Tolarean's page

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?

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!