Modified Firearm Rounds

[Guardian of Twilight]

Hello everyone. In my 3.5 Ravenloft campaign, a player of mine wants to hollow out the inside of a musket round and fill it with holy water or other substances and was asking me if this would work out. I decided that I would ask you all and see if there were any preexisting rules or anything on this. I know the Ravenloft DMG has the sheet for special alchemical rounds, but this is a bit different. Thank you for your time and help!

[ScS of the Fraternity]

Could cause some problems.

Would holy water still be holy water after being tainted with base lead and the sooty residue of gunpowder?

Also, the amount of holy water delivered with each bullet would certainly be less than a vial, which is the base unit of dealing damage with holy water.

An interesting quality of water is incompressibility. Liquids don't compress, as opposed to lead, which comparibly is very soft and squishy. The water might give the bullet extra hardness (less damage, more penetration), or it might do nothing, and the bullet would act as a hollowpoint (less penetration, much much more damage).

[Jester of the FoS]

I'd rule it a special alchemical round that can do, oh, a point or so of holy water damage to a physical undead. Maybe 1d2 damage at most (but does bypass DR).
But the bullet is reduced one size category for its damage. Or takes a -1 penalty to attack rolls (harder to get through armour, throws off balance of the bullet).

I'd lean to the latter (bonus point or two of easy damage but extra -1 to hit).
But have to be made special (considered masterwork ammunition w/o the standard benefits) plus the cost of the holy water (1 vial for, oh, 10 rounds of ammo). Keep in mind the PHB curiously has holy water being sold at cost, and most priests would make it up for labour.

[Archedius]

Drilling into the ball and then trying to fill it and then re-seal it...pretty much wouldn't allow it- impractical. If magic was used to do this- yes.

[Strahdsbuddy]

probably simpler to bless the ammunition...

[ReDeeMeR]

I agree with the 'magic only' approach.

Drilling a ball (as it was called) and shooting it with a musket, could have some very unpredictable effects. The most common would be fragmentation of the ball the moment it left the gun's barrel (thus instantly vaporizing any liquid in the cavity inside). Ball fragmentation even occured on normal unmodified balls due to lead containing impurities that affected its integrity.
Although there was no spin to the ball (well at least not in the sense modern bullets spin - due to lack of a rifled barrel), trajectory would be affected slightly, eventually throwing the ball 'off balance' as Jester suggested.
Finally the amount of holy water necessary to do actual damage to the undead is not nearly enough IMO. Modern liquid-delivering bullets would work because we assume that the target has a functional circulatory system to cycle the poisonous substance through vital organs. Undead, on the other hand, lacking that, would be affected only on the spot of impact. I always considered holy water as a form of 'divine acid' and not 'divine poison'.

I don't mean to be a party-breaker And if 'realism' has no firm place in your campaign please ignore all of the above.

Best regards

[impworks]

Not quite the same thing but I did once read about US criminals coating first musket balls and later bullets with a garlic paste that increased the pain of being shot or grazed by a projectile. Additionally if the wound wasn't thoroughly cleaned it caused pain even after healing.

Completely unrealistic but maybe a garlic paste including holy water might make for an interesting concoction. Coat it on a silver round and mix in a bit of wolfsbane too for good measure

[Archedius]

Strahdsbuddy has a good idea with the bless the ammunition bit

[High Priest Mikhal]

Not quite the same thing but I did once read about US criminals coating first musket balls and later bullets with a garlic paste that increased the pain of being shot or grazed by a projectile. Additionally if the wound wasn't thoroughly cleaned it caused pain even after healing.

That would be the acid in garlic, which ironically also acts as an antiseptic.

If you want bullets of holy water, use a sling (priests bullets in Libris Mortis). Ball ammo is hard to modify, except for alternate metals.

[vipera aspis]

I would say no. even no to magic. i ran a rather long campaign with extensive gun use by all (minus the druid). we learned the beauty on the gun is it's cold, cruel and hard scientific base. Ijust uped the damages a bit. Rock out with silver and cold iron rounds though. Even dumping some powdered materials down the barrel in a pinch(gold worked pretty well on a mountain loup). At close range(very close) the powder could hit the open wound and deal 1-2hp.

By saying no to magic and "fantasy" alchemy, it forced my players to become very creative. Which was very, very cool. They came up with attack patterns, volley attacks, orders of reloading(with cohorts), bayonetts crafted of rare materials, blending pinch of dust from holy ground in with gunpowder(they called it "the hand of god"). Likely more they never told me of.

If you do decide to incorperate magic into the formula try getting ahold of Steam and Sorcery. In there is a awesome arcane gunman class if i'm not mistaken(a secret order too). Even then, try just to pepper it on, dont dump it.

Just my opinion: but to me magic guns and ammo have grown to seem kinda lame. not taking shots at anyone who does like them but....

[ewancummins]

I allow for magic guns and ammo, but they tend to be even rarer than other magic weapons. As I run a somewhat low magic Ravenloft campaign [items exist, but they aren't sold at the local Wiz-mart like in some settings], it's not a major issue.

[alhoon]

Which setting has magic shops? Only 4th edition and even those are merchants that happen to have a couple of items. 4th edition just suggests that the characters get "lucky" each time and find what they want in the limited selection offered.

As for the holy water bullet... As many said, drilling the ball, creating a cavity and sealing it back is difficult. I would say 2-3 hours of work with a craft (blacksmith or gunsmith) DC 20. A result of 15 or less destroys the bullet.

Also these bullets should have a -2 to hit rolls since the inside won't be homogenous and the bullet would break up on impact.
I would suggest a +1 damage to undead.

[ewancummins]

Which setting has magic shops? Only 4th edition and even those are merchants that happen to have a couple of items. 4th edition just suggests that the characters get "lucky" each time and find what they want in the limited selection offered.

The 3E Forgotten Realms was so magic heavy that 1st level characters were often assumed to begin play with items. There were also Red Wizard run magic shops in some places. The Red Wizards were producing large numbers of items for sale [how , I dunno]. It was apparently part of yet another one of their crazy ''tale over the world'' plots.

Eberron basically assumes the existence of an entire magic item industry.

[A G Thing]

You could going back to the holy water in the bullets aspect use the guns offered in Dragon issue 321 and use the Grenade Pistol meant to launch such substances in bomb casings.

Or also instead of that you could have him say prayers and use holy water to cool the bullets in the mold giving the shot some properties of the water against undead and evil outsiders. Perhaps dealing a bonus 1 damage and being counted as good for the purpose of bypassing damage reductions.

If using a realworld basis drilling as said before would probably not work as it would make the bullets more likely to go off course or shatter.

A hundered posts! YAH WOOOHOOO!!!

[Amicus]

Okay then, what about an even stranger idea:

Holy Ice Rounds.

Granted, they likely couldn't be fired with a musket; but I recall reading a mystery story where the killer used a specially made air rifle (since the bullets 'disappeared' by melting, the killings were extra mysterious). Maybe the character could hire a gnomish engineer to concoct a similar pneumatic musket. Added bonus: in the story, the pneumatic weapon had the benefit of being effectively silenced-- no one recognized the noise as a gunshot.

I seem to recall that the alchemical substance Quintessence does damage similar to holy water, but only when injected? So maybe that's a possibility. Maybe Quintessence can be alchemically precipitated into a solid suitable for musket rounds?