Question about gunpowder weapon's in mediaval setting.

[SirDogeTheFirst]

Hello dear writers and readers, I have a question in my mind.

How can I make gunpowder weapons not too powerful in a medieval setting without completely butchering the immersion?

And I am not talking about the first musket rifles that took so long between shoots enemy can make itself an omelet before you can even shoot your second round.

I mean rifles more like Martini-Henry, or Mauser 1877, the ones that can fire much faster.

But I must give more information to create a better context in your head.

In my story, the main character and the people he leads are defending a Dwarven fortress where they have access to a vast amount of steel, gunpowder, and equipment to process these two into weapons.

And like every generic isekai main character, my mc also knows how modern firearms works.

But I don't want guns in my story to be too powerful and let mc steamroll everything that stands against him.

Now, the question comes. How can I nerf gunpowder weapons or balance them enough to make the enemy not useless in a way that has at least a crumb of immersion?

 

[Wheelwander]

Well, if there is magic I suppose you can say that it altered chemical properties of some compounds and make gunpowder less explosive and in turn less lethal.

 

[Feather]

It depends on what you consider too powerful?
Revolvers existed before back loaded guns. Later came breach loaded guns.
Revolvers are strong, cool but slow and inconvenient.
Back loaded are fast to load but only shoot once or twice.
Breach loaded can function as either of the two.

The problem is that if your novel last more than a few years then probably someone will invent machineguns anyway.

 

[Wheelwander]

You can always do it the other way around, make enemy shield sturdier

 

[GodlyKamui]

These kinds of weapons are actually pretty easy to nerf.

Do you have magic in your setting? Then make some of the enemies of MC to be able to enhance their defense so bullets won't do much to them.

Do you have monsters in your setting? Then make them as hard as steel or concrete and bullets won't have enough piercing power to damage them.

Even common magicians could protect themselves using barriers against physical attacks.

That is how I would nerf it.

 

[Biggest-Kusa-Out-There]

Simple, don't go for guns. You are creating a problem you don't have a solution for.

Make only 1 gun come out of an entire mine due to material incompatibility (maybe gunpowder corrodes steel so shooting once would destroy the gun. this would make it a last resource tool)

 

[TotallyHuman]

Make them not deadly. Oh no, you shot me point blank from a shotgun! I'm going to get a rash!

 

[Jemini]

I'm trying to remember the name of that Isekai in which Nobunaga and several other famous historical warriors and legendary figures such as Joahn of Arc are all transported to another world. (No, it's not Fate.)

Anyway, it has him and 2 other Japanese-origin Earth-worlders brought together, and they all have to defend a city against an entire army lead by Western-European origin transmigrator heroes. He managed this by training up a firing line armed with Aquebus (the precursor to muskets, and even slower to load.)

The presence of these antiquated fire-arms made quite the difference in the battle, for exactly the same reason they were adopted in the real world.

When you get right down to it, those old fire-arms are actually around equal in effectiveness to a bow and arrows. The major difference between a bow and a musket that caused the musket to win out is that the musket requires a LOT less training. It takes around a decade to train an archer, and the overwhelming majority of that is just the strength training needed to draw back the bow string. Accuracy is something you don't even worry about training in an archer because the strength training takes SOOO freaking long that it is practically a guarantee the archer is going to be a skilled shot by the time they have the back muscles to draw back a proper war-bow.

Meanwhile, a musket, or even the earlier aquebus, only needs a few weeks worth of drills to get the person to enough of a level of accuracy to hit a reasonable amount of the time, and the time needed is even less if all your training them to do is shoot from a firing line. You can train them to alternate off in the firing line to pack the bullet and the gunpowder correctly in just an afternoon of training.

So, really, the power of fire-arms, particularly the early ones, is in the training time and lack of physical strength necessary. If they are up against trained archers, the two are about even, so there's not that much need to worry about nurfing them.

 

[Degoneth]

I'm trying to remember the name of that Isekai in which Nobunaga and several other famous historical warriors and legendary figures such as Joahn of Arc are all transported to another world. (No, it's not Fate.)

Anyway, it has him and 2 other Japanese-origin Earth-worlders brought together, and they all have to defend a city against an entire army lead by Western-European origin transmigrator heroes. He managed this by training up a firing line armed with Aquebus (the precursor to muskets, and even slower to load.)

The presence of these antiquated fire-arms made quite the difference in the battle, for exactly the same reason they were adopted in the real world.

When you get right down to it, those old fire-arms are actually around equal in effectiveness to a bow and arrows. The major difference between a bow and a musket that caused the musket to win out is that the musket requires a LOT less training. It takes around a decade to train an archer, and the overwhelming majority of that is just the strength training needed to draw back the bow string. Accuracy is something you don't even worry about training in an archer because the strength training takes SOOO freaking long that it is practically a guarantee the archer is going to be a skilled shot by the time they have the back muscles to draw back a proper war-bow.

Meanwhile, a musket, or even the earlier aquebus, only needs a few weeks worth of drills to get the person to enough of a level of accuracy to hit a reasonable amount of the time, and the time needed is even less if all your training them to do is shoot from a firing line. You can train them to alternate off in the firing line to pack the bullet and the gunpowder correctly in just an afternoon of training.

So, really, the power of fire-arms, particularly the early ones, is in the training time and lack of physical strength necessary. If they are up against trained archers, the two are about even, so there's not that much need to worry about nurfing them.

In addition, in archives it is recorded that a good archer could send up to 40 arrows during the time an arquebuser shots and reloads. So early aequebueses were mainly used as one shot armor piercing weapons during chaotic battles such as ship boardings. So the setting can be used for fantasy adventurer parties .

 

[Cipiteca396]

You don't need to nerf guns. Doing so would be unrealistic. Guns work the way they work, and you need to be clever or very lucky to defeat them.
Honestly, the guns you're describing could easily be IMPROVED by any competent Dwarves. Using monster materials instead of steel, using enchantments to increase the range and firepower, or to replace ammo and gunpowder. I'd be surprised if they didn't have something better before the MC even arrived.

Forgetting that, give the enemies crossbows, overwhelming numbers, a natural advantage, or magic.

If there are any enemies capable of matching the Dwarves on your side, or enemy Dwarves, they should be able to replicate the tech fairly quickly. Now any advantage you once had belongs to the enemy.

What enemy are you fighting?
Goblins will keep fighting even once you run out of bullets. Maybe sneak in without getting shot too.
Orcs will take multiple bullets to kill, and keep fighting once you run out.
Elves will outrange them with bows and magic.
Humans will make a trade deal and come back with rocket launchers.
Demons and undead won't be affected by normal ammunition.
Dragons won't be affected by small arms fire, but they might attempt to run from artillery. They'll circle around and burn the entire area to cinders, though.
Giants will outrange you with slings and thirty pound rocks.

Well, just say what you're using and I'll tell you the countermeasure...

 

[Jemini]

In addition, in archives it is recorded that a good archer could send up to 40 arrows during the time an arquebuser shots and reloads. So early aequebueses were mainly used as one shot armor piercing weapons during chaotic battles such as ship boardings. So the setting can be used for fantasy adventurer parties .

That's factored in when I said that the two come out roughly equal. They are completely a-symetrical in terms of pros and cons against each other, but once all the pros and cons are added up you come out with the two being roughly even.

Such as, as you said, arquebus having more penetrating power Vs. an arrow where as the archer can get off a ridiculous amount more arrows in the time it takes the arquebuser to fire off just 2 shots.

When you boil down all of the pros and cons against each other, and scale them both up to an entire unit, 4 ranks of arquebusers firing in rotation can about match an equal number of archers firing at full speed in terms of the number of bodies each produces.

That being the case, the main difference that gave the arquebus the edge was the training time. And, by the time muskets made it onto the field and thus wore down a few of the rough edges over the arquebus, fire-arms had a very clear advantage over the archers to the point archers completely fell out of favor.

That said, up until the musket was created, fire-arms were very much a weapon of war. The far lighter-weight muskets were easier to hunt with, meaning that all of a sudden every farmer in the countryside had fire-arms training for the sake of personal hunting, thus bringing the already short training time down even further, only having to teach them to shoot in ranks and eliminating the need to teach them how to pack and measure the powder and all that.

 

[SirDogeTheFirst]

From the answers till now.


There are several great suggestions that I cannot implement because of world-building.


And removing gunpowder will destroy all the hope for victory in the future. Magic is not common where mc is, but it is in other places.


Without gunpowder, mc and his army don't stand a chance against what later will come.


But now, I don't think I need to nerf gunpowder enemy already has more numbers.



And in the future, where much stronger and magical enemies will come to the scene. I doubt if gunpowder alone will be enough.



So, I will keep the guns as they are while, making archers stronger, or more close to what the beast they actually were in mediaval times.



Thanks, everyone, for suggestions, but I am still open to more if you have one.

 

[GodlyKamui]

From the answers till now.


There are several great suggestions that I cannot implement because of world-building.


And removing gunpowder will destroy all the hope for victory in the future. Magic is not common where mc is, but it is in other places.


Without gunpowder, mc and his army don't stand a chance against what later will come.


But now, I don't think I need to nerf gunpowder enemy already has more numbers.



And in the future, where much stronger and magical enemies will come to the scene. I doubt if gunpowder alone will be enough.



So, I will keep the guns as they are while, making archers stronger, or more close to what the beast they actually were in mediaval times.



Thanks, everyone, for suggestions, but I am still open to more if you have one.

So if enemies are getting stronger, you can have MC firearms be enchanted to keep up with the enemies.

Always try to find a happy medium.

 

[SuperHeiyan]

The name of that Isekai you refers to @Jemini is Drifters by chance?
I say that while ancient guns aren't stronger than bow and arrows the more modern ones did improve in several fields and have better accuracy, better speed of fire, better armor piercing capabilities, cheaper ammo (yes, propper arrows cost is big comparing to manufactured bullets) they can even have better range and stopping power. It's can't even be said that good gun requires better material science than good wooden bow, it's just requires different fields. Composite bows are noticeble harder to "reinvent" for transmigrator than guns because the grasp of mechanics in the gun making is something that comes natural, meanwhile for bows you need deep knowledge of mathematic, physics and chemistry. And process of trials and errors will be longer with compositr bows than with simplier guns.
The only real problem with guns are availability of materials (which shouldn't be problem for dwarves) and weight.

 

[Sabruness]

Simple, don't go for guns. You are creating a problem you don't have a solution for.

i lean towards this. trying to tread the line of guns being powerful but not OP in a fantasy setting is a very tricky and complex prospect, especially when said line is razor thin. the end result will always fall on either "guns are useless because magic/fantasy phlebtonium/etc" or "guns are OP because there's either no magic, the magic simply cant deal with a chunk of lead launched at someone going at over 1k feet per second (if you're talking mid-late 19th century bolt actions) or the guns are enchanted and modified with magic to be even more powerful"

 

[Jemini]

The name of that Isekai you refers to @Jemini is Drifters by chance?

Yep, that's the one. Thanks.

 

[Assurbanipal_II]

Hello dear writers and readers, I have a question in my mind.

How can I make gunpowder weapons not too powerful in a medieval setting without completely butchering the immersion?

And I am not talking about the first musket rifles that took so long between shoots enemy can make itself an omelet before you can even shoot your second round.

I mean rifles more like Martini-Henry, or Mauser 1877, the ones that can fire much faster.

But I must give more information to create a better context in your head.

In my story, the main character and the people he leads are defending a Dwarven fortress where they have access to a vast amount of steel, gunpowder, and equipment to process these two into weapons.

And like every generic isekai main character, my mc also knows how modern firearms works.

But I don't want guns in my story to be too powerful and let mc steamroll everything that stands against him.

Now, the question comes. How can I nerf gunpowder weapons or balance them enough to make the enemy not useless in a way that has at least a crumb of immersion?

What a genius MC. Irresistible. XD Centuries of manufacturing, wielded by a single character.

The weaknesses are usually powder quality, tolerances, and ammunition quality. But if the MC sorted that all out, I see nothing being able to stop him.

 

[Layenlml]

The best way is having a smart enchancer or blacksmith in the enemy team and have them make countermesures after the first impact of the weapons.

It's always weird that they don't enchance the firearms with magic but... lethality wise, firearms are as deadly as a fireball, faster and more precise so it's hard to nerf them in most cases.

 

[owotrucked]

What a genius MC. Irresistible. XD Centuries of manufacturing, wielded by a single character.

The weaknesses are usually powder quality, tolerances, and ammunition quality. But if the MC sorted that all out, I see nothing being able to stop him.

Machinists can't fucking get screw holes aligned on my stuffs but MC can mass produce reliable rifles. Dwarves are OP

 

[Lloyd]

Just have guns not use your stats to calculate damage and instead just do flat damage, based on the gun's attack but ignoring the enemy's defense. Then guns will be better against stronger enemies, but inferior against weaker enemies.