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The Repeating heavy crossbow seems to be largely outdone by Crossbow Crack Shot, you need to spend a feat on Crossbow Crack Shot in order to boost your damage...
Are you better off going Repeating Heavy and taking another 1st level feat (Many of which seem very fun), or investing in Crack Shot with a simple crossbow?
Is the playstyle viable overall?
There are people who will tell you crossbows are better than guns. There are also people who think you'd be crazy to give up fatal with legendary accuracy. I suspect both are fairly well balanced against each other and which is better will depend on what you're fighting.
It is basically rate of fire vs impact of individual shots as far as I can tell.
For many moderately strong shots in a row you go repeating crossbow, especially if you can land Unconventional Weaponry. They are also not absurdly loud, unlike guns.
Guns are better when you want few, but high-impact shots, like with Way of the Sniper.
I personally prefer guns, but it is definitely a choice now.
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The problem with fatal is that critfishing is awful. The fighter gets mileage out of it but that's with a pair of 1d4/1d8 weapons attacking twice at 0 MAP. If greatpick critfishing were worth it, you'd see it more often. The big fatal guns are all along the same line as the greatpick where you only get the one 0 MAP shot except you also need to waste an action reloading.
Unfortunately, none of the one handed repeating guns have fatal as far as I can see so they've pre-empted good ranged fatal fishing. You could try it with a fatal reload pistol and a repeater and turret with paired shots+reload but if you need to move then that collapses without haste.
Personally, my choice for reliable damage would still be dual repeating hand crossbows but if you have a reliable front that can let you turret you can probably get some mileage out of something like slide pistol+repeating hand crossbow.
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The problem with fatal is that critfishing is awful. The fighter gets mileage out of it but that's with a pair of 1d4/1d8 weapons attacking twice at 0 MAP. If greatpick critfishing were worth it, you'd see it more often. The big fatal guns are all along the same line as the greatpick where you only get the one 0 MAP shot except you also need to waste an action reloading.
Unfortunately, none of the one handed repeating guns have fatal as far as I can see so they've pre-empted good ranged fatal fishing. You could try it with a fatal reload pistol and a repeater and turret with paired shots+reload but if you need to move then that collapses without haste.
Personally, my choice for reliable damage would still be dual repeating hand crossbows but if you have a reliable front that can let you turret you can probably get some mileage out of something like slide pistol+repeating hand crossbow.
With the Sniper, you can Hide (enemy becomes flat-footed) while you reload and use Sniper's Aim to get another +2, for a total of +6 over everyone but the fighter. You can do that every turn. Even if you factor in the usual -1 from lesser cover and the fact that Hide can be somewhat unreliable, that is absolutely viable.
You can also dual-wield and use Paired shots for 4 shots without MAP over 2 rounds, though after that you have a downtime round. Not too bad either, even just for the regular damage.
And both of these options are used at range, unlike the fighter.
If you absolutely hate relying on crits at all, nothing will ever convince you, but objectively it is far from not being viable.
Btw, has anyone found anything about guns and crossbows not taking the -2 penalty while prone? It was brought up during the playtest and I got the distinct impression (it might even have been spelled out) that that was supposed to be addressed.
The problem with fatal is that critfishing is awful. The fighter gets mileage out of it but that's with a pair of 1d4/1d8 weapons attacking twice at 0 MAP. If greatpick critfishing were worth it, you'd see it more often. The big fatal guns are all along the same line as the greatpick where you only get the one 0 MAP shot except you also need to waste an action reloading.
Unfortunately, none of the one handed repeating guns have fatal as far as I can see so they've pre-empted good ranged fatal fishing. You could try it with a fatal reload pistol and a repeater and turret with paired shots+reload but if you need to move then that collapses without haste.
Personally, my choice for reliable damage would still be dual repeating hand crossbows but if you have a reliable front that can let you turret you can probably get some mileage out of something like slide pistol+repeating hand crossbow.
With the Sniper, you can Hide (enemy becomes flat-footed) while you reload and use Sniper's Aim to get another +2, for a total of +6 over everyone but the fighter. You can do that every turn. Even if you factor in the usual -1 from lesser cover and the fact that Hide can be somewhat unreliable, that is absolutely viable.
You can also dual-wield and use Paired shots for 4 shots without MAP over 2 rounds, though after that you have a downtime round. Not too bad either, even just for the regular damage.
And both of these options are used at range, unlike the fighter.
If you absolutely hate relying on crits at all, nothing will ever convince you, but objectively it is far from not being viable.
As far as I can tell, nothing stops you from taking Sniper as your Way regardless of what your weapon setup is. Xbow/xbow can Hide normally as well if they'd like a different Way.
With that, your theoretical advantage is reduced to +2 over a Sniper dual wield build but making half the number of attacks. Shouldn't need exact numbers at this point to see why a big fatal snipe build might not be as potent as a pistol/xbow or xbow/xbow build. At least not if the fight ends within 5 rounds. After that pistol/xbow needs to drop the bow and Sniper's Aim with the pistol while xbow/xbow has to eat the 3 action reload as the price for having that 3rd action open the first 5 rounds.
I didn't see anything about prone not affecting guns or xbows.
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With double barreled pistols and dual weapon reload you could actually have three rounds of paired shots. But after that the downtime will be higher as opposed to using slide pistols and you miss out on your slinger reload (which actually works with capacity Accounting to sayre)
You can also dual-wield and use Paired shots for 4 shots without MAP over 2 rounds, though after that you have a downtime round. Not too bad either, even just for the regular damage.And both of these options are used at range, unlike the fighter.
If you absolutely hate relying on crits at all, nothing will ever convince you, but objectively it is far from not being viable.
Initiative [two wielded double barrel pistols, 4 bullets total loaded [II][II]]
Turn 1 ~ Paired Shots, Dual Weapon Reload = 3 bullets loaded [II][I_]Turn 2 ~ Paired Shots, Dual Weapon Reload = 2 bullets loaded [I_][I_]
Turn 3 ~ Paired Shots, Dual Weapon Reload = 1 bullets loaded [I_][__]
Turn 4 ~ Dual Weapon Reload, Paired Shots = 0 bullets loaded [__][__]
Four turns of 80% greater sword fighter damage, then it falls off harder. Also very inflexible and immobile.
Slide pistols are more like 70% GSFD, but more flexible because they allow for fun reloads.
It's a pretty fair trade-off IMO.
You probably want at least one of the guns be repeating while dual wielding instead of two capacity ones, it lowers a little the damage of paired shots hit but also reduces the need to reload by half and also have one gun always loaded for some of gunslinger reloads if you pick one.
Let me think.
So normal paired routine with d6(fatal d10) pistols:
Paired+Reload [I_]
~Reload+Paired [__]
~Reload+Reload+Strike [_I]
[REPEAT] ~
Over 5 rounds 72% GSFD damage on average, big turn low turn cadence. Trends down slowly over time as the "extra" paired shots from the start is less impactful.
pistol + long air repeater
Reload + Paired for 6/8 turns, ~78%.
More damage on average for sure. I hadn't thought of that. If the fight goes 9-10 rounds it maybe evens out because you lose a full turn to the repeater reload, but almost no fights go 9+ rounds anyway.
Any turn where you reload the slide pistol in order to use a special shot, like called shot, etc, also spreads out your turns.
Gunslingers are very sensitive to losing actions, but at level 14 you can also reload + fusilade with one extra action to do something else.
The long air repeater is supposed to be be two handed right? Because agile is not worth the -30 range with paired shots. But allt he text describes the long air repeater as two handed.
The only advanced crossbow that it is not a waste of time and feats is the repeating hand crossbow, as it can be decent for a lot of builds thanks to being one handed. I wouldn't bother with the other 2 repeating crossbows, honestly.
In regards to dualwield in general, I'm a little bit sad that the best we get to dual wield 2 firearms/crossbows as a gunslinger are the pistolero and the drifter ways, as they don't interact a lot with the fighting style.
pistol + long air repeater
In a FA game, I would heavily consider taking the Inventor dedication to upgrade that air repeater to a d6 at level 10 (or even in a non FA game, we only really need running reload and Paired Shots, so we could grab the dedication at 6).
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The only way that defines your firearm type is vanguard as it requires a two-handed one to work with their abilities.
Spellshot and Sniper can be used for dual wielding if you want, spellshot specially with recall bullet let you even recall some shots back.
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The only way that defines your firearm type is vanguard as it requires a two-handed one to work with their abilities.
Spellshot and Sniper can be used for dual wielding if you want, spellshot specially with recall bullet let you even recall some shots back.
Spellshot would be really good were not so clunky taking your 2nd level feat. Delaying the whole reason you are dual wielding by 2 levels doesn't seem that fun to play, honestly. But agree with sniper, thought you needed 2 handed guns for that one too.
Edit: just checked that Paired shots is level 4 so you may be right, Spellshot may be the best way to dual wield.