It occurs to me that all Sword and Pistol GS's should archetype

[Arachnofiend]

Drifters/Pistoleros that intend to use melee weapons have a distinct issue that their accuracy is naturally worse with the melee weapon. You can fix this by taking certain archetypes that make your weapon proficiency scale as your highest proficiency, like Mauler to get legendary in bastard swords. I'm pretty sure I'm not misinterpreting this because this is already an understood interaction with Fighter's Weapon Mastery class feature and getting legendary scaling in multiple "groups".

Not sure if this is an unintended interaction, or if it's even a bad one, but it's something worth thinking about.

[Serial Loafer]

I kind of feel like drifters at least should be able to maintain proficiency parity with their chosen melee group, especially considering that they're likely to end up meleeing more than shooting.

[Sagiam]

I just noticed this while looking at the pirate archetype (for obvious reasons) and specifically the Pirate Weapon Training

AON wrote:

You're particularly skilled at wielding traditional pirate weapons. You become trained with the following weapons: hatchet, rapier, scimitar, and whip. Whenever you gain a class feature that grants you expert or greater proficiency with a given weapon or weapons, you also gain that proficiency rank for these weapons.

It does seem like a "so good, must take" option.

[TheGentlemanDM]

It was mentioned elsewhere, but the developers were floating around the idea that each Gunslinger's Way got certain proficiencies alongside their firearms proficiency.

So the Drifter got one-handed axes and swords at legendary scaling, the Pistolero got weapons with the Thrown trait, and the Sniper got bombs.

Reintegrating this would solve the archetype issue.

[Squiggit]

Making it specifically swords and axes seems weird. The Drifter is pretty weapon type agnostic. Giving the scaling for free to a Drifter with a sword but not a Drifter who uses a knife, hammer or fist feels arbitrarily restrictive.

I do think something along those lines should happen though, otherwise, archetypes for proficiency are just too good.

[Lightdroplet]

Squiggit wrote:

Making it specifically swords and axes seems weird. The Drifter is pretty weapon type agnostic. Giving the scaling for free to a Drifter with a sword but not a Drifter who uses a knife, hammer or fist feels arbitrarily restrictive.

I do think something along those lines should happen though, otherwise, archetypes for proficiency are just too good.

Maybe a better way to do it would be to move the "choose a group to become a master in" level 13 feature down and make it so that it brings the chosen group to be equal to your firearm proficiency instead of keeping it one proficiency level behind. It still wouldn't step on the Fighter's niche as Fighter eventually scales up to Legendary in everything, whereas this would cap out at Legendary in Firearms/Crossbows+ 1 other group.

[Ascalaphus]

How is getting to two groups Legendary at the time when the fighter goes Legendary in only a single group at that level not stepping on toes?

[Lightdroplet]

Ascalaphus wrote:

How is getting to two groups Legendary at the time when the fighter goes Legendary in only a single group at that level not stepping on toes?

Oh, I didn't think about the intermediary levels, and just looked at the end result. My mistake.

[Squiggit]

Ascalaphus wrote:

How is getting to two groups Legendary at the time when the fighter goes Legendary in only a single group at that level not stepping on toes?

Drifter is built around using two completely different types of weapons together, so it's necessary. The fighter isn't.

Plus the Drifter is currently capped out at expert with most other weapons.

[PossibleCabbage]

Being able to make my classic-pirate drifter as "just as comfortable in a swordfight as shooting" does fix a lot of the "two unrelated weapons" problems because a pirate should expect to rely on their sword more than their pistol, and the pistol should be a change-up or "option for killing people who are far away" than you bread and butter.

Which makes it seem like you'd be better off starting in fighter so you could be legendary with your cutlass* and a master with your pistol, then picking up gun stuff with an archetype.

*cutlass rules pending.

[Exocist]

Sure it might make thematic sense, but it’s a large mechanical issue when you have a class feat or ancestry feat giving you +2 to hit with your weapon.

[Candlejake]

Maybe the drifter subclass should get proficiency in a melee weapon group. But only that subclass. Otherwise that whole subclass is just fckin weird. Its weird already with the reloading issue, which i hope is fixed in the base class and not a 1st level class feat. Because the latter would feel like a required, but not fun by itself feat. Unless you tack some other bonus to it or allow to reload two weapons at the same time as well

[The-Magic-Sword]

At the moment, this applies to dual wielding pistolero, they want that sweet, sweet dual weapon reload.

[Taja the Barbarian]

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

At the moment, this applies to dual wielding pistolero, they want that sweet, sweet dual weapon reload.

Yep, definitely seems like Dual-Weapon Reload should be a baseline Gunslinger feat.

[OCEANSHIELDWOLPF 2.0]

The first playtest report in the official Playtest reporting thread would seem to agree with the original post...well maybe not that ALL should, but this one did!