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This really shouldn't be a huge surprise. Simple weapons versus martial weapons.
Dueling pistol is a martial weapon (although 1 hand vs 1+ hand should slightly favor the latter... this is more than slightly, though).
For the record though, Ace pretty much does bump a simple weapon up to martial quality, so even if Ferious Thune was comparing it to an ace'd simple weapon you'd expect the numbers to be close.
Even with the "fix" of Ace, it's still reload eating your action economy hard.
That's definitely true, but I think that's the point. Reload has a really disproportionate effect on your action economy and the numbers don't end up bearing out as a result.
A gunslinger (or crossbowman too) attacking three times over two rounds is spending all their actions to attack (reload-shoot-reload, shoot-reload-shoot, repeat)... while a shortbow user making the same number of attacks can do basically identical damage while still having three extra actions to do whatever they want with. That's better than permanent quicken and permanent quicken is a level 20 feat.
For the record though, Ace pretty much does bump a simple weapon up to martial quality, so even if Ferious Thune was comparing it to an ace'd simple weapon you'd expect the numbers to be close.
Close, but measurably less than it does for Crossbows. I had forgotten that fatal also gives you an extra die, so there's still a lot of value, but it does still cut into that trait's value.
It is going to be interesting to see if they do have martial crossbows in G&G. I think they should, and they should ideally have something like fatal or deadly that interacts with crit chances to make them favorable to both Magi and Gunslingers (I still think Shooting Star Magi getting a free reload action with Striking Spell makes a lot of sense), but it'll be interesting to see how things math out when a martial crossbow will have to compete with an Aced crossbow.
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Thanks for the great analysis in this thread all! I can only agree and echo some of the points already brought up.
I've had the chance to start playtesting gunslinger myself, with a drifter wielding melee weapon + pistol. And really the first time I fired my pistol and scored a direct hit for 1 damage, at that point it already became clear that there was something wrong. This is a class of weapons where your hits feel like misses and your crits feel like crits. Juggling equipment in order to reload was going to eat up whole rounds, so I knew that I would get one shot per fight, at least at low levels. And that's one shot per fight to do tiny bits of damage with a 5-25% chance of matching one swing from a barbarian.
Even disregarding the white room math that shows guns behind vs. bows, just the experience at the table is unsatisfying.
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Even disregarding the white room math that shows guns behind vs. bows, just the experience at the table is unsatisfying.
This is far more important than simple white room math, imo. Because somethings seems great or terrible on paper but when you play with them it gives a different experience from what you expected.
I mean, how many player claim that the Alchemist is fine because they do damage on a miss? They probably never saw a fully optimized alchemist miss every single of their strikes in Severe+ encounters and dealing 2~4 damage on a miss on a boss with 200HP+, never applying their debuffs,sometimes even doing nothing with their crit failures.
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One example I think that reinforces this and the gunslinger's issues is their level 14 feat, Dance of Thunder.
This ability is kind of busted conceptually. It gives you up to eight actions for three and essentially doubles the number of attacks you can make. Yeah, you need to succeed at attacks to do it, but the Gunslinger is more equipped to do that than anyone else. The only other ability in the game that just outright doubles the number of attacks you get to make is impossible flurry and that puts all of those attacks at maximum MAP too.
You can only use it once a minute. It's clearly designed to be a big finisher type move.
But doubling the number of attacks you can make actually just means you can attack as many times in a round as anyone else can normally with a weapon that does about the same damage as everyone else's weapon.
So on paper you have one of the best action economy enhancers in the entire game that lets you throw out two rounds worth of attacks all at once.
In practice you get to, once per combat, spend one turn doing what the party archer has been doing since level 1. Except you lose the rest of your turn if you miss and get fatigued after.
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Dance of Thunder is a 9 for 3 - 3 steps, 3 reloads, 3 strikes (provided the first two strikes land). The issue is, well, Reload is a fundamentally do nothing action, and steps beyond the first are pretty useless. If the first step doesn’t get you out of reaction range, then your reload/strike has a chance to be disrupted anyway. The second and third steps aren’t adding much, aside from making the enemy need to Stride instead of step to reach you.
If you replaced those Steps and Reloads with most other actions, the feat would be super broke, but because 5/9 actions used will be fundamentally do nothings, it is a pretty bad feat.
Consider alternatives - a swashbuckler version that lets you do Strike, Tumble, Style Action 3 times. A caster version that lets you cast a spell, Stride 3 times. Etc. if those sound broken but Dance of Thunder doesn’t, that kind of informs you of the value of the actions you’re taking.