Cat: So, we’re making a setting for a slightly home-brewed Pathfinder 1e campaign. We want guns in the campaign, but the official firearms rules are irksome.
Cat: Anyway, as one of the changes we’ve made, we’ve switched propellants to a technically magical explosive called Force Powder. Force powder is smokeless, does not foul the workings of a gun, operates just fine in water, and can only be set off with a sharp percussive force; examples include smashing it against a metal surface with a hammer, or an explosive shockwave.
Cat; Among other things, we’ve figured that this will probably make rifled firearms a fair bit more popular early on than in real life; one of the big reasons they weren’t widely adopted for military use is because all the smoke quickly nullified their range and accuracy advantages. It also means that matchlocks, wheel locks, and flint locks basically don’t exist, with only percussive ignition being feasible.
Cat: So, are there any other things we should be aware of?
Lucifer: We’re uncertain of the effects on breech-loading firearm adoption. It seems like it should help?
obligatory not a firearms expert. but assuming that Force Powder is roughly comparable to modern smokeless powder, the biggest thing I’m noticing is that smokeless powder – by getting rid of the inefficiencies of black powder – is powerful enough to blow up your traditional firearm. Now if it’s magic you can possibly adjust the strength of Force Powder to not have this issue, but as manufacturing techniques improve you might end up with different weapon ratings to deal with different strengths of Force Powder. So for example a cast iron cannon with 2 inch thick walls might be able to use a “grade A” Force Powder while a simple wooden musket might only be able to handle a “grade D” Force Powder. (could also be a mechanic for +1 weapons and such)
As an aside, im not familiar with the Pathfinder firearm mechanics but some of the problems with traditional firearms were the guns themselves. so replacing just the black powder isn’t necessarily going to fix y’all’s problems
Cat: You don’t need to worry about the game mechanics side of things; the official rules firearms are just badly statted.
Lucifer: The point about needing to make the gun barrels stronger is definitely interesting, though.