One of my players, a gunslinger, wants to outfit his pirate ship with a siege engine version of a pepperbox.
What might that look like? I'm looking for advice on how to generate full stats for such a unique weapon.
I'd think a siege engine sized pepper box would look like a civil war era crank operated gatling gun. If you ever seen one or a picture, it is mounted on a gun carriage similar to a gun carriage for a small 3 to 6 lb size shot cannon.
The civil war gatling gun was 10 barrels, I believe. Treat it a 'pepperbox' that can fire 10 musket barrels in rapid succession. Do note, the Civil War era gatling gun used cartridge technology, so I don't know if a 'wad and ball' flintlock style gatling gun would be even possible. The civil war era one's actually had a type of magazine, gravity fed, that allowed sustained fire. Your call if after 10 shots if each barrel needs to be reloaded or if sustained fire is possible.
Actually what would be interesting is if reloading actually required removing the barrel array and putting on a new one, while the removed barrel array was reloaded.
That would mean most likely a 3-4 man crew for the weapon. The crew size for the civil war pieces were 4 men.
Or for a completely different take on a 'pepperbox' style siege gun, google 'organ gun' or 'volley gun'. There are some real world and fantasy takes on the concept of a organ pipe like cannon, which is a series of side by side cannon barrels in row or in a circular array.
Historically there probably was no such thing. A pepper box is basically a scattergun that shoots many small projectiles instead of one larger slug. A siege gun's purpose is usually to reduce a fortification by pummeling it with large or explosive shot. These two are sort of mutually exclusive. if you built a huge cannon that fired multiple balls it would work better firing one single huge slug and thus you have a cannon again and not a pepper box.
Of course there is no reason why you couldn't do it, historically lots of armies and navies used grapeshot, it was just most effective as anti personnel not anti structure.
Looking at the question again I'm guessing your player doesn't actually want a pepper box siege gun but wants to use a siege gun AS a pepper box. FUN! I would just assume that he is loading the cannon with scrap and multiply the area of the cone and damage as you feel is appropriate. Perhaps haft damage and a cone 5times as large or something like that.
A siege pepperbox would probably be an excellent defensive weapon in underground warfare.
Set some up as tunnel defenses. Spray a tunnel with lead.
The civil war gatling gun was 10 barrels, I believe. Treat it a 'pepperbox' that can fire 10 musket barrels in rapid succession. Do note, the Civil War era gatling gun used cartridge technology, so I don't know if a 'wad and ball' flintlock style gatling gun would be even possible. The civil war era one's actually had a type of magazine, gravity fed, that allowed sustained fire. Your call if after 10 shots if each barrel needs to be reloaded or if sustained fire is possible.
Civil war didn't have gatling guns. The maxim wasn't invented until the late 1880s. There existed an experimental machine gun that Mythbusters built, but it was more like a steampowered sling that wasn't practical.
A pepper box is basically a scattergun that shoots many small projectiles instead of one larger slug.
You're thinking of a volley gun. A pepperbox is essentially a revolver that you have to rotate the cylinder manually.
I think I have an idea of what your player might want Ravingdork. I'm assuming that you want this to be both fun for the player, but also not completely broken? I would base the design on a Volley Gun, essentially a number of barrels lined up next to each other on a common frame. Now, normally, these would be small arms barrels (Muskets in pathfinder), and they would all fire nearly simultaneously, but I'm thinking your player wants to target Ships or structures and be able to make multiple attacks?
Let's say we go with 6 barrels (like a pepper box). These are going to be shooting small cannon balls instead of musket balls. Each barrel uses a single 2 lb ball, and 5 doses of black powder. Instead of having all 6 barrels fire, each barrel has its own hammer, so it's effectively a 6 shot cannonade.
I would stay something like this (sorry for poor formating, I'm at work, Ironically at a gun factory)
Range: 90 ft. Damage: 3d6, critical x4, size large seige engine. Crew 2, reload 3 rounds per barrel. Your giving up range and damage to a traditional single shot cannon, but you get 6 shots before reloading.
Edit: 4d6 damage is probably better. Another option would be 2d12 and treat each barrel as a double hackbut.
This thing would actually be ideal for dealing with sea monsters lol.
I'll try to go into more detail when I get home.
Double Hackbutt is actually 2d12, That's why I edited my suggestion to 4d6. Siege Engine/Firearm/Missile weapon damage just doesn't scale well.
I mentioned Cannonade, but what I meant was a collection of Swivel guns (I get the two confused sometimes).
Swivel guns are small cannons that are usually mounted on a Pole or Rail. Each Swivel gun would weigh between 50-150 lbs (heavy, but move-able by one or two guys). They fire a "small" cannon ball (Between 1 and 3 pounds), or Grapeshot (Usually a bunch of musket balls for a Swivel Gun) at fairly short range.
I Imagine a battery of 6 of these, mounted to a single frame, could be considered a Large or Huge Siege Engine. It wouldn't have the range or single shot damage of a Cannon, but it would provide the same effect as a pepper box pistol (Multiple shots before reloading).
For a Smaller Swivel Gun, I would just Stat it out as a Double Hackbutt (Maybe increase the range too 60 feet). For a Larger Swivel gun, Like a 3 Pounder, I would go with 4d6 Damage, 90 foot range.
Notice the 16th century Ottoman Volley gun with 9 Barrels? Judging by the size of the trunnion (the little metal pegs sticking out the sides), I would guess each of those barrels is about 1 1/4 inch (very rough guess based off the limited scale in the picture, and comparing it to other artillery pieces I have seen). I don't see any reason why a cannon like that couldn't be made with separate ignition for each barrel.
That's pretty much what I was thinking, Dexion. Volley guns were the closest they could get to rapid-firing gunpowder pieces at the time, and there's a huge variety of them. Some of them do also look like the pepperbox proto-revolver pistols of the 19th century.
There have been a whole bunch of non-standardized designs of multi-barrelled firearms throught history. There are the Volley guns, Organ guns, double barrelled cannon, and strange outliers like the Puckle gun (one barrel, but with multiple pre-loaded chambers like a massive revolver) or the similar Confederate Revolver Cannon. No idea how you'd stat them but some of them look cool in a crazy, violent, steampunk kind of way.
I think it could go two ways - either you'd keep the pepperbox more or less the same size and add more barrels and a better reload mechanism (akin to the Gatling Cannon already mentioned), or you'd enlarge the entire pepperbox and turn it into a multi-barreled revolving cannon of sorts.
The latter example is most likely not even remotely realistic, but then again we are playing a fantasy RPG.
I just might.
I would think it looks something like this just with six barrels rather than 9