After digging around the forum for answers I found mostly arguments that go nowhere so I thought I'd ask.
This seems like silly questions, and broad ones, but it's rarely come up and when it does I just use my own rulings regardless of RAW but I do want to know what the actual RAW is so...
1) How does TWF interact with firearms?
My general ruling is that if you use one handed firearms in each hand you're firing at a -6 and -10 penalty, and if you have the two weapon fighting feat it's at -4 and -4. However I keep coming across the assumption that you can TWF with firearms at a -2 and -2 penalty. I generally rule against this because I have not noticed any firearms that are noted as being light weapons, just one handed. Am I correct?
1a) As a side note I generally rule that rapid shot stacks with TWF but only applies to one weapon and the penalty will stack making the whole thing have a -6,-6,-6 penalty. Am I correct.
2) How bad are firearms really?
I know I will get a lot of opinionated answers but if anyone has run numbers please inform me of where my logic is wrong.
Firearms generally have a bad rap but I feel like as long as you track ammo, actually follow the rules and stay away from advanced firearms unless you're going to make firearms simple or martial weapons you're fine.
Ammo, even crafted is expensive. Although misfire can eventually be mitigated in some ways its a resource tax to do it. You get touch attacks at 30 feet which is easily still in murder range of a competent melee combatant. You have to reload. Firearms are expensive. There are just a lot of things to firearms that mitigate some of the benefits.
From my point of view, once you get into advanced firearms the game becomes a gun game and everyone should plan accordingly. Nobody is trying to challenge a room full of guys with advanced guns if you're relying on a shield and full plate to protect them because it makes as much sense as doing the same thing in real life. Advanced firearms are just outright banned (because I assumed they were supposed to be) unless the setting has a lot of guns and at that point I just make them martial or simple weapons and tell the players before the campaign begins that this is going on.
By following that logic I haven't had any problems with firearms in my games but to be fair, I don't run many munchkins so I'd like to know how bad can firearms really be. Are they really just totally unbalanced?
Avoid allowing double barrelled guns to actually double the number of shots. Otherwise, they're not too bad.
The 'light' weapon or not ruling can and has been argued both ways; it's pretty much your own opinion that matters. Remember that you need a free hand to reload, which makes most attempts to wield 2 guns not worth it.