Gear Up and Throw Down! When sword and spell just won't be enough to win the day, it's time to power up your game with clockwork gears, lightning coils, and black powder! Guns & Gears, the latest hardcover rulebook for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game (Second Edition), brings the excitement of firearms and fantasy technology to your tabletop!
Unravel the secrets of clockworks with the new inventor class or blow away your opposition as a firearm-wielding gunslinger! In addition to new classes, a plethora of archetypes, backgrounds, vehicles, siege engines, gadgets, and the new automaton ancestry are all ready to expand your game with options for battlefields large and small.
Guns & Gears features:
Two new classes: the clever inventor and the sharpshooting gunslinger
Automaton ancestry for players who want to play a customizable construct
Firearms of all stripes, from the simple and effective flintlock pistol to versatile gunblades
More than a dozen new archetypes
Scores of new gadgets and vehicles
Siege engines and accompanying rules
A gazetteer of Golarion revealing how firearms and technology fit into the Age of Lost Omens, including a look at the technology of the continents of Arcadia and Tian Xia and never-before-revealed secrets of the rough-and-tumble, gritty city of Alkenstar
Written by: Michael Sayre, Mark Seifter, and Logan Bonner, Jessica Catalan, John Compton, Andrew D. Geels, Steven Hammond, Sen H.H.S., Brent Holtsberry, Jason Keeley, Dustin Knight, Luis Loza, Ron Lundeen, Chris Mastey, Will McCardell, Liane Merciel, Jacob W. Michaels, Dave Nelson, Samantha Phelan, Mikhail Rekun, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, Sydney Meeker, Kendra Leigh Speedling, Andrew Stoeckle, Calliope Lee Taylor, Sara Thompson, Andrew White, and Scott D. Young
Price- $14.99 here https://paizo.com/products/btq029xk?Pathfinder-Guns-Gears
TL; DR- Solid new Pathfinder toys and toy based characters! 95%
Basics- BRING THE BOOM! Guns and Gears brings solid steampunk and introductory industrialization to the Pathfinder setting with new technology and themes, two new classes, a new race, and countless new character options and items.
Mechanics or Crunch- Paizo knows their system the best and they bring the best new materials for their toys. The new classes are fun parts of an ever expanding world. The Inventor is the steampunk inventor you may be searching for, with no magical background or ties like the alchemist. The Gunslinger brings pure boom to any encounter. The new race the Automaton is an interesting, but well supported addition to the world of Golarion. There is just a TON of materials with all kinds of new toys such as new guns, tools, and magic items that can help turn the tide of battle. My only complaints are that the Gunslinger feels a bit under-powered. It is an absolute crit machine, but guns can fall flat if a character spends a day hitting but not critting. That said, what Paizo has here is a FANTASTIC addition to the crunch of Pathfinder. 4.75/5
Theme or Fluff- Guns and Gears is not a small book and there is just an absolute TON of new stuff here. Now in a tool book you would think its just item lists, and there is that, but there is also a bunch of fluff to bring the new stuff into the old game. Pathfinder 1st ed is about 10 years ago in the world of Golarion, so this helps advance the world as the fantasy world gets a bit more pre-industrial. All that said, one thing sticks out and this may just be a me-problem: automatons. I always hate new races in old parts of the world as if we just magically found them in the same places we were. That and they feel out of place and honestly more like a warforged in PF2. Not a game breaker, but something I don’t think I would have wanted in my game. Another nitpick is there are no new spells here, and I feel that's a reasonable, but somewhat annoying choice. If you want some gun spells, look elsewhere. The writers wanted to focus more on mechanics and less on magic, so while I might want some spells, it's ok they are not here. 4.5/5
Execution- It’s Paizo- they know solid book production. Good layout, art, font, hyperlinking, and all the pieces I expect from a AAA RPG company. It's a 50 buck book, but as an evil millennial, I mostly like PDFs, so the 14 bucks for a digital file is extremely worth it. 5/5
Summary-I honestly love Pathfinder 2nd Ed. It's all the pieces of 4th, 3rd, and 5th Edition DnD I want. And differentiating itself from DnD by moving to a more steampunk and pre-industrial culture will help it grow by further making its own path. Guns and Gears is a solid step in that direction with amazing classes, items, and class options. The missteps I see are maybe more opinion; even if they are not my favorite things, they are done well. If you want less magic and more mechanics mayhem in your Pathfinder 2nd Ed, you need this book now! 95%
Many elements underwhelming but what is good is exceptional.
Very disappointed with the absence of support for much of my pf1 gunslinger weapons; this has created extremely problematic continuity issues in two of my campaigns—both currently put on hiatus due to player disappointment.
Should be noted, *none* of the disappointment is toward the loss of touch ac; this actually made my players relieved so they don't have to choose to "be less optimal" to not trivialize encounters and I don't have to over compensate for it in encounter strength.
Some great stuff in here. I like the art, I was pleased to see some mentions of Arcadia. Everything with the Gunslinger was great -- I'm not much of an inventor type so didn't really look into that.
The tie-in between Alkenstar and Vidrian is somewhat silly though. The idea that two nations separated by an entire continent and sharing no waterway to each other would be besties (despite all the pirates and Cheliaxians standing in their way) is pretty dumb.
Ditto with the "Stasian Coils" thing -- why does electricity have to be imported from Earth? Couldn't someone from Ustalav have just figured out the principles based on speaking with Anastasia Romanov? Someone wanted to name them Tesla Coils but couldn't, so went with the next closest Earth-analog. Silly.
You slice or smash your opponent with the melee portion of your weapon before pulling the trigger at point-blank range. Make a melee Strike with the required weapon. If the Strike is successful, you can immediately make a ranged Strike against the same target with a +2 circumstance bonus to the attack roll. This counts as two attacks toward your multiple attack penalty, but you don't apply the multiple attack penalty until after making both attacks.
If you miss the first melee Strike, does this ability still count as two attacks towards your multiple attack penalty?
The first non-printing-based errata cycle is supposed to happen Spring of this year. I can't guarantee it'll have G&G errata, but I'd be shocked if it and SoM weren't amongst them.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
rdmarsh wrote:
No idea why they didn't follow the matching cover layout / spine art, I thought I'd ordered the wrong book.
I'm a bit disappointed it doesn't match :(
Bacause they are treating these books as "expansion packs" for the rules, not part of the "core" game. If you don't do a campaign that touch on guns, you don't need that book that much. So they made them visually different to make it clear that they are more like "optional" books.
For anyone that is thinking of getting a non-mint copy of this. I thought I would share my thoughts, this is not a true review as I am only going to talk about the non-mint condition.
The book is in great shape but one spot on the upper spine. It almost looks like it foldered the spine a bit on top of it's self. What I mean is there is a bump where the spin is thicker for the final top inch or so. The pages seem secure etc. So other than that bump it is in fine shape, so if you want it and are a budget it is worth picking up the non-mint, I picked up 3 other books and they was all in even better shape than this one and this one is in pretty good shape.
