Giving up on Gunslinger

[Midnightoker]

Kaiyanwang wrote:

Midnightoker wrote:

Kaiyanwang wrote:

Kirth Gersen wrote:

That's what I was hoping "Ultimate Combat" would be. Instead, it's looking to be a book full of OA rejects, and spells, and a class that revolves around a single piece of overpriced equipment.

This is quite unfair. You said this from a Playtest, not from a preview. Is different.

to be fair that is all they are presenting to playtest.

If they want us to be fair they should let us playtest new additions that could potentially change the whole game (like certain spells they describe) or certain rules they intend to add (or remove).

Putting out a playtest that doesn't give the right impression of what the book will contain is like putting out a free sample of a different flavor than what we would get in the box.

Are you suggesting a 300 pages PDF of playtest?

Ofcourse not but saying "whoa whoar whoa! you can't judge us for what we gave you there is more in the big book we will release that you won't get to see until you buy it" sounds pretty stupid to me.

You dont want us to think that release varied information.

Hell it would be easy to post 3 more threads one containing spells. one new skill rules. and one new something else.

But to say we can't judge based on what they gave us is just silly.

[Kirth Gersen]

Kaiyanwang wrote:

Are you suggesting a 300 pages PDF of playtest?

Not at all. But the Cavalier already got plenty of playtesting -- we know how it works, for example. And the samurai is not in any meaningful way functionally different from the cavalier. Realistically, it doesn't need much playtesting. Its inclusion in the "playtest" material therefore serves the purpose of an advertisement ("We haz ninjaz!"), not of a new mechanic requiring playtesting.

[Freesword]

James Jacobs wrote:

Looks like a good point for me to step in and address the role of guns in Golarion.

Which you have done repeatedly. I'm sure you are getting tired of saying this over and over again. Some of us are actually paying attention.

James Jacobs wrote:

In the upcoming "Inner Sea World Guide," the actual rules for firearms and gunpowder takes up about a page. This includes damage, pricing, misfires, penetration, and all of that stuff, with the gun choices themselves being limited to four choices—pistol, pepperbox (a version of a pistol with six barrels that you can rotate to fire faster, which provides a solution for iterative attacks), musket, and cannon (a siege weapon that gunslingers won't really be using anyway).

The reasons we don't want to change the fundamental way guns work is mostly because if we make major changes, then suddenly the rules for guns in this new book are pre-outdated, which is unfortunate. But if it comes to that, it comes to that, and we'll just have a little bit more errata for the book than we wanted.

Yes, and the gunslinger probably wasn't even on the horizon yet when this was written. Consequences of a previous design decision are something we all have to deal with. Please understand that without this lock-in changing the firearms rules would have been the simplest answer to many complaints which is why it is the most often proposed.

James Jacobs wrote:

Should we have started the playtest proceedure for guns earlier? Perhaps. And in an way, we DID. There were rules for firearms in the first Campaign Setting hardcover, after all. Those rules have been available for folks to use and give us feedback about for two and a half years. And the current incarnation of guns is, in fact, the result of that feedback, so it's certainly not like the gun rules in the playtest document came out of nowhere.

I recently had an opportunity to compare the playtest firearms rules to those in the 3.x Campaign Setting book. The playtest is generally much improved.

• Cost of weapon has gone down. (a couple hundred gp)
  
• Damage dice has gone up.
  
• Crits have gone up.
  
• Misfire rules are much simpler.
  

On the down side

• Range increment has gone down.
  
• Cost per shot has gone up. (from 10 per gp. to 1gp each for bullets, powder was unpriced?)
  
• Misfire rules are standard instead of optional.
  

*Exploding dice was an optional rule in the Campaign Setting.

I appreciate getting background and context posts from the staff. It helps me give better feedback.

Here's a bit of feedback on the per shot pricing changes. It is now ruinously expensive at low levels but hardly noticeable at high levels when PCs are buying and selling magic items for tens of thousands of gp. This actively hurts the gunslinger as a base class at low levels.

[Midnightoker]

Kirth Gersen wrote:

Kaiyanwang wrote:

Are you suggesting a 300 pages PDF of playtest?

Not at all. But the Cavalier already got plenty of playtesting -- we know how it works, for example. And the samurai is not in any meaningful way functionally different from the cavalier. Realistically, it doesn't need much playtesting. Its inclusion in the "playtest" material therefore serves the purpose of an advertisement ("We haz ninjaz!"), not of a new mechanic requiring playtesting.

+1

yep. exactly what this feels like.

[Erik Mona]

Ok, folks, let me sum up my topline conclusions regarding this thread, which I am about to lock. I think everyone has had their say, and it is time to move on to other topics.

1) Many folks have posted many problems with the gunslinger, in particularly how it ties into the "economics" of the associated weapons and ammunition. In-house revisions are already happening to address these issues, and the message has been received loud and clear.

2) Ultimate Combat will not be a book of spells and "Oriental Adventures rejects," but will in fact contain more than 200 pages of other material aimed primarily at martial classes.

3) The whole reason we do online playtests is to float new ideas, test them out, and make changes well before they go to print. Your feedback in this regard has been invaluable, and often significantly improves our designs before they hit the printer.

4) I personally share many of the martial/caster issues raised in the last several dozen posts of this thread, and will exert my considerable power as publisher to do the best that we can regarding this problem within the framework of the current rules system.

If you wish to discuss additional playtest feedback regarding the gunslinger, please join one of the other threads or start a new one addressing your specific concerns.

If you wish to post thoughts about what you do or don't want in Ultimate Combat in general, please post your thoughts in one of the non-playtest forums, such as the product page thread or something in Pathfinder RPG general discussion.

As usual, follow the advice of Bill & Ted: Be excellent to each other.

And always remember to follow my personal rule for the Paizo.com message boards: Don't be a dick.

Thanks,

Erik