Muskets exist in the setting, but gunpowder doesn't. In fact according to Ed Greenwood even if all the ingredients to make gunpowder are combined correctly it would be inert because Gond decided gunpowder was too dangerous. Gond does permit some gunpowder to work, which requires his priests to infuse it with magic and that's smoke powder, which is what the barrels are in this game (their prevalence is kind of wrong from a lore perspective). So firearm use pretty much can't become wide spread, there is literally a god preventing their proliferation.
From a game mechanic perspective RAW the "renaissance" firearms as written are great at low levels but kind of bad after. They have the loading property and unlike crossbows there's no feat bypass the loading property so they can only fire one shot a round. You can't even fire one as a bonus action (like you can with a hand crossbow with crossbow expert). They are on a bigger a damage dice but sharpshooter means pure number of attacks matter much more. If you have some means of bypassing the loading property then they are just great assuming similar quality with available bows. If there are magic bows but not fire arms then bows probably have the edge. In BG3 crossbows are correctly labelled with the loading property so that will probably be implemented but there seems to be no restrictions on bonus action for off hand. So the niche they would continue to occupy even at higher levels would be pistol as an off hand ranged weapon (with a hand crossbow in main hand). d4 vs. d10 means a magical hand crossbow would probably not be competitive until +2.
Any of the later weapons are just better than the existing ranged weapons.
Last edited by Panda Warlord; 12/10/22 05:51 AM.
