Ok for the first time I am giving my thoughts on a play test. Why? Because I like the idea of the gunslinger (not so much the name).
I will remind the reader I do tend to ramble abit. This is also quite long.
Ok here goes. First I think some good points have been raised on these boards. Check out the ‘quiting thread’ and the HoA gunlinger also the pickle thread.
I don’t think we need to have things as alternate classes I understand you want to limit multi classing but for me you have already done that with the damn fine base classes. The gunslinger for instance why would multiclassing with fighter be so wrong your already giving up the new cool stuff (which I’m hoping for in the final version) for fighter benefits so as a gunslinger you’re not as good as a full class gunslinger. What it does give you is armour and training and such, just more options but not in your focused field guns. This brings me on to any thought why have gun training only apply once to each type of firearm. Why not just have it as a more focused version of the fighters weapon training after all you have done this already with some of the fighter alternate abilities in the APG. Have it as a separate group (firearms) but at each level you gain it you pick one firearm to get better at so you would get better at all firearms but some better than others, this wouldn’t stack with weapon training (firearms) if you wished to make such as group (which i think could be a good idea for base fighters)
As for the guns themselves I thing you have chosen the hardest weapons to try and balance, I’ll tell you why. In the game we have two main attack options the standard (single attack) or the full (multi) attack. This is where it gets hard as most have said they want to be able to make full attacks with everything (something you addressed with crossbows in the APG) now with a bow its simple ‘nock, draw, loose’ as has been said elsewhere an English longbow man had to be able to fire a minimum of 12 arrows a minute some have been reported to have been able to lose between 20-30. A firearm using black powder its more time consuming in the Napoleonic war a good soldier was to shoot 3 a minute some are said to be able to get 4. So as you see there’s a big difference before you even try to fit that into a 6 second combat round. Then there is the issue of having to reload a firearm even if you make multi barrelled firearms your still going to have to reload them so if we say you can reload two shots in a round, what happens if you make a 6 barrels musket you’re going to be able to fire 6 shots before reloading and its going to take you 3 rounds to do that. This is where I think the picklemeister may be onto something.
Also it doesn’t seem right to me that you can’t use feats that can’t be used with touch attacks with a firearm as it stands, after all its been said it isn’t really a touch attack it just uses the targets touch AC.
I like most of what’s in the gunslinger other than maybe the names but I will get on to that later. I think grit could do with an increase in the points and maybe changing to fit more in line with other similar abilities like rage points and Ki (think this would be a good idea for another class as well) after all you have these abilities that are well tested why make more that are different that need testing couldn’t you just modify what we have. I also think that the pistol whip ability is a bit wrong I think you should be able to do this from level 1 but then get the ability to use grit to add effects like knock out later on.
Ok names why don’t I like the gunslinger name and grit, well its the image it gives. I know you are looking for a name that brings an image to mind and these do but its of a western. I don’t really have any better ideas other than maybe ‘pistolier’ again you seem to have picked a hard class for names too, as history has changed the image of names through the years as firearms have come to more prominence.
Ok will stop now as nobody is going to read something this long.
