Short lvl 3 Playtest - PFS Quest #2 - Slight Spoilers


Gunslinger Class

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I debated on whether to add this since the session was rather short. However every little bit helps I suppose.

Also, to preference this, I typically stay away from straight up martial classes as I like to have a lot of things to do and various options that caster and/or support characters generally present. So take this feedback with a grain of salt.

Lvl 3
Goblin, Razortooth
Gunslinger Feats: Firearm Ace, Risky Reload
Weapon: +1 Flintlock Musket

The quest starts with a basic skill challenge which pits the party members head-to-head against martial arts students. While I didn't have a lot of skills trained as a Gunslinger, I did have many of the DEX based skills trained (Acrobatics, Stealth, Thievery) which really played into these skill challenges nicely. So I participated and was successful.

In the fight, I found myself in a repeating rotation. Load, Fire, Rapid Reload. Each turn was a rinse and repeat. The first round I moved slightly closer to an enemy (as free action) and set myself up in the corner of the room. I then started my rotation above. I never varied from this rotation the entire fight (which was fairly long with 6 rounds).

I received 1 critical which did some major damage. The rest of my attacks were all hits. I only missed one time (with first attack, not risky reload) so accuracy wasn't an issue, but damage outside of the crit was very underwhelming.

I intended to demoralize (had Intimidation trained), but it never seemed like it would do any real good. I wasn't missing, and doing that would mean one less attack so the slight chance of getting more of a crit didn't seem worth losing an attack and only attacking once in the round.

Firearm ace just seems mandatory. I made multiple versions of the Gunslinger before playing, and anything that lacked Firearm Ace just seemed lacking. As such, I really think this should be baked into the class rather than a feat.

In the end, the RP was pretty fun, the class performance just didn't lend to a fun style of play for me personally.


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That reflects a recent game I had too - a lot of chip damage with high accuracy rolls and then sometimes you crit for massive damage. Similar attack routine too - I used Risky Reload, Reload, Strike usually.

I agree on Firearm Ace. The closest comparison is probably a crossbow ranger, but the Precision edge adds that extra 1d8 per turn and that great improves your baseline without Crossbow Ace (adding an average 3.5 per shot) significantly. I think on average the precision ranger without Ace hits as hard as the Gunslinger with it, in fact. The gunslinger's higher accuracy helps, but the utter lack of flat damage on anything but Blunderbuss hurts at low levels.

The variation from Firearm Ace or not does go down over time since it only adds +1 average per die, but +3 average is a lot when your weapon is a 1d6 baseline. It literally doubles your damage per hit to boost that to 1d8+2.

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