| whsandman |
This should be about game balance and player incentive to play. I love the idea of having a class that specializes in firearms that takes the weapon to a whole new lvl. As an experienced DM for many games including 3.5, I must consider what my players are going to ask for, indeed, what I would ask for.
Why am I going to pay 1000 gp when I can get a weapon for 1/20 of that to consistently do the same thing to the enemy. Just for fluff? Sure the firearm has a crit of 4, so 5% of the time it is going to do a lot of dmg. what about the other 95%? The rules as they are being presented say that being hit by a crossbow bolt inflicts more dmg 90% of the time, and 5% of the time it does more than twice as much. Now as I enjoy studying history, I find it hard to understand why a
.50+ cal piece of metal traveling at the speed of sound is doing less dmg than a piece of metal traveling at a much slower speed as E=MC^2 (energy [force] is equal to the mass of an object times the speed of object squared) thus the faster an object of similar size travels the more energy [force] it has and will transfer at impact to an encountered object.
Furthermore, why as a player would I want to have a weapon that depends so much on it's crit when there are many creatures that ignore crit hits. Just because we face undead I must feel impotent because my crit want work.
Now I always encourage my players to work up charcters based on concepts and not math, but how can I ask them to do so when it puts them at a disadvantage. Earlier I stated that I loved a class that worked of the firearms specifically, however I hate the fact that in order to effectively use said weapon one must take the class. The class should enhance the characters use of the weapon, not make it available. I say this out of practicality not out of legalistic literalism.