| Paradise |
I wrote this in respons to another threat but decided to post it here as well to increase the chances that its actually read.
The problem is clearest with the deed "dead shot" but goes beyond that. I however will argue based on dead shot.
Lets first take a look at the weapons. I will base the calculations on the musket but as such not an important choice (but you might want to use a weapon that enable you to fire every rund with rapid reload till you get lightning reload).
I make the asumptions that ranged touch attacks have a great chance of hitting and to ease the calculations asume that they simply hit.
That any roll of 19-20 will be a hit (possible crit) regardless of the attack bonus (which will very often be the case for the gunslinger even on the last attack).
And that you do what you can to be able to fire every round in terms of feat and ability picks.
I am ignoring any power issues below level 8 and in fact any discussions of such as I do not believe there are any problem and if there are I *believe* it to be much smaller and therefor much less important than the increasing problem at higher level.
Musket: damge d12 crit 20/X4
With feat: improved crit (musket)
chance of threat using dead shot:
Level chance
8 19 %
11 27.1 %
16 34.39 %
Confirming the crit is pretty much automatic (since its based on highest attack with dead shot). So its very likely that you will crit and your damage will increase in a nonelinear way as you gain level which does not go well with the change in power attack from 3.5 to the one used in pathfinder.
Lets take a look at the damage. With point blank shot and deadly aim it will be fairly high, even without any dex bonus. presuming that every shot fired is a hit (thats streatching it a bit but not that much) and that shots are fired within point blank range, damage will be something like:
Level damage avrg dmg. avrg dmg incl crit/round avrg crit
8 2d12+5 18 28.26 72
11 3d12+5 24.5 44.4185 98
16 4d12+5 31 62.9827 124
those numbers seem alright even, perhaps a bit low but they presume that the gunslinger have a dexterity score of 10 and that the gun is not enchanted, once you start adding those numbers the values goes way too high.
The damage increse pr 2 dex/+1enchant ment bonus:
Level increse in avrg damge incl crits pr round pr +1 damage gained
8 1,57
11 1.813
16 2.0317
So a gunslinger at level 16 with a dexterity score of 24 and a +3 gun will do an average of 83.2997 damage pr round with the conditions described above and this still leaves plenty of room for powerplaying if thats your thing.
The main damage of the gunslinger is from the crits which takes any excitement out of solo badguys and solo-ish badguys. the average crit even at level 8 will easily do an insane 72 damage and for our "average Joe" with dex 16 and a +1 gun the damage will be 88.
Even without taking the insanely powerful "signature deed (dead shot)" feat at level 11, the chance of getting your grit back from a crit is not bad and increases in a stupidly powerful way. The only good thing about dead shot is that it does not benefit from haste.
Taking a look at "average Joe" again at level 16 his dexterity has now increased to 22 and with a +3 gun he is doing a crit of around 160 damage with a 34.39 % chance. Which basicly can be boiled down to. If I fire at the main bad guy for 3 rounds I would have a 71 % chance of critting at least once and with that shot alone doing around 160 damage and in most cases end the encounter. Thats pretty boring.
As much as the problem might seem to be dead shot (and it is a problem because of the highly increased chance of a crit) the real problem is the weapons which never should have been touch attacks with a X4 crit because they take the excitement out of the game and the combination is just begging for abuse even if not intended.
The weakness of all of this is of cause the presumed automatic hit but in most cases touch attacks with a high base attack class and a weapon + whatever buff your group uses will make such attacks easy hits, even the last one). I am however convinced that even when taking misses into the calculation this class will still have a huge damage "problem".
A shortsighted fix might be to change "dead shot" deed so that any attacks using the deed are resolved normally and not with touch attacks regardless of weapon and range. I am however convinced that low average damage and high spike crits and touch attacks are a bad combination which is the mechanic of the class. Jason Bulmahn didnt do a bad job at all. The class have many exciting features and new idears. The rules for how guns work just aint well suited to build a class on. If I were designing the class I would change the gun and make an errata on the stats of it and not accept the rules for how guns work. I think its a bad move to base the class around a weapon that was given stats some years back without the intend of the weapon being the backbone of a class.