Goblin

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Organized Play Member. 35 posts. No reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 2 Organized Play characters.




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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?