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After a bit of consideration and gameplay, I have a few notes that I want to put together, and at least in regards to Gunslingers, there are some very good points, some issues, and a few oddities, which I'll try to highlight. Let's start by saying I ran one session using reloading strike as a two-action activity and I felt pretty dumb after, so that won't count.
The Ways
Premise: I like all three and I think they function well mechanically, with Sniper possibly being the most close-to-end as far as I can tell. They are well distinguished and mechanically different, all working well to offset the action cost of reload and provide benefits that fit each theme. There are, however, two issues of style.
First, no matter how we tried to handle it, Rebounding Assault felt weird and cartoonish. I understand there's some sort of movie reference there, but it's not pervasive enough to make it a "classic" move, and it was mostly taken as a "nevermind the flavour, just test the mechanics". Thing is... even the mechanic kind of gave some issue, as the move is a bit of a mid reward, high risk. While you ignore MAP, you need two successes to deal 1d6 extra damage, and if either of those miss you lose your melee weapon and the extra damage. Personally, I wouldn't mind losing the thrown weapon either way (sometimes you want to have a free hand, sometimes you need a big finisher) as that would fix both flavour and risk (by making it default), in exchange for a slightly higher reward (scaling bonus damage? Some debuff as the blade is stuck in the enemy? An extra dice on crits? Or even just nothing, the move is not weak right now). Bypassing MAP is definitely the highlight of this deed, but the required suspension of disbelief is a little off.
Second, the way of the pistolero is in an odd place. I mentioned in the live interview how Pistolero didn't feel like the one-weapon way it was intended, and that is because the two-weapon deed is not optional but baked in. In my opinion, Finish the Job makes for a great feat for those slingers that want to delve into the world of TWFing, but isn't very appropriate for a style that supposedly supports single-weapons. While it may be seen as a Drifter must-have, I th- you know what, why not making it the lv9 Drifter deed? Yeah it's powerful but we said it right above, removing MAP is Rebounding Assault's highlight. This isn't far off. Anyways, that was extemporary while I was typing, I still feel like it's better off as a Drifter option or a feat and not a baked Pistolero deed.
Sniper felt amazing in play and we had a lot of fun trying to set up Vital Shots and working together to get the best out of it. This is the way.
The Feats
Most were fairly straightforward and pretty neat. A few seem very undertuned but they're far and inbetween, and I will address those, but one that stands out is Firearm Ace because it's not very immediate. Firearm Ace is clearly a parallel to Crossbow Ace (and I expect Crossbow Ace will return in a Gunslinger form), but carries two important differences: first, it lasts until the end of your turn rather than next turn, meaning reactions will not benefit from it. Considering how many reactions gunslinger has, this is notable. It might not be a real issue, because gun reactions are likely crit and crits stun and stun disrupts turns, so the damage is not the relevant part, but it's there. The other, however, is the dice increase on guns. See, a major component of gun damage is Fatal, and Fatal does not increase with this feat, and as a result the damage boost from this is much more reduced than it would seem. The two notes combined mean that Firearm Ace is much weaker than Crossbow Ace, and I feel like there's some issue there.
Amazing feats were Hit the Dirt (and its upgrade, Return Fire), which is a bit narrow but rich in flavour and benefits, Sword and Pistol, which enabled a lot of interplay between attacks, all of the Misfire feats (more of those pls), Pistol Twirl, Alchemical Shot, Called Shot and many more. One particular note was that there was a lot of discussion on Dual-Weapon Reload being added as a core feat for all gunslingers, and personally I agree. While reloading aids were abundant, a way to circumvent hand requirements is still needed at times, and right now that is locked behind Reloading Strike (Drifter only). Especially with the Pistolero issue highlighted above, or even if that was turned into a general class feat, we'd need one for everyone. Drifter can have the best, but not the only. My one session of playtest where I played with 2-action Reloading Strike has shown that just ignoring hand requirement is not very powerful, but still incredibly useful (don't worry, 1-action reloading strike is perfectly fine as it is).
There are also some notably undertuned feats. Cover Fire (narrow usage, lowish benefit), which could benefit from requiring only that the enemy is capable of taking cover, allowing it to work on enemies adjacent to columns or table without requiring them to be behind or under them, or to not give them the choice (as it is, the enemy can just choose to ignore it); Warning Shot allows you to circumvent the language trait, add 10-20ft to the range... and little else, in exchange for a bullet and a reload action. If it allowed multiple targets, or even to apply the weapon's item bonus to the check, it might feel a bit better; Blast Lock and Cauterize feel like narrow utility feats to use firearms instead of skills - which is neat, but definitely on the low end of class feats. Perhaps they could be implemented as Uncommon skill feats, with a slinger class feat allowing you to gain both at once (or several similar feats, and one feat to pick two, or various class feats giving two each), or just be different usage of a single unified Firearm Utility feat. Note that Pistol Twirl is definitely skill-based, but combat-oriented enough that it fits neatly in the power budget, especially when combined with Vital Shot.
High level feats seem in a pretty good spot, only exception being Perfect Readiness which, while allowing free action reloads, does so at a point where slinger has a TON of options for improving her reload-based action economy. Perhaps something to consider.
The Guns
A long time ago, when the CRB just released, I had written my own draft of gun rules, like many more.
Time to quote myself:
Firearms in PF2 discussions seem to follow mainly two lines of thought. On one side, they have to be easy to use, just imprecise and prone to mishaps. On the other, they're rare, so difficult to handle right, but great if you learn. I'd have to say I fall into the second camp, mostly because we've seen how negative traits have been received with Volley and the armour discussions
It was an interesting realisation to see that paizo falls into a third camp, where guns are easy to use (point and squeeze) but have no major drawbacks. I like that. It was also interesting to see the dichotomy of low damage regular strikes with high damage, devastating crits. I also like that. The critical specialisation is insanely powerful and can massively disrupt a turn in a reaction, but reactions with guns tend to be a gunslinger thing, so that's a class boost and I still like that.
I... don't like the versatile trait on them. While bullets are hard to place between bludgeoning and piercing, versatile tends to be a little hard to justify after shooting, which is why I'd rather have the Modular trait applied to all of them, with the text changed to something like "when reloading this weapon, you can determine the type of damage it will deal".Additionally, the Sniper trait is nothing but a reprint of Backstabber, and we've seen Backstabber ranged weapons before (I play with an Assassin in my group, so they show up). We're reinventing guns, not wheels. Keep it simple.
If I had to suggest any extra traits, I would probably go with something that lets guns ignore or reduce the penalty from firing prone. It would fulfill the fantasy of sniping from prone and combine well with Hit the Dirt.
Next on the ticket is Misfire. Misfire as it is now only enters play when a weapon is used on a risky effect by a Gunslinger, and fails. It's a drawback for a risk/reward mechanic and does that pretty well. That's good. Misfire also has a lot of text that basically tells you not to read it. That's bad, especially because it also calls for you to make a roll before making an attack (or more accurately, it tells you not to make it). It can be rewritten to the effect of "when a weapon misfires, the attack becomes a critical failure and you must spend an Interact action to clear the jam before you can reload and fire again", and work exactly as presented. And... honestly, I wouldn't mind. While I know some people want guns to be unreliable jamming messes, there is no point to them having a jamming mechanic unless it's usable. Scratch that, there's no point in a mechanic unless it's used, and nobody will want to use it unless there's benefits to it. Hence, no point. Guns work fine as they are, with no need for extra text. If you truly want a Misfire effect, tie it to guns being submerged in water or exposed to live flames such as ongoing fire damage. Anything that has a chance of actually happening.
Last is Blackbeard. Again, for clarity, Blackbeard. I have to be able to stat this guy, and the only way to do that is by letting the "consumable gun" style of play function at any level that is not just first level. We need Guns&Gears to give a response to the age-old question of enchanted one-off weapons, beyond the boring "pay this Returning/Reloading rune and ignore the bad rule". No, I don't want to ignore reload, and I don't want a self-reloading gun or a reloading mechanical spider (tho they may have their place in some form); I want 'reloading using gunslinger feats' and 'going through a number of guns' to be roughly on a similar playing field. And, if we have this chance, I'd love a similar take on thrown weapons, because right now returning thrown knives do not even work (they're Twin, meaning if you have a returning knife you won't get the benefit - they're literally built to have a number of them). I wrote something about this, suggesting the Bandoleer of Expendable Pew Pews for granting short-lived benefits to a narrow group of weapons, giving way to a concept of ignoring reload for a few shots before falling back to having to reload. Perhaps that's the right path, perhaps it isn't, but we need to get somewhere close. No teleports or connections to the elemental plane of gunpowder, pls. Just let me drop my empty guns.
All in all, I love the slinger, I like the mechanics, and I love the flavour. Keep it up and smooth out a few edges, we have a great class in the making.
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I didn't realize that lying/ducking down to rest an arquebus against something on the ground to ignore unsteady would inflict prone penalties
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
I was planning to completely ignore the tripod.
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It was an interesting realisation to see that paizo falls into a third camp, where guns are easy to use (point and squeeze) but have no major drawbacks. I like that. It was also interesting to see the dichotomy of low damage regular strikes with high damage, devastating crits. I also like that. The critical specialisation is insanely powerful and can massively disrupt a turn in a reaction, but reactions with guns tend to be a gunslinger thing, so that's a class boost and I still like that.
I think their major drawback is that their damage is quite poor on average due to being able to attack half as often as non-reload weapons, even when accounting for crits. They aren't terrible compared to crossbows, but nobody relying on doing damage uses crossbows (except some precision ranger builds that likely aren't optimal).
I think if Firearms are released as is then the Gunslinger is going to have a damage problem when compared to other martial classes, and the utility feats aren't quite there as it stands.
The critical specialisation is insanely powerful and can massively disrupt a turn in a reaction, but reactions with guns tend to be a gunslinger thing, so that's a class boost and I still like that.
That isn't how Stunned works. When Stunned includes a value then it removes that many actions total, you don't lose reactions and you don't lose all of your actions if someone readied actions to stun you as soon as your turn starts. It's only if the Stunned has no value that it makes you stop acting completely.
There are two somewhat contradictory lines in Stunned, but one of them is a general description of the condition and the other is more specific to what happens when you gain Stunned with a value.
From Stunned: "You've become senseless. You can't act while stunned. Stunned usually includes a value, which indicates how many total actions you lose, possibly over multiple turns, from being stunned. ...Stunned might also have a duration instead of a value, such as “stunned for 1 minute.” In this case, you lose all your actions for the listed duration."
Also note the Callout box near Quickened under Conditions: "Quickened, slowed, and stunned are the primary ways you can gain or lose actions on a turn. The rules for how this works appear on page 462. In brief, these conditions alter how many actions you regain at the start of your turn; thus, gaining the condition in the middle of your turn doesn’t adjust your number of actions on that turn."
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There are two somewhat contradictory lines in Stunned, but one of them is a general description of the condition and the other is more specific to what happens when you gain Stunned with a value.
From Stunned: "You've become senseless. You can't act while stunned. Stunned usually includes a value, which indicates how many total actions you lose, possibly over multiple turns, from being stunned. ...Stunned might also have a duration instead of a value, such as...
That's precisely why stunned works the way it does.
You can't act while you have the stunned condition, period. The condition doesn't go away until the start of your next turn, though (when you regain actions) so getting stunned mid-turn causes you to lose the rest of that turn and actions on the turn after.
Intended? Very likely not.
There are two somewhat contradictory lines in Stunned, but one of them is a general description of the condition and the other is more specific to what happens when you gain Stunned with a value.
From Stunned: "You've become senseless. You can't act while stunned. Stunned usually includes a value, which indicates how many total actions you lose, possibly over multiple turns, from being stunned. ...Stunned might also have a duration instead of a value, such as...That's precisely why stunned works the way it does.
You can't act while you have the stunned condition, period. The condition doesn't go away until the start of your next turn, though (when you regain actions) so getting stunned mid-turn causes you to lose the rest of that turn and actions on the turn after.
Intended? Very likely not.
The callout box under Quickened explicitly contradicts this.
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In my opinion, gunslinger should add 3 level 1 core features
- 1) Reload ace, which works the same as Crossbow ace but for any reload weapon with a reload of 1 or greater. Because otherwise Firearm/Crossbow/Sling Ace will be feat tax for their respective builds.
- 2) A feature that lets them reload with both hands full. Not dual weapon reload, and not a feat (because it would be feat tax). The reason I say not dual weapon reload is because then dual-weapon slingers would never be able to use any reload+x as one action feats.
- 3) Running reload should just be a first level class feature, or if not running reload a feature that lets you step + reload as a 1a flourish, with feats that build on what else you can do instead of step.
From there, I'd much rather Gunslinger become a master weapon class with features that support their reload weapons doing stuff, rather than remain a legendary weapon class (which can't get any good stuff because legendary weapons eats up their entire power budget, and will make it forever feel like a class archetype for fighter).
Also, gunslinger legendary weapons kind of compounds the crit-fishing aspect of the class. The higher accuracy means more crits, which means they can't get a damage booster because then their DPR would be too high, but it does mean the class feels like a coin toss - crit and do a ton of damage, or hit and do near nothing. No in between.
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A few feats I'd like to (dis)honorably mention
1) Cover Fire - Actually a penalty to use. Because the opponent always has the option of making it a regular strike without any other penalty for them, they're only ever going to take cover if it's more benefical to them than it is to you. If they're planning to make a bunch of ranged attacks they'll just... let it be a regular hit.
2) Slinger's Reflexes - As far as I can tell, this feat is almost completely pointless. You can't reload out of turn, so there's 3 gunslinger reactions this will let you use another time in addition to all your loaded firearm reactions. Grit, which has a 1 hour recharge. Hit the dirt, which also can't be used twice in the same round as it makes you prone. And instant return, which is a meme in of itself.
3) Fatal Bullet - Why the heck is this a feat 16? It should be a feat 4 with how little it actually does. Look at a feat like Sneak Attacker, a feat 4 MC feat. Sure it has a condition, but it's much better than this feat. Sneak attacker adds 1d6 (3.5) on a hit and 2d6 (7) on a crit, whereas this, at max, can only at 1d12 (6.5) on a crit...
4) Instant Return - Way way way way way too specific for a feat 16. How many enemies are using crossbows or guns at that level?
5) Dance of Thunder - Should be much lower level. This feat is actually not very good at all. Maybe if it didn't make you fatigued, but still had the 1/minute restriction it could be better.
6) Scatter Blast - Given the clarificaiton on the misfire rules, why does this even have failure text? The failure makes your attack a critical failure, which means your weapon breaks.
There's probably a few others that are equally bad (Cauterize e.g.) but I think these are the biggest ones.
Misfire mechanics on these feats are also awkward, making them really bad against higher level opponents, something the gunslinger already struggles with by its nature.
Misfiring should instead trigger when you fail the attack and the number on the dice is 4 or less.
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The callout box under Quickened explicitly contradicts this.
There are two somewhat contradictory lines in Stunned, but one of them is a general description of the condition and the other is more specific to what happens when you gain Stunned with a value.
From Stunned: "You've become senseless. You can't act while stunned. Stunned usually includes a value, which indicates how many total actions you lose, possibly over multiple turns, from being stunned. ...Stunned might also have a duration instead of a value, such as...That's precisely why stunned works the way it does.
You can't act while you have the stunned condition, period. The condition doesn't go away until the start of your next turn, though (when you regain actions) so getting stunned mid-turn causes you to lose the rest of that turn and actions on the turn after.
Intended? Very likely not.
Yes, but you don't lose actions getting stunned mid-turn. You simply can't use the ones you do have.
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Yes, but you don't lose actions getting stunned mid-turn. You simply can't use the ones you do have.
I struggle to see how you can interpret it in this way. You think that when it refers to the fact that Stunned only impacts how many actions you regain at the start of your turn and then goes on to specifically say that gaining it during your turn does not adjust your number of actions on that turn that it is referring to... what? Which actions is it saying that you do not adjust or lose due to gaining these conditions during your turn? Are you being facetious?
Oh look, Stunned also says you're senseless so I guess you can't use any of your senses while Stunned. Or maybe it is not entirely literal and the rest of the rules relating to how Stunned works, specifically for when it has a value and for when it has a duration, actually tell you how to run the condition.
The rules are very clear about how to treat Stunned gained mid-turn. They go out of their way to specifically mention it and you still want to interpret it in the exact opposite way.
Baffling.
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Being unable to act has specific rules governing it
If you can’t act, you can’t use any actions, including reactions and free actions.
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I agree with most of your assessments @Ediwir, but I strongly disagree with your position on weapons being mainly focused on critical hits.
Classes, as we've seen with Magus, that relies too heavily on critical hits simply don't work or feel good in play. Core mechanics shouldn't be reliant on luck alone, we all like to roll our dice, but this kind of design direction creates a very polarizing play experience, with guns feeling lackluster for a damage-oriented class when they hit normally and feel great when you can crit someone into oblivion, what's worse is that as a player (or even GM) you have no input on this aspect of the class.
In my opinion, Guns should have bigger dice and instead of fatal as a general characteristic, it could have deadly to keep the critical hit aspect. More traits to further differentiate them from normal crossbows is also a great direction, because of their status as uncommon weapons they can afford a little more complexity.
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Hey guys, would you mind tabling the stun discussion in the playtest forum? The devs specifically asked us to not indulge in even semi off-topic discussion, if we could help it.
From there, I'd much rather Gunslinger become a master weapon class with features that support their reload weapons doing stuff, rather than remain a legendary weapon class (which can't get any good stuff because legendary weapons eats up their entire power budget, and will make it forever feel like a class archetype for fighter).Also, gunslinger legendary weapons kind of compounds the crit-fishing aspect of the class. The higher accuracy means more crits, which means they can't get a damage booster because then their DPR would be too high, but it does mean the class feels like a coin toss - crit and do a ton of damage, or hit and do near nothing. No in between.
I don't quite get the team's logic on the whole "legendary proficiency means no real power class features" in regards to the gunslinger. That the class doesn't get a really good scaling damage boost like sneak attack, that I can understand. But the problem is that the gunslinger needs several additions to make large parts of it even playable - case in point TWF.
If we were going with the master route, we would also just copy the precision ranger or at least something very close to it. Not to mention that, unlike any other class, this class is heavily focused around a very specific set of weapons. We do one thing and that is reload weapons. That is our sneak attack, rage or champion shenanigans. If a fighter can just roll around, pick up my gun or crossbow, and just be straight up better than I ever could be, I would not be happy. Especially if he can pick up a relevant archetype - which will almost certainly come out - and be an even better me.
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I actually don't mind the way this class plays right now, at least in principle. It could and should be better, sure, but I strangely like it. If one does not like the extreme differences between hits and crits, I'm certain martial crossbows are going to solve that problem for you. That is, if they go with the whole "higher damage die and deadly" route. And if you want to absolutely use a gun, I hope that they will include the advice for re-flavouring straight into the rulebook. If they don't, most of us could just do it anyway.
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@Ediwir I appreciate you taking the time and giving your feedback in so much detail ^^
I would like to add something to the following, however.
Firearm Ace is clearly a parallel to Crossbow Ace (and I expect Crossbow Ace will return in a Gunslinger form), but carries two important differences: first, it lasts until the end of your turn rather than next turn, meaning reactions will not benefit from it. Considering how many reactions gunslinger has, this is notable.
This was already errata'd (see point 3). It is supposed to last as long as Crossbow Ace does.
Also, Warning Shot uses the maximum range of your gun, so everything including the 6th range increment. That's still not great, but a whole lot better than just a minor range increase :)
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Blast Lock and Cauterize feel like narrow utility feats to use firearms instead of skills - which is neat, but definitely on the low end of class feats. Perhaps they could be implemented as Uncommon skill feats, with a slinger class feat allowing you to gain both at once (or several similar feats, and one feat to pick two, or various class feats giving two each), or just be different usage of a single unified Firearm Utility feat.
This reminded me of the PF1's Equipment Trick feat.
And what better place to introduce such tricks than the equipment book, aka Guns and Gears?
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@Ediwir I appreciate you taking the time and giving your feedback in so much detail ^^
I would like to add something to the following, however.
Firearm Ace is clearly a parallel to Crossbow Ace (and I expect Crossbow Ace will return in a Gunslinger form), but carries two important differences: first, it lasts until the end of your turn rather than next turn, meaning reactions will not benefit from it. Considering how many reactions gunslinger has, this is notable.This was already errata'd (see point 3). It is supposed to last as long as Crossbow Ace does.
Also, Warning Shot uses the maximum range of your gun, so everything including the 6th range increment. That's still not great, but a whole lot better than just a minor range increase :)
Oooooh, I missed that!
If only paizo forums would let me edit the day after :P Ah well, one issue down.|
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@Ediwir I appreciate you taking the time and giving your feedback in so much detail ^^
I would like to add something to the following, however.
Firearm Ace is clearly a parallel to Crossbow Ace (and I expect Crossbow Ace will return in a Gunslinger form), but carries two important differences: first, it lasts until the end of your turn rather than next turn, meaning reactions will not benefit from it. Considering how many reactions gunslinger has, this is notable.This was already errata'd (see point 3). It is supposed to last as long as Crossbow Ace does.
Also, Warning Shot uses the maximum range of your gun, so everything including the 6th range increment. That's still not great, but a whole lot better than just a minor range increase :)
It could be something that incentivises making only a single attack per turn, like devise a stratagem but maybe more tailored to guns and fatal.
Something like “You may roll twice and take the better result for the first attack you make with a reload weapon each turn. If you do, that attack gains the fortune trait.”
I haven’t done the math on how master+that stacks up to legendary, might be too strong.
@Ediwir I appreciate you taking the time and giving your feedback in so much detail ^^
I would like to add something to the following, however.
Firearm Ace is clearly a parallel to Crossbow Ace (and I expect Crossbow Ace will return in a Gunslinger form), but carries two important differences: first, it lasts until the end of your turn rather than next turn, meaning reactions will not benefit from it. Considering how many reactions gunslinger has, this is notable.This was already errata'd (see point 3). It is supposed to last as long as Crossbow Ace does.
Also, Warning Shot uses the maximum range of your gun, so everything including the 6th range increment. That's still not great, but a whole lot better than just a minor range increase :)
It could be something that incentivises making only a single attack per turn, like devise a stratagem but maybe more tailored to guns and fatal.
Something like “You may roll twice and take the better result for the first attack you make with a reload weapon each turn. If you do, that attack gains the fortune trait.”
I haven’t done the math on how master+that stacks up to legendary, might be too strong.
I really like a reload focused devise style mechanic, like when you reload you can roll a d20 and on your next attack (with that weapon) you can choose to use that result or make a new one.
What I like though is how it interacts with firearms on 2 fronts, it directly interacts with reload, and it indirectly interacts with fatal.
It could also work as scaffolding to the other gunslinger ways, so all gunslingers get that roll on reloading, but snipers also get it when they hide, drifters get it when making a strike with a melee weapon, pistolero's get it when they feint or demoralize. So a sniper could effectively get 3 attack rolls on their turn (but only makes one shot) when they reload, hide, then finally shoot.
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I quite like the idea of crit fishing and a one attack per turn martial.
I don't quite see the feat support for that in the gunslinger right now. Few ways to increase your accuracy or all that many things you could be doing instead of attacking more.
Combining actions with reloading sounds fantastic. Demoralize + Reload "this bullet has your name on it" would be amazing.
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Crit fishing should not be a class's core design. I repeat. Crit fishing should absolutely not be a class's core design.
It may look cute on paper and it may remind you of the interesting builds on MMORPGs, but for tabletop? It doesn't feel right because you're just adding another layer of randomness and for every great critical hit you have, you'll have dozens more unsatisfying hits, if you manage to hit at all!
Come on people. We've had this discussion on the Magus. We already have two classes that encourages single hit with the Swashbuckler and Investigator, and they do it right, they work because they have effects that aren't reliant on critical hits, instead they reward your choice of making a single attack while giving you space to engage with the system as a whole, instead of forcing your character into a specific set of actions because it needs to do them.
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I’m not a fan of Magus and Gunslinger being crit fishing classes, because they are largely martial classes (yes, Magus is a caster, but casting is meant to improve their martial ability, not replace it).
I don’t mind crit fishing on a character that is designed around out of combat contributions first, combat second. Like Investigator. An investigator that spends time studying their opponent before making one devastating shot makes a lot of sense. If they roll low on devise, they can still do other things and not feel like it was a wasted turn. The party also isn’t going to rely as much on the Investigator to be the damage dealer.
But for classes that are designed around attacking, and that’s their main class ability (gunslinger has very little contributing outside of combat from the class itself), they need to be able to attack and contribute in a meaningful way more rounds than not.
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The heck’s all this about crit fishing, now? Yeah guns are inherently swingier than most weapons but the gunslinger isn’t desperately looking for crits just like the fighter isn’t. Both classes have much higher than normal crit ratios and that’s about it. They hit reliably and hit well.
I think you guys need to explain what you think crit fishing is and why on earth it would apply to this.
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Yeah I'm with Ediwir here. Guns have good crit modifiers and gunslingers inherently crit more than other classes... but so do picks and fighters.
The magus was problematic because the class had severe accuracy issues that made even utilizing its combat mechanic at all extremely unreliable without a lot of outside support.
Gunslingers are more accurate than the baseline though, not less. They just have access to weapons that deal extra damage on a crit. It's an entirely different beast. The comparison is wildly off base.
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The heck’s all this about crit fishing, now? Yeah guns are inherently swingier than most weapons but the gunslinger isn’t desperately looking for crits just like the fighter isn’t. Both classes have much higher than normal crit ratios and that’s about it. They hit reliably and hit well.
I think you guys need to explain what you think crit fishing is and why on earth it would apply to this.
As it stands right now, the gunslinger is indeed a crit fishing class. Guns are inherently weaker than other ranged weapons, simply because they don't do more damage on a hit, but require two actions for every attack you want to make. The Ranger for example can thus easily make twice as many attacks as you can. The Gunslinger doesn't have a way to make up for that difference apart from landing crits.
I don't know about the magus, but there can be no doubt that the gunslinger is currently relying on crits to even remotely keep up with the competition.
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They've summed it up. It's a combination of a slow firing rate due to reload 1 and relying on Fatal for the bulk of the weapon's damage. Gunslingers have Expert-> Legendary proficiency, but that doesn't mean that they're hitting more often than other classes, because they are attacking less often than other classes. A Rogue attacking twice a round is going to hit more often than a Gunslinger attacking 3 times over 2 rounds.
Gunslinger's damage output comes from critting more frequently when they do attack than other classes. They need those crits, or they fall far, far behind the other classes. Without Fatal and ways to speed up reloading, a Gunslinger is better off using a shortbow (even with only getting Trained->Master) than they would be firing a gun. With Fatal the gun eventually lets them outpace just using a composite shortbow.
At least fighter proficiency means crits happen more often - blowing a grunt to pieces in one shot has a reasonable chance to happen each attack. The problem is that strong enemies are still going to have low crit rates, and guns are worse at stacking the deck than melee weapons (flat footed is much easier in melee, as everyone who's tried to make a ranged rogue can attest).
And this here is just it. This is the issue. I don't want my Gunslinger whose entire class is focused on attacking and using a gun that has very little specific out of combat utility added to be the kill low-powered enemies class. It's a martial character with legendary proficiency in what is supposed to be a powerful weapon. But I'm more effective playing mop up with the minions than I am facing off against the boss, to a far greater degree than other martial classes.
Critfishing would be more of a downside if you didn't already have the highest accuracy in the game.
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It's a downside because the play style is not fun. The overall white room damage output might come out close, but you will have many, many rounds that amount to reload, miss, reload. It just isn't fun for all the same reasons that people expressed it not being fun on a Magus, either.
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It just isn't fun for all the same reasons that people expressed it not being fun on a Magus, either.
Again, not a great comparison, because Magi suffered from very poor accuracy. The playtest magus would often fail to do anything at all more often than not.
The gunslinger on the other hand has the best accuracy in the game.
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I mean the Swashbuckler is also another class where potentially you're not going to accomplish much on turns where you miss (a reasonable 3 action progression- gain panache, attempt finisher, then either regain panache or use a "get +2 AC" option) and while that's a reason some people don't like the swashbuckler, a lot of people do like the swashbuckler quite a bit.
And the Gunslinger is +2 to hit vs. the Buckler and doesn't ever fail at reloading (like you might fail at gaining panache).
The bigger problem with the Gunslinger than "sometimes you don't do much" is "reloading is sort of a nothing action." The swashbuckler at least has the option to couple "gaining panache" with something useful (e.g. Bon Mot, Leading Dance, Goading Feint, etc.)
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I don't enjoy the play style of Swashbucklers, either. I find it to be the opposite of what I think of when I think of a Swashbuckler. Swashbucklers should be fast and accurate. In my opinion, Swashbuckler makes more sense as the "dex to damage" class than Rogue does. They should be hitting a lot for lower damage, and being able to use multiple strikes to combine into something bigger. Instead, my rounds as a Swashbuckler often go fail to tumble through, fail to tumble through, attack for some of the lowest damage in the game (if I even hit in the first place).
A Gunslinger has a higher base accuracy, that doesn't mean they are actually hitting more. Gunslingers don't get flank. They have to deal with cover. They can't benefit from Feint. They, again, are firing 3 times when an archer is firing 6 times. Just the extra die rolls alone make it more likely that an archer actually scores more hits than a gunslinger, despite the gunslinger's accuracy.
A gunslinger never fails to reload, but barring having taken additional feats, they can't do anything else at the same time. There's no other benefit to it, so yes, it's that reloading is a nothing action. They are forced to waste actions just to be able to attack. So compared to an archer, which is already using a superior weapon, a Gunslinger is essentially wasting half of their turns.
Seriously, the best thing for a Gunslinger to do with their improved accuracy is to take an Archer dedication at level two and use a shortbow. That is a better use of a feat than having to take Firearm Ace, Risky Reload, Quick Draw, Running Reload, and possibly even Reloading Strike just to get to where other classes start. Then just take Archer Feats as much as possible. At which point, they may as well have just been a Fighter.
But if you're taking Gunslinger, you're taking it because you want using guns to be fun. In this version, it's not fun.
EDIT: Keep in mind that a major benefit of better accuracy is hitting with 2nd or 3rd attacks. You can't hit with a 2nd or 3rd attack if you never get to make them, because you're too busy reloading.
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I mean the Swashbuckler is also another class where potentially you're not going to accomplish much on turns where you miss (a reasonable 3 action progression- gain panache, attempt finisher, then either regain panache or use a "get +2 AC" option) and while that's a reason some people don't like the swashbuckler, a lot of people do like the swashbuckler quite a bit.
And the Gunslinger is +2 to hit vs. the Buckler and doesn't ever fail at reloading (like you might fail at gaining panache).
The bigger problem with the Gunslinger than "sometimes you don't do much" is "reloading is sort of a nothing action." The swashbuckler at least has the option to couple "gaining panache" with something useful (e.g. Bon Mot, Leading Dance, Goading Feint, etc.)
I think the issue is actually a combination of these problems. In your swashbuckler example, not only does the action attempting to gain panache have an effect of itself completely separate from the panache system, the average damage is also still higher than that of the gunslinger, even considering critical strikes (see spoiler for incredibly bare bones, back of the napkin math).
Of note is that I'm super lazy, so I didn't include any other feats and just assumed a 50% success rate for the swashbuckler's attempts to gain panache (despite likely having two chances to do so and being able to target different saves to exploit monster weaknesses) as well as the swashbuckler hitting on a 10/gunslinger hitting on an 8. I also intentionally left out the likelihood of the swashbuckler attacking a flat-footed enemy and the gunslinger attacking enemies with some degree of cover. All that said, the gunslinger has more of an advantage here than they likely would in an actual gameplay scenario.
Gunslinger
Level 1
1d6+2 50% hit (2.75) 15% crit (2.25) DPR: 5
Level 20
4d6+10+2d6 50% hit (15.5) 15% crit (12.525) DPR: 28.025
Swashbuckler
Level 1
Panache
3d6+2 50%hit (7.65) 5% crit (1.25) DPR: 8.9
No Panache
1d6+2 50%hit (2.75) 5% crit (0.55) DPR: 3.3
50% Panache Rate: 6.1
Level 20
Panache
10d6+12+2d6 50%hit (31.2) 5% crit (5.4) DPR: 36.6
No Panache
4d6+12+2d6 50%hit (16.5) 5% crit (3.3) DPR: 19.8
50% Panache Rate:28.2
The swashbuckler just feels better to play all around because not only do the actions to gain panache feel better than the flat reload actions, but the damage per hit is typically higher than the gunslinger as well.
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Most of the time, the Gunslinger will not benefit from flanking. Which is usually not true for the Fighter. The Fighter also benefits from a huge choice of weapons, those with the Fatal trait being a very small part of it. And the Fighter can choose weapons that free their hand to do something else (use shield, dual wield, grapple...).
When you add the loading part on top of all this, no surprise that the Gunslinger feels like a very restricted Fighter.
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Most of the time, the Gunslinger will not benefit from flanking. Which is usually not true for the Fighter. The Fighter also benefits from a huge choice of weapons, those with the Fatal trait being a very small part of it. And the Fighter can choose weapons that free their hand to do something else (use shield, dual wield, grapple...).
When you add the loading part on top of all this, no surprise that the Gunslinger feels like a very restricted Fighter.
We shouldn't forget the soft cover as well, which is a -1 that happens quite often for ranged characters, specially in Paizo's APs, with some battles happening in very tight spaces.
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I don't understand why the Gunslinger has so many press attacks.
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I don't understand why the Gunslinger has so many press attacks.
Yeah, Reload + Press = Bad. :P
I guess guns are supposed to be loaded when you enter the fight. So, fire, reload, press attack. And next round is reload, fire, reload.
Yeah, that makes Press attacks every other round attacks which feels pretty bad.
And a melee Gunslinger could attack with their melee weapon and then use the press attack then reload.
True, but that's a LOT of Press abilities for a particular style: especially a style I think of as a fairly niche one IMO: mixing melee and a gun.
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Are those numbers for a single attack or for a round of attacks? Because the biggest advantage short bow has is that it's a reload 0 weapon.
EDIT: Ok, yeah, this looks like a single shot from the pistol and a single shot from the short bow, giving them each a +2 from Firearm Ace/Point Blank Shot, and an additional +1 to +2 for the short bow from Propulsive.
So, yeah, again, the main advantage the short bow has is attacking more often, which is going to raise the damage considerably.
I mean, the Shortbow user is just going to average one more -5 attack over 2 turns than the pistol user (-10 attacks are pretty useless in my experience.) That can't be a huge difference.
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It is a significant difference. And if we're giving the short bow Legendary proficiency, their -10 attack is going to hit as often as the gun's 1st attack crits.
Think about it like this as well. The short bow user isn't doing nothing with that third action. Maybe they aren't attacking, but they're raising a buckler. Or just moving. You have to also give the gun user running Reload for them to be able to move at any point during that 3 attacks over 2 rounds sequence.
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Had some time to check. This was generated using criticking's pf2 attack comparer tool.
Level +0 High AC
Blue line is a Gunslinger using a Dueling Pistol firing 3 shots over 2 rounds with Firearm Ace assumed on all shots. So 1d6 base damage, 1d10 Fatal, +2 bonus damage. Attack Ability 18 to 22 Apex. Damage Ability 10 no bonus.
Red Line is Fighter using a Shortbow firing 4 shots over 2 rounds with Point Blank Shot assumed on all shots. So 1d6 base, 1d10 Deadly, +2 bonus damage, Attack Ability 18 to 22 Apex, Damage Ability 14 to 18.
Green Line is Fighter using a Shortbow firing 6 shots over 2 rounds with Point Blank Shot assumed on all shots. So 1d6 base, 1d10 Deadly, +2 bonus damage, Attack Ability 18 to 22 Apex, Damage Ability 14 to 18.
Purple Line is Gunslinger firing 4 times over 2 rounds (giving Risky Reload that never misfires) with Firearm Ace assumed on all shots. So 1d6 base damage, 1d10 Fatal, +2 bonus damage. Attack Ability 18 to 22 Apex. Damage Ability 10 no bonus.
Levels 1-3:
Pistol: 16.925
SB 4 shots: 20.95
SB 6 shots: 24.75
Pistol 4 shots: 20.15
Level 8:
Pistol: 36.5
SB 4 shots: 43.45
SB 6 shots: 50.6
Pistol 4 shots: 44.15
Level 15:
Pistol: 71.125
SB 4 shots: 88.1
SB 6 shots: 103.95
Pistol 4 shots: 85.75
Levels 19-20:
Pistol: 80.975
SB 4 shots: 100.65
SB 6 shots: 118.8
Pistol 4 shots: 97.55
In short, yes, the extra attacks matter. Anywhere from about 23.7% more damage for 4 shots, to 46.2% more damage for 6 shots at level 1.
And then consider that by spending a level 2 feat on Archer Dedication and a level 4 feat on Point-blank shot, those Fighter numbers using a shortbow are essentially the Gunslinger numbers using a shortbow.
To get a pistol to be roughly equal (but still lower at high levels) to firing a shortbow twice/round, you need to add Risky Reload, and that's assuming that you don't get slowed down by misfires (that's hard to account for in the tool).