Gunslinger: reassurances

[Strife2002]

I have an upcoming player who's about to make a multiclass gunslinger/samurai in my game soon and it incited me into looking over the gunslinger, but more importantly, the firearm rules in general (something I still hadn't gotten around to doing).

To anybody out there who has either played one or seen one played (or just has a better grasp on the firearm rules than I do), are gunslingers any good? I love the idea of them, but I was a little concerned when I saw a few things.

As I understand it, even if he selects a one-handed firearm, the quickest of firearms to reload, it still takes a standard action to do so. This means he gets to fire every two rounds. No biggie, he can just take the Rapid Reload feat or craft or buy alchemical cartridges (or both once he gets more attacks in a round) in order to speed up that process. The problem (to me) though is that alchemical cartridges seem like a pretty expensive ammunition to want to blow away every round, and worse, Rapid Reload can only be applied to one, specific type of weapon, meaning that getting Rapid Reload (pistol) is great for your initial battered firearm, but what about at later levels when suddenly you come across advanced firearms like a revolver and that feat becomes obsolete? Waiting till level 11 for lightning reload seem like a really long time. I wish they had given the gunslinger a catch-all Rapid Reload feat for free. The term gunslinger just conjures images of that sort of talent (thanks Steven King) and it seems like a necessary feat all gunslingers need to take anyway. If that's too OP, then I wish they had said Rapid Reload is selected for firearm categories (one-handed and two-handed) instead of specific weapons.

I REALLY want to like the gunslinger, and I do, but I worry about my player and me just not understanding how it works. Any feedback on this from those with more experience would be helpful. Thank you!

[caliga]

Rapid Reload applies to weapon types, not specific weapons like weapon focus does.

Prerequisite: Weapon Proficiency (crossbow type chosen) or Exotic Weapon Proficiency (firearm).

Benefit: The time required for you to reload your chosen type of weapon is reduced to a free action (for a hand or light crossbow), a move action (for heavy crossbow or one-handed firearm), or a standard action (two-handed firearm). Reloading a crossbow or firearm still provokes attacks of opportunity. If you have selected this feat for a hand crossbow or light crossbow, you may fire that weapon as many times in a full-attack action as you could attack if you were using a bow.

Normal: A character without this feat needs a move action to reload a hand or light crossbow, a standard action to reload a one-handed firearm, or a full-round action to load a heavy crossbow or a two-handed firearm.

Special: You can gain Rapid Reload multiple times. Each time you take the feat, it applies to a new type of crossbow or a new type of firearm.

[TarkXT]

CAliga has the right of it. That plus alchemical charges are how gunslingers can load as a free action. But this costs a feat and a load of money to cover a major weakness.

[Strife2002]

Actually I don't think that's true.

Pg. 135, Firearm Rules, Firearm Proficiency, second paragraph wrote:

Even though the Exotic Weapon Proficiency (firearms)feat grants you proficiency with all firearms, anytime you take a feat that modifies a single type of weapon(such as Weapon Focus or Rapid Reload), you must still pick one specific type of firearm (such as musket, axe musket, blunderbuss, pistol, or double pistol) for that feat to affect.

It seems the use of the word "type" in the Rapid Reload description means a specific firearm still, not the category of the firearm.

[Michael Sayre]

Yeah, thematically, the Gunslinger is pretty sweet, but mechanically he does have some deficiencies, like the reloading issue you brought up Strife. We were just talking recently about how a 19 fighter/ 1 gunslinger could run circles around a 20 gunslinger when it comes to accuracy, damage, and number of attacks per combat. The text you quoted for Rapid Reload is correct, unfortunately, meaning that yes, it only applies to the one type of weapon. This destroys weapon scaling for the Gunslinger, since he's locked into whatever he starts taking feats for right off the bat, and doesn't even have weapon groups like a fighter.
I think they tried so hard to prevent the gunslinger from being over-powered that they went too far in the other direction. We've corrected this in our home games by allowing Rapid Reload to apply to either one-handed two-handed firearms as groups, and it works well. An archer will reliably out-damage your Gunslinger, but the GS does get some fun utility powers that can be useful (and just flat-out cool).
Just know that your Gunslinger is essentially a non-buffing, non-spellcasting bard, with a super cool weapon selection. You shouldn't be taking this class in the hopes of any kind of edge for your character, as there really isn't much advantage to being a Gunslinger outside of thematically.

[Strife2002]

Thanks Ssalarn. Yeah, thankfully I've been blessed with a player that truly does care about theme, rather than "omg, howz do I break/win tha gamezor". It's why he's cross-classing with samurai, to be thematic to his concept.

[Michael Sayre]

And that rocks. A samurai with a katana and pistol using the Sword and Pistol feat chain would be pretty sweet thematically :)
We've got a gunslinger right now who's a grizzled dwarven marksman and he just picked up a Pepperbox Rifle. He's so used to just burning his iterative attacks to use Deadshot that he's getting used to finally having a weapon that can fire more than one shot a round effectively and affordably, lol. Something like 40% of his adventure treasure cut was going into materials for alchemical cartridges before this.