[quote=Feigling]
Arquebi, we meet again.In fantasy, things always get a bit woozy when guns get mentioned. They had to add DLC just to put crossbows in Skyrim. In Assassin's Creed, I just shot every guard instead of swordfighting like a good Assassin. In Shamer's Daughter (a book set in the Middle Ages) everyone used swords and crossbows. Hell, even in The Saga of Darren Shan, which is set in the modern day, they had to take an oath never to use ranged weapons.I think it should be gunpowder, not magic, we should worry about becoming OP. And, as GM rightly said, the best way to do that is to make certain armour resistant to it. Same with magic, actually. Maybe light armour resists magic and heavy armour resists bullets.I also think certain artifacts should be more powerful than people. [b]For example, an amulet that makes the body immune to fire should not be bested by a spell cast by a fire mage, because you could always just stab the amulet wearer.[/b]
[/quote]

The problem with magic is that it isn't solely anchored to just combat applications, but defensive, logistical, technological, and agricultural applications as well; more uses for magic can be found through proper brainstorming sessions, which makes magic very likely to act as a laughably cheap 'work around' for some of life's more frustrating trials that might make an appearance in this roleplay. I wouldn't consider a pike-and-shot formation to be overpowered even if it did drop forward cavalierly charges with impunity (which it typically does, with pike-and-shot squares being even worse), but the guy that's using magical alchemy to transmute standard iron into high quality steel or causing his crops to yield more food year after year with a simple flick of a mage's wrist is what I'd be [i]extremely[/i] wary of. Magically healing the bodies and minds of war-wary soldiers, for example, would allow a player to pack their martial forces full of seasoned troops, which means an absurdly-powerful force multiplier for said player. 

Early firearms have hard-limits and rules that can't be worked around using conventional methods.

Because magic theoretically has no upper limit and encompasses an innumerable amount of potential uses, the odds of it being 'overpowered' are drastically higher than that of early firearms. Your opinion on firearms is rampantly common on this site for some odd reason---especially with fantasy writers. 

Also:

1) Shooting all of the guards in Assassin's Creed doesn't make you a bad assassin, it just means you had a different style of play. 

2) I don't know why the Skyrim example was needed. Because of Smithing, Alchemy and their relevant perks, any weapon in Skyrim can become horrendously overpowered. It isn't just limited to crossbows.

Your other examples lead me to think that you simply have a particular bias against ranged combat, and that you favor the style and flavor of melee combat over ranged combat (of which you obviously think is 'dishonorable').