Gunpowder+Thoughts

at this price point, the musket is more expensive than the crossbow but more deadly. Its rate of fire is much diminished, but in the hands of inexperienced men it would be vastly more effective.

We can presume that the musket represented here must be a snaplock/snaphance or flintlock, as we don't really want the trouble of representing the match, the rest, and the winding of wheelocks...all a bit complicated.

Upon some further reading, it seems that untrained men could be expected to fire once a minute, and well-drilled men that practiced live fire every day could hone this down to thrice a minute. If we take the principle that a soldier is a level 1 fighter, apply skill focus (prof: soldat) and wisdom 12, we get a skill mod of 8; with a command aura, bless, or bards we can fudge this to 9 which allows -3 from the reload time as the system is devised.

As the objective is volume of fire for volleys, most feats that don't increase RoF don't seem to compute well.

For his other 2 feats let's say quick-draw and Rapid Reload. Now we have a base 8 reload time, -5 from penalty reload.

Round 1: move up, shoot Round 2: reloading Round 3: reloading Round 4: reloading Round 5: move up, shoot

Under this regime it's a shot every 30 seconds, and would take only four lines for continuous fire.

A human commoner could achieve this, with only one flaw, leaving another feat open, and a fighter could have two more over this.

Moneywise only the rich princes would undertake it, but it does make some sense.