1] As Atarlost noted in ninja'ing me, the muzzle-loading rifles that were contemporaneous with muskets were notorious for being slower to load, because the rifling that made the rounds more accurate and longer-reaching also made it harder to ram the powder, wadding, and ball. Muskets were smooth-bore, which meant you could reload faster but hitting a particular target was more of an ask. That gives the mechanic enough verisimilitude that I'll give it a pass.
2] It's entirely possible that many campaigns will allow primitive firearms, but not advanced ones like the rifle. This way, the archetype remains useful in either case, and if advanced weapons are available, it allows a musket-wielding gunslinger a counterbalance to the advanced weapon (the rifle has better range, the musket greater rate-of-fire).
3] EDIT: you appear to be thinking of breech-loading rifles. There aren't rules for those in the PFRPG - except for revolvers, all PF firearms are muzzle-loaders.
Besides, the archetype's name is "musket master". :P
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I don't think you've read the text of advanced fire arms, let me help you...
The ammunition of an advanced firearm takes the form of metal (usually brass) cartridges that are loaded into a chamber rather than shoved down the muzzle.
Advanced Firearms: Advanced firearms are chamber-loaded. It is a move action to load a one-handed or two-handed advanced firearm to its full capacity
These are literally the old west rifles that load faster than a musket.
The problem is that the feat rapid reload doesn't interact with them, and alchemical cartridges do not either (since they already are that by the rules)
Muskets ARE muzzle loaded....
rifles are loaded into the chamber with an actual self contained bullet...
It's wikipedia, but hey...
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uh.... PRD regarding the issue at hand and not what happened in history at one point...
Advanced fire arms also feature revolvers... which were roughly a hundred years or more after the long rifle saw it's use... and also the long rifle did not use metal cartridges... you're talking about something completely different then what's being discussed.
I don't think you've read the text of advanced fire arms, let me help you...
Guilty as charged: I'm more partial to SGG's Anachronistic firearms than the PF rules. For one thing, they don't use the 'touch AC within X range increments' rule which so many people seem to object to.
The ammunition of an advanced firearm takes the form of metal (usually brass) cartridges that are loaded into a chamber rather than shoved down the muzzle.Advanced Firearms: Advanced firearms are chamber-loaded. It is a move action to load a one-handed or two-handed advanced firearm to its full capacityThese are literally the old west rifles that load faster than a musket.
Fair enough.
(Huh: that means that the 'advanced' rifles with metal cartridges are trapdoor-actions like a Sharps or (yuck!) Springfield. Welcome to Custer's Last Stand.... X.X)
The problem is that the feat rapid reload doesn't interact with them, and alchemical cartridges do not either (since they already are that by the rules)
Looks like you're the one who missed something in the rules this time! ;)
The Rapid Reload feat reduces the time required to load one-handed and two-handed firearms, but this feat does not reduce the time it takes to load siege firearms.
That appears to be a tweak to bring Rapid Reload back to the point the 3.5 Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting brought it to.
All of which means that I'll concede my first and third points, but point 2 still stands: I'd hazard it's meant as a balancing measure, so people will still be willing to use muskets if rifles are available.
How is exactly is the rifle being loaded slower than musket in this scenario?
Early two-handed firearms = Full round action. Rapid reload shortens this to a standard action. Fast Musket deed makes this a move.
Advanced two-handed firearms = Move action. Rapid reload shortens this to a free.
Admittedly, fast musket is redundant for the rifle, as advanced firearms are a move action regardless of one- or two-handed, but it doesn't get much faster than a free action.
Also, if this is based on the bonus Rapid Reload only applying to muskets, I'm gonna say that's rather silly as the rifle is specifically mentioned as an improved musket in its description. That's like saying the revolver isn't a pistol even though it's called one as well. I guess it could be interpreted as muskets not applying to rifles, but that seems unlikely.
Edit: Missed the clarification that Rapid Reload is indeed the problem here. What makes you think it doesn't work on rifles? Was this specified somewhere?
Edit 2: Huh. Actually, I see where it specifies that Rapid reload does only apply to one of them. That's... huh.
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Because a musket master using alchemical cartridges and using rapid reload is doing it as a free action on a musket, where a musket master (or anyone for that matter) cannot decrease the load time to anything less than move.
Rapid reload does not reduce it by a step, like the alchemical cartridge does, it has set reductions...
Rapid Reload (Combat)
Choose a type of crossbow (hand, light, heavy) or a single type of one-handed or two-handed firearm that you are proficient with. You can reload such a weapon quickly.
Prerequisites: 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.
If you take rapid reload for revolver or rifle, you're technically getting zero benefit from it.
I find this just freaking absurd that a musket master can't reload a rifle faster than a musket. Just ridiculous.
A musket-master is a MUSKET master.
Of course as noted above, it also depends on the weapon. A muzzle-loaded rifle was hell to reload; unlike the musket the bullet had to exactly match the diameter of the barrel to catch the rifling (the Springfield rifle was the exception using the mini-ball bullet that would expand on firing - that and the use of the percussion cap was why it was such a leap forward in technology, and why the Union soldiers consistently out-shot the theoretically more skilled Confederate soldiers armed with muskets). This meant that the bullet had to be rammed home with great difficulty. Early revolvers were also NOT cartridge weapons, you had to load each chamber individually with powder, ball, and percussion cap.
Cartridge guns with a breach were indeed a huge leap forward on this technology. You open the breach, insert a cartridge, close the breach, aim and fire. This is a slow process, so restricting the rate of fire for it is perfectly reasonable.
In actual fact what is UNreasonable is not that the musket master cannot fire faster than they do with a rifle, it's that they fire as fast as they do with the musket.
The best recorded rates of fire with a musket are the British redcoats that were trained rigorously to shoot four bullets a minute. This is what broke the back of the French columns at Waterloo and forced the best soldiers in the world (at that point) to break and run. But in D&D terms, that is one shot every 2.5 rounds. In your average combat, you might just get two shots off, so the time of loading is reduced for the musket to make it playable.
In other words, your musket master has been made playable. What more do you want? Just put it down to unfamiliarity with a cartridge gun.
Edit: Yes, you get zero benefit from Rapid Reload with a cartridge gun. It's not much cop with a longbow either. That's the way it works.
Rapid reload does not reduce it by a step, like the alchemical cartridge does, it has set reductions...
If you take rapid reload for revolver or rifle, you're technically getting zero benefit from it.
Nearly everything that I've seen written about firearms seems to be assuming that advanced firearms are not in play. All of those reductions hold true on normal guns as well as the equivalent action reductions on crossbows.
Full round actions (early two-handed firearms) go down to standard.
Standard actions (early one-handed firearms and heavy crossbows) go down to move.
Move actions (hand and light crossbows) go down to free.
Pretty straightforward as a drop in action type. Advanced firearms fall into the move action category on that. I can't imagine the intent was 'if you take rapid reload on a rifle, the move action turns into a standard.'
That said... it looks like this really should be errata'd or something because RAW does technically say that's the case...
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16, Contributor
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Since fewer people use advanced firearms, early firearms have more support in the game in the form of rules, etc. Musket Master is an archetype designed around muskets... There is no "rifleman" archetype as yet so if your GM is a stickler for the rules you are kind of SOL.
It doesn't help that Pathfinder RPG is largely designed to compliment Paizo's Campaign Setting which only has early firearms available.
Again we're not talking about real world physics...
Game wise it's just silly that rapid reload does nothing to a 2hand fire arm... We can drop actually everything else mentioned and focus only on that if it helps.
Well, Rapid Reload only works on certain weapons is your answer. As I said, may as well ask why it doesn't work bows as why it doesn't work on cartridge guns. It just doesn't, they are good enough already, live with it.
...may as well ask why it doesn't work bows...
Seeing as you don't reload a bow, but simply grab the ammo as a free action when attacking, I'm not sure this is a logical comparison.
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I believe that Rapid Reload simply doesn't reflect the advanced firearms. As Darkwolf117 said earlier, most of the books simply assume advanced firearms are all but non-existent. I believe that they were operating under this assumption when they did the feat, and finalized the reload speed of the advanced 2-weapon firearm farther down the line.
/I/ assume RR can be applied to advanced firearms, and would let my players take it to reduce the time. So long as they take it with that specific weapon, whatever.
Also: Note that the Musket Master is not the 2-Handed Firearm Master, he's the MUSKET Master. Again, archetype primarily built around and for a world with only emerging guns, where a gun of any kind is a significant find outside Alkenstar. It's like getting angry that the Pisolero sucks with a shotgun- they're very different weapons. Even the most skilled musket-user from the American Revolution, when suddenly handed a Mosin that fell out of a timewarp from WWI, will look at you like "dafuq?"
Or they decided anybody could pop a cartridge in at the same speed while it would take a Rapid Reload to speed up the black powder loading process...
Not saying this was the intent, but it could explain the apparent oddity.
Maybe a houseruled version of the Crossbow Mastery feat, with similar prerequisites, for either all firearms or early or modern firearms or one- or two-handed firearms might help?
But I'd probably allow rapid reload to work properly for modern firearms... if you took the feat again for rifle vs musket or revolver vs pistol, as you will. The reloading technique is completely different.
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despite the name "musket master" the point was to highlight that rapid reload despite being able to be taken for say a rifle, doesn't do anything for the rifles reload speed when taken for the rifle.
Musket master actually applies completely to a rifle except for the free rapdi reload, which only applies to muskets, but you can simply pick another one up for rifles. All the musket master abilities key in on 2hand fire arm.
...may as well ask why it doesn't work bows...Seeing as you don't reload a bow, but simply grab the ammo as a free action when attacking, I'm not sure this is a logical comparison.
Not even a free action. Drawing arrows is part of the attack action and not an action itself.
I don't think you've read the text of advanced fire arms, let me help you...Guilty as charged: I'm more partial to SGG's Anachronistic firearms than the PF rules. For one thing, they don't use the 'touch AC within X range increments' rule which so many people seem to object to.
This is what I use also. Unfortunately they dont work very well with the gunslinger class, but heck, anything is better then a weapon that turn a core piece of the rules on its head.
It seems as though the Paizo team has a shaky relationship with firearms. They seem to not like the concepts of the advanced guns while holding a quite tenuous eye on even their early weapons. For example, one of their new classes for the advanced class guide is a combination of Fighter and Gunslinger and in revealing this, they felt that they had to reassure us that the class DOESN'T NECESSARILY USE GUNS. It just seems like people that like more modern settings are a tad SOL when it comes to firearms in our RPGs.
I mean, out of all the specific magic weapons, only three are firearms and none are advanced as far as I know.
Also, I've seen a lot of builds say that Deadly Aim is necessary for gunslinger builds, but the last sentence of that feat says you can't apply it to touch attacks, making higher accuracy useless for advanced firearms. I think that's made specifically against gunslingers, which is a real shame.
isn't there a faq or something that specifically excludes firearms from the no-touch-attack restriction for deadly aim?
Not even an FAQ, it's written into the rules already in the book:
Early Firearms: When firing an early firearm, the attack resolves against the target's touch AC when the target is within the first range increment of the weapon, but this type of attack is not considered a touch attack for the purposes of feats and abilities such as Deadly Aim. At higher range increments, the attack resolves normally, including taking the normal cumulative –2 penalty for each full range increment. Unlike other projectile weapons, early firearms have a maximum range of five range increments.
Advanced Firearms: Advanced firearms resolve their attacks against touch AC when the target is within the first five range increments, but this type of attack is not considered a touch attack for the purposes of feats such as Deadly Aim. At higher range increments, the attack resolves normally, including taking the normal cumulative –2 penalty for each full-range increment. Advanced firearms have a maximum range of 10 range increments.
Well. There's egg on my face.