HI, I am about to start running CoT fairly soon and one of my players is thinking of playing a gunslinger type character. Not sure whether to allow this and to what extent gunpowder weapons are available
any suggestions/ideas?
Well, in many ways Westcrown is a renaissance Italian city. On Historical Earth during that period, gunpowder did exist, and was used mostly for artillery. However the Crossbow was still considered the most effective weapon. What this means is that the state should be “Very Rare Guns” as defined on page 135 of Ultimate Combat. So no, the Gunslinger class should not be used.
On a more practical level, none of the NPCs use or have firearms. If you do choose to allow the class, you will need to decide where to add some guns to the appropriate NPCs.
I'm 4/6 of the way through, and I don't think it would really hurt anything. Won't do much of anything in book five, for example. I would do a few things, though...
1) make it so that guns are only allowed to the aristocracy. or
2) make guns available, but illegal
Either way, it will serve to tie the gun-using character more firmly into some of the NPC's, and that's for the good. Have ammo and weapons only available from House Oberigo, for example.
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Man I wish I saw this post earlier to help this guy...
Depending on the player you could be looking at a player that will easily destroy most encounters in this AP. I have a dual wielding Pistolero that is just one shotting BBEGs left and right...sure he misfires sometimes but with Clustered Shots and Rapid Shot and Double Barrel Pistols he is shooting around 8 bullets a round at touch AC and only applying DR ONCE. Considering most encounters happen in rooms no larger than 10 by 15 squares you will always have that player shooting at touch AC and no effective way to deal with it.
I had a gunslinger in Serpents Skull (when it was being beta'd) that fought TWF double barrel pistols and pretty much had the same experience, Housed everything (to the point everyone got bored and quit) which is why my wife wont allow gunslingers any more. The older APs just werent designed with baddies to challenge that type of build.
We ran Council of Thieves up until What Lies in Dust with one of the PCs being a Gunslinger. It didn't break the game, since he tended to miss and then got too busy reloading to do anything useful. The Chelish might think his gun is a really exotic wand or something, but we had a Kellid who mentioned it reminded him of stuff from his homeland of Numeria. Unless the other players have a problem with it, I see no reason (aside from backstory) to ban the Gunslinger in CoT.