Though I currently don't allow firearms in my homebrew setting, when we wrap up this campaign I'm thinking of allowing the very primitive ones in the next one. The pepperbox pistol may not be one of those allowed, but I was just reading the description and as I understand the rules firing all 6 rounds are a free action. I just watched a few videos of people firing them and if anything firing one is a full action. The ones I watched had automatic rotation of barrels (not by hand) but I just can't believe the weapon can be fired as a free action. If this is the case, and I allow the pepperbox pistol I'm going to have to houserule it as such. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the rules behind it (I freely admit that chance exists).
Anyway, that was just rambling around my head and I thought I'd start a thread that will likely get out of hand over something.. lol
I believe you're still bound to the number of attacks you can normally make per round. Just because you can rotate the barrel doesn't mean you'll be able to fire the gun via PF's rules. This basically means you can only unload the entire barrel as a 20th level character with full BAB progression, hasted and with Rapid Shot. And they'll need to have access to alchemical cartridges and Rapid Reload to be able to do so every round as it is. Also bear in mind it has a 1-2 misfire, so any given shot has a 10% chance to misfire if they haven't gotten it enchanted to reduce misfire chance.
I would assume they'd be about as difficult to find as many magic items in your game, and a player would need exotic weapon proficiency to use one unless you allow gunslingers into the game. If you really want to keep guns as a mysterious, novel technology that few have even heard of, much less mastered, then you'll probably want to make alchemical cartridges rare or nonexistent and ban gunslingers and any gun-focused archetypes.
The pepperbox pistol doesn't allow itself to be fired as a free action, instead what it does is it allows you to rotate the barrel as a free action allowing you access to another loaded shot without actually reloading the gun(at least until you fire all six shots). Which isn't even that useful of an ability seeing as at least for pistols with rapid reload and alchemical cartridges you can get free action reloads anyways, and the same can be done with 2-Handed firearms with the Musket Master archetype for Gunslinger.
If you do allow firearms in your next campaign be sure to make use of the updated double-barrelled firearms. The old versions allowed you to take a -4 penalty to attack to effectively double the number of attacks you could make. The updated version simply allows you to take a standard action to fire two shots at the same target with a -4 penalty.
Thanks, guys. As far as allowing Gunslingers in the game, I'm pretty doubtful about that. I'll just make firearms exotic or perhaps their own weapons category and dang, DANG rare to find. In my setting Dwarves are extremely xenophobic and don't have much to do with the outside races, and for some reason they seem to be the perfect race to have developed such weapons. I dunno, it's just a gut feeling I have regarding my thoughts on the next campaign, though it's a long way off.
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I mean, Emerging Firearms is the state of the Golarion setting, which is what most of the content is being made for. The rules already account for firearms being their own weapon category, exotic weapons and hard to find.
Gunslingers are supposed to be equal parts gunfighters and their own gunsmiths. Nobody else could probably make the guns for them, so they have to do it all themselves.
Mechanically, they aren't that hot, honestly. They might hit more often, but any bow archer has been outpacing a given Gunslinger for far longer at any level. I have an archer ranger who took Skill Focus as her human bonus feat instead of Precise Shot, and I think she would still outpace a gunslinger 1st-5th level because she has favoured enemy, about as much accuracy and way more tools available to her. And an animal companion and spellcasting down the road.
I think people overestimate how powerful gunslingers are by conflating their power with the power of archers. Archery is the best build type, and gunslingers are just hyperspecailized archers with more feat taxes and weird rules.
Edit: OH. And they reload slow. REAL slow. You thought crossbows were bad. Okay, crossbows still suck because you don't have access to any means from equipment to increase load speeds, but a pistol takes, normally, a standard action to shoot, standard action to reload. So it has, without feat support, a grand total of 1 attack per two round. With rapid reload, that goes down to a move action reload, so now you are as a good as a light crossbow without feat support, for a feat. With alchemical cartridges (basically, wax paper bullets), you go down to a free action. But they are expensive. REALLY expensive. 16gp a bullet, or 8gp for the gunslinger to craft on their own.
Two-handed firearms have it worse. They are a full-round action to reload, then standard action with rapid reload, then move action with an alchemical cartridge. They never get free action reloads outside of playing a Musket Master.
Huge feat taxes, slower-paced increase in power, with a reliance on a build type with a considerable amount of feat taxes. They only thing keeping them competitive is Dex to Damage and attacking touch AC.
Gunslinger only does one thing: shoot it. If a player gets bored with a fighter, because the continual stream of full attack (or move to be able to full attack next round), they'll get tired of Gunslinger quite quickly. If you keep track of ammo, they'll really dislike it. Sure they hit things with most shots, but the damage isn't great, and if they want the free action reload they'll be consuming several gold with each shot.
Not to mention the huge array of feats needed to be really good. All the archery feats, plus whichever solution to AoO they choose, plus specialty deed feats of they want to be flashy. All for 1d6 +Dex mod+ Enhance damage. Providing you use the reasonable double barrel stats, and enforce the complications that two weapon fighting with pistols brings (say goodbye to even more feats), Gunslinger is just a steady ranged damage dealer.