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Too strong? If you aren't a Gunslinger or Trench Fighter, they're the worst weapons in thr game!!!
Too strong? If you aren't a Gunslinger or Trench Fighter, they're the worst weapons in thr game!!!
And if you are a gunslinger or trench fighter, they're one of the strongest in the game and change the campaign in a way no other weapon does.
Aren't gunslingers just contenders for best ranged DPR in pathfinder Cyrad? I don't see how that's all that game changing compared to optimized archer builds.
Too strong? If you aren't a Gunslinger or Trench Fighter, they're the worst weapons in thr game!!!And if you are a gunslinger or trench fighter, they're one of the strongest in the game and change the campaign in a way no other weapon does.
Eh, no worse than a paladin with a longbow or a ranger with a longbow or a zen archer with a longbow.
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Too strong? If you aren't a Gunslinger or Trench Fighter, they're the worst weapons in thr game!!!
And if you are a gunslinger or trench fighter, they're one of the strongest in the game and change the campaign in a way no other weapon does.
Aren't gunslingers just contenders for best ranged DPR in pathfinder Cyrad? I don't see how that's all that game changing compared to optimized archer builds.
Cyrad did say, "one of the strongest" rather than "the strongest." And he backs up his claim to game-changing in his article, The Problem with Gunslingers. Gunslingers challenge a campaign the same way Alchemists do: their touch attacks target weak areas that are not factored into CR, so they mess up CR ratings. A GM forewarned about these problems can adapt, but the differences are not obvious.
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Much depends upon your GM/campaign too. If you use standard AC/CR for naked monsters, then gunslingers are a bit less effective than archers most of the time.
However, if the monsters in your campaign are smart enough to actually use even a fraction of their wealth on gear instead of just drinking out of ruby encrusted goblets or some such, then most of their defenses will shoot up a lot (considerably more than their offense; this is actually a big way to solve the 'rocket tag' issue of high levels), but their touch ACs will only get a couple of points higher, which is negligible to a full BAB class such as the gunslinger.
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Too strong? If you aren't a Gunslinger or Trench Fighter, they're the worst weapons in thr game!!!
Usually agree with you, but my siege gunner with dragon pistol gun training and targeted blast ability beg to differ. I killed a room full of cyclops in one hit at level 9. It does less damage than those you mentioned, but the damage is applied to all creatures in a 30 foot cone (again, level 9 siege gunner here...)
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I still contend that the whole touch attack issue is the real problem. It makes every other balancing point about firearms excessive and unfun, this goes to the point where the Gunslinger has to compensate for the downsides which make it a damage dealing monster, And its not just guns that are involved with the problem as touch attacks seem to only be there to make spells function but it's overcompensating.
Running a game where there's all touch attacks all the time (Technological weapons are 10% of their normal price) I had to make adjustments that seem to be working but even before that I was testing out something that seemed to work out too. Both of them made firearms much more useable and one dealt with touch attacks in general less of an issue so I'll be using both depending on the genre of the campaign.
Solution 1: Lemmy posted something similar, In fact he posted it in another thread a while ago and it contributed to how I made this solution. I just took away misfire, Took away touch attacks, gave natural dex to damage with firearms, and adjusted abilities that interact with any of those things. Its a fast and clean solution that doesn't interrupt too much and I'll be using it for any game where firearms are commonplace but not technological. Firearms get to do something unique that's powerful but if you try to farm out a lot of attacks your accuracy falls with any other weapon.
Solution 2: Since technological firearms don't have to deal with misfire at all and have a host of other advantage I moved the dex to damage to being a feat to compensate for them being cheaper in setting. I had to adjust the technological pricing despite this producing more powerful players because I wanted to emphasize that the setting had a lot of technology and I wanted it to be used from the beginning of the game. Players were offered a lot of tools to deal with touch attacks in the form of several feats, spells and situational bonuses, which meant that NPCs have the same benefit, but monsters do not. To compensate I made Natural Armor count against touch attacks. With some monsters this didn't matter because so I made a template called 'Bulletproof X' where the monster gets +X natural armor that doesn't stack with it's existing natural armor and works against touch attacks and assumed all monsters had it. I contemplated having shield bonuses count because it made more sense for shields to protect from touch attacks than natural armor but I didn't test for that and they already have technological shields that do that anyway. I've been doing this for five sessions now and it's been going very well. Even the player that full attacks with four arms at level 3 is missing about half his attacks if he goes all out.
These make me feel like Touch attacks really need a kick in the pants. Shield bonuses should be able to work against them and monsters should have natural armor should work against firearms if not all touch attacks themselves because that just makes sense and the higher levels you go the more monsters rely on it to extreme degrees.
I agree with Malwing that touch AC is a problematic system in some ways. In the past I've thought of limiting the amount of armor or natural armor a touch attack (or firearm, which is slightly different) can bypass, possibly to a flat number or possibly based on the size of the damage die (d8 bypasses 8, d10 bypasses 10, etc so that elephant guns blow right through a big monster's hide but derringers might bounce off)
I think people would say that's too complex and maybe prefer something like just setting the limit at 10. I think other people would say that's too complex too, and that makes me think about how "what's your touch AC?" and "what's your flat-footed touch AC?" still seem like tough questions for many people I play with after all these years. Touch AC being different than regular AC and also different from CMD is kind of a nuisance in and of itself. I wonder sometimes if it wouldn't be better if more spell attacks weren't against touch AC but let you use caster level in place of BAB so that even Wizards not particularly optimized for attack rolls should have a decent chance of hitting with Scorching Ray, Shocking Grasp, etc. I guess it wouldn't help much at low levels, but that's when AC and touch AC are usually closest together anyhow. I can see how folks might object that armor shouldn't protect you against Enervation, but I can also see how folks might feel it should protect you against Acid Arrow (maybe it would seem like the acid should damage your armor, but we don't track the damage armor and shields take from near hits with melee weapons)
I don't really expect Paizo to change touch attacks after all these years, and honestly I'm not sure if I'll ever try changing them with house rules since there would always be at least one player who would get upset that attack spells might miss or encounter "double jeopardy" against some monsters with an attack roll and SR. Of course regular attacks often have kind of a "double jeopardy" with AC and DR, but...oh well...ranting and raving here won't change anything...
My way is more KABOOM!y.
So... Ha!
>:)
You're right.
*smiles wickedly*
This whole debate is based on armor penetration during the 1500s. Yes, but the guns doing this were very large caliber... and they were being used against armor that was 200 years or older technology.
Armor could be made bullet proof until the 1700s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdmIbM8aF18
Should point out that once again after a 200 year lackluster performance armor can once again be made bullet proof...
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This whole debate is based on armor penetration during the 1500s. Yes, but the guns doing this were very large caliber... and they were being used against armor that was 200 years or older technology.
Armor could be made bullet proof until the 1700s.
Actually - some wore steel armor as late as the civil war, though it seems that they were only at all effective against muskets at rather long range (200+ yards) and most soldiers ended up discarding them due to being too heavy/cumbersome. civil war armored vests
Really though, it was in part a change in military philosophy which the gun caused which made the use of armor go out of fashion so quickly. It just took so little training to get conscripts to a point of effectiveness with a musket (since no aiming involved anyway), that the cost of armor which stood a decent chance against muskets could probably equip at least another two dozen peasants with muskets including ammo etc.
(Based upon scattered historical data which puts 16th century full plate at 16-20 pounds & a musket with all extras at about 18 shillings. No guarantee of how accurate they are, and I don't think that the dates of those prices matches up exactly.)
I still contend that the whole touch attack issue is the real problem. It makes every other balancing point about firearms excessive and unfun, this goes to the point where the Gunslinger has to compensate for the downsides which make it a damage dealing monster, And its not just guns that are involved with the problem as touch attacks seem to only be there to make spells function but it's overcompensating.
Running a game where there's all touch attacks all the time (Technological weapons are 10% of their normal price) I had to make adjustments that seem to be working but even before that I was testing out something that seemed to work out too. Both of them made firearms much more useable and one dealt with touch attacks in general less of an issue so I'll be using both depending on the genre of the campaign.
Solution 1: Lemmy posted something similar, In fact he posted it in another thread a while ago and it contributed to how I made this solution. I just took away misfire, Took away touch attacks, gave natural dex to damage with firearms, and adjusted abilities that interact with any of those things. Its a fast and clean solution that doesn't interrupt too much and I'll be using it for any game where firearms are commonplace but not technological. Firearms get to do something unique that's powerful but if you try to farm out a lot of attacks your accuracy falls with any other weapon.
Interesting. What do you do about things like Deadeye and Quick Clear?
Interesting. What do you do about things like Deadeye and Quick Clear?I still contend that the whole touch attack issue is the real problem. It makes every other balancing point about firearms excessive and unfun, this goes to the point where the Gunslinger has to compensate for the downsides which make it a damage dealing monster, And its not just guns that are involved with the problem as touch attacks seem to only be there to make spells function but it's overcompensating.
Running a game where there's all touch attacks all the time (Technological weapons are 10% of their normal price) I had to make adjustments that seem to be working but even before that I was testing out something that seemed to work out too. Both of them made firearms much more useable and one dealt with touch attacks in general less of an issue so I'll be using both depending on the genre of the campaign.
Solution 1: Lemmy posted something similar, In fact he posted it in another thread a while ago and it contributed to how I made this solution. I just took away misfire, Took away touch attacks, gave natural dex to damage with firearms, and adjusted abilities that interact with any of those things. Its a fast and clean solution that doesn't interrupt too much and I'll be using it for any game where firearms are commonplace but not technological. Firearms get to do something unique that's powerful but if you try to farm out a lot of attacks your accuracy falls with any other weapon.
I allow replacements from third party material. Specifically Rogue Genius Games 'Ultimate Options: Grit and Gunslingers '
This whole debate is based on armor penetration during the 1500s. Yes, but the guns doing this were very large caliber... and they were being used against armor that was 200 years or older technology.
Armor could be made bullet proof until the 1700s.
Actually - some wore steel armor as late as the civil war, though it seems that they were only at all effective against muskets at rather long range (200+ yards) and most soldiers ended up discarding them due to being too heavy/cumbersome. civil war armored vests
Really though, it was in part a change in military philosophy which the gun caused which made the use of armor go out of fashion so quickly. It just took so little training to get conscripts to a point of effectiveness with a musket (since no aiming involved anyway), that the cost of armor which stood a decent chance against muskets could probably equip at least another two dozen peasants with muskets including ammo etc.
(Based upon scattered historical data which puts 16th century full plate at 16-20 pounds & a musket with all extras at about 18 shillings. No guarantee of how accurate they are, and I don't think that the dates of those prices matches up exactly.)
Good points, I would think that a well equipped adventurer would be able to both afford and afford to wear the bullet proof vests and since this is a magical setting you could make magical bullet proof armor or at least Mithral lol.
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I don't think it really fixes the problem on the monster side, but I really think shields should add to touch AC. It gives an option to increase touch AC which is easily available, and gives more incentive to use shields, which at least in the meta I see are generally disregarded.
I think the solution to the monster AC problem can be fixed by BAB-based AC increases and lowering the absurd amounts of natural armor floating around. I'm reminded of Warhammer, where there is a Weapon Skill statistic which determines both your chance to hit and your chance to not be hit. Maybe BAB could be reworked to be more like that.
Good points, I would think that a well equipped adventurer would be able to both afford and afford to wear the bullet proof vests and since this is a magical setting you could make magical bullet proof armor or at least Mithral lol.This whole debate is based on armor penetration during the 1500s. Yes, but the guns doing this were very large caliber... and they were being used against armor that was 200 years or older technology.
Armor could be made bullet proof until the 1700s.
Actually - some wore steel armor as late as the civil war, though it seems that they were only at all effective against muskets at rather long range (200+ yards) and most soldiers ended up discarding them due to being too heavy/cumbersome. civil war armored vests
Really though, it was in part a change in military philosophy which the gun caused which made the use of armor go out of fashion so quickly. It just took so little training to get conscripts to a point of effectiveness with a musket (since no aiming involved anyway), that the cost of armor which stood a decent chance against muskets could probably equip at least another two dozen peasants with muskets including ammo etc.
(Based upon scattered historical data which puts 16th century full plate at 16-20 pounds & a musket with all extras at about 18 shillings. No guarantee of how accurate they are, and I don't think that the dates of those prices matches up exactly.)
A well-equipped adventurer should be able to. But the real debate is over the effectiveness of guns for adventurers, not against adventurers.
It's mostly the increase in AC due to natural armor and the low touch AC of higher CR monsters that cause firearms to be considered overpowered.
Sure, I am just pointing out if GMs want a logical reason for house rule dropping touch attacks... there is some.
Should be noted crossbows (750LB. pull) and even regular bows (150lb. pull) also penetrated older armor designs until hardened armor was invented. The game has no touch attacks for crossbows on armor of certain types. The firearms touch attacks are a special rule that in some games is unbalancing.
@Riuken - I too have sometimes considered whether shields should add to touch AC. The primary driver for me is that I just don't like the idea that somebody touching your shield (or other weapon) is the same as them touching you, but I agree that having more options to increase touch AC and more benefits for using a shield would both be good things.
I guess that somebody might point out that the use of shields decreased rather than increased after the advent of firearms, but there are a lot of factors which go into stuff like that, and the game probably isn't intended as a historical simulation anyhow. Regarding the depiction of early firearms in the game, I would have preferred a slow rate of fire with very high damage. I feel like that captures the "spirit" of how early firearms are depicted in fiction better than a Gunslinger reloading and firing a muzzle loading gun once a second.
If a musket did 4d6 base damage (for instance - not a carefully considered suggestion) it also might become a weapon which works pretty well with Vital Strike.
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I think the solution to the monster AC problem can be fixed by BAB-based AC increases and lowering the absurd amounts of natural armor floating around. I'm reminded of Warhammer, where there is a Weapon Skill statistic which determines both your chance to hit and your chance to not be hit. Maybe BAB could be reworked to be more like that.
That would require a MAJOR revamp of the entire system from the ground up.
d20 Modern played around with class defense bonuses instead of having so much gear boost AC, and while that part of it worked generally, the game as a whole was rather poorly designed in a lot of places.
One simple solution to touch AC - let force based effects, like mage armor and bracers of armor, apply to touch AC. I've considered this for a game with commonplace guns (though no advanced firearms).
Yeah with commonplace guns you'd get ways to counter guns. In a setting that goes for 'contemporary realism' you'd have a lot more bulletproof vests as light armor and maybe riot padding and shields as medium and heavy armor options and those would raise 'Touch AC'.
A lot more people would add 'Deflect Arrow' to their feat builds.
Throw magic into the setting and you'd have a lot more bullet ward type spells on wands.
In a sci fi setting you could have all of those and also have force fields that add deflection AC and/or muscle booster implants that increase dodge AC.
In a Star Trek setting you'd just give every gun a flat -10 to hit :p
I do see how this would screw up the balance for spells which rely on low Touch AC for wizards to be able to hit anything with rays. Anti bullet defences (like vests and forcefields) could be made to apply just to firearm attacks of course but that is an extra wrinkle of complication.
I have a gunslinger in a local Skulls and Shackles campaign. Tons of damage. My main problem right now is that I'm absolutely bored with the character. I see it as a similar problem clerics have: you're a slave to your function. Clerics have that healing bit they're expected to do. Gunslingers, well... it's even worse, as they can't wake up after a weird dream and memorize a bunch of different spells to change their approach that day. They're stuck... doing.... the same thing.... over and over and over again.
Even some 'flavor' feats thrown in (siege engineer, etc.) are not enough to help in my case.
Anyone came up with this before? I'm trying the roleplay angle all I want to ease the pain by geez, what an uphill battle...
I have a player in my Skull and Shackles campaign who is beginning to say similar things about his gunslinger.
Firearms hit all sorts of issue in terms of how they were designed and how they were balanced. Unfortunately paizo decided to go a route that suited their campaign setting more then them being a good set of rules.
Basically paizo tried to drive a sports car, from the back seat, by alternately pulling and yanking on a series of levers. The end result, the car goes mostly in the desired direction, and mostly faster then most cars, but theres lots of room to go wrong, and the path it takes is a friggan mess.
First big problem: having the rules for firearms support the Golarian specific fact that they are rare and mostly don't leave alkenstar. So they are expensive as hell, and they need specific knowledge (read class abilities like quick clear and reloading feats/abilities) to operate effectively. Sure firearms are expensive to manufacture, but so were good swords in their day, and crossbows could malfunction and jam. It was foolish to make them different then every other weapon for campaign setting reasons. One lever pulled the sports car swerves wildly right.
Now you have outrageously expensive, prone to failure, slow to load weapons. What do you do? You have to give them something. So the insane solution was to make them not just go through armor, but be actual touch attacks. Neglecting the fact that huge amounts of monsters rely on natural armor almost exclusively. Another lever pulled, the sports car goes into a left skid, back tires burning up rubber.
On top of that now, we have a gunslinger. A class specifically designed to use these overly expensive unwieldy, but also game breaking weapons. So that class has in built exceptions to a lot of the rules nonsense that go around firearms. Because the class needs to be able to do its thing, which is shoot guns. But of course there is still the possibility for non gunslingers to use firearms. So somehow they have to figure out a way to make it work with both the limitations of the weapons bypassed (via classes/archetypes that are supposed to use them) but still be somewhat reasonable for a normal character to use them.
You have now thrown the sports car into an uncontrollable spin.
The sad thing is, paizo had a perfectly solid set of rules for firearms. They wrote them. In the pre-pathfinder version of their campaign setting. But they decided to go with the touch attack, slow to reload idea that literally does not fit mathematically into the rest of the game, make them overpriced and prone to failure, then create a class that bypasses those issues and hope it all evens out.
Most gunslingers will be average characters. If you don't optimize the crap out of it, it works well enough. Their damage isn't as high as a highly optimized archer most of the time. But in specific circumstances, they are either way too good (abnormally high AC but low touch ac enemies) or downright aweful (campaigns without the resources or time for the gunslinger to keep up his ammunition count, or improve his weapon over time).
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I have a player in my Skull and Shackles campaign who is beginning to say similar things about his gunslinger.I have a gunslinger in a local Skulls and Shackles campaign. Tons of damage. My main problem right now is that I'm absolutely bored with the character. I see it as a similar problem clerics have: you're a slave to your function. Clerics have that healing bit they're expected to do. Gunslingers, well... it's even worse, as they can't wake up after a weird dream and memorize a bunch of different spells to change their approach that day. They're stuck... doing.... the same thing.... over and over and over again.
Even some 'flavor' feats thrown in (siege engineer, etc.) are not enough to help in my case.
Anyone came up with this before? I'm trying the roleplay angle all I want to ease the pain by geez, what an uphill battle...
Mine is not even optimized, with stuff like Besmara's Tricorne, Gloves of Reconnaissance, Boots of the Cats, and Death's Head Talismans - a quilted cloth +1 with human defiance enchantment, a buckler with light fortification on it... most of those being flavor items to somehow increase his 'out of combat' versatility.
Oh, and he worships Besmara a lot - does daily devotions at the bow of the ship every day, etc.
Still, I feel like he's a dud in terms of fun factor.
I have a player in my Skull and Shackles campaign who is beginning to say similar things about his gunslinger.I have a gunslinger in a local Skulls and Shackles campaign. Tons of damage. My main problem right now is that I'm absolutely bored with the character. I see it as a similar problem clerics have: you're a slave to your function. Clerics have that healing bit they're expected to do. Gunslingers, well... it's even worse, as they can't wake up after a weird dream and memorize a bunch of different spells to change their approach that day. They're stuck... doing.... the same thing.... over and over and over again.
Even some 'flavor' feats thrown in (siege engineer, etc.) are not enough to help in my case.
Anyone came up with this before? I'm trying the roleplay angle all I want to ease the pain by geez, what an uphill battle...
What book are you on? How are you liking it?
My Gunslinger for Skull and Shackles is a Vanara named Caesar. :-)
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What book are you on? How are you liking it?I have a player in my Skull and Shackles campaign who is beginning to say similar things about his gunslinger.I have a gunslinger in a local Skulls and Shackles campaign. Tons of damage. My main problem right now is that I'm absolutely bored with the character. I see it as a similar problem clerics have: you're a slave to your function. Clerics have that healing bit they're expected to do. Gunslingers, well... it's even worse, as they can't wake up after a weird dream and memorize a bunch of different spells to change their approach that day. They're stuck... doing.... the same thing.... over and over and over again.
Even some 'flavor' feats thrown in (siege engineer, etc.) are not enough to help in my case.
Anyone came up with this before? I'm trying the roleplay angle all I want to ease the pain by geez, what an uphill battle...
Book 4. And yes! This a great AP!
Unfortunately, the campaign is somewhat dying out at this point (suffering from the usual AP disease that strikes many groups around level 10). We are halfway through 4 but we seemed stuck there at the moment as we switched to a homecampaign (mine, that is, so I'm probably responsible for enabling the GM to lay off and just be a player in MY campaign! ;) ). The intent is to finish S&S one day though... if we do, I might have to make a new character, as I'm going through a really bad case of '10th-level gunslinger blues' right now...
What book are you on? How are you liking it?I have a player in my Skull and Shackles campaign who is beginning to say similar things about his gunslinger.I have a gunslinger in a local Skulls and Shackles campaign. Tons of damage. My main problem right now is that I'm absolutely bored with the character. I see it as a similar problem clerics have: you're a slave to your function. Clerics have that healing bit they're expected to do. Gunslingers, well... it's even worse, as they can't wake up after a weird dream and memorize a bunch of different spells to change their approach that day. They're stuck... doing.... the same thing.... over and over and over again.
Even some 'flavor' feats thrown in (siege engineer, etc.) are not enough to help in my case.
Anyone came up with this before? I'm trying the roleplay angle all I want to ease the pain by geez, what an uphill battle...
Book 4. And yes! This a great AP!
Unfortunately, the campaign is somewhat dying out at this point (suffering from the usual AP disease that strikes many groups around level 10). We are halfway through 4 but we seemed stuck there at the moment as we switched to a homecampaign (mine, that is, so I'm probably responsible for enabling the GM to lay off and just be a player in MY campaign! ;) ). The intent is to finish S&S one day though... if we do, I might have to make a new character, as I'm going through a really bad case of '10th-level gunslinger blues' right now...
** spoiler omitted **...
We've been going for about 4 hours every other Sunday for a bit over a year and are just about to wrap up book 4. To address your items in your spoiler:
Maybe you could move into being an inquisitor of Besmara for the rest of the campaign Purple? Inquisitors have some toys to play with.
Edit: Adding cunning initiative onto gunslinger's initiative would be pretty hilarious also. Level 11 gunslinger's get some important deeds on the other hand.
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Maybe you could move into being an inquisitor of Besmara for the rest of the campaign Purple? Inquisitors have some toys to play with.
Edit: Adding cunning initiative onto gunslinger's initiative would be pretty hilarious also. Level 11 gunslinger's get some important deeds on the other hand.
Thanks Azih! that's a great suggestion actually... wow! fits the character perfectly too!
What book are you on? How are you liking it?I have a player in my Skull and Shackles campaign who is beginning to say similar things about his gunslinger.I have a gunslinger in a local Skulls and Shackles campaign. Tons of damage. My main problem right now is that I'm absolutely bored with the character. I see it as a similar problem clerics have: you're a slave to your function. Clerics have that healing bit they're expected to do. Gunslingers, well... it's even worse, as they can't wake up after a weird dream and memorize a bunch of different spells to change their approach that day. They're stuck... doing.... the same thing.... over and over and over again.
Even some 'flavor' feats thrown in (siege engineer, etc.) are not enough to help in my case.
Anyone came up with this before? I'm trying the roleplay angle all I want to ease the pain by geez, what an uphill battle...
We are in second half of book five. We've had a ball for the most part so far, though I worry that it's losing steam--and also about the mass naval combat coming up. Learning even more rules is not something my players generally enjoy, especially since they weren't terribly fond of the Mass Combat rules as presented in Wrath of the Righteous.
At this point, I think my players might be more excited about actually finishing a campaign (which has never once happened in our group) than about the campaign itself.
Thanks Azih! that's a great suggestion actually... wow! fits the character perfectly too!Maybe you could move into being an inquisitor of Besmara for the rest of the campaign Purple? Inquisitors have some toys to play with.
Edit: Adding cunning initiative onto gunslinger's initiative would be pretty hilarious also. Level 11 gunslinger's get some important deeds on the other hand.
Glad I was of help :). Based on what domain you pick you should see a whole lot of options open up. Plus Judgement!
I guy I know that was board with gunslinger was going into Grand Marshal (d20 name) to make his guy more interesting.
