Café de Nuit

Bows are not easy. It takes a lot of practice to become a good archer, and if one is expected to handle a longbow with a heavy draw weight, then we're talking years and years of training.

Yet what about the crossbow, which is roughly as easy to learn as the arquebus and arguably has better range & accuracy than most early firearms?

Guns win.

Most definitely in the long run, though it's interesting to note that at least one observer - I believe it was Benjamin Franklin but one might be mistaken - remarked that a battalion of trained bowmen could still shoot a battalion of musketeers to pieces as late as the 18th Century; one could argue that the advantages are still more logistical than tactical until the debut of the breech-loading rifle finally upped the rate of fire on small arms in the 19th Century.

Cannon, on the other hand, are Bad News no matter what sort of infantry weapon you happen to be equipped with (though it's interesting to wonder if a setting where mages are reasonably available would be bothered to build up the infrastructure associated with Field Artillery).

Rogold Gildenman wrote:

Bows are not easy. It takes a lot of practice to become a good archer, and if one is expected to handle a longbow with a heavy draw weight, then we're talking years and years of training.

Yet what about the crossbow, which is roughly as easy to learn as the arquebus and arguably has better range & accuracy than most early firearms?

Guns win.

Most definitely in the long run, though it's interesting to note that at least one observer - I believe it was Benjamin Franklin but one might be mistaken - remarked that a battalion of trained bowmen could still shoot a battalion of musketeers to pieces as late as the 18th Century; one could argue that the advantages are still more logistical than tactical until the debut of the breech-loading rifle finally upped the rate of fire on small arms in the 19th Century.

Cannon, on the other hand, are Bad News no matter what sort of infantry weapon you happen to be equipped with (though it's interesting to wonder if a setting where mages are reasonably available would be bothered to build up the infrastructure associated with Field Artillery).

Franklin wasn't expert in military affairs. But I think you have the source right. It might have been something of a joke on his part-I'd have to look it up.
It would have taken years to train an army of longbowmen and they'd need to be some big beef-fed guys to handle heavy warbows.
It's not about a single engagement. It's about campaigns and wars.

Crossbows were obviously not better than guns as they were fairly quickly displaced by matchlock firearms (at least for military purposes) in real life.
Range and accuracy don't always matter quite as much as you might think in mass combat. Most men aren't sharpshooters and aren't deployed as such. They are fighting in formations and firing in volleys.
And note to get good long range out of a crossbow you must arc the shot. Sure, the trajectories tend to be pretty flat, but extreme ranges are a different matter.

As far as logistical versus tactical advantages, I'm sure you know the line:


'Amateurs study tactics, professional study logistics.'


Now, do I think an adventurer shouldn't carry a bow or crossbow? Ah, that's quite a different proposition than outfitting an army! An adventurer in D&D is typically a skilled specialist, (at least) a cut above ordinary soldiers and militiamen.
Crossbows and bows are quiet. Guns are noisy. That may be a consideration.
It may be easy to make to find special bolts and arrows needed to slay certain monsters than to find or cast the equivalent in shot.
Recoverability of projectiles, which I think you mentioned up-thread, could be important, too.


A poacher might prefer a crossbow or bow.
So might an assassin.

And again, is powder produced in large quantities in your setting? If it's not, guns aren't so attractive.

RE Mordentshire soldiers

I don't have the Black Box in front of me, but don't Mordent's militiamen carry maces?

That would make sense in 3E. It's a simple weapon, relatively cheap, and effective in hand to hand combat.

I'd have the armed townsmen supplemented by woodsmen with bows and gentry (the leaders) on foot or horseback.


I wouldn't actually add a lot of guns, but my conception of Mordent is that it's hardly a rich and heavily settled land and it rarely fights wars.
Armament may not be very 'modern.'


The English still fielded longbowmen until about 1620, IIRC.

At the risk of swamping the thread in a Ewan post-storm, let me break with a question: are forces in your game fighting large battles against other soldiers pretty often, or is it mostly tangles with monsters and small bands of brigands?

No campaign on the go at the moment, but were I running or playing through a Ravenloft Campaign one would prefer to avoid Mass Warfare on the whole.

My own mental image of the Demiplane of Dread is very much a "New World" sort of setting, where populations aren't really large or organised or dense enough to sustain Open Warfare for very long - despite the best efforts of Vlad Drakov - although this doesn't prevent rivalry between more belligerent neighbours, much less the very nasty skirmishes that they produce (think the Anglo-Scottish Borders or the Hatfields and the McCoys; I imagine warfare in Ravenloft as very, very personal).

Personally I feel that this approach helps prevent the Horrors of War from diminishing the Supernatural terrors of the Demiplane by comparison (also that this keeps local Fantasy more "Heroic" than "Epic" in scale; as I may have noted elsewhere one prefers a version of Ravenloft where Fantasy is relatively understated, all the better to pull in harness with Gothic Horror*).


*I suspect this may be a highly idiosyncratic approach and will admit this stems from a long-running fondness for WARHAMMER 40,000 (in other words my appetite for EPIC WAR TO END ALL WARS COSMIC HORROR FANTASY is quite thoroughly satisfied elsewhere, so I'm looking for something a little different from the Realms of the Darklords).

Sounds cool.

Another factor: border closures by darklords.

Professional armies with firearms and artillery trains will be stopped by a supernatural effect at the border just as well as that effect will halt a mob of commoners with torches and pitchforks.

Assuming, of course, that the Darklord (or Darklords) in question aren't employing that mob for some cunning old "Just As" Plan!

The only one who can wage war easily enought in Ravenloft is my Drakov, unaffected by Border Closure and with an unmatchable army at his behest; If only something wouldn't always happen in Falkovnia to distract him from his campaigns...

If someone is interested here is my personal view on the Domain of Mordent(shire)viewtopic.php?f=1&t=10299