Gunslinger Questions and Ranged Weapons

[Quirky Berserker]

Hello everyone, I finally was able to get my hands on a copy of Ultimate Combat. After a bit of reading on the Gunslinger, I feel a bit confused at some of the darn rules and specs of the guns. Anyone mind giving me some help?

First object is this;

"When making a full-attack action, you may fire a firearm as many times in a round as you have attacks, up to this limit, unless you can reload the weapon as a swift action or free action while making a full-attack action."
-Ultimate Combat, Page 135 "Capacity"

I get that this is saying that you need to reload each time you fire a weapon from your gun, but what I'm not understanding is what will happen after you get your secondary attack. If it takes you a full round just to reload after one shot (which my character would be since he's going to use a musket) is he just going to lose that second attack?

Secondly;

What is the misfire value? Would it just be if you roll a 1 (or 1-4 as Fire Lance has) +2 due to your normal gun being a "broken" condition?

Thirdly;

What would be considered a "range incriment" sorry for posting a "newb"/"noob" question for this. It's just that I'd like to know how far I can hit and I've never played a ranged character before so...yeah

Fourtly;

can someone explain to me just what's going on with the Dead Shot Deed that you get at lvl 7? It just sounds like you're doing what you'd normally do with a full attack. If there's any really difference, please tell me and kinda sort it out for me.

That's all for now, I'll probably have more questions the more I read into the thing.

[Abraham spalding]

1. Yes the extra is lost unless you have the means to reload faster than normal.

2. If you roll a 'natural' number that is in the misfire range you've misfired. Second time without fixing means the gun goes boom.

3. The range of the weapon. A dagger has a range increment of 10 feet. You can throw it out to 50 feet total but for each 10 feet beyond the first 10 feet you take a -2 on your attack roll. Same thing with firearms -- a pistol has a range of 20 feet. For the first 20 feet you take no penalties on attack rolls -- beyond that it's -2 on attack rolls per extra 20 feet you go out. Please note that you round up to 20 feet too (so if you shoot at 45 feet you are taking a -4 penalty on attack rols).

4. You are doing a full attack that counts as one shot, and unless everything misfires you get to ignore misfiring. All the damage stacks for penetrating DR (normally you would subtract DR for each individual attack), and you only spend a single shot of ammunition and powder. If you have heard of "rolling thunder" or "exploding dice" it's kind of like that for attack rolls.

[Heaven's Agent]

Quirky Berserker wrote:

"When making a full-attack action, you may fire a firearm as many times in a round as you have attacks, up to this limit, unless you can reload the weapon as a swift action or free action while making a full-attack action."

-Ultimate Combat, Page 135 "Capacity"

I get that this is saying that you need to reload each time you fire a weapon from your gun, but what I'm not understanding is what will happen after you get your secondary attack. If it takes you a full round just to reload after one shot (which my character would be since he's going to use a musket) is he just going to lose that second attack?

If it takes you a full round to reload your weapon, and it only has a capacity of one, you can't get more than one shot off every two rounds:

Round 1 Fire weapon (standard action; move action remaining)
Round 2 Reload weapon (full-round action)
Round 3 Fire weapon (standard action; move action remaining)

There should be ways to decrease your reload time, though, if I remember correctly. And if things haven't changed too much from the playtest document, of course.

[Starbuck_II]

Quirky Berserker wrote:

Hello everyone, I finally was able to get my hands on a copy of Ultimate Combat. After a bit of reading on the Gunslinger, I feel a bit confused at some of the darn rules and specs of the guns. Anyone mind giving me some help?

First object is this;

"When making a full-attack action, you may fire a firearm as many times in a round as you have attacks, up to this limit, unless you can reload the weapon as a swift action or free action while making a full-attack action."
-Ultimate Combat, Page 135 "Capacity"

I get that this is saying that you need to reload each time you fire a weapon from your gun, but what I'm not understanding is what will happen after you get your secondary attack. If it takes you a full round just to reload after one shot (which my character would be since he's going to use a musket) is he just going to lose that second attack?

Hey Rapid reload never touch normal ammo in battle (you can use it out of battle), use alchemy cartiridges (cost more but reduces loading by 1 step).

Total change: Musket are full rd action (meaning only 5 ft step possible) but you reduce that to a move action (Rapid reload moves it to standard, Cartiridge moves it to move action).

Quote:

Secondly;

What is the misfire value? Would it just be if you roll a 1 (or 1-4 as Fire Lance has) +2 due to your normal gun being a "broken" condition?

Muskets have a reload 1-2 so NAT 1 or NAT 2 (either a roll of 1 or 2 on a d20).

If you break gun (then it increases by 4 unless you have gun training then by 2).

Quote:

What would be considered a "range incriment" sorry for posting a "newb"/"noob" question for this. It's just that I'd like to know how far I can hit and I've never played a ranged character before so...yeah

It is listed on the page of the pricing pg 138 I think (with the table). It says 40 ft. So each 40 ft is the range increment.

If a enemy is 75 feet away that is 1 range increment past listed (so you take penalty to hit of -2, this is covered in Core rulebook, but as Gunslingers usually hit touch AC you should be fine).
You can only hit touch AC past 40 ft (your range increment), so 75 ft away requires using the Deed Deadeye (or moving closer).

Quote:

can someone explain to me just what's going on with the Dead Shot Deed that you get at lvl 7? It just sounds like you're doing what you'd normally do with a full attack. If there's any really difference, please tell me and kinda sort it out for me.

That's all for now, I'll probably have more questions the more I read into the thing.

Dead Shot Dead?

The idea is if any hit, you hit.
So if you are worrying about hitting once, this helps.
It helps vs DR as you treat additional hits as increasing damage.
Drawback precision damage is added once (so Pisterlo archetypes's deed that adds Precision isn't as good).
Also reduces Misfire as you must misfire on every attack.
Sadly it uses BAB not as many attacks as possible so Haste/Speed/Rapid shot Weapons don't count.

Anyway, with a musket you are limited to 1 shot/rd till you get Level 11 with Lightning Reload (with Rapid Reload or using cartiridge it lets you reload 1/rd as a free action) so you can full attack (at least twice). If you are going Musket, I suggest Musket Master Archetype as it makes Muskets better (the level 3 Deed lets you reload Muskets as a 1 handed weapon so with Rapid reload + Cartiridges it is a free action).

With Musket Master you can reload as many times as you need allowing you to use Dead Shot Deed.

[Roaming Shadow]

Likely going to repeat a bit, but I've done a fair amount of research so I'll throw in my 2 cents too.

1. Yes, you wouldn't get that second attack, because it takes a full round action to reload. The only way for a gun wielder to get iterative attacks from a full round attack is for you to be able to reload as a swift action (though that means you can only get that second attack, and not a third, as you can only take one swift a round) or a free action (at which point you can reload as often as you need to).

2. The misfire value is listed on the weapon table, as it seems you've looked up. A musket has a misfire of 1-2, which means on a natural 1 or a natural 2, the gun misfires, automatically misses, gains the broken condition, and the misfire increases by 4, so a musket would misfire again on a 1-6. On that second misfire, the gun explodes and is destroyed (though gunslingers eventually get a deed allowing them to spend 1 grit to avoid that fate). Once you have obtained gun training at level 5 and choose two-handed firearms, the misfire increase for a misfire is only 2 for a musket, so after the first misfire it'd be 1-4.

3. You can find the range increment on the weapon table as well. Up to the listed value (40 ft for a musket), you take no penalty to the attack (and go against touch AC, as per firearm rules). Next increment would then be up to 80ft, so if you shoot at a target between 41 and 80 feet away from you (or 9-16 squares), you take a -2 penalty to the attack, and so on in 40 ft increments (17-24 squares incurs a total -4 penalty, as you are taking a -2 penalty on each increment beyond the first), up to a maximum of 5 range increments (giving a musket a maximum range of 200ft at a -8 penalty to hit).

4. Because of the load times of most firearms, without feat and equipment expenditures, most firearms won't get to reload as a free action, therefore they'll never get their iterative attacks from a high base attack bonus, or at least not all of them. Dead Shot gives them a means to somewhat circumvent that. With Dead Shot, you roll all of your attacks as though you were making a full attack, but it is really only one attack, with the number of damage dice rolled equal to the number of "hits" you made. Because you make multiple attack rolls, the attack is more likely to hit than normal, and the odds of a misfire are greatly reduced, as every attack roll needs to be be in the misfire range to actually misfire, otherwise it's just a miss and no misfire. However, because it is actually only one attack, all modifiers are only added once (so two "hits" with a musket would be 2d12+modifiers, not 1d12+modifiers twice as two seperate attacks would have been). It's like being able to use the Vital Strike feats as a full round action, with the level of Vital Strike determined by how many iterative attacks hit. If you can reduce your loading time to free however, you might as well be making multiple attack, as it's the same number of attack rolls at the same bonus, but with a higher damage output per hit. If, however, you're trying to hit someone at longer range than normal (and therefore taking a penalty and not going against Touch AC), those multiple attack rolls might come in handy.

If you're going to specialize in the musket, I highly recommend the Musket Master archetype. At level 3, if you use paper cartridges (the most basic alchemical cartridge), you can reload a musket as a free action so long as you have 1 point of Grit in reserve, abliet your misfire becomes 1-3. Still, I think it's well worth it. You can always take a turn to use the Quick Clear deed if you get unlucky with a roll.

I'd also recommend getting a Distance Musket and a Far Seeing Scope as soon as you can, as well as highly recommending the Far Shot deed. That combination will allow you to shoot against Touch AC at up to 400ft at only a -5 penalty, or against Touch AC at up to 80ft, where all you're iterative attacks you eventually get (along with those provided by haste effects and such) should have little trouble hitting.

[Berhagen]

Of course, at level 3 the costs of paper cartridges can still be somewhat prohibitive, as the cost reduction for gunsmithing on cartridges is only 50% so you are still using 6 gp each shot…..so you have to think about when to use them. If you don’t have to move, use your normal gunpowder, if you need to move, reload and shoot, use paper cartridges.

[Pyrrhic Victory]

What about masterwork firearms. I would guess that a masterwork or magic firearm should have less of a chance of misfire, but I don't see any mention at all of masterwork firearms. Also do they provide +1 to hit? Is this info somewhere and I just missed it?

[Roaming Shadow]

Pyrrhic Victory wrote:

What about masterwork firearms. I would guess that a masterwork or magic firearm should have less of a chance of misfire, but I don't see any mention at all of masterwork firearms. Also do they provide +1 to hit? Is this info somewhere and I just missed it?

A masterwork firearm apparently behaves like any other masterwork weapon; you get a +1 to hit with the weapon. A firearm is a weapon, and masterwork weapons are detailed in the core book. Neither masterwork nor magic inherently alter the misfire chance. There is, however, a magical property for firearms called Reliable that reduces magically reduces the misfire chance of a firearm.

As for the bullets, the cost difference is negligible. A firearm bullet costs 1g and one dose of black powder is 10g, making for 11g per shot fired, as you need to load in both the bullet and the powder to fire. A paper cartridge costs 12g, only 1 more gold, so it's effectively the exact same cost to shoot, the difference being that the paper cartridge reduces reload by one actoin and increases misfire by 1. Now, if your crafting them yourself (which any gunslinger should), then a single round of bullet and powder cost 1 gold, 1 silver, where the paper cartridge costs 6. At first level I suppose that 5 cost difference can have an impact, but once you start earning gold, I don't think that small ammount adds up all that quickly.

[Pyrrhic Victory]

Thanks for the info. It is unfortunate that the firearm system is not a little more thorough. A misfire table would have been nice rather than a generic your gun is broken. After all most misfires were just that and not catastrophic.

[Pyrrhic Victory]

Or maybe even a simple system like with criticals. Roll in the misfire range = misfire. Roll in the range again and you get a catastrophic misfire and gun is broken. Thus it is similar to crit and confirm crit.

[Roaming Shadow]

Pyrrhic Victory wrote:

Or maybe even a simple system like with criticals. Roll in the misfire range = misfire. Roll in the range again and you get a catastrophic misfire and gun is broken. Thus it is similar to crit and confirm crit.

Well, part of the point is that early black powder firearms weren't all that reliable. A misfire means something went wrong with the weapon, and that's persistent, hence the broken condition. Firearms are meant to be rather powerful, risk/reward weapons. Going against touch AC at a certain range is extremely powerful, which is why guns and ammo are expensive, and you also risk losing the weapon if you push it.

By your system, a gun would rarely ever break, as it would require you to roll extremely low twice in a row. A pistol would need to roll two nat 1's in a row to break, and that happens so rarely as to be an almost pointless rule. Unless you'd add the +4 misfire modifier before the roll to confirm break.

Beside, having an entire table of consequences is a bit much for weapons. Firearms already have enough rules as it is without adding additional table to them.

[Cibulan]

Dead Shot would have been useful if they had made it an alternative to full-attacking, allowing for some mobility. The fact that it is also a full-round action makes me wonder when/why anyone would use it? (I'm assuming that everyone has rapid-reload and paper cartridges and any appropriate archetype)

I would house rule it to either be a standard action or to grant access to the vital strike feats for the cost of 1 grit per use. Now there is a reason to use it, mobility.

[Starbuck_II]

Cibulan wrote:

Dead Shot would have been useful if they had made it an alternative to full-attacking, allowing for some mobility. The fact that it is also a full-round action makes me wonder when/why anyone would use it? (I'm assuming that everyone has rapid-reload and paper cartridges and any appropriate archetype)

I would house rule it to either be a standard action or to grant access to the vital strike feats for the cost of 1 grit per use. Now there is a reason to use it, mobility.

I don't think you understand Dead Shot.

You don't need to reload between. You just shoot BAB attacks (no haste, nothing extra).

It is one big attack. It lowers misfire chance (as all must misfire for it to misfire). And it goes through DR easier as it stacks damage.

Con: No precision multipier (only once).

[Pyrrhic Victory]

Roaming Shadow wrote:

By your system, a gun would rarely ever break, as it would require you to roll extremely low twice in a row. A pistol would need to roll two nat 1's in a row to break, and that happens so rarely as to be an almost pointless rule. Unless you'd add the +4 misfire modifier before the roll to confirm break.

Beside, having an entire table of consequences is a bit much for weapons. Firearms already have enough rules as it is without adding additional table to them.

I see your point about the table, but I think we just have a semantics issue for the rest. You are right, a gun would rarely "break" under my system, meaning explode. But it would still misfire once or twice every adventure. Now that I think about it my idea really is about the same as the one put forth in UC but you don't have the constant cycle of break and fix. It is still two failures = explosion one failure = the shot does not happen.

I know for simplicity's sake they are using the same terminology for firearms as all of the other weapons, but perhaps it would be more understandable if there was a jammed condition or some such.