Guns in a Fantasy Settings: Tips and Tricks for a GM

[Chris Goodwin]

I disagree, but that's not what I was talking about anyway.  Let me rephrase for clarity.

 

I dislike the idea of wizard universities.  Magic should be something mysterious to the characters within the setting.  Within the setting, magic should not be understood and accepted like science is today in the real world.  The "magic is science/science is magic" equivalency devalues one of the principal facets of the fantasy genre.  I don't want to play in a game where somebody is using a magical version of the internet to order pizza.

 

Then how does anyone use magic?  If it's something mysterious, it by definition can't be something quantified.  If I can cast a spell on demand, there's nothing mysterious about it.  

 

"I cast fireball."  If the player can say that, and a fireball consistently appears, then it's not mysterious.  The characters may not understand the mechanisms by which the fireball appears, but they know that if they have a small booger of bat poo and sulfur squished together, make gestures X, Y, and Z, and chant M, the fireball appears, and it's consistently a sphere of fire 20 feet in radius that appears within 120 feet... That's not mysterious.  It may be abstracted, from the player and GM standpoint; it may even be inconsistent in world, in that the gestures and incantations and material components for fireball have nothing whatsoever to do with those for ignite fire, or wall of fire, or affect normal fires; but I abso-damn-lutely assert that it's not mysterious.

[massey]

Then how does anyone use magic?  If it's something mysterious, it by definition can't be something quantified.  If I can cast a spell on demand, there's nothing mysterious about it.  

 

"I cast fireball."  If the player can say that, and a fireball consistently appears, then it's not mysterious.  The characters may not understand the mechanisms by which the fireball appears, but they know that if they have a small booger of bat poo and sulfur squished together, make gestures X, Y, and Z, and chant M, the fireball appears, and it's consistently a sphere of fire 20 feet in radius that appears within 120 feet... That's not mysterious.  It may be abstracted, from the player and GM standpoint; it may even be inconsistent in world, in that the gestures and incantations and material components for fireball have nothing whatsoever to do with those for ignite fire, or wall of fire, or affect normal fires; but I abso-damn-lutely assert that it's not mysterious.

 

Read what I wrote.  I said it should be mysterious to the characters within the setting.  I didn't say that the players should be unable to understand what is going on.  Read what I actually wrote.

[Chris Goodwin]

Read what I wrote.  I said it should be mysterious to the characters within the setting.  I didn't say that the players should be unable to understand what is going on.  Read what I actually wrote.

 

And read what I wrote.  "The characters may not understand the mechanisms by which the fireball appears, but they know that if they have a small booger of bat poo and sulfur squished together, make gestures X, Y, and Z, and chant M, the fireball appears, and it's consistently a sphere of fire 20 feet in radius that appears within 120 feet... That's not mysterious."  

Edited March 23, 2017 by Chris Goodwin

[massey]

The Palladium system has a unique method of dealing with magic, something I hadn't seen before and haven't seen since anywhere else.  It works really well.

 

Every being has a certain amount of innate magical power, which is called PPE (potential psychic energy).  Most people only have 3 or 4 points of PPE.  Wizards can have 50 points or more pretty easily.  You can cast a bunch of D&D-type spells using your PPE, just like a Hero character would spend Endurance.  But there are other ways to get more PPE, so you can cast more powerful spells (the most powerful spells often require enormous amounts of PPE, 1000 points or more sometimes).

 

One method of gaining PPE is to travel to a ley line, one of the mystical lines of force that criss-cross the Earth.  You can't see these lines, though some spellcasters can sense them.  Generally you'd have to do some research into mystical tomes to know where these things are.  Find a ley line, or find a place where two ley lines meet, and you can draw free magical energy from the world around you (these places also increase the power of your spells).  Another method of getting extra PPE is to kill someone and draw upon their life force.  When someone dies, their PPE is released in one big batch (double their normally available PPE).  This amount is even greater on a ley line or at a ley line nexus.

 

So if I kill Bob the Bystander at a ley line nexus, his 3 base PPE will be released into the air, and since he's dead it doubles to 6 points.  And since we're on a nexus, it triples to 18.  I can use this energy to blast off a fireball or something, without using my own energy.  But let's say I want to open a portal to another realm.  That costs like 500 PPE (or whatever, it's a lot).  I can take a few children (kids have more PPE, like about 10 points each), and I'll wait until a celestial event like an eclipse or a solstice (which increases the power again).  So I sacrifice say 4 kids, each releases 10 PPE, which doubles to 20 when they die (so 80 total), triple it to 240 at the nexus, and then double it to 480 for the eclipse.  Now I only 20 of my own to successfully cast the spell.

 

Is it creepy?  Sure, it can be.  But it's unique within its rule structure, it matches up with certain real world ideas of magic (important locations, sacrifices, etc), and the rules work pretty well.  There's a strong thematic aspect to the rules, and it comes through in play.

[Chris Goodwin]

The Palladium system has a unique method of dealing with magic, something I hadn't seen before and haven't seen since anywhere else.  It works really well.

 

Every being has a certain amount of innate magical power, which is called PPE (potential psychic energy).  Most people only have 3 or 4 points of PPE.  Wizards can have 50 points or more pretty easily.  You can cast a bunch of D&D-type spells using your PPE, just like a Hero character would spend Endurance.  But there are other ways to get more PPE, so you can cast more powerful spells (the most powerful spells often require enormous amounts of PPE, 1000 points or more sometimes).

 

One method of gaining PPE is to travel to a ley line, one of the mystical lines of force that criss-cross the Earth.  You can't see these lines, though some spellcasters can sense them.  Generally you'd have to do some research into mystical tomes to know where these things are.  Find a ley line, or find a place where two ley lines meet, and you can draw free magical energy from the world around you (these places also increase the power of your spells).  Another method of getting extra PPE is to kill someone and draw upon their life force.  When someone dies, their PPE is released in one big batch (double their normally available PPE).  This amount is even greater on a ley line or at a ley line nexus.

 

 

So if I kill Bob the Bystander at a ley line nexus, his 3 base PPE will be released into the air, and since he's dead it doubles to 6 points.  And since we're on a nexus, it triples to 18.  I can use this energy to blast off a fireball or something, without using my own energy.  But let's say I want to open a portal to another realm.  That costs like 500 PPE (or whatever, it's a lot).  I can take a few children (kids have more PPE, like about 10 points each), and I'll wait until a celestial event like an eclipse or a solstice (which increases the power again).  So I sacrifice say 4 kids, each releases 10 PPE, which doubles to 20 when they die (so 80 total), triple it to 240 at the nexus, and then double it to 480 for the eclipse.  Now I only 20 of my own to successfully cast the spell.

Is this list of conditions written down somewhere for the players to use? If so, then at some level the characters have to know about it, or be able to find out about it. If it's not, then it may as well be random, for all the input the players have into the process. And I assert, not fun.

 

Is it creepy?  Sure, it can be.  But it's unique within its rule structure, it matches up with certain real world ideas of magic (important locations, sacrifices, etc), and the rules work pretty well.  There's a strong thematic aspect to the rules, and it comes through in play.

Creepy and thematic is not the same thing as mysterious.

[massey]

And read what I wrote.  "The characters may not understand the mechanisms by which the fireball appears, but they know that if they have a small booger of bat poo and sulfur squished together, make gestures X, Y, and Z, and chant M, the fireball appears, and it's consistently a sphere of fire 20 feet in radius that appears within 120 feet... That's not mysterious."  

 

Still doesn't matter.  You're still focusing on the wrong parts of it.

 

A player will never find a magic system in a game mysterious.  He knows that they're sitting at a table rolling dice, and the GM is making rulings on how things work. Even if the player doesn't know how the magic system of the game works, he isn't going to be mystified.  He knows that Dave is sitting there checking his notes to see what the magic did.

 

A player character who uses magic will very rarely find magic in the game mysterious.  Apart from Call of Cthulhu, or other games where players can use magic beyond their understanding, a player character wizard knows what his fireball does.  That is not what we are talking about.

 

To achieve the right feel, magic should carry an aura of mystery within the setting to the vast majority of people in the setting.  This doesn't necessarily include PCs, as they are the ones who will be using the magic.  Nor does it apply to NPC wizards.  But the common man should view magic as an unpredictable and wondrous/terrifying thing. 

 

 

--

 

We as viewers know that the Polar Express takes kids to visit Santa Claus.

 

The kid on the train (as close as we get to a PC) learns and understands that the Polar Express has taken him to see Santa Claus.  And the bell that he gets will ring as long as he believes in Santa.

 

The kid's family does not know that the Polar Express even exists.  They do not believe in Santa.  They cannot hear the bell.  Even his little sister eventually stops hearing it.  They don't even believe that magic exists.  They aren't like "oh, you took the magic train to see Santa, huh?  I remember when I was a boy and I took that train..."

[Cantriped]

Schools of magic.as a DnDism is something I necer heard before but I think that came about around their 3rd edition?

Even 1st and 2nd edition Dungeons & Dragons have the "Schools of Magic" as a system of categorizing spells. They haven't changed much over the games history terms such as "Evocation", "Conjuration", and "Illusion" were being used to categorize spells at least as far back as the 1st Edition AD&D Players Handbook (I just checked my copy to be sure).

 

However, this really isn't the place to be having an in depth discussion about "proper" magic system design. As much as I love these debates, we are far off topic here. Chris, Massey please return to the topic at hand, or begin an appropriately named thread in which to continue this very interesting debate.

[Chris Goodwin]

Yeah, sorry about that, all.  I've been sitting on that for a while.  I will take it to another thread; I've got more to say on it.  

[Scott Ruggels]

I actually kind of "reject" the Mysterious magic concept, especially in my games. (especially if we are dealing with my Quasi- Byzantine era campaign, or a campaign where magic and firearms co-exist). It's definitely a  personal taste issue, but anything "Mysterious" rarely remains such, because humans are curious creatures, and are also endlessly looking for patterns, even where they may not exist (superstitions).  Everything gets put into a framework, and the ambitious will rules lawyer reality given the chance. Magic is a tool, with predictable results in a game, just as science or engineering, it just uses different rules and equipment. It has a different flavor, then, but it's still a tool for manipulating reality like a shovel and fire are as well.

 

Most traditional spell-casting in folklore is very much in the same vein as a recipe for cooking the family Christmas cookies. One learns at the elbow of an elder, and it taught the steps one at a time, in sequence to get the desired result. Experience modifies it to make the results more consistent, and creative individuals will try different ingredients to experiment, Eventually when she's old, the family will ask for it to be written down so the knowledge of the recipe is not lost. Sometimes it's well written, sometimes it's not and steps are misplaces, forgotten, or badly explained as the language shifts. Some people can follow instructions or have a talent for cooking, and some people wont. The differences between Magic and cookies thought tend to be societal, with the overarching culture coloring people's perceptions of magic and what is, and what isn't acceptable.

 

In Roman Times, magic was believed in, but a lot of small household charms were within the knowledge of  everyone, as were small rituals.  In the Dark Ages, anyone that could read was nigh unto a wizard, but anyone saying they could practice magic was a heretic and consorting with the devil, and therefore burned. In the Renaissance a general spirit of curious research gave us Alchemy, and the beginning of science, and by the enlightenment, witch burning was no longer practiced in Western Europe, and the scientific method was used, and soon gave birth to engineering and the industrial revolution.

Having Firearms presupposes having a supporting society, that  carries a more Renaissance view of the world, rather than a dark age, or barbarian outlook. It supposes  the primary users of said weapons are no longer tribal, or feudal, but proto-nation states with economies large enough to support a class of experimenting "renaissance men", as well as being able to support standing armies and navies (Small, but professional at this time, or even mercenaries). None of that prohibits the existence of magic in a campaign, but it will definitely "color" the attitude about magic.  Making magic "mysterious" presupposes that there is an organization that decides the morality of knowledge, and has the power, and the motive to suppress knowledge, and remove it from society, and cause severe social penalties, including death upon those that continue to quest for such forbidden knowledge.  

 

Mystery is generally just in it's simplest term a lack of knowledge, and all of us even in this modern age have blind spots in our knowledge about something, whether it be cars, computers, firearms, or the law, all forms of knowledge we trade with specialists for money to maintain our standard of living. IF one looks at magic like the ability to draw or paint, as in it's a mystery, and not everyone knows how to do it, speaking as an artist, it's the product of observation, practice, book learning and time, and the more of each one spends on one's art, the better they get. Artistic Talent is just how much self motivation does one have to put in all that time and effort to learn? The same could be said if we looked back at magic as cooking, where a few years on Culinary school may give one a leg up on using exotic ingredients, and cooking techniques to prepare meals at the highest skill,  and different schools teaching different skills.  This would relegate Grandma's Christmas cookies to  "hedge magic", though also a beloved local or family ritual. This sort of read still allows anyone with a school diploma so command respect and high fees  in society, but it's not the dark age folklore flavored image. How magic is viewed by "the Characters" is dependent upon how magic if viewed by society.  Sure magic will be mysterious, if knowing about it means danger to one's immortal soul, or membership in the church, the town or the polity.

So I reject "Mysterious Magic" for Mystery's sake, and lay it all out fair and open to the players, and in general it's another tool, and a tool, like a gun is neutral, and dependent on the motivations of the user, and the perception of the tool by society.

[Scott Ruggels]

Okay, back to guns. Here is, to me, the most advanced flintlock technology, from the 1720's, let me introduce to you, the Puckle Gun:

[Old Man]

So I reject "Mysterious Magic" for Mystery's sake, and lay it all out fair and open to the players, and in general it's another tool, and a tool, like a gun is neutral, and dependent on the motivations of the user, and the perception of the tool by society.

There are other trope aspects to magic besides mystery, although that is one of them. Unpredictability and consequences are two others that I can think of off the top of my head.  The former is not that magic is mysterious, necessarily, but that we don't know exactly what it will do when invoked.  The latter is that using magic either costs the caster something serious, or has other far reaching consequences.  Gandalf was reluctant to use magic for fear of giving away his position to bad guys who might be attuned to that sort of thing; Ogion refused to magic away a rainstorm for fear of not knowing how it would affect the weather elsewhere.  There is some overlap between these and mysteriousness but this way we can recapture some of the feel of magic without having to hide the mechanics from the players.

 

For the characters, of course, who can't see the game system, it's probably still incomprehensible how a wizard can incinerate an orc army just by saying something weird and wiggling his fingers.  Just like IT or auto mechanics.

[Doc Democracy]

Scott, I both completely agree and disagree with you. :-). I think it is absolutely dependent on the context of the campaign. If I think magic should be unpredictable, unsystematic and fundamentally non-scientific. In other campaigns it should be simply an alternate branch of science, that anyone should be able to learn and manipulate.

 

As long as players know the rules they are going to operate under, it should be simply a matter of flavour with a difference in how it plays in the game.

 

Doc

 

PS: that goes double for it being a neutral tool, like a gun. In many written fantasy setting the magic, or the source of the magic, is sentient and absolutely does have an agenda.

[Scott Ruggels]

 

Wellll...

 

Recently, in our Sunday Morning Roll20.net pathfinder game, we found ourselves in a dimension where magic became very unreliable. Every time one cast a spell, one spent the endurance/ consumables, and then rolled a D100. 99 to 59 the spell performed as expected. 59 to 39, nothing happened, and you were out the charges/spell slot/ consumables. on a 39 to 01, the opposite effect occurred (Light became darkness, cure light wounds became cause light wounds, ect.)  Because of this, the Sorcerer (me), and the Cleric (outside of defined, divine powers) became rather ineffective, and frustrating. You know it's bad when 1[.) The Sorcerer falls back on his first level acquired back up weapons  of a dagger and sling, and the other players who were way down on hit points declined any healing after or during combat because a D6 of damage might kill them. It left us panicky and frustrated, but we managed to survive this, thankfully, temporary frustration.  If this had been the base mechanic for the entire game, no one would play magic users, really at all, or if they did, their spell choices would be radically different.  Players loathe unreliable tools, and will tolerate it for certain temporary effects, but it's not something that they want to  endure as the default normal.  This was a big discussion when I worked in video games in the 90's, that too many random results or unreliable elements frustrated the player, and they became avoidant, like how people structure their income to minimize taxes.

 

Now, by all means you can have  consequences, and unpredictability, and there are mechanics in Herof for that already. Skill rolls turn Magic from a science to an art, especially if they have to roll to target as well. But you can see how that will affect the design of spells as well as the "feel" of them.

 

Another thing that can be done is all spells of a certain type have a limitation of 1d6 of unluck opper X{ number of dice of effect, up to 3D6, with the an added mechanic of  the GM rolling a secret roll for how "delayed" the unluck is for that by rolling 2d6 for the number of phases of delay, until the unluck event occurs, which could with unfortunate systems, stack  more than one d6 of unluck on a single phase. One could also play with the amount of delay, as well.  There is your consequences.

 

But in general, if you "want" magic in the game IMO, keep it clean, keep it useful and lay the assumptions out on the table for the players. The mechanics should nudge the players into making decisions consistent with how their characters perceive the world, though. 

[Doc Democracy]

I dont "want" magic in my game, I want "magic" in my game.  :-)

 

I think what you described in the pathfinder game is a great episode in a game.  It is not how you make magic in your game feel more like magic than an alternative technology.  I agree that something like that makes players less interested in playing magic - it is exactly the effect I was talking about magicians having on gun users in battles by making their weapons unreliable.  :-) :-)

 

I think there are better ways, often out of combat situations...

[Pattern Ghost]

The Pathfinder scenario imposes mechanical consequences. A good campaign striving to give magic unintended consequences should look to impose story consequences.

[Scott Ruggels]

The Pathfinder scenario imposes mechanical consequences. A good campaign striving to give magic unintended consequences should look to impose story consequences.

 I had to think on this through an insomnia period last night,  It all came back to the word, "story".  I came into this hobby through wargaming back in the mid to late 1970's (Microarmor for the win!), and I approached gaming as a competitive/cooperative group activity. Roleplaying was important, but it was in support of the activity. It was later in the  early 80's when playing Champions  with Carl Rigney, that we got into "Deep Roleplay", but even so, when I played and when I ran, I was thinking  "what would the characters do in this situation?{", rather than, "What would the characters do to be entertaining?".  In the old Usenet newsgroup rec.games.frp.advocacy, there were long and drawn out discussions and debates, and I found that I fell mostly in the "Simulationist/ Situationist" camp in that I was uncomfortable fudging die rolls as a GM, and  I would be completely transparent as a GM about rules and rolls, while being intentionally opaque about in game information and the intent of the opposition. That was what asking questions and detective work were for.  Sometimes the players found clues and stopped X, Y, Z on time, and sometimes they were ambushed because the missed, or didn't bother looking for clues.  I would also try not to play favorites among the players or characters.  I would lay out Hero System constructed "Tactical Puzzles" for my players and  see how they would solve it. I was entertained by watching them think, and fight. I didn't go for that "cooperative storytelling" philosophy, because my entertainment was seeing other people come up with creative solutions within a very tight, and mechanically constrained situation.

 

I rebelled against the trend  moving at the time that gave us "the Rule of Cool", and heavy reliance on literary sources.  To me, games like Amber or Fudge, and now Fate, were an anathema.  I desire structure and some amount of internal logic to my games. It may be, that I just don't "feel" the magic.  For me, a good game was a good "game".  It was cooperative in the way  a wargame was cooperative, but it was also competitive to a degree.

 

You mentioned " A good campaign striving to give magic unintended consequences should look to impose story consequences.", but all I can think of is the back an forth  between P.C.'s and N.P.C.s as they react to each other's moves in game. Having  utter, but localized crop failures because a P.C. used a spell seems unnecessarily arbitrary.  To me Consequences are a result of action and intent, usually. (or a bad decision or even bad luck), because in the end I want to have my game seen as "fair" to the players, and as open as I can manage, because I despise railroad tracks in games I play, as well, and a lot of RPG's of "Narrative significance", seem to invest a lot in steel rails and right of ways. 

 

For me, though it's all about the mechanics. I has to be, or it feels unfair and arbitrary and unattractive. Hero arrived, and for me was the fairest system I had experienced up to that time, as it was all about points rather than die rolls, and one could "wargame" a fight easily and simply. A good chunk of the fun of Champions was designing characters to test (or exploit) the rules in different combinations. This may be an antique point of view these days, but I still like it as a "game". For me a story is what the players tell "after the game" , not so much as during it. XD

[Scott Ruggels]

Here is another classic Flintlock. Note the discussion of barrel lengths to increase accuracy in the old  flintlock rifles.

[Pattern Ghost]

You mentioned " A good campaign striving to give magic unintended consequences should look to impose story consequences.", but all I can think of is the back an forth  between P.C.'s and N.P.C.s as they react to each other's moves in game. Having  utter, but localized crop failures because a P.C. used a spell seems unnecessarily arbitrary.  To me Consequences are a result of action and intent, usually. (or a bad decision or even bad luck), because in the end I want to have my game seen as "fair" to the players, and as open as I can manage, because I despise railroad tracks in games I play, as well, and a lot of RPG's of "Narrative significance", seem to invest a lot in steel rails and right of ways. 

 

 

 

You don't have to be arbitrary. If you want unreliable magic, you tell the PCs they're playing with fire, and when they get burned, you make it interesting. The BBC series Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell gives a good example. The character uses magic he knows is dangerous to advance his position, and in doing so creates a situation that the plot flows from. Now that PC's actions are a centerpiece of the adventure, or in a campaign, perhaps create an interesting side adventure. How that's resolved should be utterly fair.

 

I'd say that if you want magic to figure into tactics as in a typical Pathfinder/DnD game, then it'd be unfair to make it unreliable. Your PCs will quickly all become rogues and fighters, leaving magic by the wayside. If you're going for tactical magic and still want some danger in the magic system, then doing something like separating the tactical magic system from the ritual magic system is probably in order. You want to bring your party's best fighter back from the dead? OK, you have some options, and they all have drawbacks. The easiest option, he comes back as a kind of stupid zombie, so scratch that. The second option, you have to petition a powerful magical being to help with the process, and run the risk of making a bad deal with said entity, or simply unleashing it on the world.

 

As the GM, you can treat it as simply a roleplay opportunity for the PCs to outwit the entity. The negotiation can be the thing, in and of itself. Let them outwit the entity. This time. Maybe next time, it gets the upper hand.

 

None of this is railroading. It's letting the players make decisions and steer the direction of the game as they play out the consequences. It's the furthest thing from railroading, and can be a lot more fun than the Pathfinder dickery described above.

[Doc Democracy]

I had to think on this through an insomnia period last night,  It all came back to the word, "story".  I came into this hobby through wargaming back in the mid to late 1970's (Microarmor for the win!), and I approached gaming as a competitive/cooperative group activity. Roleplaying was important, but it was in support of the activity. It was later in the  early 80's when playing Champions  with Carl Rigney, that we got into "Deep Roleplay", but even so, when I played and when I ran, I was thinking  "what would the characters do in this situation?{", rather than, "What would the characters do to be entertaining?".  In the old Usenet newsgroup rec.games.frp.advocacy, there were long and drawn out discussions and debates, and I found that I fell mostly in the "Simulationist/ Situationist" camp

Yeah, well I find myself in the gamist camp. :-). I love self analysis and I think we need a psychologist to come up with a game equivalent of the Myers-Briggs analysis.

 

I wonder if our game preferences (and magic style preferences) correlate with the Myers Briggs personality types or whether this draws on a different profile.... (I am ENTP for anyone that makes sense to).

 

:-)

[Scott Ruggels]

 

I wonder if our game preferences (and magic style preferences) correlate with the Myers Briggs personality types or whether this draws on a different profile.... (I am ENTP for anyone that makes sense to).

 

:-)

 It could quite possibly be. I dont remember if I took Meyers-Briggs, but I did take the Minnesota Multi-phasic for a security guard job, but don't remember the results.   I do think there are  preferences in games, and game types or systems that prefer certain types of players.  FATE priviledges those that are glib, and/ or comfortable with the rule of cool, of which I am neither. I have fgound that in my previous location, HERO was preferred by engineers, rather than theater majors, if that is of any indication.

[Scott Ruggels]

Also, Flintlock Pistol.

[Scott Ruggels]

Ohh! and here is an example of the advantage that "one step" opf technological progression gets you in combat.  Muzzle loader vs. breech loader. I mentioned earlier that the breech loader allows you to maintain your DCV in combat, whereas a Muzzle Loader means you have maybe 1/2 DCV as you have to stand upright, and mostly still to reload.. here's the example:

[Scott Ruggels]

Note: the 1/2 DCV pentalty for muzzle loading reloads only occurs for "long arms." I.E. muskets, rifles Muskets, and shotguns. It does not apply to  Pistols or other short arms."

[Christopher R Taylor]

I'd probably give someone breech loading an old rifle ½dcv too, its not quite like slapping in a new magazine

[Scott Ruggels]

I'd probably give someone breech loading an old rifle ½dcv too, its not quite like slapping in a new magazine

Fair enough, though that may make the muzle loader have even less DCV to no DCV while reloading, necessitating a half move to cover before starting a reload in static defense, or  in a Pike square. Still a bit wobbly on this.