Firearms work underwater?

[The Rot Grub]

The Aquatic Combat rules from the CRB say that you can't use anything that has the Fire trait. Firearms in the playtest do not have the Fire trait. And the firearms description is silent on their effectiveness underwater.

My group is now in an aquatic dungeon level and, since this is a Playtest, we are going by RAW and allowing our gunslinger to use his firearms underwater.

Unless there is clarification saying otherwise...

[Themetricsystem]

That's odd, I feel like there should be some restriction on that as well but it seems that the only penalty for MOST firearms would just be to halve the Range Increment.

[Castilliano]

And this might be one of those areas that could fall under "Golarion guns work different enough" or "it's obvious they don't work so we didn't explicitly call it out" or "GM adjudication to suit the obstacles, meta-, & gameplay they desire".
Who knows?
And who knows re: vacuums or in inert gasses?
Or flammable gasses, would firearms make them explode?

Personally, I'd say no offhand to the water, yet I'm also likely to reskin firearms as being more alchemical than Earth's which would lead to yes since lots of other effects work underwater which shouldn't (or should work differently).

[Dubious Scholar]

As written, firearms work underwater. If that changes in the full book expect a low level magic solution to the problem, at which point they'll just have half ranged increments.

...which will absolutely suck for most of them.

[The Raven Black]

Arrows should burn in a fire. And have their damage considerably reduced when wet. They don't.

I am okay with firearms benefitting from the same exceptions.

[graystone]

Playtest guns works fine underwater: well as long as you don't use the Versatile B trait.

[Invictus Novo]

Yeah, I brought this up on the 2nd day of the playtest as I was about to playtest a water scenario. As written, they work underwater.

Oddly enough though, the Inventor's "explosion" class ability does NOT work underwater. I suspect that there will be rules written in the actual book at don't allow firearms to work underwater. That said, I agree with Dubious Scholar that there will likely be a low level magic option to get around that problem.

[PossibleCabbage]

Do we have underwater combat rules for 2e yet? I, at the very least, haven't internalized them yet.

[beowulf99]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Do we have underwater combat rules for 2e yet? I, at the very least, haven't internalized them yet.

We do in fact have aquatic combat rules.