Gunslingers and Their Touch AC mechanic, Need some help.

Hello Everyone,

I just joined and this is my 1st thread. A little background may be needed. I've been playing DnD since I was 8 years old (now 25) and I've been Game mastering for 7 years. I grew up on 1st and 2nd edition DnD and I do have player and game mastering techniques that are generally not used in 3.5 and up DnD. I've even housed ruled poisons to be more in line with 1st and 2nd edition in my current campaign, you know the type that instantly kills.

My current campaign however is a bit strange should I say. It started out as a Warhammer 40k Dark Heresy campaign. At a certain point the characters were sent back in time to figure out the significance behind a certain artifact. To emulate this I had them roll pathfinder characters. Now they are on the verge of returning to the Dark Heresy Campaign and currently there is a mixture of technology in the area they're in. Well last session one my player's characters died and was unable to be brought back to life. (His soul is currently in possession of a Lich thanks to the master spy that one of the other player's are playing.) I love inter party turmoil.

Needless to say the player that has to make a new character wishes to roll a gunslinger because it actually fits really well in the current area they are in. The bad thing is and the problem I'm having is that the Technology level has guns that range anywhere from 100ft to 300ft. So that means for this character anywhere between 500 and 1500ft (depending on the gun) all he has to do is hit touch AC. He argues that the penalty for extended range increments are enough to balance this aspect. I don't believe it does. I fail to see how an accumulative penalty of -2 addresses this issue. Even if the penalty to attack was -12 that should be negligent to any 6th level or higher character that's reasonably constructed. It's mainly because of the Touch AC aspect. I simply find it a little broken.

So I decided to do a test, I made a 10th level character and put it up against a CR 10 creature. This creature is a Movanic Deva. Killed it in two rounds, dealing 126 damage in 4 attacks. The player in question will have the opportunity to produce even more damage since he went full gunslinger (7 levels). While I split my character into a 6th level inquisitor/4th level gunslinger. After building the character the only way I could actually miss the creatures Touch AC was at maximum range, deadly aim maxed in penalty to hit, and a head shot call to the head or unless I rolled a 1.

For the life of me I cannot see how this is balanced and not broken. So I'm reaching out to the pathfinder community for a little help on the situation.

Pretty sure that without some rather hard to get special abilities, gun attacks are only resolved against Touch AC in the first range increment.

For early age guns that it is true. For advanced age guns, attacks are resolved against Touch AC within the first five range increments.

It's advanced firearms... They're better than swords lol

Here's a solution I found for my campaign. It's a house rule, but it works.

Instead of targeting touch AC, guns gain a +5 bonus to hit within their first range increment (or first five ranged increments for advanced fire arms).

This is still a bonus, but not nearly as significant as targeting Touch ACs which are much, much lower for many kinds of monsters.

I explain it as a combination of piercing power and bullet speed.

I know that guns are more powerful than swords haha. It's just the Touch AC mechanic I have a problem with. This character can simply max out his ranged attack roll penalties without having a fear of missing his shot unless on a roll of 1. In turn the character constantly maximizes their damage output. Not only that, they will constantly be out of range for any type of retaliation unless I simply add a gun user to every single encounter to target only that character.

As a 7th level character, they will have no problem hitting an evenly matched target. They will have no problem hitting any creature actually listed in the Pathfinder SRD. Rarely any creature has a Touch AC past 20.
That means that a 7th level character, can just as easily hit a CR 20 creature as a CR 7 creature. I might be old school, but I simply do not like the idea of a character being able to easily hit a creature meant for a party of characters 13 levels higher than them.

I guess I simply find the addition of a high damage, extremely low miss rate, with extreme mobility character simply broken. I do not see how in the development phase anyone thought the Touch AC mechanic was a great idea.

@DM_aka_Dudemeister:

Thanks for the Suggestion, I kind of like that you added bonuses to hit in the range increments instead of using the targets Touch AC. I'm working on a total overhaul of the system right now and I think I might include that Idea. Thanks for the tip.

How many encounters start at 300ft range?

Also, the issue is more with the tech level you're choosing, the most common guns have range increments of 10-30 ft...

You're right hardly any fights start at a 300ft range. That's not the issue. Even if I reduced the range to 80ft which is standard rifle range in Pathfinder. That means that now instead being at 1000ft+ away the character can now be at 800ft away and still hit everything under the sun for an absurd amount of damage. It also takes him out of the range for everything that any creature can do, it's outside of any spell range. The only thing that could return fire is another gun user.

The problem is that as a DM, I can't say no you can't take 2 rounds to run 400ft away and then begin combat. If I was the player in this situation, the DM would never be able to inflict any type of damage on my character. I have the highest initiative, highest movement range, fighter level hit points, full base attack progression, longest attack range in the game, absurdly high damage output and with zero downside.

Easiest to just outlaw guns and gunslingers in your campaign...they are just ridiculous anyway...and while you're at Alchemists are just as stupid.

What are the enemies doing while the PC is running away? Chewing on the rest of the party?

The huge range increments won't be an issue with any encounters happening in a dungeon or in a city.

There are only 2 pathfinder firearms with 80ft range, both of them advanced. Doing d10 damage a hit, with no access to multi-shot or rapid shot.

Archers do loads more damage than gunslingers, and their bows almost never explode either...

Just in case you weren't exaggerating for comic effect, by the way - advanced firearms target touch AC within 5 range increments, so if you give them the best firearm in the game then their max "touch AC range" is 400ft, not 800.

I still can't fathom this fighter type who chooses to do nothing in the first two rounds of each combat...

The problem with resolving firearms attacks vs. touch ac by range is that it makes all firearms very genaric falt ac bonues arenot much better IMO. The best way that I have seen for resolvong Fire arms attacks is that they get bonus vs. Armor class bssed on the caliber of the fire arm the game system had a chart with the most common rifle and pistol calibers on the left side of the chart tange incremets across the top of the chart and in he body of the chart were the armor clsss penatratons. you just looked up rangeand compared it to the ac of the target if the acp was less than or equal to the ac of the target you aded your bonus to hit. it was a very elegant system that allowed the use of any era of firearms from black powder to sci fi.

You're also forgetting that power armor is not plate mail. The Touch AC mechanic was introduced because in Golarion there is no armor that can stop a bullet. In Warhammer 40K, armor is advanced enough to stop bullets. Especially since clip size reduces the inherent penalties of firearms, you could probably forgoe the Touch AC mechanic

Advanced firearms change the world... you state that you know that, but don't really seem happy with the implications. My advice? Embrace the change in that area.

Anyone who could afford an advanced firearm would be using them. This would even be regardless of proficiency (as you have seen looking at the numbers, the -4 to hit would not be terribly significant).

If they are not readily available to everyone what is the implications of that difference between the haves and have nots? Make sure you play that out in your game.

Tactics would need to change. Yes, people use cover occasionally in Pathfinder now, but in an area dominated by advanced firearms cover would become the focus of early combat.

In fact, looking at all the types of bonuses that would help against firearms and using those tactics would be a high priority.

Play up that the world is changing. Let the PCs see a group of fairly low level gunmen ganging up and taking down a large, low touch ac creature that would have crushed a typical town guard earlier. Then have a later encounter that shows just how successful a quickling or similar high dex, high touch ac opponent is against a similar group.

Basically you should think through the implications of the change and make sure that you bring them into the game.

possible way to combat this could be to give the creatures Dex boosting items that are destroyed upon death (so the party doesn't get them)for example one of the scariest things I've run into is a dragon with a Dex of 40

Well, as the GM you get to decide how advanced fire arm technology is. If you're worried about Advanced Firearms being too powerful, just don't allow them. A Gunslinger can still be effective if he uses a Pistol or a Musket. Keeping the technology level low also makes some of the early, more flavorful guns more appealing.

one key thing to remember is that if your allowing a player to use advanced firearms then you should probably consider (as stated above) just how common these weapons are and just who the player is getting their ammo from. if they arnt all that common, perhaps the player needs to make his own ammo, then its simply a matter of limiting him to x amount of rounds per day based on how many he can make over night while still getting enough sleep to rest for the following day.

there are ways to limit a characters out-of-balance-ness using DM fiat.

some people may say that its in a sense cheating the players, but IMO any player who plays a class or build for the sake of just being that OP is cheating the rest of the grp out of enjoyable game play. part of the game is struggling with misses and bad rolls. if you eliminate that aspect of the game, you basically turn the game into a very linear setup with only one possible outcome. laughing at your friend cause they dropped their greatsword on the ground and then fell on it and sliced their butt-cheek open on it is the best part of the game.

Firearms don't do lots and lots of damage unless we are talking about a level 5 gunslinger, with lots and lots of feats, which can be no more than five. Unless there is another way to get the Dex. modifier to damage with Firearms and 5 levels is a big investment.