My players and I have a bit of an issue with how easy it is to reload certain weapons, and I wanted to get some thoughts from the community.

The first issue are black power weapons. Perhaps someone more steeped in the lore can tell me exactly what the tech level for these weapons is, but I always imagined them as being un-rifled muzzle loaders that require multiple steps to reload (like those from the American Revolution or early U.S. Civil War). At best these would be paper cartridges with flint-lock priming rather than a percussion cap, so it would take time.

The other issue being crossbows (non-repeating). In order to reload on you need to drop it to your foot (generally), use that to anchor it so you can pull cock it, then bring it up and place the bolt in firing position. In our minds this should take more than a single maneuver to accomplish.

We are probably going to house-rule it, but I wondered if others had done so as well.

I haven't run into the problem and probably wouldn't bother making a rule for it. Manouvres and actions have no set time, so its not like the rules list how many seconds it takes. The system is made vague exactly so you don't have to care too much about details like this and can focus on the story.

Wouldn't be hard to houserule though. Just use Perform a Stunt Coordination or Athletics. If it goes exceptionally well, give a Fortune Dice on the next shot. If it goes badly, you hva to try again. Spending the manouvre to reload as well gives a Fortune Dice on the Perform A Stunt roll.

I'd really like some kind of canonical reverence as to the tech level of these firearms in the world. If they have invented metal cartridges and caps then I would be cool with it, but are all muzzle loaders then it becomes silly.

I had a look at the firearms chapter in WFRP2e "Old World Armoury".

It's pretty much all muzzle-loaded flintlock and wheellock guns. The more fancy ones have several muzzles and stuff like that.

Cartridge based amunitition would fall under experiemental weapon engineering.

Well, there were prepacked paper cartridges long before the metal cartridges were developed. Basically it was a bullet with the right ammount of powder in a little packet

The would use the paper part thay you tore off for wadding. That seems like the right tech level.

Yup, that sounds about right. In the discription of blunderbuss and firearms, both are listed as needing a "shot of powder" per firing.

The Empire is somewhere between blunderbuss and firearms. Most private owners of blackpowder weapons use muzzle-loaded weapons with flared barrels that can be loaded with anything from actual shots to rusty nails and glass.

While the well-equipped parts of the army and more well-off citizens (read: wealthy merchant sons and nobles) are switching to firearms/arquebus. But these are still somewhat experimental.

I believe that the single manouvre for reloading is to keep the rules simple. A combat turn is quite a fluid amount of time, I do not believe that they have defined how long a turn is and I think that somwhere in the books FFG have written that a single attack action is actually a series of blows, parries etc which boils down to one check in the end. Similar arguments could be made for manouvres as the system is quite abstract.

Also, making realoading take longer time would make black powder weapons quite useless.

Just compare a Longbow vs a Handgun for example:

Handgun:

DR 6 CR 2

Range: Medium

Qualities: Pierce 1, Two-Handed, Reload, Unreliable 2.

Cost: 8 G, + 12 silver for 12 shots.

Rarity: Rare

Longbow:
DR 5 CR 3
Range: Long
Qualities: Pierce 1, Two-Handed.
Cost: 40 S, + 1 silver for 12 shots.
Rarity: Rare

In my opinion the Longbow is almost the better weapon of the two, having better range, less drawbacks, only 1 less damage and at a much cheaper price. You can also use actions such as rapid fire with the Longbow, which you cannot do with the Handgun. Increasing reload time for the Handgun would almost make it completely useless in comparison.

You are absolutely write about a round being fluid, which I have no problem with for the most part. where I do have a problem with it is where it compares to other players actions in a turn. For example, in the same round that a long bow archer has fired a single shot (only one arrow used) and moved away one range unit the rifleman fires a shot then drops the but of the gun to the ground puts in the right amount of black powder, taps it down the wadding, puts the bullet in and taps that down, primes the cord for the next shot and readies it to fire again. I don't know a ton about muzzle loading rifles so I'm sure I got the steps a little wrong, but that is the gist. It is that relative time that annoys our group.

One suggestion was to keep reloading a maneuver but rule that the player may not make it so that they can't move that turn even by taking fatigue.

Yes keep the concept of time fluid, what I would focus on more is "how many hands, do you have to be stable etc. while doing that" - e.g., reload likely assumes you have two hands free and are on stable footing or braced.

It is complicated to introduce reality in this game. Your concerns may be right regarding reloading times but there are so many things that do not stick to "real" standards...

For example, the ballista became a very popular weapon for two reasons, one because its power, but most importantly because it is a weapon that is very easy to learn how to use. Therefore, it was very convenient to arm untrained soldiers with this weapon and loose them on the battle field. On the other hand, the longbow was an equally devastating weapon (as compared to the ballista), but it had a huge, huge draw back. It takes long and hard training for a soldier to get to know how to use it. It is very difficult to properly shoot with a longbow. These is not reflected in the rules at all for example.

What I mean is, forget about "real" things when dealing with Warhammer 3 and just house rule what you think is correct in order to balance your games.

Cheers,

Yepes

Lol, you are right about everything you said, but I think you meant "crossbow", not "ballista". A ballista is a large free standing weapon that used the same principles as a crossbow. Most of the time they shot ball large ball shaped projectiles, though some are shown firing spear sized bolts. It was kind of a proto-cannon.

Ups! Indeed! I meant crossbow (ballesta in Spanish).