A Tier 1 black powder weapon. A musket is a muzzle-loading, smooth-bored ‘firelock’ long gun. The historical weapon was relatively slow to load and fire, with less accuracy and range than the later rifled-bore long guns; thus, the Reloading feature (identical to that used by the Tier 2 blunderbuss in the SRD) and a range of Far rather than Very Far.

The term ‘firelock’ is a real historical one (dating from 1544 according to Merriam-Webster!), but somewhat uncommon. I think it has a delightfully fantastical feel, though. 🙂 It first referred to what is more commonly called a matchlock – firearms that use a burning piece of twine, the match, to ignite the powder, which is what the earliest historical muskets were, but later also referred to wheel-lock or flintlock firearms.

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> WHAT ELSE MIGHT A MUSKETEER CARRY?
By itself, a musket is just an awkward metal stick. To simplify several hundred years of history (and a few Wikipedia pages), just as your archer is also carrying a quiver of arrows into battle, your musketeer is likely carrying a BANDOLIER slung with up to 12 paper (or cloth) cartridges contained pre-measured ‘charges’ of black powder and a round lead ball (the ‘shot’ in ‘shot and powder’). They might also have a POWDER HORN, a small CASE OF LEAD SHOT, and empty CARTRIDGE ENVELOPES in their pack, to refresh their bandolier outside of battle. Famously, and part of why muskets are slow(er) to load, they would also have a RAMROD: a metal or wooden rod used to ram the powder, shot, and wadding into the barrel of the gun.

> TRACKING AMMUNITION
If you wish to track ammunition in your game, I suggest tracking the 12 charges slung on the bandolier. Mark one charge as consumed for every attack roll made with the musket and allow restocking of the bandolier only during downtime or quiet / low-action scenes. I would not recommend “refill bandolier” be its own downtime move or even a project, as that seems a bit too punishing, but as always: discuss with your table! You may also consider adding the SPARE SHOT AND POWDER item to the game (homebrew, see my profile), with its feature allowing for a musket to be used even if all its prepared charges are gone.

I created this weapon for my home campaign, in a setting where black powder firearms do exist but are still unusual and expensive. Because of this, I wanted each bullet to count, as it were – though we were not otherwise tracking ammunition, I had the player with the musket track how much shot they had left. (They also didn’t have any spare shot beyond that, and restocking it would have meant going to a very specific merchant and paying a pretty penny.) Something to consider, if you want *some* firearms in your fantasy roleplaying, but don’t want them to be omnipresent!