Firearm ammunition pricing

[Adjathazar]

Hey all

Am working on an arcane spellcaster, who I plan to equip with a pistol to supplement his spellcasting, mostly for flavor reasons. This is my first real encounter with the rules governing the use and pricing of firearms, and there's just a few things I have to get off my chest.

1) Why is the pricing of firearm ammunition so ridiculously high? I mean, a bullet is something like ½-1 cm in diameter and typically made of lead or iron, arguably cheap materials, and yet it costs one gold piece? I mean, I can buy a light steel shield for 9gp, presumably made entirely or mostly out of steel, with a weight of 6 lbs. so there's a lot of metal there, but a single bullet costs me 1 gp??
Changing material makes no more sense. A single silver bullet costs 25gp (25!!!), but an entire silver (alchemical) dagger costs just 22?
Claiming difficult crafting procedues doesn't help, since bullets (not cartriges) are some of the easiest things to manufacture by a smith... you just need a small cast.

I presume the goal is to limit the access to firearms, and I do get that the pricing of firearms themselves should be high, at least compared to "older" weapon groups, since they might be more difficult to manufacture, but the bullets themselves? Makes no sense!

2) Why arent firearms included in the simple weapons? Bows take skill i.e. training to use, but a pistol? I'm not a historian, but it was my understanding that two of the main reasons firearms replaced almost all previous weapon was 1) their effectiveness and 2) their ease of use.
I mean, a crossbow is listed as a simple weapon, and it still has to be cocked correctly, presumably oiled and maintained, perhaps the string needs replacing etc. Are the use of firearms really that difficult, that they need to be restricted to specific classes (i.e. a specific subset of skills) or as a martial weapon.

I'm not arguing the rules, and I get that the first priority of a fantasy roleplaying game isn't nessesarily to reflect reality, but these examples just seem overly disproportionate.

(Also, if there exists some rule I havent noticed explaining that the price of one bullet really covers like 50 bullets, please excuse the first half of the post.)

:-)

[Bob Bob Bob]

So, some background. All the rules you find are based on:

Emerging Guns wrote:

Firearms become more common. They are mass-produced by small guilds, lone gunsmiths, dwarven clans, or maybe even a nation or two—the secret is slipping out, and the occasional rare adventurer uses guns. The baseline gunslinger rules and the prices for ammunition given in this chapter are for this type of campaign. Early firearms are available, but are relatively rare. Adventurers who want to use guns must take the Gunsmithing feat just to make them feasible weapons. Advanced firearms may exist, but only as rare and wondrous items—the stuff of high-level treasure troves.

1. Bullets are expensive because they have to be carefully made. Sling bullets are 1 sp for 10 because you're just going to fling them so there can be imperfections. Firearm bullets have to be perfectly circular or your gun will blow up. The money is because of labor, not materials. That's why making them yourself costs 1/10th as much if you have Gunsmithing.

Gunsmithing wrote:

Crafting Ammunition: You can craft bullets, pellets, and black powder for a cost in raw materials equal to 10% of the price.

As for silver bullets, they're not the same silver as weapons. Weapons are alchemical silver coating. Silver bullets are solid silver and come with a bonus for that.

Silver bullets wrote:

This ammunition is specifically crafted from silver, and though nonmagical, it is particularly detrimental to lycanthropes, automatically confirming any critical threats against such creatures. A firearm that is shooting a silver bullet takes a –1 penalty on damage rolls (with a minimum of 1 point of damage).

An alchemical silver bullet wouldn't have the penalty to damage, for instance (being a bludgeoning weapon).

2. Why is a Katana an exotic weapon to someone from the Japan analogue? Why are bolas, boomerangs, nets, etc. exotic weapons? Because there exists some "standard setting" which determines what everyone's weapon familiarity is. And in that setting guns are rare, exotic, and manufactured in very few places. If you switch the setting assumption to "Commonplace Guns" or "Guns Everywhere" then they become martial or simple, respectively. It's a setting thing, that's all.

[Wyatt Conely]

I had problems with the price of bullets the first time i played a gunslinger. The price is most likely because unlike arrows which are easy to find and buy, firearms and their ammunition is not the first choice for many adventurers when then get a ranged weapon. Bullet's also have many advantage's and disadvantage's. I suggest if your using firearm's look into alchemical cartridge's.

A firearm is not a simple weapon probably for the fact is, not everyone fully know about them in the world of pathfinder, and most of the people who do prefer not to use them for the fact that they don't know much about them. Firearm's are rare on adventurers, and making them simple, would ruin the purpose of allowing certain classes to use them. The gunslinger is a daring class to learn the way's of how a firearm works, and using them, letting any class do that would kind of defeat the purpose of having gun's be kinda mysterious and feared in pathfinder.