Black Powder Wizard 5e

Since 2011, an old blog post of mine about adding flintlock guns to 3.5e has been one of the most popular posts on my blog. I haven’t played 3.5 for years, though, and I suspect most people visiting the site haven’t either, so I figured it was about time to update that content for fifth edition.

Here’s how I handle black powder flintlock guns in 5e. Converting my 3.5 rules to 5e meant slimming a lot of things down to match the new design style of the edition, so you’ll find that these are a little simpler and hopefully easier to use in your own game.

Weapon Properties

Muzzleloader. This weapon needs to be loaded with ammunition before being fired. It takes an action to load one shot into a muzzleloader.

If you can make more than one attack in a single action, you can use one or more of those attacks as reload actions. For example, a 5th-level Fighter has two attacks, and can therefore reload a pistol and fire it in a single action, or reload two weapons in a single action.

You can’t reload two-handed muzzleloading weapons while prone.

Misfire. Black powder weapons hit hard and are easy to use, but the powder itself is notoriously finicky, especially in damp weather. If an attack with this weapon rolls a 1 before bonuses and penalties are applied, then something’s gone wrong with the powder or the mechanism. The attack still might hit, if your bonuses are high enough (maybe it was just a hang-fire), but the weapon can’t be used again until someone succeeds
on a DC 10 Tinker’s Tools check to repair it.

Note that the chance of a misfire goes up if you’re attacking with disadvantage, and goes down if you’re attacking with advantage, because both change the odds of getting a 1 on the result of the roll.

Some items or attributes can increase the range at which a weapon misfires. If something says that it gives “+1 Misfire range” then that means that the weapon misfires if the attack roll is a 1 or 2. Increases to the misfire range stack, so if a weapon has +1 misfire range from one thing and +1 from something else, then it misfires on a 1, 2, or 3. A +3 increase means that it misfires if the roll is anywhere from 1-4. You get the idea.

If you want to make things a little more realistic, you can add 1 to the Misfire range in wet conditions. And of course, if you want even more complicated and simulationist misfires, you can use the rule from my old Black Powder Wizard post for 3.5e.

Rifling. This weapon can have rifling applied to its barrel at the cost of 100gp, multiplying both the close range and max range numbers by 1.5 (so, for example, a rifled musket would have a range of 150/750 instead of 100/500).

Blast. This weapon deals damage in a cone up to its normal range. When you make an attack with a blast weapon that has a chance to misfire, roll 1d20 to determine if something goes wrong: if it doesn’t, every creature in the cone must make a Dexterity save with a DC of 8 + your attack bonus. A target takes no damage on a successful save. Swarms have disadvantage on this saving throw.

High-Powered. This weapon has to be loaded with special high-powered cartridges that contain much more explosive material. This doesn’t change the reloading time, just how much powder it takes.

Weapon Stats

Everything in this list is considered a simple weapon, except for the hand mortar, which is a martial weapon.

Weapon Descriptions

Derringer

A small, low-caliber palm pistol, easily concealed. Derringers are often carried by people whose positions don’t allow them to be visibly armed, such as noble ladies and gentlemen, gamblers, actors, assassins, and merchants.

Pistol

A single-shot handheld firearm. The average black powder pistol is about a foot long (though they can range from eight to sixteen inches) and has a curved handle that is easy to hang on a belt or in a holster. Some more expensive pistols have saw grips, with a contoured handle that makes aiming and recoil handling a bit easier, but those are rare.

Carbine

Not quite a musket, but longer than a pistol, carbines are often used by fighters on horseback or by city guards who need something a little shorter and easier to handle than a full-sized longarm. You can’t be prone while loading a carbine, but if you want to keep a low profile you can load it while crouching.

Musket

A standard-pattern musket comes with a ramrod, stock, curved grip, and hooks for a sling so it can be easily carried over a shoulder. This weapon is the most common type of black powder firearm in the world, and can be found in the hands of soldiers, adventurers, caravan guards, bandits, nobles, and common folk alike.

Blunderbuss

This wide-bore weapon has a flared muzzle and an extremely simple mechanism, designed to disperse buckshot over a wide area. Blunderbusses are beloved by militias, farmers, and caravan guards everywhere for their ease of use and low price.

A blunderbuss can be loaded with either buckshot or random rocks, nails, and metal scrap. If the weapon is loaded with scrap, it has +1 misfire range.

Dragon Pistol

Essentially a one-handed blunderbuss, a dragon pistol is a wide-bore pistol with a flared muzzle meant for firing buckshot in a wide spray. Similarly to a blunderbuss, a dragon pistol can be loaded with random scrap when lead shot isn’t available. When loaded with scrap a dragon pistol has +1 misfire range.

Hand Mortar

This weapon has a fat, short barrel wide enough to accept a black powder bomb (or other explosive), which is generally loaded into the weapon with the fuse pointing towards the firing chamber so that the ignition of the black powder that launches the bomb on its way also lights the fuse.

To launch a bomb from a hand mortar, choose a point within range and make a ranged attack roll. The target location has an AC of 10. if you miss, the explosive ends up 10 feet away from your target in a random direction (roll 1d8 and assign 1 to be North, 2 to be North East, 3 to be East, etc). Creatures within 5 feet of the detonation must make a Dexterity saving throw with a DC of 8 + prof + Dex. On a success, they take half damage. Swarms have disadvantage on this save.

A misfire on a hand mortar results in the bomb exploding in the barrel, destroying the weapon and dealing its damage to the wielder and anyone unfortunate enough to be within the bomb’s radius.

A hand mortar requires both a high-powered cartridge and a black powder bomb in order to fire. These can both be loaded with a single attack action.

Ammunition

Lead balls fired from pistols and muskets are generally the same size and material, and can be used interchangeably. Pistols tend to use a finer, faster-burning powder, to make up for the loss of velocity from the shorter barrel, but to keep things simple assume that you can use the same powder, bullets, and balls in any black powder weapon, unless a weapon’s description or qualities say otherwise.

The most common way of reloading a black powder firearm is with a paper cartridge. These little twists of stiff paper contain a pre-measured amount of black powder, along with the musket ball (or other projectiles). A small amount of powder from the cartridge is squeezed into the priming pan, and then the rest of the cartridge is stuffed down the muzzle of the weapon and pressed firmly home with a ramrod, with the paper of the cartridge itself being used as wadding to hold everything in place.

High-powered firearms require high-powered cartridges, which contain significantly more black powder.

10 regular cartridges costs 3gp, and 10 high-powered cartridges costs 5gp.

Explosives

A black powder bomb is a metal (or sometimes clay) shell with a length of fuse sticking out of it that can be cut to varying lengths. If the fuse is wet, it won’t work, and if the bomb is thrown into or through a fire it will detonate immediately. Don’t get set on fire while carrying these.

Usually, black powder bombs are thrown with a short fuse and explode on the same turn. If you have proficiency with Tinker’s Tools, you can cut the fuse long and throw them to explode on a specific turn in the future, or set them as demolitions to destroy doors and walls.

The shrapnel from a black powder bomb deals 3d6 piercing damage with a radius of 5ft. You throw a bomb the same way you fire a hand mortar, except within a more limited range (up to 60 feet).

Black powder bombs cost 150gp each.

This post contains all the basic rules and stats you need to add flintlocks to your game. If you want black powder weapons to be a deeper part of your world, I’ve also created a bunch of new content that wasn’t in my old Black Powder Wizard post, and put it into a PDF available for sale.

Black Powder Arsenal: Fifth Edition Firearms is a 30-page PDF that contains:

• 31 different black powder weapons, ranging from basic pistols and muskets to pepperbox revolvers and air rifles
• 7 types of ammunition, 4 kinds of powder, and 4 special materials to make musket balls from
• 8 kinds of explosive and 14 pieces of equipment
• 3 new class archetypes: the burly Grenadier, the rogue Sniper, and the wild west paladin Oath of the Lawbringer
• Random tables for generating magic weapons and unique guns
• Optional advanced rules for more simulationist firearms, including different types of firing mechanism and more realistic loading rules

Black Powder Arsenal is available for $9.98 in the Carpe Omnis Games store, and on DriveThruRPG.