Firearms and all about it

[Seisho]

I wanted to share my first thoughts about firearms and in the mean time invite to talk more about specificly those.
(Partially because there don't seem to be very many threads focussing solely on the firearms and they are usually linked to other stuff.

So without further waiting, step by step my personal impressions with little side notes

Traits
-Fatal: I love this. I was always for Firearms having fatal as trait. It just hits the right spot.

-Versatile: Makes perfectly sense. Makes me wonder a little why PF2 removed the ability to deal two types of damage at once. Easier calculations?

The New Traits
-Scatter: Seems largely a solid trait. It seems a little niche, more like a sidearm trait to me. Admittedly I could never warm up to scatter weapons in anything but an actual FPS

-Sniper: The ranged variation of Backstabber. It is literally the same trait in all but name. As with backstabber I think it is rather weak. The worth is still higher since it levels the field to propulsive weapons. It could be something on Future bows and crossbows. (Advanced Elven bow *eyebrow wiggle*)

-Unsteady: Now this is a harsh one. -2 hit penalty if you don't spend an extra action on an either way action starved weapon. Either every round or with a tripod that probably ruins your mobility. Historically Arquebus had a fork rest which seems way simpler and more mobile. Considering the ammount of incredible dangerous and fast beasts out there it seems almost like a must to have something better then a tripod.

The Simple Guns
-Flintlock Musket: I really like this one. It seems to be roughly at the level of a light crossbow but I can already feel the glee in critically hitting an enemy to mess them up really good. (at the cost of averagely 1-4 points of base damage) I have the strong feeling this could be at the moment the go-to firearm for two-handed firearm users

-Flintlock Musket: I have very mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand I love it for the same reasons as Musket. On the other hand...oh do I despise d4s...

-Hand Cannon: I find the concept of a gun you can just shove scrap in and shoot it around very amusing. It should maybe have cheaper ammo or special rules for scrounging shot? powder of course still has to be paid

The Martial Guns
-Arquebus: The most brutal Firearm. In damage as well as ooportunity cost.
At least you won't get into trouble for wanting to reload it while dual wielding. But seriously, you have to invest an extra action every turn if you want to be able to use running reload or you are just sitting in place. Most of my problems with this weapon admittedly stem from my problems with unsteady

-Blunderbuss: It feels a little like the damage type should also be modular. Blunderbuss are the archetypical 'shove something in and fire it' Weapons. (And I think the gm should feel free to give or take weird properties if you stuff...stuff into it)

-Dueling Pistol: It's a friggin onehanded musket you can hide in your pocket (they are not just happy to see me :P ) for the cost of 10 range.
Probably the go-to Weapon for one-handed or dual wielding...oh wait...
well for gunslinger who use only onehanded firearms.

The big Missed Opportunity
Firearms with Magazines.
Even a Pistol or Musket with two barrels (or three, or four) would have been a great opportunity to test how this influences the whole action economy.

The big Winners
-Ranger should be excellent with Firearms right out of the gate. Their Precision Edge and Running Reload work perfectly for a Sniper fighting style.

-Fighter is also in a good spot, but they probably need a little Multiclass support to really make it work action wise (or just use the Firearm as devastating backup weapon)

-Investigator: Stratagem with a ranged fatal weapon? Yes please! where do I sign up?

-Bastion: Since they learn how to have a hand free with their shield strapped they get a new level of tactical options.

The big Loser
-Wizards: because they can't shoot at all.
I wonder if there will be a new version of that wizard sniper archetype (maybe as Arcane thesis? that would actually be cool)
At least with the new misfire mechanics there wont be a flat 5% chance of exploding every turn.

[Loreguard]

Regarding your comment about missing out on the magazine and dual barrel weapons, I agree, and think it would have been nice to playtest a solution for them. (but perhaps they feared a miss on it would make too powerful a weapon and skew the general take on guns?)

It seems like ideally, a multi-barrel weapons shouldn't just be absolutely better in all things than a single barrel one other than money (which depending on scale might be seen as better due to runes even if costing more than double, for instance.

A couple thoughts quickly.

We've heard discussion of both capacity by way of extra barrels, as well as capacity via something like a revolver. In theory, at higher levels of technology there could be actual changeable magazines.

Obviously, when a single barrel weapon misfires, you have to clear it to shoot again. But what about a 2 barrel variant. What if after any misfire, the one barrel is blocked, but the other barrel can be fire, but the weapon suffers from the misfire chance even if it had been maintained. The idea being it would suffer from the misfire chance until both barrels have been cleaned, or you could simply have it apply the misfire chance to the other barrel once. If it misfires, obviously that barrel would then be fouled.

A revolver type magazine would have one barrel, so you would have to take a round to clear the misfire, but perhaps you need to spend an additional round checking the revolver mechanism, or your next shot is subject to the misfire chance.

This would mean that doing riskier things with the multi-capacity firearms increases the risk of pushing it, giving you a tradeoff between extra capacity and riskier maneuvers.

If the weapon isn't maintained, this doesn't' change anything unless you decide firing a unmaintained weapon after such a misfire without fully clearing everything, not just the barrel, might increase the DC of the flat check.

Two barreled versions of weapons, you might make cost 3 times as much, might increase the bulk one step. Revolver style weapons might tend not to have higher bulk, but might cost capacity squared times for the cost. So a 3 shot revolver, might cost 9x gold, while a 5 shot revolver might cost more like 25x the cost of a single shot. Perhaps if you have a 3barrelled version, might see it costing something like 5x or 6x cost.

I imagine that multi-barreled weapons may increase the expected level of the object by at least one. The revolver variants, probably will bump items up a couple levels.

Actual quick change magazine weapons seem like an even higher advancement. They seem to be something that would change reload weapons into something as fast to fire as a bow, if not faster. They thus seem to be something that would compete with magic fundamental runes and such.

[Dubious Scholar]

Modular needs to be changed for ranged weapons I feel - an action to change damage type doesn't make sense when that amounts to "load different ammo". The problem being is you're basically spending an action to change which ammo pouch you reach into during reload (why) or you're spending an action to change the damage type of what you already loaded (how?).

Maybe they just need to have multiple ammo types? B rounds, P rounds, etc.

Not sure about the damage of the firearms right now - mainly it feels Firearm Ace is mandatory (it literally doubles your damage per shot if you don't crit) and they're very swingy between crit and non-crit damage output. Which... well, crossbows are less swingy a bit, and ranger tends to go Precision when using them for obvious reasons which adds some extra damage on top of Crossbow Ace and now you're doing 1d10+1d8+2 at level 1.

[Angel Hunter D]

Yeah, I'm seeing the big issue being that unless you crit your damage isn't worth the Reload, even if you do crit I'm not so sure - in play I've found a bow outdamages guns pretty consistently.

Then Sniper is Backstabber, so redundant, and Unsteady just isn't fun and not worth it.

Last issue is I've spent so much time testing the gear I don't know if the class is any good or if all my experiences are because of the guns.

[Inquisitive Tiefling]

I had the idea of certain firearms having an additional trait, called "Capacity/Magazine X", the number being how much ammunition the weapon could store before needing to reload. For example, a revolver could have the trait "Magazine 6" (probably lower like 4 or 5 realistically), meaning it can be fired six times consecutively before needing to reload.

The tradeoff? Having Reload 2 or even Reload 3, so that after you fire off everything- which a Gunslinger will probably do frequently, given all their strike and reaction options- you're going to be forced to duck out of the fight for a turn so as to reload, or reach for a backup weapon.

[YuriP]

To be honest I don't know if I like the idea of magazines. They can make the flintlock weapons too obsolete. But revolvers and even Revolving long guns is cool and fells more balanced once that they reloads are more complex and slow.

Inquisitive Tiefling wrote:

The tradeoff? Having Reload 2 or even Reload 3, so that after you fire off everything- which a Gunslinger will probably do frequently, given all their strike and reaction options- you're going to be forced to duck out of the fight for a turn so as to reload, or reach for a backup weapon.

I don't think they need a complex trade-off, just be an advanced weapons and have to reload a bullet per action, maybe 2 if the char have some kind of fast reload ability. This can make the things more fun, after a character discharge the gun it runs and take cover and reload (or reload during run and take cover if it have some move and reload ability).

That way it can chose if is better reload the revolver entirely or if is better just reload some bullets and fire in same turn.