Reply To: How accurate were early firearms?

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#1707
Philologus
Participant

Bert S. Hall’s “Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe: Gunpowder, Technology, and Tactics” and the Bow vs. Musket blog are also good. I’m not sure if Bow vs. Musket groks that recruits could be expected to learn the bow or crossbow on their own time before they were conscripted, but someone had to pay for the powder and shot to learn musketry. So when early modern people talk about training, they are not talking about starting from scratch like a modern infantry school, they are talking about how much the paymaster has to spend to get an effective soldier.

All kinds of ranged weapons are much less accurate in combat than in practice, for a long list of reasons. So you can’t really use target shooting to work out combat accuracy, just to rank different weapons in your rules.