want to run or play in a setting which is like American Wildwest and magic is cast through arcane bullets.
Would make sense that the way magic is cast evolves as society and tech advances.
Though the idea of magic-resistant/anti magic bullets could be an interesting world building concept to design around. Could even be a fun plot line if the people weilding those firearms are part of an invading organization.
My campaign has both guns and laser rifles. The Party maybe in Faerun, but they traveled all over the multiverse and even through the timelines, assembling both a knowledge advanced technology and how to use such weapons.
It also helped that the Party found a crashed ship in Greyhawk and spent months salvaging it and learning how to use the tech.
Now they deploy laser and antimatter rifles when they're facing a strong enemy or expect a lot of threats. Doesn't stop them from using swords and bows, but a laser pistol is a great way to finish some enemies.
Why not something akin to Outlaw Star's caster gun? The shells are rare rare, and used like spells. 3 outright take life force to use, and there's a chance a shell can be a dud. As others have pointed out, early guns should be fine with either flint lock or wheel lock variety.
The artificer could already be already be able black powder, and other compounds, with simple ingredients.
Depends on the type of gun and whether or not your campaign is the usual medieval fantasy setting. I'd say flintlock pistols could work in a fantasy setting. Pirates! 🏴☠️🦜
Gunpowder was made much earlier than people think and there is a class that can make it. So overall yeah. But it is how the GM allows players to make or buy them that should be questioned. If they are not balanced then the GM should make it really expensive near end game materials to make one that can’t just explode on the user.
Or you can take another option. Magitech. Something that while isn’t in DND as far as I am aware is in media. In fact in a world I am creating. Magitech or Magitek as it is called in universe, it is more like casting a spell without components but it also just eats up resources to make these ‘bullets’ and depending on the weapon chooses if they have an additional effect. Like a Fireball bullet in a revolver isn’t going to have the bug explosion of fireball. But a rocket launcher sure is. Revolvers having a quickdraw, while rifles pierce. But it is hard to come across or make it. Requiring time and mastery of many different arts.
To add on Kiln is the only place where Magitek is truly common place, with robot wildlife, and even people technofying themselves using some sort of power sources, mechs, and Kiln itself being a floating continent compared to the more medieval Typhrea, Chandrilla, Dannagh and Krystle who mostly use swords, magic and what not. With the Magitek guns only really giving a better accuracy or range depending on the weapon. And that is without me talking about the Cursed Revolver. But that is probably something to talk about another time.
Whatever the players and the DM want in the game belongs. That's the only thing that really matters as long as everyone can enjoy how the story unfolds. Fantasy is fantasy, even with lasers and c-4.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Magitek is just as valid an explorable genre in tabletop experiences as it is anywhere else. While yes some fantasy settings omit gunpowder as part of their soup of ideas, just as many delve into the idea of magitek as a staple and thus offers the option for weapons that can easily reach Firearm effectiveness, even if they're more esoteric and require different training than the average fightin' stick or a crossbow. After all, one of the current most popular MMOs, Final Fantasy 14, is essentially a world in which magitek is a staple of the universe and is slowly being exported across the world, both for things that makes lives easier like airships, and as weapons of war. Even DND is more than happy to dabble with the idea, leading to Ebberon, the native setting of the Artificer and one chocked full of magitek wonders alongside the political intrigue the setting is also known for.
I'd say nothing more advanced than say a musket or maybe a wheel lock I think they're called?
Edit: yep, it's a wheellock carbine, I'd have those for higher levels
I have made guns that fire magical energy to go along with the standard gunpowder ones. Guns belong if the setting permits and only if the setting permits. If I made a setting were guns don't work I don;t want to see a player roll up a gunslinger. Most of the time I allow guns though.
PANR has tuned in.
Yes there are niches guns can fill in D&D.
There are a number of early types of firearms that are entirely appropriate if used correctly by the DM and players.
They'd likely be pretty rare and expensive as well as difficult to maintain.
In terms of power they should generally deal very heavy damage but require extensive reload times. Probably every 2 rounds at best with maybe some form of feats or special training that could speed up reloads.
Ammunition and powder would also likely be fairly uncommon & expensive specialty items.
More advanced variants could exist but would have to be the product of races like the Dwarves, Gnomes, ect. and would most assuredly require special tools and training to maintain and use.
That said they'd be good options for city guards and military to use against large monsters which your average bow or crossbow won't cut it.
Alternatively they can take the place of casters if there aren't any available or if the monsters in question are resistant to magic.
Cannons are of course pretty standard fare as both defensive, siege, and ship mounted weaponry too.
Yes casters certainly can take the place of guns in all these roles but remember that unlike spells you CAN stock up on ammunition and powder.
That said I don't see them as being something you would see in the hands of a commoner or the majority of adventuring parties.
They'd be primarily in the hands of nobility, military, city guards, or the more technologically advanced races.
It completely depends on the setting and time period that setting is modeled after (if any). For the Standard Fantasy Setting™that's based on the Late Middle Ages/Early Renaissance (and assuming you're trying to be somewhat historically accurate, baring magic and dragons), then guns are perfectly fine... as weapons of war. In the form of handgonnes, arquebuses or muskets (and cannons). Not weapons for adventurers.
Pros: They can be mass produced, you can carry more ammunition than archers/crossbowmen, they are much quicker to learn (and thus easier to aim) than longbows, and they are armor-penetrating.
Cons: They're very complicated and time-costly to reload (think 20 seconds to a minute), they're more sensitive to bad weather and wetness than bows, there's no reusing ammunition and more difficulty looting ammunition that can fit in your weapon, they're really bad for stealth (noise and smoke and matches in the dark), they're dangerous to the user (they can explode from mistakes or clogging), and over the long run they damage your hearing.
So it's reasonable to outfit soldiers with them, less so adventurers who hope to attack more than once per fight. _Maybe_ they would carry a drop-gun to start a fight with, but if you're already well-trained with the weapon you'll be using for the rest of the fight, the only real advantage is their armor-penetration.
Of course, all of this can be ignored for various reasons, including the rule of cool, similarly how we easily accept crossbows firing multiple times in a skirmish. They can even be banned for similar reasons, to enforced a time period though if you do this you'll want to ban (or reflavour) rapiers too, since their development was partially a response to the rising effectiveness of firearms making armour more and more useless and unpopular.
As someone that has played video games i do remember a class in FFX-2 was a Mage Gunner, if this was translated to a table top i would imagine that it is a weapon that is preloaded with a spell that requires magic to charge and then fire, So 2 actions would be needed to fire it, the attack damage would be tied to the level of and type of spell so it is more like a back up for a mage in an ambush as they could always keep it charged outside of combat. As for actual firearms i would assume gunpowder would not be used due to the dangerous nature of fire, however if we take a page from Portal and just make it a rapid fire projectile due to a lot of force then the gun is like a crossbow but designed to fire faster so of course magic would be needed for this type of firearm as well. But allowing such a weapon would mean that it is a specialized craft to make thus making them rare and expensive as you need a case (the main weapon) the firing mechanism (enchanted part) and an Ammo type ( can be any material that will fit and can be shaped and will survive the firing. So the "Gun" would be more a status symbol as it would cost a lot to make and use, as for a Mage Gunner i would think they are someone that is dabbling in magic but not a mage as the device is only as strong as the spell built into it so would require much in the way of upgrading making it another expensive item but more versatile as magic is everywhere and can be used to charge it. So the question of asking if they belong, Then the answer is yes as we as humans will always try to make a projectile weapon whether for war or hunting. The question we should be Asking is what limits are in place when designing such weapons, whether it be cost, craftsmen or just the general Law of a Kingdom. This leaves a lot up to the DM in terms of restrictions and can open up the way for players to utilize the gun more as a tool for certain situations than in battle. Example if the Law states only certain noblemen and high ranking adventurers can have a gun then presenting one would be like a Pass to show your great status or influence maybe allowing for certain checks to be passed easier like getting into a city. Anyone could bribe a guard with coin but by presenting the weapon that guard knows instantly your status and that his actions could get him killed if he somehow offended the player. It could also lead to interesting quest decisions like recovering one for a client but deciding to either return it for some gold or keep it to use as a tool to get in contact with more noblemen. But ultimately it is up to the DM to decide if it fits and how it is implemented.
Guns not only belong in a Fantasy setting, I feel that the existence of Artificers, Alchemists, Potion master Wizards, and Clerics of Forge gods should result in Guns being invented far earlier relatively speak than they came about in our world's history. I could easily see a Forge Cleric of Hephaestus in a Bronze age, sword and sandal fantasy setting creating a simple "Fire-Sling" made of worked bronze and riddled with magical runes for added effect.
Its a magical Fantasy world, you can go wild with it, no need to arbitrarily limit what your characters can do based on "IT DOESN'T FEEL HISTORICAL" when this is clearly a different world than our own, and guns very much existed in the late Medieval / Early Modern period in our world.
I had a 'gun' in my campaign that the players found a schematic for. They found one of the few true tinkerers and had them make it. Gun shaped but the 'firing pin' is just an arcane array that launches a ball bearing that must be loaded. Only works 5x a day though.
Depends on the setting, if it's late medieval or renaissance period then yeah. If it's early medieval/dark ages or anything like that then no guns. If it's a 1800-modern day setting then go ham with anything from revolvers to anti material rifles based on what the setting is. In lore guns would make the most sense as an advanced combat tool to combat the use of magic as well as other enemies.
Like any tool, a gun has its place. A bow is silent but requires a lot of training. Magic is powerful, but theres a lot of ways to counter it. A gun is easy to use, but you need to be able to supply it and maintain it. If the DM can work it into their setting, I dont see why they cant coexist
I'd say guns are entirely possible, just not that efficient or reliable plus they tend to be very time-consuming and expensive. Thus, outside of cannons for ships, they're most likely to be used by nobles or noble-backed mercenaries hoping to kill something that has heavy armor that the gun is more likely to pierce than a standard arrow or crossbow bolt, or by Artificers who can keep them maintained..
Really depends on the setting, the campaign I’m running rn has guns banned, the one I ran right before had modern guns
If it can fit in Warhammer Fantasy it is fine. Shot and Pike works great where people can still be weirdos with magic and bows but like don't charge a gun line.
Guns aren't awful when implemented fairly (i.e. flint/matchlocks); they're a particularly expensive and noisy alternative to a crossbow that doesn't operate underwater
Ive always thought a Final Fantasy 6-8 kind of magitech could work for guns.
Like they exist, and so does magic, but the world is also advanced enough to make it make sense.
I think thats what a lot of people forget with guns. FF8 has futuristic Citadels. FF7 has rockets and subs and airships, and theyre not any less fantasy for it. But because when we hear D&D we assume LoTR-style worlds, we forget that other types of worlds exist.
I like keeping guns out of my sword and sorcery cause the few times I have been places where it is allowed, it has gotten weird and out of hand. I don't object to the idea, but not fully into it either. I also generally don't have stuff like cannons either and use ballista instead. Kinda planning a open seas pirate style campaign in the future and thinking I might be more open for it.
I've had 6 campaigns with bolt action rifles and revolvers, and they still haven't been popular with more than one person per campaign.
Ugh... Well, I'm simultaneously the argument for and against them. The propellent is nothing but a replacement for mechanical charging of a crossbow and even that can be jury rigged using spell tiles. I've also combined mechanical charging with payload that more or less resembled a grenade launcher than just a slug. It's really no different in that sense than incendiary rounds. Difference is that combination with magic can lead to VASTLY over powered rounds. And that's simply using what is actually a glorified crossbow launching thinner ceramic spell tiles. Knowing how badly I can abuse them, I have to say the ruling is VERY tied to context, your campaign setting, and who's using it as much as what they're using for rounds.
"repeating longbow" aka, the crossbow
So, my take on this. A game I'm in started out as Eberron, at third level. Due to the period Eberron is, my character started out with a revolver, as a rogue. It came in pretty clutch during some of the early levels, but never felt overpowered or out of place. After level 5, I never used it, because I mutliclassed Barbarian, due to our team compromising of a Cleric/Artificer, an Artificer, a druid and a Gunslinger(Valda's Spire of Secrets class, not the Matt Mercer fighter subclass.)
I've only just started using a gun with my character again, due to us encountering more flying enemies, or getting into ship to ship battles. (On the latter, I don't use a pistol, I pick up one of cannons on the top deck and have the Artificer cast produce flame on it while I reload and aim it.)
Basically, I think guns have a place in DnD, but it's setting dependant on how big of a place that should be. (My backup character for another campaign is a wizard/gunslinger with a flintlock pistol, because he may be out of spell slots, but he isn't out of options.)
Yes.. First, I always felt D&D was much more Renaissance then strictly medieval, with it's more flexible class structure and the idea of people being essentially free people, rather than strictly subjects of any given lord. If the technology exists, then there will be an effort to mass produce it, just adventurers can afford to take various shortcuts and often are better minted when experienced than the average person.
Firearms would typically belong to a particular guild or a faction wealthy enough to own them, such as town armouries or merchant guilds, however. This isn't to say they wouldn't exist but they wouldn't see mass deployment unless a marshalling was happening. In which they would be deployed essentially as they were. Mass formations of gunmen with slow-to-reload weapons that hit *really* hard, with some dedicated pike support to protect against charges. These mass-produced firearms should be relatively primitive, but extremely effective and easy to operate. Likewise people with cash (e.g. adventures) should ultimately be aiming to gain status and, therefore the ability to buy or produce guns if they so feel inclined.
Of course, people with the cash and the willingness to draw some eyes might bring a gun to a sword fight and as with all weapons, there should be opportunities to find ancient technology that might seem like magic, but really is just the idea that a civilisation much more advanced then us existed before.
This isn't to say guns should or shouldn't exist; just that whether they exist and how often they are available will change how your world fundamentally behaves. In a world of magic there is plenty of reason that someone might forgo or optimise these mechanical contraptions, just there is plenty of room for bandits and monsters still around because in my mind the people that own these assets won't risk them recklessly. Though it would be certainly a nice touch with a towns guard being able to ward off creatures with loud cracks. But also be ready for the players to *want* to own them, even if they have abilities that would likely surpass a weapon.
I like playing homebrew where almost anything can happen
Evil dead 3 with the chemistry book, ive not once ever ripped it off😂
People seem to thinking that technology and magic would work opposite. But if that was the case the crossbow and just a regular bow wouldn’t have been developed either. You have to do everything within reason. If you wanted to be hyper realistic physics wise then magic would break thermodynamics, neutonuan physics, and pretty much all general science. Guns would have to work for the same reason forging works.
4:49 That’s called a Chainfire!
The only Guns in DnD I would agree with are rustic forms, such as flintlocks for example.
I would even go as far as possible semi-auto magazine rifles. High misfire scores, and only 3-4 shots before reloading! (Like critical roles bad news)
One thing to remember is that magic in most settings is extremely versatile. So even though the common man can easily pick up a musket, a magician is still worth a hundred of them because he can do a hundred different things. Then Comes the question does mass beat quality and in some aspects it does. However, my counter-argument is magic, tends to bring different dimensions (quite literally sometimes) into the battlefield. A dude who can kill you in a 100 different ways from a distance is pretty freaking terrifying to go up against and even harder to counter.
Depends on the setting. Stay true and respectful to the setting. Forgotten Realms, for one, does indeed have primitive firearms. Cannons, arquebuses, simple flintlock pistols. They're rare, and Smokepowder they rely on is hella expensive. Other than that, they very much exist and belong in the setting.
I'm a forever DM (since AD&D) and have not and will not allow firearms of any kind in my world
I don't know if anyone will read this, but hello! This is your friendly narrator Brian here!
My opinion is simple and I'll leave it as this - yes.
Want to know more? Okay then!
Black powder/flintlock/wad guns are totally fine in a D&D setting depending on the time period. Dark, high, low, medium fantasy are all fine to have around the 13th century and beyond. Hand-cannons are perfectly fine inventions.
Much like the sword, axe, mace and flail are upgrades over the club and spear, a gun is simply a more destructive way to penetrate armor at various ranges. It's why once firearms were more commonly used, plate and other armor were basically phased out. We're now at a place where bows are back in real life and they can penetrate most armor.
Magic and technology are both at odds with and compliment one another.
Obviously though... I'd not put modern firearms in a fantasy setting... because that's just stupid.
I say any weapon available in the year 1890 or older as a viable option. Yes Any Weapon. So a Gatling gun is fine. Just balance it. It's a game
Ayyyyyyyyyy. TBA shoutout, I love it!
Guns can work, see Warhammer and all of their armies with blunderbusses and pistols, but it clashes with the LotR aesthetic. Even the industrial armies of Sauron capped out at trebuchets and battering rams instead of Ottoman cannon artillery or muskets.
For D&D specifically, as always, it depends on the setting. The real problem is that guns, realistically in the player's minds, are powerful weapons. If the guns aren't blasting people for 1d10+ at range, the lack of power ruins the fantasy of brandishing a firearm and people won't want to play with them over a Crossbow, especially if Crossbow Expert or Sharpshooter doesn't properly apply and whatever Gunner-like feat makes optimal investment too taxing. Adventurers also get too rich too quickly for price to be an actual roadblock, so you have to also have them be in such limited supply that it basically devolves back to the Magic Item solution. If the DM wants the party to have it, then the party will find it in a treasure hoard or for sale; if they doesn't want the party to have it, then it won't be in the game.
The pirate Fighter that I'm playing in my friend's Curse of Strahd campaign (potential spoilers ahead) was allowed to start out with a DMG Renaissance Pistol with ten shots worth of powder and ammunition because I asked nicely. One-handed 1d10 at 30/90 range, but my DEX is only 14 so it's more inaccurate than swinging a Longsword or throwing a Handaxe with 18 STR, and I don't have any feats to ignore the Loading property, so it's clear I'm not trying to abuse the setting with a guy that turns a musket into a gatling gun. Between the fact that replenishing ammunition would be downright impossible in Barovia without raiding an alchemist's shed and making an oddly specific request of a smith, and that we also have to worry about certain individuals ascertaining our capabilities, it hasn't been used yet. Party and DM keep asking OoC when I'm going to use it; turns out that a player's self-restraint can really make something feel special, even when mechanically it's a mediocre hail-mary play.
TL;DR: the people that do and don't want guns in D&D have very specific ideas of how a setting should be, and guns either don't or do conflict with their Platonic ideal of a D&D setting. For me, D&D is on the cusp where firearms are incredibly rare if not nonexistent, but the technology is there if someone was dedicated to creating the item.
It really is the miscommunication of expectations that tends to make guns a touchy subject.
I always just tend to tell my players that we're not dealing with sniper rifles here, and people will walk off gunshot wounds as much as they will a greatsword to the chest.
Focus more on the ammunition, common bullets would be damaging to most creatures but certain magical creatures would have a resistance
Then you (dm) and the party can create fantasy special ammo for those special encounters.
Unicorn blood hooves bullets for dragon slayers
Hellhound fang incinerated round for those pesky annoying mobs
Holy cold steel for the fae and creatures of the night.
Go Wilde!
Urgahh; gun bad. Not gun in my renaissance era game.
Tell that to the Landsknechts.
Uaargh, they take too long to reload.
It's called bayonet! Fire a round and charge in with what is now a spear.
Also, toss in a few granatos (grenade) and have a blunder buss (shotgun) near your nightstand and you be ready for anything.
guns should exist, but rarely as a weapon and more often as flavoring. and of course if your campaign is set in a modern time, sure, have guns in either form. I just see it as if i want my wizards fireball to be a grenade that's cool, if i want my artificers firebolt to be a rifle that's cool.
My personal view or method or whatever you want to call it is also simply "yes gun exist but they are rare and seen as unreliable against not just mages with any number of spells that can turn the weapon against the user but also unreliable against the numerous monsters in the world" like yes they exist but do you really want to have an explosive on you well fighting a red dragon or have a load gun with you around anyone with say the heat metal spell
Like ya, a stick of Dynamite is kinda like a fire ball but then there's the cost of making it, transportation to the seller and have you use it that's it, it's not nearly as convenient now take all that and add om the fact it can stolen by bandits, ruined and made useless in bad weather and finally in a fight some jerk with Prestiditaion lit the fuel well it was still on your belt or snuffed out the fuel when you tried to lite it
Compared to magic it's just not as convenient and ya sure if you have no choice
Do you allow studded leather something that historically never existed it was just a misidentified brigandine chest piece. Do you allow full plate something that was made over 100 years after the first guns.
Anyone who thinks that traditional fantasy magic and guns can't mix has never played Wild Arms.
I been playing DnD since first edition yeah I am old but thing is history of gunpowder and fireworks in the Far east was already established even before crossbows...chinese even developed repeating crossbows so why in any Fantasy setting would you abhor guns.... and yet have had DM's that did.. but also had a few that allowed guns of appropriate era to be used so no tommy guns or ak 47's... besides I like when a caster is smart enough to use Heat Metal spell and make the gun explode before it can shoot...
I think this argument is always more of a test of how powerful a person thinks guns inherently need to be and then becomes just about overpowered homebrew.
Depending on how you view hit points a level 1 barbarian is at least 3 times as hardy as a commoner before they even rage, they can get stabbed and slashed over and over again. If you can accept that most guns are basically designed to kill 4hp commoners and so would have similarly little effect on tough adventurers cool. If you view hit points more as dodge or luck points then prepare for everyone shooting at adventurers to have storm trooper aim
The DMG flintlocks can be fine because of the loading property and price, basically they can be difficult to get before 5th level at which point they become less effective than bows because you have extra attack. There is the gunner feat which I have a minor design issue with but really crossbow expert is stronger in my opinion.
Now things more advanced than flintlocks get complicated but I think mostly can be handled by asking what sort of fantasy you want, flintlocks work for pirates and are arguably necessary if you involve ships because a pirate ship doesn't feel right without a canon. Then there's cowboys, if you can accept your 6-shooter doing damage roughly in line with everything else I have no problem, if you insist that it does 3d10 on every attack or something similar, I assume you just want to be OP, same for any machine guns.
If you want guns to play as your favourite character like doomslayer or john wick then you need to have the "is this the right system?" Discussion with the DM, maybe we can figure something out like flavouring battlemaster manoeuvres with a bow as different weapons, like tripping to represent a shotgun to the leg
1000% this is the issue every time it comes up in discussions I'm in.
People saying they should be able to unload all their shots faster than the (instantaneous) Eldritch Blast, giving out dice numbers that put hypothetically dual-wielded greatswords to shame, still adding in your Dex modifier (or I've even seen people argue Int and Wis because of.....aiming?), being simple weapons anyone and their mother can use, having more range than longbows, and even triple damage crits. And this is all *before* runes to make them silent/incendiary/true strike'd (yes really one I've seen) and just....so much more customizable than anything else no contest.
I get it. You want to use guns and for them to have kick. But these are so overwhelmingly overtuned that there's literally 0 reason for the entire party to not be using them at all times. If the Rogue is doing more damage at level 1 than all the other martials will their entire careers because of a weapon choice, then that is a *big* issue.
@@dreamwanderer5791 one idea I had for mag dumping because fanning the hammer is a little bit a cowboy thing, was that you can fire your proficiency bonus worth of shots with no to hit bonuses(except for magic stuff, you aren't aiming but the gun, bullets of whatever could be). Basically just good for damage on low AC targets like zombies, Gelatinous cubes or someone hit with hold person
@@RowbotMaster Bless the reasonable pros and cons.
@@dreamwanderer5791 because I feel like you might appreciate it my ideal revolver is a simple weapon that does 1d6 as base(basically handaxe as a ranged weapon) but can have the damage increased at the risk of chainfires being more likely and devastating as you go. At 1d8 damage rolling a 1 causes a chainfire and you take 1 damage for each unfired shot. There is a maximum you can boost it to.
I kind of assume something like a Chicago reload happening often but if you do need to reload in combat you can replace an attack with loading a shot.
It's not a lot but it adds a few options like duel wielding range weapons, gun and shield and a small trick of loading your last shot to the max because there's nothing left to chainfire
In my opinion, having/making guns are one thing. What most people don't think about are the bullets. To make bullets even in our modern day are, while not super expensive, are not cheap either. Also, look at the availability of bullets for sale.
I always look at it from a gameplay balance stand point, a Dm can always write in the lore how they want. Personally I make most guns do a larger damage dice then bows seeing that a bullet has a worse exit wound then an arrow, normally. To counter act this the gun is breakable when equipped and has a personal hp that be “healed” back to full by mend as long as the gun is not hit 0 hp( mind you I don’t normally run artificers so idk how that would fit in with this system). Every time the user is damaged the gun takes half that dmg and when fired the gun halved its current go count. This allows early guns to be used as disposable items or allows the Dm and players to implement improvements to the fire arm such as reenforcement or better bullet types for higher dmg. As well as if the creature is attacked by fire dmg then their black pounder is ignited and they take 1d4 fire per bag they were holding (1 bag=1 shot). Probably didn’t mention a lot of context for this but I am on the toilet at work typing this so no time for a spell check, good luck hope this helps some one.
Yes. Guns date back to 1288. An original dnd campaign has space lasers. The entire point of the dnd multiverse is that everything fits to an extent.
Even eberron makes them magical projectiles and not gunpowder. Easy
No simple
Just like it doesn't in any fantasy type setting set in the medieval times
Pillars of eternity has guns so I say yes
Honestly, I think they can. I came up with a whole system using a lot of cowboy style weapons. Revolvers, pepperboxes, lever-action rifles, rolling block rifles, double barrel shotgun, lever action shotgun. That whole era of firearms is just really cool to me, plus it gives plenty of room to experiment. For example: a prototype semiautomatic pistol, make a single shot as an attack action as normal, or use that fast cyclic rate to make two but with no proficiency bonus because of unpredictable recoil. Or a revolver with an underbarrel shotgun (that’s actually a real thing, it’s called the LeMat and saw a lot of use during the U.S. Civil War. Go look it up).
Edit: And if you want to do magic guns, I have two words for you: Destiny Exotics. A lot of those can work really well as magic weapons . I came up with stats for Ace of Spades and Rose by tying their special abilities to getting crits. Thorn had a damage over time effect tied to a constitution save. Thunderlord became a shotgun.