To be honest the stats would certainly fit 1750, or even 1650, but there were much better weapons around. Samuel Colt started selling his patented revolver in 1833, the 1836 Walker-Colt was a very popular model.

I do understand the reason for those few puny weapons - in the British Empire they didn't actually change from muzzle-loading black powder weapons until after the Crimean War (despite the increasing reliability and availability of better breech-loading and rifled weapons). I do believe even cartridge weapons were available, though not mass-produced. Indeed percussion caps were replacing admittedly simple and cheap flintlocks as the firing mechanism, speeding things up some.

Indeed thanks to the then War Minister the Duke of Wellington (hero of India, the Peninsular and Waterloo), the British Army were poorly equipped. Unfortunate trait of old men is to think what worked when they were young is equally applicable to the modern day. The weapons of Wellington's armies were obsolete by the time of the Crimea, and it wasn't until after that debacle that it was rectified. Of course the 1850 juncture is before Crimea...

Heard there were stats for the excellent (if old by 1850) Baker rifle somewhere...

Can we offer the 1850s gun-man something better than smooth-bore black powder weapons? While your average British soldier might be poorly armed, there's no reason a PC from 1850 should have to be. Or of course a well-heeled villain!

Thoughts
Kiero

What's with the rulebook's crappy-ass damage of 1850's weapons? Black powder pistols do a pathetic 7 pts, and muskets only do 8. Now, I'm aware that these firearms were far less -accurate- than modern weapons, but when they hit, it seems like they did some ugly damage. I mean, the projectiles were big wads of metal, for cripe's sake. It would seem better to impose an AV penalty to attacks with them but pump damage up a bit, wouldn't it? Does anyone know enough about this topic to address this?

And as long as I'm bewildered about damage...
What about bow & arrows doing only 7 points? I've seen live demonstrations of arrows fired from standard short bows penetrating deeper into targets than .22 and .38 caliber handgun bullets. Shouldn't this penetration equate to more damage than 7 pts? It seems to me like a crossbow bolt to the ribs could easily do 9 pts of damage, if a 38 revolver like the Rossi 851 can do that. Any archers out there care to comment on arrow damage?

I know, reality is usually tossed aside in Feng Shui, but I have this thing for weapons other than firearms. As a (real-life) martial artist, I cringe to see some of the non-firearm weapons getting slighted in the game. And sure, as the Ref, I can just *say* that bows do 9 pts or whatever, but I'm curious to know if I have a historically accurate basis for that. Any help would be great!

A Welsh longbow at 200 yards could penetrate a knight's armoured leg and pin him to his horse (ie armour on both sides, the knight's leg, the saddle, blanket, and the horses flesh). There are numerous accounts at the Battle of Agincourt (1415) at just how powerful (and long ranged) these weapons were. The English simply outclassed the more numerous crossbow-wielding French with their faster-firing longbows.

The Mongol composite bow was small but long ranged and powerful. Wouldn't make a big hole in your back as it left, but two and a half feet of wood driven through you will do serious harm.

Crossbow bolts more damage, but fixed since it ain't muscle powered. Maybe 8 or 9 for a light/hunting crossbow, and 10-12 for a heavy one (requiring a mechanism to wind it and making it extremely slow). Smaller for the cho-ku-no which fire little quarrels and has a hopper for speedy reload.

Arrows and bolts can be caught by exceptional martial artists, which is a cool stunt...

Black Powder weapons are powerful, just slow and inaccurate. Seems they've been made deliberately weedy, perhaps to balance out Fu-based characters in 1850? Still not right though.

Kiero

http://www.uta.fi/~trmika/peleja/1850guns.pdf