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I'd probably just routinely knock over his cabbage cart with my zany antics until he went insane.

Except that the Gunslinger's shot does have bonus damage. It just only happens on a crit via Fatal. A true strike mechanic is going to improve overall accuracy slightly. It's going to have a much bigger impact on how often you crit.

While this is true to a certain degree, I feel like it is disingenuous. Gunslingers do not have a bonus damage mechanic outside of increased accuracy. Most weapons in the Firearm weapon group have the fatal trait. This is a difference worth noting, especially considering that crossbows have also been grouped into the class's niche.

A fighter can take Double Slice with a pair of picks (or a pick and a light pick to avoid the penalty on the second attack), roll twice, and actually get the damage from both if they both hit. Considering the reload action, this effectively the same cost, available in a first level feat, and actually does more damage (the firearm averages out to between 1/2 and 3/4 of the fighter Double Slicing with picks, depending on level and base accuracy relative to the target's AC).

Likewise, a fighter can just use a composite short bow and attack 3 times in the same round and average more damage than a gunslinger using an arquebus with the proposed changes doing nothing but attacking and reloading (assuming that the arquebus already has the tripod deployed even).

I still don't like the idea. I don't think it would be fun to play (for me), but it's not in any way, shape, or form overpowered.

Being perfectly honest, I don't see anything wrong with your suggestion on its surface (I'll let someone better at math than I am run the numbers on precise balance), but I'm not crazy about it. This works great for a sniper, but doesn't really fit my preferences for the Clint Eastwood style gunfighter. If Paizo decided to go this route, I think it would work out just fine, but I probably wouldn't be into it.

It's super late and I can't sleep, so I'm subjecting all of you to what my brain is doing instead of resting :p

TLDR: I think scatter/blunderbuss looks neat and would be interested in seeing what you all think about it as it is now and what possible feat support to interact with the scatter trait you might want to see in the future.

A lot of discussion has been centered around the relative power level of guns, the fatal trait, reloading, and how all of that relates to the gunslinger class as presented, but I haven't seen a whole lot of discussion on the scatter trait. In my own, admittedly limited, play of a gunslinger, I focused on the iconic dueling pistol using the way of the pistolero rather than using what I initially assessed to be a more niche weapon in the blunderbuss. However, looking at it again, I think that blunderbuss as written might be a lot of fun with proper feat support.

I'd like to get a read on the general thoughts of you folks about the scatter trait in general and the blunderbuss in specific, how you feel it currently performs, and on some general proposals on feats for the gunslinger to better make use of it (because a Doc Holiday shotgun slinger sounds like a fun idea).

Looking at the scatter trait, it appears to do two things. The first is increase the effective damage of the weapon by the equivalent of a die size (something very useful for the otherwise low damage on guns in general). The second is to transform your ranged weapon into a reach+ weapon with some minor aoe damage attached. The extra scatter damage is a bit of a double-edged sword in that you're probably not going to be the only character that wants to be close to the action and friendly fire becomes a concern. On the other hand, it is a bit of minor damage to help whittle down crowds. This gives the blunderbuss the equivalent of a d10 damage die, putting it at a higher non-critical damage than the musket (with Firearm Ace) or arquebus, and putting its average damage at the same level as a standard crossbow (with crossbow ace) with the added benefit of actually having some traits, including some minor damage on a miss. You most likely won't be out-damaging a fighter or ranger with a composite bow any time soon, but the consistency of the damage is attractive, especially considering the swingy nature of its fellow firearms.

There is currently only one feat that directly interacts with scatter; Scatter Blast. For the low low price of using two actions to strike and turning a failure into a critical failure due to the wording of misfire, causing you to damage yourself and everyone within 20ft as well as breaking your gun, you can increase the range of a blunderbuss, and thus the length of its scatter cone, up to 30ft. I feel like the risk vs. reward for this feat makes it not really worth taking (I just don't want to break my gun and possibly kill my party members on a failed attack), but there is another feat that, while not specifically focused on scatter, could have an interesting interaction with the trait; Alchemical Shot. Presumably the persistent damage wouldn't affect the splash damage of the weapon, but being able to deal elemental damage in a cone to take advantage of vulnerabilities could be handy. I'd like to give credit where it's due here, as @Unicore pointed out the interaction between Alchemical Shot and scatter here.

As it is, scatter/blunderbuss aren't super impressive, but looking at some of the alchemist's bomb splash feats got me thinking about how the scatter trait could pan out with similar support. With Calculated Splash, an alchemist replaces the standard splash damage of a bomb with their primary class attribute. A similar feat for a gunslinger might not replace the scatter damage with the gunslinger's primary attribute bonus considering that dexterity is kind of a super stat and there's not a restriction on the number of scatter shots you can make in a day like there is for alchemists' bombs, but adding something like a gunslinger's wisdom modifier (maybe half wisdom modifier?) to the standard scatter damage could be a way to capitalize on the scatter trait through feat support. Likewise, a feat that improves the length of the cone by a smaller amount (maybe 5-10ft?) than Scatter Blast as a passive benefit might be one way to go about it.

So what do the rest of you think? Could the blunderbuss or some potential future scatter weapon make an effective primary weapon? Would you like to see more class feats that interact with the trait, or is it something that you feel like you wouldn't really bother with in game?

Guns really don't suck though. Especially not for the gun slinger. Not simple ones nor martial ones, (well maybe the hand cannon). The average damage of guns in comparison to crossbows, very quickly shifts in the guns advantage with only a slight boost in accuracy vs the targets AC.

Yes, guns outperform crossbows when crits are more likely to happen. Unfortunately, the crossbow is ill used as a primary character tool because its damage is considered subpar on average. Hence why most players that want to do ranged damage stick with a bows, which blow guns away (no pun intended).

1 crit with a arquebus is better than 3 regular hits with a longbow.

And one crit with a longbow is better than three hits with an arquebus, which will take three rounds to produce. What point are you trying to make here, exactly?

The dueling pistol is a L weapon. Meaning you can carry 10 of them for 1 bulk. 1d6 base is great (d10 fatal) with a weapon you can draw and drop over and over again and it sounds like the developers are already looking into ways to give us a bandoleer or brace of pistols option for covering runes.

Yes, for 120 gold and a feat, you can carry 10 dueling pistols and use the Quick Draw action for every attack. Or you could get a composite shortbow for 14 gold, do more base damage with roughly the same crit damage, and use other attack options besides Quick Draw without worrying about what to do if the combat runs over three rounds and you run out of pistols.

There are rough patches in the implementation of making the different options work smoothly with the way players will want them to work, but it isn't necessary to try to wrestle firearms around when crossbows pretty effectively cover the weapon design niche that people seem to be complaining that guns don't.

Except that:

This is the playtest. This is the time to make suggestions. We don't have to get rid of the current crit fishing options for those who like them, but we shouldn't be stuck with them for those who don't.

I like having the gunslinger as a separate class, but I do agree that there should be a lot more going on with the ways. Right now, there are 3 deeds each, some of which exclude a common play type that shouldn't be excluded from the given way (looking at you Rebounding Assault and Finish the Job), and 1 way-exclusive feat each. Each deed and the respective feat for each way is either an action of varying significance (compare Reloading Strike with Shattering Shot for example) or a minor benefit to the first turn of combat.

I'd kind of like to see this turned into something similar to Rogue's Racket or Swashbuckler's Style where they heavily influence the way that you play from the outset, with tangible bonuses to those styles of play, and then a slew of supporting feats or class features that further build on the base.

I don't really mind that the gunslinger is focused so heavily on firearms (and to a lesser extent crossbows), as it's a defining part of the trope that they're playing into, but I definitely want to see some more class features that aren't simply band-aids to make firearms viable weapons (note, not good weapons, just viable :/).

I mean the Swashbuckler is also another class where potentially you're not going to accomplish much on turns where you miss (a reasonable 3 action progression- gain panache, attempt finisher, then either regain panache or use a "get +2 AC" option) and while that's a reason some people don't like the swashbuckler, a lot of people do like the swashbuckler quite a bit.

And the Gunslinger is +2 to hit vs. the Buckler and doesn't ever fail at reloading (like you might fail at gaining panache).

The bigger problem with the Gunslinger than "sometimes you don't do much" is "reloading is sort of a nothing action." The swashbuckler at least has the option to couple "gaining panache" with something useful (e.g. Bon Mot, Leading Dance, Goading Feint, etc.)

I think the issue is actually a combination of these problems. In your swashbuckler example, not only does the action attempting to gain panache have an effect of itself completely separate from the panache system, the average damage is also still higher than that of the gunslinger, even considering critical strikes (see spoiler for incredibly bare bones, back of the napkin math).

The swashbuckler just feels better to play all around because not only do the actions to gain panache feel better than the flat reload actions, but the damage per hit is typically higher than the gunslinger as well.

if you are to bring up pf1 setting, they had a split setting, "emerging guns" and "commonplace guns" (and a few other). The latter had rules to involve revolvers but that was in a setting where pretty much all used guns. Gun rules were a mess in pf1 trying to appease all players and most of the adventure paths did not work in that setting. It's better for them to start low/early guns and add variant rules for those who just wanna do sixshooters.

Could even be in the same book

The golden standard in alkenstar is the musket as far fluff goes, Lirianne used 2 flintlock pistols (may she rest in peace) and was from alkenstar, the highest tech on golarion (numeria is looted tech)

I remember the split rules sidebar explaining all of that for gameplay purposes, but I also remember that revolvers were available in the setting, they were just treated as higher level items. The following entry from the Pathfinder Wiki talks about revolvers, specifically noted is the On Golarion section. There's also apparently an NPC that heads Alkenstar's law enforcment that dual wields revolvers, so there's that.

A revolver is an advanced firearm with five or six chambers that spin as the wielder cocks its hammer, aligning the next chamber to the barrel. Each chamber can hold one metal cartridge consisting of a bullet and wad of guncotton. Because the mechanics are so complex, revolvers are prone to misfiring.

On Golarion
Revolvers are one of the few firearms on Golarion with a five-round capacity, and is one of the most technologically advanced firearms. It is also the most expensive one-handed firearm, with a base model's price ranging from 2,600 to 4,000 gp on the open market.

Also, from the PF1E Archives of Nethys:

Pathfinder’s world of Golarion uses the rules for emerging guns, which is also the default category of gun rarity detailed in this Pathfinder RPG supplement.

...
Emerging Guns: 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.

And this is from before the time jump to PF2E, before the inventor was a class. I'm not saying that everyone under the sun should have revolvers, though I'll reiterate that baseline revolvers is my personal preference, but I feel like dismissing revolvers out of hand for being too advanced for Golarion is slightly misleading.

How about no. Why do you people insist on stuffing high levels of tech into a fantasy game?

There is no sense in doing this. The moment you introduce higher tech Firearms, you basically say to everyone else "your weapons are obsolete". There is a huge reason why these kinds of developed firearms obsoleted armour and weapons in the modern world.

The only way this doesn't happen is if you don't make the developed firearms as good. But that will immediately bring us back to this conversation.

You're already basically talking about making Crossbows irrelevant.

Crossbows are already irrelevant for everyone except for one specific ranger build. We're talking about making guns actually work for the one class that is supposed to use guns. If you don't like high levels of tech in a fantasy game, then I somehow doubt that this supplement is going to please you, considering the subject matter that we already know about (i.e. clockwork ancestry, steampunk/mad scientist inventor class/loads of guns).

The Mad Scientist's stuff explicitly doesn't work for anyone else though. So if you want a really high tech gun, the class for that is probably Inventor not Gunslinger.

There's a very big difference between lightning gun and revolver. If you want a Tesla style lightning gun because SCIENCE, then you should probably play an engineer. But a revolver is nowhere near that level of zany antics. Their existence is in fact canon for the setting already (or was in 1e, anyway), they were just comparatively rare in 1e.

Personally, I feel the realism question should just be thrown out at this point. Let's decide on what gives the desired mechanics and visuals.

1. How badly do we want to see flintlocks versus breach loading guns with cartridges? How important is it that the default weapon a Gunslinger owns is relatively crude, and takes a powder horn and round bullets and lacks rifling?

2. Since we have the rarity tag, do we need to be as cautious about impacting the technological assumptions of the world?

3. Has the passing of time between editions allowed for a bit more liberal sprinkling of advanced firearms?

4. Would the people who are okay with flintlocks but not breach loaders be a sizable enough portion of the audience that we should be designing the gunslinger for them?

5. How many people immediately imagine things like six shooters when they even hear the name Gunslinger?

If we answer these questions, we can then handwave pretty much anything to get what we actually want. I would argue that it might make more sense to assume the baseline assumption for PCs is breach loaders and cartridges, but many NPCs still use flintlocks because they're NPCs. PCs can elect to use them, but do so at some reasonable cost. I would say range and accuracy and power in a similar fashion to the difference between a regular shortbow and a compound shortbow is a clear upgrade.

I hope multi-round weapons are adjusted to fit into the rules elegantly, because people WILL want them, and they WILL be made sooner or later.

To be honest, my first thought when hearing of a gunslinger is Clint Eastwood with a six-shooter. I'd personally prefer that revolvers were the expected baseline model weapon, especially considering that the inventor class from the same book is using some way more advanced weaponry and gadgets than a simple mechanical revolver.

I feel like, barring revolvers if they're deemed either unbalanced or too advanced, that breach loaders are a good compromise. I was never crazy about the flintlock weapons from 1e either, precisely because of the imagery presented in @HaydenWills first post.

technically, the crossbow does a little bit more on a successful strike, but the bow user gets deadly, so I count it as a wash

With composite bows being a thing, eventually the crossbow + feat doesn't even do more damage without a critical success :/

I kind of feel like drifters at least should be able to maintain proficiency parity with their chosen melee group, especially considering that they're likely to end up meleeing more than shooting.

I feel like if the decision was to exchange legendary proficiency for a new class mechanic, then the guns themselves would need to be changed appropriately. As it is, the only thing keeping parity between guns and crossbows is the higher critical damage which is empowered by the proficiency gain. Even with that boon, the damage mock ups I've seen have martial guns behind or close to short bows for damage and mostly behind composite short bows. Without the added crit chance to take advantage of the fatal trait on firearms, I feel like they'd be that much more behind other ranged options. I'm not necessarily opposed to a trade, but that is something to consider.

...so may as well make Western lovers happy by including feat support for horses, rope tricks, squinting, eating beans, bounty hunting, and whatever else you can think up.

Can o' Beans [Feat, level 2]

I don't necessarily mind reload as a concept, but it feels clunky in gameplay (with crossbows/slings, mind you I haven't had a chance to try the gunslinger in actual play). I like the idea of having things happen while reloading as an action such as seeking, recall knowledge, taking cover, etc.

That said, while reading through the feats I frequently find myself thinking, "Man, this would be great if only it worked as a free action modifier that could be combined with other actions." A good example of this is the Risky Reload feat which lets you reload as part of a strike in exchange for risking a misfire. It's good on its own, but it would go a long way towards making the class more viable if it could be attached somehow to Alchemical Shot, Return Fire, and so on.

It's been covered before, but I'll repeat for emphasis that melee + firearm and 2x pistols builds don't appear to be wholly viable at the moment due primarily to the reload mechanic. At low levels, you honestly aren't likely to have the money for multiple pistols to make the brace of pistols work, so you're stuck with reloading. You can't reload while holding two pistols, nor while holding a pistol and melee weapon before level 6 (and then only for Drifters who take Reloading Strike), but reloading in melee range provokes attacks of opportunity. Moreover, reloading two pistols, even if you could do it without holster juggling them, takes up two actions.

The class is super flavorful, but reload mechanics look like they'll still jam it up something awful. Maybe using fighter proficiency advancement in combination with gunslinger specific feats and the fatal trait on most of the guns will keep it balanced with other ranged options, but it still looks like anything besides single weapon/free hand combat is going to be super clunky.

It might break things, but I'd be interested to see how using intelligence to attack (but not damage) would work out based on the chosen innovation. The weapon innovation would use it as the default using the reasoning that the inventor has specifically accounted for things such as the perfect balance, aerodynamic design, and so on for them specifically to wield the weapon, whereas the armor innovation would have it so long as the inventor is wearing their armor and using their Overdrive linked weapon with the explanation of the inventor having some kind of aim assist built in. The construct minion innovation, but not the non-innovation version, might gain the inventor's intelligence modifier as a straight bonus to its attacks (partially to make up for having poor accuracy with only expert proficiency, no item bonus, and being limited to +6 to it's attack stat as well) to account for the pet being the primary focus for that path.

Alternatively, using intelligence to hit or giving some bonus to hit could be rolled into Overdrive. Just giving a bonus of some sort doesn't account for the MAD nature of stat placement, however.

So the average damage is 11.925 (crossbow), 11.475 (musket) over two rounds. Or 5.96 (crossbow), 5.74 (musket) per round.

Now we factor in a flat 20% chance of a misfire, independent of your attack roll. This does two things: it gives a flat 20% decrease in expected damage of that attack, and makes you lose a round in your routine clearing the misfire, roughly making you lose 1/6 of your 2 round routine.

Factoring the 20% flat miss-chance gives us: 5.96 (crossbow), 4.59 (musket)

And approximating the extra turn cost of clearing as 1/6 of your routine gives us: 5.96 (crossbow), 3.83 (musket)

Are you just adding in the misfire stuff for the sake of completeness or am I misunderstanding the way that misfire works? It seems like as long as you maintain your weapons, that misfire shouldn't factor into this attack/reload routine all that much unless you use a feat that adds misfire on a failure (but at that point you're not talking about the level 1 attack/reload routine anymore).

I appreciate what Cover Fire is trying to do in its current form, but I'd never take it as a feat over the other level 1 options as is for the reasons you mentioned. Your suggestion is quite elegant and seems to achieve much the same goal. It does make the level 10 feat Deflecting Shot irrelevant, but then that's pretty weak for a level 10 feat anyway.

First off, I wanted to say great work! I love the themes you're dealing with and the overall feel and mechanics of the class work well within that narrative while also making a great member of an adventuring party.

I do have the following bits of constructive criticism for you. Bear in mind that I have not had an opportunity to playtest this in an actual game yet (and may not get the chance for a while, as my group is currently in the middle of a playthrough of Extinction Curse), so this is all speculative and/or comparative to other options already available.

1. Currently, Drifter is the only class to achieve master proficiency in all three save categories, let alone legendary in one save and master in the other two. Likewise, no other class gets armor mastery at 15th level. The two classes that get it at 13th level improve to legendary proficiency at 17th. The fighter is the only class outside of those two to get master proficiency before 19th level (at 17th, the same as the other defense focused martials cap out). You may want to consider switching things up a bit to account for that.

2. The custom weapons you included for the ronin path (the Nodachi and Saintie) are honestly a little bit too good. The only comparable weapon in terms of the number of traits for its damage die is the war flail at 1d10 (disarm, sweep, trip) and the traits on the war flail are less advantageous than those of the nodachi and saintie. My suggestion would be to remove one trait each or lower the damage die for the weapons.

3. The focus on parry for so many of the class feats is understandable considering the ronin and pacifist subclasses, but parry weapons are somewhat rare and, as noted above, the custom weapons you added are a bit over the top. My suggestion would be to include phrasing in the Exceptional Parry feat to add the parry trait to specific weapons or actions based on those subclasses.

For the ronin, I'd suggest adding parry to agile/finesse weapons and the uncommon martial weapon to which they gained access via the ronin path.

For the pacifist, I would suggest allowing the parry action regardless of weapon type while they have grit and/or have not dealt lethal damage since the beginning of their last turn.

Regardless of the above steps, you might also consider accounting for the level 19 Unbreakable Demeanor class feature (automatically upgrades Grit's circumstance bonus to AC to 2) in the Exceptional Parry class feat.

4. Consider doing a pass to clean up some of the wording around certain features and feats. For example, consider the wording of the Champion (paladin cause) feature Retributive Strike's trigger "An enemy damages your ally, and both are within 15 feet of you." compared to that of the Drifter's Return the Favor "An ally is the target of a Strike and both are within 20 feet of you". The wording for the Retributive Strike trigger is much clearer in its intent.

5. You specifically have two feats that require wielding a melee weapon in one hand while keeping the other hand free (Combat Grab and Duelist's Challenge). This isn't really a bad thing, but nothing else available in either class features or available class feats really seems focused towards that style of combat.

I want to clarify here that while my feedback may seem like nit-picking, I really do love what you have created and am not trying to diminish that in any way.

I'd love to see an official drifter type class. Bonus points if it gets incentives to be unarmored for that classic robe and sandals wandering samurai style or clothes and duster gunslinger like the old movies.