Talk:Musket, Rifled (5e Equipment)

I noticed that someone questions the balance of the musket. I admit that I was unaware of a musket previously existing, so I'll work to alter it in ways so as to make it a variant. However, I question the persons knowledge of muskets, or of firearms in general. For weapons with the "Range" property, the numbers denote the weapon's normal and maximum ranges. Both of these ranges are measured in feet (p. 148 PHB). So, when a musket has a range of 150/500, it's to say that the effective range is 150 ft., even though it can reach out up to 500 ft. To be honest, I actually got the range too low. A typical smooth bore musket was actually accurate up to 300 ft. Source So, I don't know where the person got the idea that 150 feet is twice as far as a modern hunting rifle's range, but they need to fix that. Vobria

The ranges of weapons in D&D are artificially reduced. An English longbow could fire out to 1000 feet [Wikipedia], in the game it's two-thirds that. Spears could be thrown to 150 feet with an effective range of 50 feet[1], in D&D it's 20/60 ft. Axes, crossbows, slings and shortbows are all similarly reduced. The ranges for renaissance and modern firearms given in the DMG are are the same way. I can think of two justifications for this. The first is that these maximum and effective ranges are determined in ideal conditions, which is rarely the case for adventurers in the swirl of battle, so this is abstracted in. Secondly, it helps balance the relevance of melee attacks, particularly when using miniatures, and they are balanced against the ranges of monster attacks and spells.

The important thing is that the ranges are consistent with each other, then if you want more realistic ranges the DM can suggest an overall multiplier. Marasmusine (talk) 07:01, 4 September 2015 (MDT)

Ah, I see what you're saying here. I adjusted the stats for the weapon and created a variant. I reduced its standard range to 80/320, which I think is quite doable as there are other ranged weapons on the wiki with greater ranges than that. The adjusted ballistics make more sense on this variant and the price is increased significantly, so I think the balance is maintained quite nicely. Let me know if you see anything else that would make it better. Vobria

Oki doki, we'll see how it goes, although I'll point out that the DMG gives 2d10 damage for modern hunting rifles, 2d8 for automatic rifles and revolvers. Marasmusine (talk) 01:36, 6 September 2015 (MDT)

Yeah, I'm thinking of bumping it to a 2d8. It should be more powerful than a smoothbore musket, but 2d6 is only marginally better than 1d12 for achieving high rolls, with the maximum being the same. A rifled musket matching a modern handgun in damage, at least in the context of D&D, is more easily imaginable. Since this isn't a weapon that a typical level 1 would have access to, it looks as though it would round out as well as it can. Vobria

So 2d12 was a typo :) Marasmusine (talk) 04:52, 6 September 2015 (MDT)

Well, not exactly. I just realized that 2d12 was rather odd when compared to its modern counterparts, x'D. --Vobria (talk) 17:28, 6 September 2015 (MDT)