Tolarean's page

Bump; any ideas if it would be worth to switch at 6 or after 7... or at all? (at 5 i got dex to damage, at 7 starts DR which feels tempting, but is it really worth it?)

Mostly thinking about Fighter, Warpriest or maybe Slayer/Rogue?

Its an archetype of the "Legendary Barbarian" class. Its 3pp, yes, but the archetype sounded rather fun to do, as they get to make melee attacks with their firearm, and doing this reloads the gun and clears any jams.

So I have come upon a rather strange conundrum, at least arther strange for me.

I have recently made a rather silly character; a dwarven 'legendary barbarian' with the Gunpowder Savage archetype. He has a double-barrel musket, shoots it and smacks with it about as well; with the stats of: 16,17,16,10,14,6 @ lvl 5.
I think of putting all his attribute bonuses into dex, to get the most out of the dex-to-damage with guns. He even has a class ability to use Large two-handed weapons.
You might ask, so what is the problem?

I don't know where to take this further. I just realized that the L.Barb is very front loaded with its bonuses, and my rage bonus increases at 11 for a +1 over what it does, and at 20 for another +1... so I started thinking: what could I do with this dwarf to make him work better than just trudging along with barbarian just cause.

I started thinking about things like staying barb til lvl 7 to get DR, then going Fighter? Or Warpriest? Or Ranger? And that is where the problem continued - I don't know what would work!

His main combat style is a sort of switch-hitting where he does not have to actually switch weapons.

Do you think I should just stick to barbarian? Or do you think some other class could make the build work better while staying interesting and fun?

Im not really set on the subrace that gives it INT, I just thought it would be nice for a magus. In theory I could of played a warpriest or something... but well, magus is rather nice imo.
Im just set on playing a dwarf in general, due to it being a dwarven campaign.

And that is a very interesting trait, didnt know about that one!

I did want to go guns because of the visuals and dwarfyness, then thought that crossbows could work too but well. Hm. I suppose fluffing up a longbow could also work in theory, perhaps. Some very mechanical recurve bow...

If I just go for regular dwarf without moving the stats around...
STR 11
DEX 16
CON 14
INT 16
WIS 16
CHA 4
Yeah the Cha is dangerously low but welp. In theory opens up interesting roleplay options.

Yeah im worried the accuracy would be a proble, as its a 3/4BAB class and id only have +3dex (and while we start at lvl5, the DM explicitly said we dont start with magic items at all) so im not sure a dex belt will come soon at all.

Though going with a refluffed longbow would let me snatch 3 levels of Arcane Archer potentially and all the fun archery feats. Tho if I really wanted to go longbow the zen archer would just glare at me...

On the topic of crits, theres one thing im unsure about, can the Eldritch Archer ranged spellstrike even crit? Like with the spell as the melee one can, I mean. In that case the crossbow would certainly be more interesting.

Thanks for the ideas so far.

Honestly Alchemist was my first idea when I saw that custom dwarven sub-race our DM has, which instead of the regular +CON+WIS -CHA gives a solid +4 INT for a -3 to STR;

The stat line I was looking at with all the adjustments was:
STR 9
DEX 16
CON 12
INT 20
WIS 14
CHA 6

The guns hitting touch AC was one of the things that made me want to go for them actually, since with just a +3 dex that crossbow would struggle. That and to use guns I would really just need Rapid Reload instead of outright needing crossbow mastery.

My original idea was an Alch though but not a gun chemist but a Grenadier who used crossbows (with a splash of Focused Shot) and just shot explosives on people all day erry day but that was when I thought about what other class could do that and well, here we are.

From what I thought is that with just Rapid Reload and Alch.Cartridges you reload muskets as a move action, hence why I wanted to take 3 levels in Musket Master to get the reload as a free action, which would let me actually properly use Spell Combat.

The dragoon musket is a very nice catch though, did not think of that and it does sound pretty nice...

So im getting into a game which for fun reasons we decided would be an all dwarf party. What more, the DM told us that dwarves in his setting have guns, which made me think of gun users because those are fun, but I dont really want to be just a dude with a rifle.

Then I remembered my favourite class, the Magus has the Eldritch Archer archetype which actually can use any ranged weapon, not just bow... and it got me thinking about guns; but I quickly realized that if I wanted to use a musket, I would always be reloading on move, which is kinda bad. On the other hand I thought about going for crossbows and that also seemed rather dwarfy, but on the flip side, crossbows need a tonne of feats to start actually working proper.

I certainly dont want to use a bow though and I cant decide how to do this.

One of my ideas was going Musket Master gunslinger til lvl 3 to get the free action reload with muskets and then switching to Magus full time, but thats losing out on 3 levels of magus and that doesnt sound too good.

Another issue is that while we do start at lvl 5, as a dwarf I dont exactly have an amazing dex (my rolls were rather eh; I got a nice above average but my highest was a 16.), but with a dwarven sub-race present, I can get my INT to 20 base.

Is there a way to build this that actually works, be it crossbows or guns?
I dont want to hyper optimalize but I certainly dont want to be useless.

As the name implies, I am planning on running a campaign and felt.like spicing it up with some custom/optional rules.

The focus of the campaign would be living in a world where an undead apocalypse seems to be winning and the living have retreated into massively fortified citadel cities.

Because of this I wanted to focus on survival elements - properly tracking hunger, thirst, heat, sleep, sanity...(which im unsure how to)
That and pondered about these optional rules:
Called shots
Armor as DR
Piecemeal armor - plays well with the whole scavenging aspect

One thing has me worried though, with armor as dr, making called shots and magic a MUST use or making the game even more tailored for casters.

Also have been thinking if there are any other rules that could be used to amplify the survival horror aspect.
OR if there are perhaps other systems I could use for this (WHFRP, Conan d20?)

So, yeah, any thoughts or ideas are welcome!