Yakkabe's page

A couple impressions of mine to add to the pile... If I'm totally off-base with these, lemme know.

I'm ok with the general balance of the firearms. They strike me as gimmicky but potentially dangerous for anyone that isn't a gunslinger, and legitimately dangerous when used by a gunslinger (once he's finished being balanced).

That said, I take issue with the blunderbuss. Compared to the musket, the extremely short range seems like a harsh penalty for the die increase, which would be okay except it is also stepped up into martial weapons. The extra 1 damage to secondary targets seems ineffective to me (as well as a liability to teammates), and the only feat that really affects the blunderbuss is pretty poor. I would personally move it to the "simple" category and let the range and damage difference balance each other out.

Regarding the dueling pistols, I find myself wondering who would ever use a flintlock pistol when these exist. Of course the martial weapons should be an upgrade, but in this case it's just drowning in improvements, far more than most martial weapons IMHO. Maybe let the flintlock pistol be used as a bludgeon or something since it's bulkier, I dunno.

Last I'll just speculate on the TBA advanced weapons. I would submit the following:

Revolver:
d4 P
20 ft.
Reload 3
Bulk 1
Hands 1

Fatal d8
Versatile B
Magazine 6

Clean and simple; it just uses the flintlock pistol stats but comes with the opportunity to fire several shots in a burst before reloading. Less accurate than a dueling pistol due to the advanced category, and it doesn't fit in many builds because of how many feats affect reload 1 weapons, but in my experience that is where advanced weapons shine.

they fixed that part, check the sticky threads.

Oops, missed that, thank you

Yakkabe wrote:

I'm still going through the Gunslinger feats here but I came to a hard stop when I reached "Scatter Blast." I feel like I'm missing something big here, what in the world is the benefit to this feat?...

Ignoring the failure issues, its basically the Widen Spell metamagic, but for your gun. (Spend an extra extra to widen your cone). Which isn't super impressive (widen is a level 1 feat for a reason), but it is technically useful. Of course the downsides are pretty harsh for a pretty minor benefit. Because of the increased range its also useful anytime it saves you from spending an action to move (which with a 15' base range will probably be common).

It isn't the same though. On a spell, widen lets you hit more targets with the full force of your spell. But on a blunderbuss, all secondary targets receive a measly 1 damage (more if you have a striking rune). This hardly seems like it compares.

I'm still going through the Gunslinger feats here but I came to a hard stop when I reached "Scatter Blast." I feel like I'm missing something big here, what in the world is the benefit to this feat?
Spend an entire extra action on your attack, for a bigger cone and the chance to deal an extra 1 damage to a few bystanders? I feel like this activity isn't worth performing even if you ignored the added chance of a misfire or your gun outright exploding on a bad roll. I guess you get to target someone a little farther away, but... Spending a level 6 feat for the opportunity to break your gun feels dreadful.

In response to OP, I would like to point out that in the playtest, Firearm Ace states: "You must make the attack before the end of your turn or these benefits are lost."

Meanwhile, Crossbow Ace is more useable: "You must make the attack before the end of your **next** turn or these benefits are lost."

I agree with the general consensus here, reloading is a big problem for the gunslinger, much bigger than a crossbow ranger who invests everything into fewer, more precise shots.