After seeing the couple of small sections on firearms in the campaign setting and thinking that I must be missing some rule or something, I came here and did some searching. I found some old archived threads that indicated that firearms were included into Golarian but more as a flavor thing. To make sure that people didn't abuse (or even use apparently) firearms, the damage output for most of them is well below what you'd do with a bow if you decided to specialize in it and about the same if you didn't. Add in a much higher cost for the gun and ammunition and it's fairly pointless to ever use one and downright foolish not to sell one if you found it.
Now, I'm not complaining here. I understand that they didn't really want firearms to be a big part of Golarian and that's fine. If I'm going to even bother using them though, they have to have a use. I'd like to house firearms into something useful for my campaign.
I'm trying to decide between two mechanics and will certainly entertain your ideas as well. My two are...
Accuracy equals damage: Basically this means that you do more damage based on how accurate a shot you are which makes sense. Applied to DND, this would mean that DEX bonus adds to damage. I'd probably rule that precision damage isn't possible due to these guns not being accurate enough for that kind of thing. I'd like to avoid combining sneak attacks with DEX based damage.
Guns have their own strength: This also makes sense. It doesn't matter if you are the srongest person in the world or the weakest, the gun itself is going to provide it's own power. In this case, I'd have to assign a (fairly high) STR modifier to each gun and that would apply extra damage to each shot. I could also add extra dice to the attacks but that makes damage much more swingy.
So, which one do you think I should go with or do you have a better suggestion?
After seeing the couple of small sections on firearms in the campaign setting and thinking that I must be missing some rule or something, I came here and did some searching. I found some old archived threads that indicated that firearms were included into Golarian but more as a flavor thing. To make sure that people didn't abuse (or even use apparently) firearms, the damage output for most of them is well below what you'd do with a bow if you decided to specialize in it and about the same if you didn't. Add in a much higher cost for the gun and ammunition and it's fairly pointless to ever use one and downright foolish not to sell one if you found it.
Now, I'm not complaining here. I understand that they didn't really want firearms to be a big part of Golarian and that's fine. If I'm going to even bother using them though, they have to have a use. I'd like to house firearms into something useful for my campaign.
I'm trying to decide between two mechanics and will certainly entertain your ideas as well. My two are...
Accuracy equals damage: Basically this means that you do more damage based on how accurate a shot you are which makes sense. Applied to DND, this would mean that DEX bonus adds to damage. I'd probably rule that precision damage isn't possible due to these guns not being accurate enough for that kind of thing. I'd like to avoid combining sneak attacks with DEX based damage.
Guns have their own strength: This also makes sense. It doesn't matter if you are the srongest person in the world or the weakest, the gun itself is going to provide it's own power. In this case, I'd have to assign a (fairly high) STR modifier to each gun and that would apply extra damage to each shot. I could also add extra dice to the attacks but that makes damage much more swingy.
So, which one do you think I should go with or do you have a better suggestion?
Guns are the last thing I'd want in my game, but... I'd say go with assigning a strength / bonus to damage for guns, and maybe crossbows. For bows, I'd go with the users strength up to the pull of the bow. Anotherwards, cap a shortbow at x, a longbow at y based on the pull of the bow. Of course, you might have to have a minimum strength to pull a given bow as well.
I'm not familiar with Golarion (I have my own campaign setting) but if the weapons are 17th-18th century blackpowder weapons their effectiveness is limited compared to more modern weapons. Or even older ones. When you think about combat effectiveness of these weapons, consider that some contemporaries of these weapons considered the longbow a superior weapon to 18th century firearms (due to superior range / accuracy and rate of fire). A crack unit of 18th century musketeers could get off about 3-4 round per minute, less as combat continued. These volleys were "into the brown", that is fired into masses of soldiers with the only aim being the enemy units general direction. Given a six second round, it would take two rounds to load followed by discharging the weapon. Wash, rinse repeat. Combat range, even into the brown, was 100 yards or less. After that, God knows where the round (fired out of a smoothbore unrifled barrel) would go. If you have rifled barrels (which began to see use in the 18th century) triple the range, but half the rate of fire. The rifling made the weapon slower to reload. The powder used then fouled the barrel of a smoothbore decreasing accuracy and increasing loading time as well. The fouling was worse with a rifled barrel. The problem with the bow was the time needed to produce a competent longbowman versus a musketeer... ease of use and mass armies made the gun the preferred weapon (along with the collapse of the social system in England that produced the yeoman class).
It depends as well on what kind of firearms you want to allow or try to model. In Golarion, firearms originate in the specific magic-dead region of Alkenstar, but I don't know what technology level they're supposed to represent.
One the one hand, you could have matchlock, smoothbore hand cannons like in "Mononoke-hime": extremely slow to reload, probably mostly firing shot in a very wide spread. Or you could have something like a blunderbuss or "Brown Bess", which can be loaded as a shotgun, a musket, or with "buck and ball". Still slow and inaccurate. In a world with clockwork golems and clockmages (like Golarion), there's no reason you couldn't have revolvers, which opens all the modern gun feat chains.
Personally, I would say that after firearms were invented, they quickly reached a level of technology similar to the Kentucky longrifle: accurate rifles that still have a low rate of fire. This seems like it would be the most fun to play with without breaking the game world.
A longrifle could be an exotic weapon that did 3d6 piercing damage with a crit range of 18-20, but would take 20 rounds to load. That's pretty huge damage on a critical, certainly tempting for fighters, and encouraging marksmanship. I think Improved Critical may be better than Dex bonus to damage.
Medieval armies transitioned to guns because they were easy to use, even though they were expensive; even though longbows were cheap to manufacture and more effective at the time, it was really difficult to train archers to use them effectively. But you have to put limits on guns, or they'd overrun the game world like they did ours.
A 5th-level wizard with fireball is still the world's most powerful artillery.
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There are guns in the CS, but yeah, the damage of them is pretty pathetic. Of course those of us who do favor guns, to one degree or another of commonality, are in the minority in terms of Pathfinder fans, so we're not likely to really get our wish. I just double most of the damage dice for the ones in the Campaign Setting, myself. Leave the prices as-is to keep them as rare and expensive things, explaining why there aren't peasant armies overthrowing the various monarchies and what not.
Plus imagine how much worse Galt would be if the mobs had firearms.
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Or you could just do what I do with firearms in my game: they have a x3 crit range and their damage dice open-end. Sometimes a bullet hits meat and you have a little owie; sometimes it catches you in the brainpan and your thinking bits get rearranged. Firearms don't do as much damage as big swords, but their damage potential in a lucky shot is higher (which is kind of true in the real world too--a torso hit from a low- to medium-caliber bullet induces a lot less shock and blood loss than a sword slash).
In practice, for my game anyway, this hasn't made firearms noticeably more deadly than anything else, but my players have a healthy fear/respect for them, since when a gun comes out, that means that things have just gotten real. XD
Jeremy Puckett
Keep in mind, the rate of fire and even range for a medieval firearm is a joke. Unless the player makes modifications to the firearm, a handy bow, crossbow, and fireball will fire quicker, do more damage at a longer ranges, and are more accurate. Medieval firearms were only good for short range and mainly for "Shock and Awe" but with fireballs and etc, a Medieval firearm is just another noise maker.
Rule that can be used for a firearm - range 1 to 30 feet, the firearm makes a touch attack. The firearm with a stand has a -4 to hit due to fuse smoke, recoil, and etc. If you do not use the firearm stand, then it is -8 to hit due its cast iron construction. The rate of fire is 1 every 4 rounds. Damage 1d12 for all sizes. On a confirmed critical, the victim rolls a Will check or die (range 1 to 30 feet only). It has been proven that most immediate deaths come from shock and not actual body tissue damage. People with a high will can override pain, the "I've been shot" syndrome, and live and sometimes fight back. Or you can eliminate the will and die check since people in PF are more use to being hacked, slashed, and roasted.
Here is an example of the very first true firearm. The hand cannon does not count.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arquebus
Firearms did not reach maturity until around the Civil War or 1860s with the advent of rifling and cartridge rounds. This is when they became accurate at longer ranges and more deadly.
Another cool idea is to come up with your own firearm that will fit the PF world instead of using an arquebus or any real life firearm.
The tome of secerts the first pathfinder related third party product has a section on fire arms.
Called flinklocks and fantasy.
Worth taking a look if your into that sort of thing only $10 for the PDF.
Not really my thing but it sounds like you guys like black power gaming.
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In campaigns I have run with firearms, I have run with rules along the lines of the optional rules listed in the Campaign Setting (exploding dice and misfire). It makes for a potentially deadly weapon from a single shot as you don't need to roll a critical to potentially double, triple, etc the damage to your opponent (or yourself). I find this type of system takes care of the issues DEX or STR mods the OP had mentioned, in that you can have the "grazing" wounds where the normal damage is the result (say 1-5 points) or you can have more serious hits (7-whatever) without having to rely on a confirmed critical. Of course, a PC dying from having their pistol backfire, or just explode in their hand, is a major bummer ...
As to why someone would want to have a firearm in Golarion, it all boils down to how often the party ends up in areas that magic is unreliable, ineffective or just negated. For these types of scenarios, they can be a life saver. Especially if the PC invests in "special" ammo (silver or cold iron bullets, for example).
And this brings up an interesting question. Is it possible to have a magic firearm or magic ammo for a firearm?
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I like firearms for flavor, I don't want a pirate that has a brace of hand crossbows...
They're not really overly powerful, but they can be deadly if you get a critical with the exploding dice. d10/x3, and smaller calibre arms have a higher chance of rolling that exploding dice...derringer anyone? d4=1 in 4 chance to be 2d4, 1 in 8 to be 3d4, 1 in 12 to be 4d4...1 in 16 to be 5d4, you get the picture...
CALADORS: black power gaming or black powder gaming?
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As to why someone would want to have a firearm in Golarion, it all boils down to how often the party ends up in areas that magic is unreliable, ineffective or just negated. For these types of scenarios, they can be a life saver. Especially if the PC invests in "special" ammo (silver or cold iron bullets, for example).
And this brings up an interesting question. Is it possible to have a magic firearm or magic ammo for a firearm?
My idea has been since firearms are only made in Alkenstar amidst the dead magic area of the Mana Wastes that guns should be non-magical only. Enchanted bullets, sure, (caster shells, if you want an Outlaw Star kind of thing) but the guns themselves as non-magical only.
Adds an interesting bit of flavor, IMO, as well as a bit of a balance. Sure, go ahead and spend 203k gp on +5 flaming frost holy shock adamantine bullets, but those'll be gone in 50 shots.
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As to why someone would want to have a firearm in Golarion, it all boils down to how often the party ends up in areas that magic is unreliable, ineffective or just negated. For these types of scenarios, they can be a life saver. Especially if the PC invests in "special" ammo (silver or cold iron bullets, for example).
And this brings up an interesting question. Is it possible to have a magic firearm or magic ammo for a firearm?
My idea has been since firearms are only made in Alkenstar amidst the dead magic area of the Mana Wastes that guns should be non-magical only. Enchanted bullets, sure, (caster shells, if you want an Outlaw Star kind of thing) but the guns themselves as non-magical only.
Adds an interesting bit of flavor, IMO, as well as a bit of a balance. Sure, go ahead and spend 203k gp on +5 flaming frost holy shock adamantine bullets, but those'll be gone in 50 shots.
Crafting and enchanting are different, I would allow a player to enchant a firearm, but it would probably cost a little extra (25-50%)
Cool thing about enchanted bullets, is you can have 20 flaming and 20 of adamantine, and another 20 holy cold iron.
I don't like move action reload!!! that's a 6 second reload & fire which is faster than any musketeer EVER reloaded...my game made the reload 1 minute, if you had the rapid reload it was 5 rounds...there's a reason pirates and highwaymen carried a brace...
make them penetrate armor by halving the armor values for medium and heavy armor to compensate for the longer reloads.
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I remember our local DM used to rule that fire arms operated as a ranged touch attack rather than a normal roll, then they had a bit of an advantage over a bow but he did have it so we rolled on a mishap table if you rolled a natural 1.
Also if anyone still has access to Dragon #321 it has an article about firearms on pg.30, notably they mention increasing damage or crit range to represent the guns somewhat erratic damage capability (this makes the firearms rather nasty as they now do 2d6 and 3d6 respectively). I'd like to see firearms actually be useful occasionally as they can be quite entertaining in some settings but most published rules penalize you for even thinking of using them when bows and even crossbows are far superior.
Also on the subject of the technology level in Alkenstar they have a revolver, rifle, and scattergun on the firearms table and they are mentioned as being percussion cap firearms so they could be roughly equivalent to the weapons of the 1850's and 1860's. You could run into anything from single shot muzzle loaders all the way up to breechloading rifles similar to the Kammerlader and the Dreyse needle gun.
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I almost made this post myself way back when - Firearms did seem a tad underpowered.
I had this discussion with my GM (Grimcleaver) and the real hitching point came when we relaised that Guns did less than Crossbows.
So the house rule was this -
Double the Damage Dice (2d6, 2d8, etc) - No Damage Dice Explosion - Armor (which in the Grimcleaver System provides DR) provides no DR (unless its special quality armor, or magic, etc - normal grade armor has no protection)
This seems very formidable, and hopefully, should be very realistic.
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THIS IS EASY:
They need no special rules, just duplicate the crossbow hand/light/heavy for pistol/short musket/long musket.
If you really wanted to add rules you could make them longer to load than a crossbow but easy to use (simple weapons) and you could if you really wanted add +1 damage or something to account for more punching power than a crossbow to combat DR better.
If you really wanted to get into house rule land I like the concept of giving non-strength based weapons a "virtual" strength score for damage. I can see giving crossbows a 14 to 18 strength and guns an 16 to 20 depending on the particular barrel length or bow tension.
I played a custom 3.5 Red Steel campaign, and the big advantage was that guns got touch attacks. Frontline fighters had one-shot rifles they'd fire before going into battle, a la the Revolutionary War, etc.
They could be enchanted like any weapon. One reason given for the dragons and dragon-blooded creatures living in the badlands and staying away from cities was the fact that an army of peasants could actually hit them and do real damage en masse.
That was that game, but my 21st level front line fighter still carried a rifle. He almost always hit. The cleric had a blunderbuss that took out plenty of mooks, too. Our ranger was an archer, but still carried pistols for the 5 foot shots (provoking no AoO, unlike a bow).
We could get enchanted guns or ammo, and could shoot whatever metal was needed. I'm not sure that silver would actually make a good bullet, but it worked for us.
Magic guns and magic ammo stacked, so it wasn't hard to really hurt the bad guys with one shot. Not cheap, but it was worth it sometimes.
I'm sure Paizo will come out with rules, but the aforemetioned article should do for starters.
Well as I understand it, what made the gun become the modern weapon of war was the fact that you could teach someone to use a gun fairly easily, then get 20-100 of them to stand in a line, and get them all to fire at nearly the same time. You could do this with bows but aiming was more difficult, thus more training time. Besides, guns made a frightening BANG noise!
The gun was the great democratizing weapon. It turned a group of average squad of foot-soldiers into wall of lead that not even cavalry could reliably compete with.
Now on an individual scale, a pistol is not going to be a deciding factor, most of the time. I think the reload times in PF are probably a concession to playability. Nobody want to own an expensive hunk of metal they would really only use once in combat, before switching to a melee weapon.
however, I think one way to show off what made guns dominate warfare is to up the crit multiplier. Its a piercing weapon after all. A x4 crit weapon, once or twice a game, will allow that guy who made a gun wielding renaissance Alkenstari fighter to smile at the rest of table and say, "THAT, is why we don't fight with swords anymore..."
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after careful checking of x-bows and firearms rules, I happen to believe that firearms are very balanced... shooting a pistol or revolver does not incur the -2 for shooting light x-bow with one hand
a two-weapon fighting feat build with two revolvers (-2/-2 each round; no need to reload until round 6) is awesome; damage is 1d6 sure, but light x-bow is 1d8 for -4/-4 with the same build, and hand x-bow's -2/-2 is just at 1d4 dmg...)
Spycraft (both iterations) has loads and loads of good guns. They had an arms and equipment guide that was almost nothing but guns.
The basic system was that the gun had a range, accuracy bonus or penalty, and damage written something along the lines of XdX +/- X.
So essentially they were packing their own strength bonus. However it was rarely very high, instead the deadlier guns typically had more or larger dice than their prosaic cousins.
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You want firearms? Elemental body into a fire elemental. :P
I'm sad no one thought of this before I did.
You mean THIS guy?
