Heh, use the search function and look for Iron Kingdoms and Warmachine, (or in my case WARMACHINE) on these boards... I dare you!

The Auld Grump

"IronKingdomWorks" sounds like it was made for WWG models!

Heh! You are actually more likely to be killed by a knife wound than a bullet in real life - bleeding out is more immediately lethal than a deep puncture, though the deep puncture is more likely to cause organ damage. And until the cannon most deaths from war took place days to weeks after the battle, from infection. Cannon on the other hand just blowed people to Kingdom Come. In particular there was the glancing strike, a cannon shot that struck the ground then bounced through a unit.

My only problems with the gun rules in Iron Kingdoms are the weapon speed, like I said guns are faster than heavy crossbows in real life, and the IK guns are breach loaders, making them about the speed of a light crossbow in my etsimation. The second problem is the price per shot... no country is going to be fielding units where each shot costs two or more gold pieces... several weeks pay for a soldier in D20.

The flip side is that early handguns (into the 1600s) were actually less likely to penetrate armor than a heavy crossbow - by the invention of gunpowder heavy armour was already on its way out. The most common weapon for the mounted knight had changed from the sword to the warhammer, with an awl point for punching through armor. And armor is heavy, there were battles where more knights fell to heat prostration than they did to wounds inflictef in the battle. So the armor went away.

The gun took over because it was faster than a crossbow, yet more easy to train for than a long bow. (Old English saying: To train a Longbowman start with the grandfather.)

Large caliber low velocity rounds are much more likely than modern rounds to not only break bones, but pulverize them.

As for penetration, when I was a child a man had to go to the hospital in New Hampshire because a friend put a hot dog into a black powder musket and fired it at him, expecting it to go 'Splut!' He had to go to the hospital in order to have it surgically removed from his arm... And I have shot a candle at a 1" thick pine board, it was undamaged, lodging in the board, sticking out both sides. (Like a straw through a potato it was the air in front of the candle that made the hole, not the candle itself.) A crossbow bolt would have gone clean in and out of the board. Good armor does not block a shot, but rather shunts it to one side.

The real downside for cannon in D20 is of course being near a cannon when somebody hits the area with a fireball...

The Auld Grump, long past beddy bye time...