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I'm hoping to get some opinions on the Gunslinger, is there a specific archetype that is better than others? Is this a high DPR class? do they provide much in the way of utility?
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Maybe, yes, hell no respectively. Musket Master is considerably easier to use in play than the variations which use TWF pistols for slightly more damage (a little more range, less misfires). Yes gunslinger does good damage. No, their utility is nonexistent - since fighters got advanced weapon/armor training the gunslinger has less utility than that class.
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Maybe, yes, hell no respectively. Musket Master is considerably easier to use in play than the variations which use TWF pistols for slightly more damage (a little more range, less misfires). Yes gunslinger does good damage. No, their utility is nonexistent - since fighters got advanced weapon/armor training the gunslinger has less utility than that class.
would you say a fighter is better?
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The usual question is 'Are Gunslingers Too Good???'
Generally speaking, you'll want to pick the Archetype that goes with the weapon/style you want to use:
- Musket Master for longer range but higher chance of misfire.
- Pistolero for 'up close' combat
- Bolt Ace if you want to do actual damage with a crossbow.
Things you might want to keep in mind:
- Before level 5, you won't miss your targets much, but you won't do a lot of damage when you hit. Once you hit level 5, the 'Dex to Damage' bonus kicks in.
- Past level 5, Gunslingers don't tend to get much, so player often multi-class at this point.
- You'll need the Rapid Reload feat + Alchemical Cartidges to get all your attacks on a full attack action.
- Alchemical Cartidges are a bit costly and can not be used with Weapon Blanches as they tend to explode.
- Dual-Weilding pistols always gets hung up on the 'need a free hand (not the one holding the gun) to reload' issue. There are ways around this, but they take a little bit of work and planning (Tiefling with a prehensile tail, Alchemical Discovery, and the Gun Twirling feat are a few of the classics)
- The bigger they are, the harder they fall: Seriously, the larger your opponent, the worse their Touch AC tends to be (We faced a dragon-like creature a while ago and its flat-footed AC was 28 for the Paladin and Ninja but only 8 for the Gunslinger).
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Gunslingers are pretty bad till lv5, then they do tons of damage all the time. And then they don't get any better after lv5. They have basically no class utility, so just what skills they have.
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trench fighter makes a better gunslinger than gunslinger nowadays to many things got nerfed for the gunslinger to be worth it anymore imo
By itself, the Trench Fighter archetype falls far short of Gunslingers in a 'normal' campaign due to its inability to clear or avoid misfires and the need to pay full cost for ammunition (it's a World War 1 era archetype, so it's not intended to wield a musket).
Now, throw in the Amateur Gunslinger and Gunsmithing feats, and you could probably make it work for pistols at least (You essentially need to be a Musket Master Gunslinger to get your full rate of fire from a Two-Handed firearm), but at that point you might as well just multi-class and get a full Grit pool.
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The class pretty badly needs an advanced gun training option to mirror fighter advanced weapon training.
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The Mysterious Stranger archetype is notable in that it's a little more MAD (heavily encouraging both good Dex and Charisma), and really pushes you to go a full 11 levels into the class to get Signature Deed (Focused Aim) in order to add both your Dex and Cha mod on all of your attacks (during your turn). It does have the downside of delaying the signature Dex to damage until 9th level (though that also makes taking the extra 2 levels to hit 11 much easier to swallow).
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The gunslinger is OK.
It can out-perform a dedicated archer's damage (slightly) in the right circumstances. The biggest drawback, unless using advanced firearms, is that at anything other than spitting distance (20 ft for pistols, 40 ft for a musket) you only target touch AC by spending 1 grit point per additional range increment per shot; against targets outside of that (very) short range, you are no better than an archer with a composite longbow (other than not having to invest in Str for the damage bonus)... worse, actually, as you start adding in the range penalties.
Not to mention the cost (both for the weapon and the ammunition), misfires, etc.
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The class pretty badly needs an advanced gun training option to mirror fighter advanced weapon training.
Or we just accept that separating fighter and gunslingers was a terrible idea to begin with, but frankly I wouldn't complain if they gave gunslingers and swashbucklers advanced weapon training options.
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Gunslinger 5th, Fighter (Trench Fighter) the rest of the way.
Pick up the Vital Strike feat chain so your single bullet shots are at least as good as if you went to the dead shot deed at 7th.
Named Bullet feat lets you use grit to make your own named bullets without the pesky limitations of SR, so you always have the option to make your own death bullets without worrying about annoyances such as having to pay for them.
Guess if you wanted to be really mean you could go Assassin easily enough. "One shot, one hit, one kill." ;)
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Maybe, yes, hell no respectively. Musket Master is considerably easier to use in play than the variations which use TWF pistols for slightly more damage (a little more range, less misfires). Yes gunslinger does good damage. No, their utility is nonexistent - since fighters got advanced weapon/armor training the gunslinger has less utility than that class.would you say a fighter is better?
For killing things at close range it's hard to beat a gunslinger. If you want utility as well as ranged damage you want to look elsewhere - a kineticist, an inquisitor, an eldritch archer magus, maybe a blaster sorcerer or mad bomber alchemist. A fighter is marginally worse at ranged damage, and can be marginally better at utility if you build it that way, but isn't a significant change really.
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I used a Pistolero in ROTR and absolutely dominated every single combat. Reloading is a total non issue if someone in the party can cast extended abundant ammunition, and two pistols will kick out serious damage.
I was using +3 Flaming, Cold, Acid, Electric Seeking pistols, one in each hand, but the ridiculous initiative bonuses, combined with 7 attacks each round combined with clustered shot to more or less ignore DR means gunslingers can kick out incredible damage up close, usually killing enemies before their turn.
For utility, you need the rest of the party, Gunslingers have no utility outside of murder. But in terms of outright damage, nothing else i've played as had such a consistently high damage output.
Damage output/turn = 21 + 7d8 + 7xDex(7 in this case) + 7d6 fire +7d6 acid +7d6 cold +7d6 electric. You do need to make an absolute mass of rolls though. The odds of you missing at high levels in close range are slim, hence assuming all 7 shots hit.
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For foes that don't have energy resistances they work plenty fine. Added bonus is that the entire group gets to see, in short order, if the gunslinger's target has immunity, resistance(s) and/or vulnerabilities to one of the primary four energy types. Downside is rare (energy absorption targets). Any standard critter with regeneration loses it with the first bullet unless they resist both energy types (highly unlikely). Tack on the "I don't care about concealment" aspect from seeking and that's some nasty firepower even when the targets largely ignore the bonus energy damage.
The abjuration fields that flare up with each impact will help the casters identify that the target is protected and that they might need to do something about it assuming it occurs from abjuration spells.
I'd probably have gone with bane (dragon, humanoid - giant, monstrous humanoid and outsider - evil) and holy on those pistols. But the visuals of those bad boys blazing away ... oh, very very impressive!
If the Gunslinger sees it and it's close enough, it will die under the withering hail of gunfire to the tune of of 101.5 averaged damage per round, not counting critical hits, misfires and - for the targets that are not at all resistant to any of the energy damage - another 126 points of assorted energy damage per round. Those poor bastards get mowed down by 227.5 hit points per round. Probably one-round wonders...
Added benefit of bypassing any retooling by the GM to have the enemy Wizards packing defensive feedback. Where the latter could potentially have caused some problems would have been with stoneskin, assuming the pistolero was generally going to work at 30' or closer.
Odds of missing at point-blank range are worse than the odds of landing critical hits. Presuming Improved Critical (pistol), you're averaging a x4 crit every second round while missing only once every third round. I like those odds! Per-round that puts the pistolero's average damage output at about ... mmmm, what, 130 plus bonus energy damage dice?
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A few more observations:by the time you can afford to even use guns you will have a gun with the enchant that completely removes misfire chance from most guns so no need for quick clear and fighter gets like 3 times as many bonus feats as gunslinger so picking up gunsmithing wont set them back muchtrench fighter makes a better gunslinger than gunslinger nowadays to many things got nerfed for the gunslinger to be worth it anymore imoBy itself, the Trench Fighter archetype falls far short of Gunslingers in a 'normal' campaign due to its inability to clear or avoid misfires and the need to pay full cost for ammunition (it's a World War 1 era archetype, so it's not intended to wield a musket).
Now, throw in the Amateur Gunslinger and Gunsmithing feats, and you could probably make it work for pistols at least (You essentially need to be a Musket Master Gunslinger to get your full rate of fire from a Two-Handed firearm), but at that point you might as well just multi-class and get a full Grit pool.
- Just noticed that the Trench Fighter archetype doesn't even get proficiency with firearms, so there's another feat you need to take. (again, it's a modern-ish era archetype, so firearms are presumed to be commonplace Martial weapons).
- If you are getting your full rate-of-fire from an early Firearm, your misfire chance is probably going to be at least 1-2, which means you need the Reliable (Greater) enchancement to completely negate it, which is a rather steep +3 cost. This means investing at least 32,000g in a single weapon.
- 'by the time you can afford to even use guns' is a rather silly restriction, as Gunslingers use them right off the bat (free gun and cheaper ammo right away). If you want to use a firearm, why wait?
- Gunslingers get a bonus feat at level 4, so 5 levels of fighter only gets you 2 more feats than 5 levels of Gunslinger, and once you add in Proficiency, Gunsmithing, and/or Amateur Gunslinger feats, the fighter is unlikely to be ahead on this point.
- Not a major factor by any means, but Gunslingers do get 4 skill points per level, along with Perception as a class skill.
I've seen the suggestion of going Gunslinger 5 / Trench Fighter X, but this is actually not a good idea: The 'dex to dmg' abilities do not stack, so that fighter archetype actually loses the Armor Mastery abilities for just bonus AC from cover: Multiclassing into fighter is fine, but there's bound to be a better archetype for you.
In conclusion, Trench Fighter + Early Firearms just don't mix particularly well.
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Lady-J, run-on sentences like that are confusing as Hell.
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while the archetype assumes modern firearms in campaigns were thats not common place it would be reasonable for the dm to also give them free fire arm proficiency,
Yeah, and Gunslingers would be ridiculous if we gave them a free battered Madsen Light Machine Gun at first level, so let's try to avoid the 'reasonable GM' argument...
most guns only have a 1 misfire chance so you only need the +1 enchantment reliable which will cost you 6000gold or 3000 gold if you can make it yourself
You basically need to use Alchemical Cartridges to get your full rate of fire from early firearms, which increases your misfire chance by 1, so pistols are a 1-2 misfire and muskets are a 1-3. Dwarves get a Favored Class Bonus (as Gunslingers only) to reduce the misfire chance, but it can not drop your misfire below 1, and there is some question as to how this interacts with the enhancement.
and you can normally only actually afford to use a gun after level 8 the bullets even when you make them yourself are to expensive at lower levels and your better off using a reach weapon until then,
Gunslingers get a free early firearm at 1st level, and ammunition is not that expensive at low levels (you won't get multiple attacks right away, so you can skip the more expensive Alchemical Cartridges for a level or two).
and correction the dex to dmg would work in conjunction with the gunslinger dex to dmg you would just have to pick a different gun to have it apply too so its not uselessGenerally speaking, this is one of the big reasons don't take Gunslinger without an archetype:
- Musket Master applies 'dex to damage' to all two-handed firearms (it's also the only way to get reloading a two-handed firearm down to a free action)
- Pistolero applies 'dex to damage' to all one-handed firearms.
- Pistolero using a Musket would only get one shot per round, so you are better off using pistols if the target is within range
- Musket Master using a Pistol is fairly pointless unless you want to dual wield, at which point it seems like your pistols are your major focus anyway
if you really wanted quick clear so bad
It's kinda hard to operate without it or a similar ability: Your first bad roll of the day puts your primary weapon out of action and will require an hour to repair if you have the Gunsmithing feat.
or your gm is being mean and not giving you the proficiency the archetype should have
I'm going to go out on a limb and say if you gave a WWI soldier a musket, he'd probably take a non-proficiency penalty with it. Honestly, I'd expect most GMs to ban the archetype all together (as PFS did) because WWI soldiers aren't roaming around most campaign worlds.
then gunslinger 1 trench fighter x would be far far better than gunslinger 5 trench fighter x
Well, the exact split is probably open for debate, but I'll just mention that Armor Mastery is not horrible for a dex-based character using a short-ish range weapon.
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using advanced weapons solves most of those issues
Yes it does ... however, there is currently exactly one point-of-access on Golarion for such firearms. Depending on the campaign they're no better than the pesh-induced dream-fantasies of Golarion's gunsmiths as they're simply not available, at any price.
Edit: the super-science-y-tech from Iron Gods is yet another matter as well. I don't have that AP, so someone else would have to speak as to how plausibly available any of that stuff is presuming a favorable conclusion of that AP.
Homebrew is an entirely different kettle of fish of course.
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using advanced weapons solves most of those issuesYes it does ... however, there is currently exactly one point-of-access on Golarion for such firearms. Depending on the campaign they're no better than the pesh-induced dream-fantasies of Golarion's gunsmiths as they're simply not available, at any price.
Edit: the super-science-y-tech from Iron Gods is yet another matter as well. I don't have that AP, so someone else would have to speak as to how plausibly available any of that stuff is presuming a favorable conclusion of that AP.
Homebrew is an entirely different kettle of fish of course.
Depending on how the AP ends,
- You have reliable access to Star Trek level tech. Mostly Original Series, maximum silliness included.
- Golarion may be about to be overrun by HR Giger horrors.