I decided to create a 9th level sniper to help imagine how some of the features of the gunslinger would work out. My goal for this character was to focus on crit fishing to try and stack up huge amounts of damage, but at the end of the day I'm not sure the build is really satisfying as it ended up seeming pretty clumsy even though I think that this kind of character should be possible to execute on.
The main problem is the action economy. This problem comes from the inherent problems of guns in general, but also from how the various feats the gunslinger gets don't quite synergize in a way that really makes me excited. There are also issues of complexity and overall damage output which might be even more of a problem.
Unfortunately, I made the character on paper so I'll have to post the details in text form. I'm also playing with the free archetype variant. It's possible I made some mistakes here, but I'm more interested in the big picture anyways.
Level 9
Str - 10
Dex - 18
Con - 18
Int - 12
Wis - 12
Cha - 16
Ancestry: Razortooth goblin
Ancestry feats: Very Sneaky, Twitchy, Goblin Scuttle
Skill feats: Intimidating glare (background), Assurance athletics, Cat fall, Powerful leap, Swift sneak
General feats: Fleet, Incredible initiative
Class feats: Firearm ace, Risky reload, Running reload, Shattering shot, Shooter's aim
Archetype feats: Rogue dedication, Sneak attacker, Nimble dodge, Dread striker
Skills:
Master in Intimidate (background) and Stealth
Trained in Acrobatics, Athletics, Crafting, Deception, Performance, Survival, Thievery, Warfare lore
Gear:
+1 Striking Shock Arquebus
+1 Resilient Leather armor
Demon mask
Boots of bounding speed
A bunch of lesser bombs for hitting weaknesses with shattering shot
How I imagine playing this character is avoiding notice to roll a really good stealth check to kick off combat - when I go before an enemy they're flat-footed due to the rogue dedication - which might let me steady and then make a vital shot or move and make a shooter's aim shot. On later rounds I'd running reload or risky reload and hopefully hide or intimidate to get even more sneak attacks in at hopefully a rate of 1/round.
This scenario brings up the issue of complexity while calculating damage. There are 5? boolean variables to consider: regular hit/critical hit, firearm ace, flat-footed target, one shot one kill and vital shot. That's like 32 combinations? Not only that, but the fatal trait makes things even more complicated. Do I also double the bleed from vital shot on a critical hit?
Anyways, I roughly calculated the max damage to be 8d12 + 12 p/b + 6d6 precision + 2d6 shock + 4d6 bleed which averages to 92 damage or 118 with 1 round of bleed. That's a lot of damage! But it requires a ton of setup and can only be done once per combat and requires everything to go perfectly because of the huge burden these special feats take on the action economy. I quickly calculated how much a giant instinct barbarian does on a crit (with a fatal d12 weapon) and it's around 73 with a single action and basically no setup whatsoever (other than closing the distance which they are pretty great at doing). I'm sure rogues or crossbow rangers could beat this character in a pure damage race as well... These classes also can just do these huge amounts of damage with no real feat investment - this is just the baseline scenario.
Even in the most ideal situation I won't be dishing out the kind of damage that I need to put out to really compete. And it's incredibly complicated. And stuff like shooter's aim doesn't synergize with vital shot at all which is pretty frustrating - if shooter's aim was just a better "steady" action that gave you a +2 circumstance on your next shot that'd at least be an improvement. Unlike many other classes, hasting this character really doesn't help much because that won't let you reload or use any of the special attacks like risky reload or shooter's aim with the extra action.
I think that either the damage needs to be increased, vital shot is just added onto the first shot like one shot one kill is, many of these action-saving feats need to be class features instead, the action-saving feats should be even more efficient, and/or changes need to be made to things like vital shot and shooter's aim to work better together.
For anyone who made it this far, thanks for reading. I doubt this character is in any way optimal, but it's the type of character I'd like to be able to play.
I haven't gotten to playtest yet, and I might not get a chance at all before the test ends, so maybe it's different in real life. Buuut I kind of doubt it.
