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The general reason is that it does not fit most campaign worlds. Many people do not like guns in their fantasy worlds at all so they ban the class, similar to how ninjas, samurai, and (though less often) monks are banned. I admit that I disallowed gunslingers from one campaign I run because it is a setting that guns have not been invented yet, another game I ran had guns because it ft the setting.
On the other hand some people dislike it because firearm rules are "different" they target touch AC in the first range increment with a full base attack bonus class, they have a chance to blow up in your hands (not too big of a problem for gunslingers as a class though)
Mostly it comes down to not liking the idea of a gun in medieval times as it breaks some "realism" to certain people.
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As Falcar says, it's largely setting-dependent.
There also used to be some highly-questionable silliness involving gun juggling and weapon cords that was causing balance issues. But that was errata'ed away: the consensus is that now it's a very balanced class.
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Yar, what Falcar said, basically.
Some people also think they are overpowered (because of the Touch AC bit). I've never played with a Slinger but looking through some DPR threads seems to suggest this it isn't true (unless double barreled pistols are involved).
Another thing is that , as RumpinRufus said is that some of the things people do with Guns to get full-attacks breaks their suspension of disbelief.
If it isn't because of The above then it's because "Guns! In my medieval fantasy setting? NOOOoO!"
(Note I tend no offense towards anyone who does not like guns in their games, I'm just being snarky. Please play your game however it is fun for you ^_^.)
Some of this is rendered moot with the archetype in the Advanced Class Guide that swaps the firearms for crossbows. This allows for a gunslinger that fits into more medieval fantasy settings. Of course, if they either dislike the class for it's mechanics or just plain dislike the class, this is also rendered moot.
It isn't necessarily that they're over-powered (at least not compared, say to a zen archer); it's just that attacking touch AC with a weapon really throws things out of whack. For example, a CR 19 Ancient Red Dragon has a touch AC of 5 -- it is essentially defenseless against firearms. Other monsters, however, aren't terribly vulnerable to touch attacks. It just makes planning appropriate but challenging encounters more difficult imo.
As for personal taste, I don't particularly care for gunslingers. I prefer firearms in my fantasy as the "fire and drop, then close for melee." Obviously that's a matter of taste.
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As Falcar says, it's largely setting-dependent.
There also used to be some highly-questionable silliness involving gun juggling and weapon cords that was causing balance issues. But that was errata'ed away: the consensus is that now it's a very balanced class.
How unbalanced was it though? I'm legitimately asking, I knew people had issues with slingers taking a bunch of free actions, but was it actually too powerful?
How unbalanced was it though? I'm legitimately asking, I knew people had issues with slingers taking a bunch of free actions, but was it actually too powerful?As Falcar says, it's largely setting-dependent.
There also used to be some highly-questionable silliness involving gun juggling and weapon cords that was causing balance issues. But that was errata'ed away: the consensus is that now it's a very balanced class.
The issue was using (I/G)TWF + Rapid Shot you can get a crazy number of attacks. Since you're aiming vs touch on a super-SAD full BAB class, you laugh off the to-hit penalties. Add in Deadly Aim and Gun Training, and you're doing a ridiculous amount of damage. Combine that with easily overcoming DR due to special ammunition and/or clustered shots, and an optimized gunslinger was really overpowering.
It was made worse by the mind-boggling logistics of the whole thing - you need a free hand to reload, so you would drop a gun (attached to a weapon cord,) make all your attacks with the first gun, then drop that gun (also attached to a weapon cord,) and make all your attacks with the second. Then next round start with the second gun and do the whole thing again.
This is why Weapon Cords were errata'ed from a swift action to a move action. Now, you can no longer make an unreasonable number of attacks and hit an unreasonable DPR.
I feel that guns themselves have too many exceptiony rules.
Touch AC, but only in first range increment.
Critical failure rules in a game without critical failures.
Cartridges.
And then the feats and classes themselves.
All of this combines to lead to lots of people playing guns wrong and thus unbalanced.
Just don't use double barrel guns. If you must, don't use them as a potential damage doubler the way that they're often read.
I allow alot. I like the Gunslinger, I'm fine with the Summoner, I would allow a Techslinger, and I would even allow the Mythic Archmage loophole, but I wouldn't allow double barrel guns as written.
I can't agree that the Weapon Cord nerf fixed all perceived balance issues with guns or especially double barreled guns to a consensus level. Requiring a standard action to activate the "double shot" feature would be a nice nerf to add. Setting game balance concerns aside for a moment I suspect that many folks have thematic issues with the "BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! KER-BLAM!" style of firearm use in Pathdfinder anyhow. If a gun let you pool your attack potential into one devastating shot I think that would be more thematically in line with what many of us expect from early firearms. "Fire and forget" probably wouldn't have made an effective basis for an entire class though, and Paizo's solution of allowing fast reloads doesn't sit well with some folks.
Even the Paizo material on firearms includes some disclaimers like:
"Firearms and gunslingers are not for every campaign, and even if you are excited about introducing firearms into your campaign, you should still make a decision about how commonplace they are. The following are broad categories of firearm rarity and the rules that govern them. Pathfinder’s campaign setting uses the rules for emerging guns, which is also the default category of gun rarity."
-and-
"If you are interested in letting such weapons in your game, do so with the following warning: Advanced guns can substantially change the assumptions of your game world, in the same way that they changed the face of warfare in the real world. If you like your fantasy to be of the more traditional variety, stand clear. Or, better yet, run for cover."
The latter warning is specifically about advanced firearms, but I feel it ends up applying to early firearms too due to their being too many ways to make them reliable and reload them quickly. I wish that weren't the case a pirate with fire and forget pistols or a crazy gnome/goblin with a big blunderbuss would seem like fun to me for many campaigns. Unfortunately getting guns to work the way I want would require house rules, and house rules which limit a PC's effectiveness are often so despised that the DM might have an easier time just banning entire classes or books. I suspect this is one reason why many DMs choose to run "Core Only" or "Core+APG" games.
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I find gunslingers to actually be rather underpowered. Most of their class features are just there to mitigate how awful guns are as weapons. Imagine if 1/2 of what a barbarian got was there just to keep his axe from hitting him in the face.
The class itself is neat, but they went a bit overboard in pre-nerfing the signature equipment. Plus the problem that the gunslinger doesn't actually do anything except sling guns. They're profocient with martial weapons so in theory you can get into the scrum... except the class has absolutely no support for that whatsoever (and the archetypes that CAN do it tend to make your guns more worthless than usual)
In the first handful of levels, yes, you're hitting touch AC... in the first range increment. meanwhile the wizard is back there hitting touch AC from as far away as he wants to. And the ranger and barbarian aren't too worried about their attacks, and they get twice as many as you.
I'm sure there are no shortages of players who picked up the gunslinger thinking they were going to rock... only to find that most of their advancement of the character is geared towards simply keeping par with the int 7 guy with an axe.
1. Not every setting has technology that advanced.
2. I love renaissance firearms, but the Pathfinder firearm rules are just bad.
And the ranger and barbarian aren't too worried about their attacks, and they get twice as many as you.
This isn't really true, at all. Unless you don't decide to do one of the multiple ways of reloading as a free action, the gunslinger using Rapid Shot will get just as many attacks as a standard TWF build does. And since barbarians don't use TWF, the gunslinger will get more attacks than him.
I agree with the general sentiment of the RumpinRufus post but feel I must comment that Barbarians can use TWF if they'd like. Barbarians and Rangers can also start an AoO farm with Come and Get Me or Snake Fang (perhaps Monk/Rangers for the latter). That said, attacks on touch AC which have no SR and bypass resistances are actually a pretty big deal. Force Bombs can create some havoc too but don't tend to have as many thematic issues (plus it might not be hard to house rule that TWF doesn't work with bombs since most folks can accept the idea that it would take two hands to prepare and throw bombs)
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Gunslingers are great. I'm playing a Siege Gunner archetype in Skulls and Shackles and holy crap... I'm loving it. I don't even need rapid shot as I use a dragon pistol in a 20-foot cone to hit everyone in the cone, adding dex to damage... so with my merciful dragon pistol +1 I'm a one-man press gang that can knock dozens of lowly sailors out for 1d6 + 1d6 + 8... targeted blast lets me add my gunslinger level to damage to two creatures in the cone (currently level 5), same thing when I fire a catapult with a liquid ice or alchemist fire load... so it's cool when the enemy captain hangs out close to his first mate... LOL
Next time I get gun training I'm applying it to a double-barreled musket or double hackbutt with a Far-Reaching Sight (can fire the double hackbutt at a distance of 250 ft vs. Touch AC... pretty cool when you can dispatch the Captain of an enemy ship before the battle has even started... hehehehheheheheheh :) )
The touch AC mechanic is my main problem.
For home games I ruled they don't use touch AC mechanic, but don't have misfire chance either.
So two handed fire-arms are about on par with a bow (though they don't get manyshot), but you can still use two pistols and deal more damage than a bow user. Double barrel firearms also aren't allowed, except to be fired as a standard action for both barrels (which most players wont use).
Problems relevant to the issue are touch AC goes down as CR goes up.
Touch AC is usually so low, that penalties that normally make concepts as TWF with Deadly Aim, Cover Penalties, etc can mostly be ignored because you have full BAB and your target value gets lower the better you get.
Also add that outside of Manyshot, gunslingers as just as good with a two-handed firearm as an archer is with bow. Archery is already one of the most powerful combat styles. Now, combine it with wielding two pistols and you're talking about double the damage.
The only impediment that was real was reloading, but so many options have been introduced to the game that will let you get around it that the only way for me as a GM to keep the DPR from creeping to outrageous levels is to change the rules.
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Gunslingers can be very problematic, and they're unfortunately very inconsistent due to the class' archetypes being so wildly out of line with the core class. A core Gunslinger is probably somewhere between "decent" and "kind of weak". A TWF double-barreled wielding Pistolero will probably out-damage most other characters, and will do so with an alarming reliability. In the latter quarter of play they can take ludicrous amounts of penalties for TWF, Rapid Shot, double-barrel firing, and Deadly Aim, and still be as or more likely to hit and confirm their crits against level appropriate foes, thanks to targeting the only defense in the game that actually scales down on average as your to-hit scales up. Being DEX SAD and gaining Nimble as a class feature means they're likely going to have AC on par with the best in the group, and their only weak save is also supported by their secondary stat.
So, mechanically, some people don't like them. They rely on a poorly designed subsystem, the Musket Master and Pistolero archetypes are vastly more powerful than the core class, and the two "balancing" factors, wealth and misfires, will be non-issues for some characters and crippling handicaps for others. It can be hard for a GM to know what they'll be getting at their table.
There's also a lot of people who just don't like guns in their fantasy (though I'm not one of them).
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I allow them, but with heavy warnings
first off is that you will need to be on terms with dwarven gunsmiths
second off is that gunpowder does not work well with water, old guns are delicate things and should be treated as priceless artwork rather than a toy.
as such, finding a simple box of bullets in a shop would be about as easy as telling calistra shes ugly and living through that.
if you want to go adventuring in pretty much any place OTHER than a city or a desert, you will have the issue of things not working, you will suffer from an increased misfire chance from the terrain, so if its snowing outside, your gun will require extensive work to make sure it doesn't explode. Because snowflakes will get into your gun and they will damage your gun
I rule that every consecutive shot from a round increases misfire chance by 2. Due to the barrel getting hot. Also after four shots in a round their is enough smoke output in a 10 foot radius that targets get a 20% mischance. The smoke disipates after the next round.
Another thing to remember is that if you allow guns in your game, you should allow all of the options listed in Ultimate Combat to deal with them. The book has spells and wondrous items to mitigate some of what firearms are capable of. Amulet of Bullet Protection, Bullet Shield, Recoil Fire, Thundering Fire, Weaken Powder, etc. There may even be some armor qualities that mitigate the full BAB touch attack issue.
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Another thing to remember is that if you allow guns in your game, you should allow all of the options listed in Ultimate Combat to deal with them. The book has spells and wondrous items to mitigate some of what firearms are capable of. Amulet of Bullet Protection, Bullet Shield, Recoil Fire, Thundering Fire, Weaken Powder, etc. There may even be some armor qualities that mitigate the full BAB touch attack issue.
This is actually another reason people may not like them; you have to adjust your entire game to accommodate them. Very few (see: none) APs are written with allowances for primitive firearms, and that means the GM will have to consider every encounter while thinking "Okay, I allowed a Gunslinger, what does that mean for X..."
Between the GS targeting touch AC and gaining access to no-save debuffs and maneuvers that bypass CMD, that can involve a lot of reevaluation and redesign.
The touch AC problem isn't unique to guns, but they can certainly amplify it. Rather than remove the armor penetrating ability of guns entirely I'd probably just limit it though. Using a limit equal to the damage die size of the gun might work. Just going with 10 would make the math simple.
Regarding guns and water in Pathfinder, there is ammunition available which works underwater. I believe it is kind of expensive, but it is probably worth it. Of course guns aren't the only weapons which face some potentially costly challenges underwater.
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tranq shot
marking as thread #58369392 about 'why gunslingers'
releasing back into the wild
I really don't think people are taking fingers off often enough to make it realistic to fantasy-era guns.
Just saying. I'm always disappointed at the lack of 8-fingered gunslingers.
Just saying. I'm always disappointed at the lack of 8-fingered gunslingers.
Neither are there many nine fingered ring bearers.
And the ranger and barbarian aren't too worried about their attacks, and they get twice as many as you.This isn't really true, at all. Unless you don't decide to do one of the multiple ways of reloading as a free action, the gunslinger using Rapid Shot will get just as many attacks as a standard TWF build does. And since barbarians don't use TWF, the gunslinger will get more attacks than him.
it is true, actually. By default, this is how it works.
Round 1: barbarian attacks. gunslinger attacks.
Round 2: barbarian attacks, gunslinger reloads
Round 3: barbarian attacks, gunslinger attacks.
Round 4: barbarian attacks, gunslinger reloads
...and so on.
So of course, you can take rapid reload to attack every round... if you're using a one-handed firearm. in which case it eats your move action.
So at level six?
Round 1: barbarian attacks twice, gunslinger attacks.
Round 2: barbarian attacks twice, gunslinger reloads and attacks.
Round 3: barbarian attacks twice, gunslinger reloads and attacks
Round 3: barbarian attacks twice, gunslinger reloads and attacks
It gets quite messy if the barbarian IS using TWF, or natural attacks, or has a mount / animal companion through one of their archetypes.
Even with rapid reload, you're waiting until level 11 to use your iterative attacks, when Lightning Reload makes it into a free action... assuming you're using one-handed firearms. Which is thankfully one level before a wizard gets to use them 'cause that would just be embarrassing.
Now, there are probably other things, magic items or weapon qualities or traits or something that I'm missing. it all comes out to the same problem though - you have to take these things for your class to function at a basic level.
Barbarians do not need feat chains and magic items to make iterative attacks every round at level 6. They don't need weapon properties and archetype features just to keep their axes from self-destruction on a bad roll. And speaking of axes, anyone proficient in axes can pick one up and swing it around pretty effectively without having to actually be a barbarian.
Gunslingers have to make a lot of investments just to function at a basic level. Most of their class features are simply fixes to a bad system, sprinkled through twenty levels. They are the ONLY class that can make firearms functional (Aside from Trench Fighters, I suppose, even then only because the Trench Fighter presumes modern firearms). In exchange for all this? They can hit on touch AC on opponents within 10-30 feet of them, depending on the weapon they're using.Oh, and they need to make the same investments any other ranged character does, on top.
Gunslingers are not overpowered. They're barely even "powered." The reason Alkenstar hasn't conquered Golarion is because level 1 warriors know how to use longbows.
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I've got a level 12 gunslinger in PFS that I worked up from level 1, and I can tell you, it's powerful.
Hitting touch AC with every shot is huge. I don't think anything in any Bestiary has a touch AC of higher than 15.
I accidentally killed a dragon in one shot one time because I rolled a critical, doing x4 damage. That was mid-levels, so I had more than one attack as well, which also hit because I hit touch AC instead of regular AC.
I never put Reliable on my gun to reduce my misfire chance, because misfiring on 1-3 was actually slightly more balancing, and also hilarious at the table whenever I roll the dice and shout MISFIRE!
I didn't take Snap Shot, because not being able to take attacks of opportunity if a bad guy comes into range is another balancing factor.
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So anyways OP, the consensus is "people mistakenly think it's broken because they don't really suss out the math" and "Because they don't want guns in their swords and sorcery."
Says the most dismissive and ignorant guy on the internet.
Also wrong. That too.
People who actually combine math and system mastery can see the issues both with Gunslinger's primary method of interacting with the game, and in his own internal inconsistencies, like archetypes that are vastly more powerful than the base class, "balancing" mechanics that some people will be badly hampered by and others will know how to ignore or mitigate completely (wealth, misfire). People who understood the game also laughed at the "fix" executed through weapon cords, because they know that there's still multiple ways of achieving the same effect; at best the "fix" pushed things back a few levels.
People who know the math also know that the Fighter actually wins the DPR Olympics at 20th level thanks to his automatic critical confirmation. It's not hard to follow that along and realize that the Gunslinger has the next best thing to auto-crit confirmation mucheck sooner than 20th level, access to the highest critical multiplier, and is actually more likely to hit in the first place.
In the cosmic scale of Pathfinder and all its table permutations, the Gunslinger isn't the most powerful thing out there. It is, however, one of the easiest to optimize, one of the hardest for a GM of zero to middling experience to know how to deal with, and one that requires special attention from the GM To work into most campaigns even if the GM does know how to deal with them. There are a lot of reasons for people to dislike the Gunslinger outside of "Hurr dut dur, I can no math".
And this is coming from someone who knows the math and will actually allow Gunslingers and firearms at his table.
Gunslingers are not more likely to hit with their critical threats than fighters. That's just wrong.
Asides, most of it seems to come from an aesthetical perspective; some people feel that guns are a little off.
How they can feel that and still like golarion, that setting being what it is, I don't know, but I know the viewpoint is out there, and from how much I've encountered it on the interwebs and IRL, it's pretty widespread too.
Actually, that's a lie. I've studied humans enough to know what thinking processes that let them establish and maintain viewpoints like that. Still, it strikes me as odd when I really think about it.
Archers are a powerful class, gunslingers are everything archers are with touch attacks and DEX to damage. If you take a powerful build and make it more powerful, you're going to run into problems.
I will say, level 1-4 meh, slightly less powerful than an archer due to misfire and reloads. 5-10 more powerful than archers due to DEX to damage and the gap between AC and touch AC widens. Slightly mitigated by misfire chance.
11-20 Will do the most consistent damage out of every class in the game. They will get full attacks nearly every round, they will RARELY miss because the difference between touch AC and regular AC is huge (40 Regular AC vs 8 Touch AC at the higher CR's), and they've completely negated any misfire chance.
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Gunslingers are not more likely to hit with their critical threats than fighters. That's just wrong.
Yes, they are. Their likelihood of landing a critical threat is the same as anyone else using a weapon with the same crit range, but their likelihood of confirming is much higher because their target confirmation roll is much lower. An 11th level Fighter hitting an ancient red Dragon needs to hit a confirmation roll total of 29; an 11th level Gunslinger needs to not roll a 1, because his target to confirm is lower than his BAB alone by a full 3 points.
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waaaaaage!!!!!Wut?
Nothing you said makes any sense in context, and it's completely non-sequitor. Are you feeling okay>
I'm sorry that you are apparently unable to see that your blanket statement that "people mistakenly think it's broken because they don't really suss out the math" is insulting to people who can do math and still have issues with the class and/or its supported subsystem.
My response was in direct address to that point.
Erm...a gunslinger is basically never going to have the range literally any archery build gets out of the box on its attacks, and unless you're playing with Advanced Firearms, which is unwise, it requires a lot more fiddling with the mechanics for them to get around the reloading problems while our friend the longbowman laughs at everyone that needs to spend FEATS to make more than one attack in a turn.
Right the longbowman has to spend Character points and money to do damage instead of a whopping 1 feat (rapid reload). I'd hardly call that balanced. And the talk of "range" is hogwash. Encounters don't start more than 80' out or the melees would never get a chance to act. So it's great to say an archer has a 110' range, an actual game is rarely outside of a Gunslinger's touch range, so that argument is moot.
So not to contradict the primary thrust of your your argument that they are a strong ranged build that doesn't play by the exact same rules others do, but saying a gunslinger is strictly better than an archer is just flat out wrong.
Let me say this again: Gunslingers can do everything an Archer can do AND gets to use Touch Attacks AND gets DEX to damage. So if you have two things that are exactly the same, then you add benefits to one of them, the one you add things too becomes better. I don't get how that's so complicated to understand.
what archers are you talking about, commoner class archers? Archers get STR to damage as soon as they buy a composite bow. While archers are more MAD, needing DEX to hit and STR to damage, every other martial PC class can get a total bonus to damage at least comparable to that of the gunslinger if not better (well, not the barbarian, but archery for a barbarian should be a second choice anyway).
Really? What does a Zen Archer get? What does a Fighter get (the exact same), a Ranger and a Paladin are situational and not consistent, hence my statement consistently higher.
A vanilla gunslinger gets DEX to damage at level 5 (MM&pistolero archetypes get DEX + 1 at level 9, DEX +2 at level 13 and DEX +3 at level 17) which compares to a vanilla fighter archer who using weapon training which gets STR to damage at level 1, STR + 1 at level 5, STR + 2 at level 9, STR +3 at level 13, STR +4 at level 17 can tack on gloves of dueling for an additional +2, weapons specialization at level 4 for another +2 and greater weapon specialization at level 12 for a another +2 - at level 17 the archtype gunslinger can add DEX +3 to damage while the vanilla fighter archer can STR + 10 to damage. And fighters are the baseline from which other martial classes improve - an archedin smiting with damage + STR + level is going to hit a lot harder than a gunslinger firing with damage + DEX. And archers can switch out the rapid reload feat needed by gunslingers for multi-shot which lets archers make more attacks than gunslingers and have access to arrow only spells and items which gunslingers lack.
Two problems here, a fighter with a +10 to hit and +100 to damage does exactly zero damage when he rolls a two against a monster with a 15 AC. Against the same monster the Gunslinger with the same to hit and 1/4 the damage, will do full damage because all he needs is a 2 to hit.
Being SAD and attacking touch AC can make the gunslinger powerful, but those factors are not so much built into the class as into the how the campaign works. The weaker the stats (PB or array or dice rolls) are the better the gunslinger is compared to other martials, with a 30 PB a fighter archer can have a high enough STR & DEX to keep with the gunslingers DEX to damage and DEX to hit while with a 15 PB the fighter is going to be a bit worse in both categories.
This is probably the most moronic thing I've heard in a long time. I don't care if it's 100 point buy, if I need 2 stats to be effective and you need 1 it doesn't really matter how many we have to spend because 1 beats 2 every time.
Targeting touch AC is a situational thing, assuming no advanced firearms (all bets are off if advanced firearms are used) a distance enchanted musket user can hit touch AC out to 16 squares and the common pistol wielder without distance enchant has to be within 4 squares to target touch AC - if enemies are stupid enough to stand 20' away from a gunslinger they deserve to eat mucho hot lead. When a gunslinger cannot target touch AC they really suffer for unlike, say, fighter archers they do not get a weapon training bonus to hit from their class and access to the fighter only feats to increase hit chance so they wind up hitting less often for less damage with fewer attacks.
There are SO many problems with this statement. Let me start with if monsters are over 16 squares away, the monsters aren't hitting anyone else either.
Second, if a Gunslinger doesn't get in his first ranged increment, he becomes only marginally better than an archer, since he is still full bab, has a better to hit chance since he's SAD and does the same damage as a fighter. Yeah, it's horrible when a gunslinger is only as good as an archer.
All of which proves my point that Gunslingers will consistently do more damage than any other class especially in the second half of the game (11-20).
It costs 1,000 gold to make a bow do the right amount of damage every time before you start putting Enchants on it. That's pocket change. That spare feat? That's letting the bowman get all the good stuff before you can because you spent a feat on reloading and he didn't.
Yup except the Weapon Focus feat the archer needs to hit anything with more than one arrow, the gunslinger skips, and we're all back to even again.
And with Early Firearms, the most common ruleset, it makes Reloading a MOVE action rather than a free action like it does on advanced firearms, so unless you're playing an archetype that gets better reload times the bowman will be firing four or so arrows to your one or two bullets every turn at mid-game.
1. If you are playing a Gunslinger you are using an Archetype.
2. Alchemical Cartridges, and Rapid Reload and you're at a free action at first level.That adds up. Additionally, he can move around while continuing to harry his opponent with arrows while moving and reloading an early firearm are the same action. The only way around this is alchemical cartridges in Pistols (or muskets if you're a Musket Master), which cost roughly as much as 400 normal arrows would and are only getting free action reloads in the pistol/Musket Master Musket, which are a step up from MELEE WEAPONS in how far they hit Touch AC at. Rate of fire is going to be skewed by how frigging expensive ammo is comparatively.
And depending on how your GM reads the rules, that Adaptive may be considered an Enhancement that can't be added to the bow until after it's +1 so now it's a 3,000 gold piece item, but even so, how many alchemical cartridges can a gunslinger buy with 1000gp? Knowing that he'll be making them himself. Oh and I hope the archer bought blunt arrows AND pointy ones since bullets do both types in one.
And again, if they don't get touch attacks, that just makes them slightly more powerful than the next largest damage dealers in the game.
I also don't know what kinda lenient GM you're playing with, but it's not uncommon for flying enemies to have a serious height advantage on the party if they're fighting smart,nd enemy factions with crossbowmen will rarely engage you fairly and pass up the opportunity to perforate the PCs before you're even in range to charge. Only a fool goes out his door without a backup weapon for when that happens, but the Gunslinger is the only example of a RANGED character looking at something with a good flight speed and flyby attack, down at his firearm, and promptly declaring he is out of ideas.
Really? If your gunslinger is out of ideas when dealing with a Flying target, make sure he gets home safely, because he's pretty clueless. Why don't you ready a Targeted Shot and knock the flying monster out of the sky?
That dragon gunslinging "trivializes" by hitting its low Touch AC can pulverize a gunslinger who's not getting help from his friends because it can just Flyby Attack him until he dies without ever presenting a target.
And how exactly is that different than every other class. The only difference I see is that the Gunslinger has a chance to knock the thing out of the sky, archers don't.
Enemies like the Blue Dragon in particular can just strafe you with their long-range breath weapon without ever coming close enough that even a readied action shot will be in touch range.
Okay, but they still have a better to hit than a standard archer, can fire just as many shots, and do more damage.
Do NOT underestimate spacing when you're considering a ranged character. A lot of firearms have less ways to keep out of charging range than their bow counterparts, and sniping is a thing, even if it's not an enormously supported one. If you're in a naval battle, you're going to love being able to hit enemy pirates from 110 feet away without suffering any accuracy penalties while the gunslinger is waiting with the melee guys for the boarding party to get within 20-40 feet or so so they can join in the fight.
Do you know why that happens in Naval Battles? Because you have MILES to work with on the ocean. In a cave, there's considerably LESS room.
Except, as I just explained, the Gunslinger cannot fight at very long ranges,
Where fights NEVER happen.
fewer answers to clever flying creatures with the speed and ability to flyby attack in and out of your range,
Except actually has more options due to Targeting Shot.
requires specific build tactics or Advanced Firearms, a rarely-used set of rules, to be able to reload faster than a move action, and without that option you cannot Rapid Shot and never get access to Multishot, two key feats for the Archer to unleash hell on the enemy.
Uh except they only need alchemical cartridges readily available and easy to make at 1st level, and as far a "specific build" if you want to use a pistol you take pistoleer, if you want to use a musket, you take musket master, I'm really sure that qualifies as a "specific build", so stop trying to make it sound like some convoluted multi-class option that you have to be an expert to figure out.
Just so I'm clear: The "limited range" is a crock that no one who's actually played the game believes. Fights RARELY if ever are more than 80' away.
And even if limited range weren't a crock, it only knocks Gunslingers down to slightly better than archers since they have full BAB, and use DEX to hit and to Damage. And let's be honest, the only time it's not a crock is when fighting flying ranged attackers, and by the time that happens the Gunslinger can fly, spend grit to extend their range or 6 billion other options.
The "high cost" of ammunition is a crock because 600 GP gets you 100 Alchecmical Cartridges, and that is completely trivial.
So yes, gunslingers can do everything an archer can, except has more utility abilities, targets touch AC and gets DEX to damage.