Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girardoni_air_rifle
Someone over on Reddit today asked about some cool historical firearms that could be included in games. This made me think of a weapon that was like a firearm but was not actually a firearm - the Girardoni Air Rifle.
The Girardoni Rifle was used primarily by the Austrians for a brief period from 1780 to 1815. This gun was a contemporary of the early muzzle loading rifles, but it came well after the musket which was represented by the heavy arquebus as early as 1521.
The wikipedia article I linked at the top of the page is extremely interesting and I am not going to summarize all of it here, but basically the Girardoni Air Rifle used compressed air to shoot 9-13 gram balls at high velocity. Because it did not rely on gunpowder it had several advantages over a traditional musket or rifle:
- Quiet
- Smokeless
- No flash
- Could be reloaded from a prone position
- Could be used in wet conditions
- Could fire up to 30 shots consecutively (no priming)
- Effective range of 150 yards
- Steampunk as ****
However, it was fragile, expensive, and re-pressurizing the tank required upwards of 1500 pumps (the tanks were modular so you could just take the empty tank off and put an already pressurized tank on if you had a spare). Also, as could be imagined the gun would progressively lose power as it was shot (although most sources I went to in my quick google around the internet seemed to agree that ~30 shots could be fired).
Now the important stuff: The Girardoni Air Rifle for your B/X Game. I'm using the firearms rules from Carcass Crawler #1 to model this:
Girardoni Air Rifle: 750 gp (includes 1 tank); 9 lbs, 4' length
- Damage: Equal to current Resource Die (Compressed Air)
- Range: 5'-50' / 51'- 100' / 101' - 150'
- Magazine: 20 musket balls (can be shot 20 rounds in a row without reload).
- Reloading the magazine takes 1 round
- Compressed Air: Start at d12. Roll with every shot, on a 1 or 2 it reduces one step. When 1 or 2 is rolled on d4 the air tank is completely empty.
- Tank can be recharged by 1 step by taking 1 turn (10 min) pump it back up. This is very tiring, 2 people working together can recharge it twice as fast (taking turns).
- An empty tank can be switched for a full spare in 2 rounds (1 round to remove the old tank, 1 round to attack the new tank).
- Fragile: Using as a club (1d6) has a 2-in-6 chance of permanently breaking the gun.
20 musket balls cost 1 gp (you don't need to buy powder, wadding, and cord).
A spare tank (that is the tricky part to make) costs 500gp. If you use item saving throw rules, treat spare tanks as potions with a +4 bonus on their save.