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Tech level is 100% a flavor thing. My game already has revolvers and smgs, they just have damage spreads and effects that are in line with the existing weapons.
The secret is to not expect simulationism. Like, yeah irl, a revolver is more lethal than a bow, but irl, a human being that was bathed in gallons of acid strong enough to melt stone in 4 second would just die; if we can accept that a person could survive an ancient black dragon's breath, why not accept that someone coyld survive a spray of bullets from an Uzi?
At my table, guns are stated out to reflect a cinematic fantasy rather than a realistic simulation, and it works out pretty well
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Would You Allow An Inventor To Invent A Revolver?
No.
For me if a player can justify it, has the time for it, and has the money for it they should be able to come up with most reasonable requests.
Inventing a new weapon by combining some other weapons seems extremely reasonable. Now the strength of that weapon is a totally different matter. Just because they invent the automatic short/longbow ala Jörg Sprave does not mean that it would deal more damage.
Same if they want to start an organization. If they want to spend time getting people's trust and paying them for work great for them. They are still the ones that are going to have to fight the BBEG at the end, not that organization.
In my home game, I've had a revolver for about 4 months before G&G, and it basically used the same stats as a slide pistol.
Mine is 1d6 p, 60 ft range, 1 hand, Versatile B (this was pre-concussive), magazine 6 (my magazine ruled predated paizos, but they were almost mechanically identical)
I made it by comparing it to the shortbow. I kept the damage and range. I figured the removal of deadly and propulsive, as well as the addition of a mag was enough to balance out the fact that it was truly one handed and had the damage type flexibility.
For me if a player can justify it, has the time for it, and has the money for it they should be able to come up with most reasonable requests.
Inventing a new weapon by combining some other weapons seems extremely reasonable. Now the strength of that weapon is a totally different matter. Just because they invent the automatic short/longbow ala Jörg Sprave does not mean that it would deal more damage.
Same if they want to start an organization. If they want to spend time getting people's trust and paying them for work great for them. They are still the ones that are going to have to fight the BBEG at the end, not that organization.
In my home game, I've had a revolver for about 4 months before G&G, and it basically used the same stats as a slide pistol.
Mine is 1d6 p, 60 ft range, 1 hand, Versatile B (this was pre-concussive), magazine 6 (my magazine ruled predated paizos, but they were almost mechanically identical)
I made it by comparing it to the shortbow. I kept the damage and range. I figured the removal of deadly and propulsive, as well as the addition of a mag was enough to balance out the fact that it was truly one handed and had the damage type flexibility.
I would probably now also throw in the Kickback trait, because the bullet caliber of a revolver (.50 caliber) is pretty hefty.
I mean, when we do get into the "Conan fights Robots" part of the setting, there are going to be plasma cannons and the like. But balance is still going to be a consideration since those things are going to run on energy packs or something that are extremely hard to get your hands on.
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Of note, a horn of gunpowder, not even a properly made bomb but just loose horn of gunpowder, is specifically stated to do a 5-foot burst of 1d6 damage.
As for an actual crafted bomb... well, I mean, it depends on the size of the pipe, how well it's sealed, the effectiveness of the primer, to a degree even the composition of the powder itself. In short: It would depend on the Crafting check. If it's a poorly made pipe bomb, yeah, it might not do more than 1d8, Splash 1 (notably, still enough to royally ruin the day of, and in some cases even straight up kill, your average Level -1 NPC). Heck, since this is a straight up explosive rather than the napalm-esque Alchemist's Fire that is the most obvious point of comparison, I'd probably bump up the Splash damage to 2 or even 3 rather than the Persistent Fire Damage. A well made one might rival the 3 or even 4d8 of high-level bomb. If it's an exceptionally made bomb, a really high DC but then high-level adventurers can make high DCs, I might even bump the damage higher, something like 6d8, splash something like 12-18 because Percussion Bomb, something roughly equivalent to taking a non-Critically direct hit from a cannon it you're the direct target, easily enough that the splash is going to slaughter most NPCs if they aren't lucky (probably extremely so, it would probably take a nat 20 not to crit fail that save against a high-level PC's DCs.)
I appreciate the effort here, but the level of craftsmanship isn't what scales an explosive or firearms effective damage, its how much bang you pack in and what the bang is made out of. A fertilizer bomb is so easy to make that we have to track gardening supplies because a truck loaded with the stuff can bring down buildings. Did the OKC bomber need to make an insanely high crafting check just because he did a simple thing on a large scale?
Does your complexity really rise if instead of a pipe you take a thick-walled cooking pot, fill it with a large amount of gunpowder, and seal the lid on really well? Obviously, you don't want this thing to hangfire, and delivering it could be troublesome but the crafting itself is simple enough. Even better it's something that can easily be extrapolated from an alchemist's bombs or firearms in general.
I get that not all GMs want their campaign to end with the PCs wheeling wagon loads of primitive bombs into the big bad's dungeon and blowing his castle sky high, but logically if they can get the required materials I don't see how the GM is supposed to stop them.
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Suicide bomber exploding the PCs before they get there.
Sure, that's fair game if the big bad happens to have minions that are fanatically loyal, the enemy has been shown to use guns and/or explosives, and they're set up as a proper encounter that the PCs have a chance to spot and overcome. If the GM does it on the fly in response to the players coming up with a clever plan (and especially if they also do everything they can to ensure that the PCs can't avoid the attack) that's just adversarial GMing and the players should flip the table and never come back.
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I appreciate the effort here, but the level of craftsmanship isn't what scales an explosive or firearms effective damage, its how much bang you pack in and what the bang is made out of. A fertilizer bomb is so easy to make that we have to track gardening supplies because a truck loaded with the stuff can bring down buildings. Did the OKC bomber need to make an insanely high crafting check just because he did a simple thing on a large scale?
Modern examples are not very good for this. Dynamite wasn't invented until 1867. The nitrogen fixing that makes fertilizer what it is wasn't invented until WWI, and was responsible for extending the war by multiple years by providing the Germans with access to far more explosives than they would have normally had. That was a huge scientific breakthrough, both in the areas of agriculture and warfare.
If you just pack in more black powder, I don't think you're going to get great scaling of effect, since it's going to cut off oxygen to the rest. I'm pretty sure the rate of internal detonation is an important element in a bomb, and without some modern advances providing shortcuts, I think would require some decently involved engineering.
Does your complexity really rise if instead of a pipe you take a thick-walled cooking pot, fill it with a large amount of gunpowder, and seal the lid on really well? Obviously, you don't want this thing to hangfire, and delivering it could be troublesome but the crafting itself is simple enough. Even better it's something that can easily be extrapolated from an alchemist's bombs or firearms in general.
I get that not all GMs want their campaign to end with the PCs wheeling wagon loads of primitive bombs into the big bad's dungeon and blowing his castle sky high, but logically if they can get the required materials I don't see how the GM is supposed to stop them.
Well, at that point you're running a Guy Fawkes campaign, and the fact that he didn't succeed shows there's plenty the GM can do to stop them. Acquiring enough ingredients or powder for that much of a bomb could attract attention, getting that much into place is going to take work and be easily noticed, it will take some architectural analysis if the party wants to have confidence that the explosion will do the job.
There's the reasonable approach of not using multiplicative scaling. If you have one cheap Alchemist's Fire, that does 1d8. Every additional Alchemist's Fire probably adds minimum damage instead of a full d8.
And, of course, there's having an out of character discussion with the players. Like you said, it's not something most GMs want, and plenty of players probably wouldn't be thrilled either.
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When I'm using a setting, I often start from the assumption that the inhabitants of that setting are not stupid. Major Alchemist's Fire costs a lot more than Lesser Alchemist's Fire. There is probably a reason that the inhabitants do not just make a big bottle of four Lesser Alchemist's Fires for 12gp instead of one regular flask of Greater Alchemist's Fire for 2500gp.
So now that this is in homebrew, if a player wanted a weapon that similar to but different from another weapon, like a straight up trait swap I would be inclined to go along with that if they seem similarly powerful traits (like shove,trip, and disarm are all weighted equally).
So for a revolver we have an extremely similar weapon in the slide pistol which is martial, uncommon, does d6P, range increment of 30, with traits Capacity 5, Concussive, and Fatal d10. If we just wanted to make it Capacity 6 for verisimilitude purposes, that's a very small power increase but I don't think it should be free. I'm not sure what the appropriate offset would be though: drop the Fatal die to d8, reduce the range increment, or just increase the price of the weapon above 16gp. Hypothetically we could make it Capacity 6 as part of making it an advanced weapon, but that's not useful for the weapon inventor so it's a nonstarter here.
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If it would be a repeating black powder firearm, it would almost certainly be an advanced weapon. D6, concussive, repeating (6) range(40 feet). Would be my guess as to how a revolver could be an advanced weapon.
Does a revolver feel like it should require special training to use? It feels like it should be easier to use than something like a slide gun.
Sure, that's fair game if the big bad happens to have minions that are fanatically loyal, the enemy has been shown to use guns and/or explosives, and they're set up as a proper encounter that the PCs have a chance to spot and overcome.Or just a fireball from 300ft away.
That assumes they know what you're trying to do, have casters with the spell prepared, and that you didn't try to pick off any obvious sentries before enacting your plan. Hell, you could go full sapper and spend a few days digging a tunnel and advance your plan without even contrived risks.
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Modern examples are not very good for this. Dynamite wasn't invented until 1867. The nitrogen fixing that makes fertilizer what it is wasn't invented until WWI, and was responsible for extending the war by multiple years by providing the Germans with access to far more explosives than they would have normally had. That was a huge scientific breakthrough, both in the areas of agriculture and warfare.
Raw gunpowder has plenty enough grunt to get the job done and my examples, while modern, simply show that one doesn't need much sophistication to get impressive results.
If you just pack in more black powder, I don't think you're going to get great scaling of effect, since it's going to cut off oxygen to the rest.
Black powder has its own oxidizer so it doesn't really care if it has access to external oxygen. If you do find that you're getting incomplete detonations you could try adding fine shavings of rust which shouldn't be outside the ken of an INT 18+ character with alchemical leanings.
Well, at that point you're running a Guy Fawkes campaign, and the fact that he didn't succeed shows there's plenty the GM can do to stop them. Acquiring enough ingredients or powder for that much of a bomb could attract attention, getting that much into place is going to take work and be easily noticed, it will take some architectural analysis if the party wants to have confidence that the explosion will do the job.
Guy Fawkes wasn't exactly a battle-hardened adventurer.
A party of four could have an alchemist, an inventor, a wizard, and an investigator and easily have all the skills needed to craft explosives and conduct sapper operations while still fairing well in more conventional combat situations.
When I'm using a setting, I often start from the assumption that the inhabitants of that setting are not stupid. Major Alchemist's Fire costs a lot more than Lesser Alchemist's Fire. There is probably a reason that the inhabitants do not just make a big bottle of four Lesser Alchemist's Fires for 12gp instead of one regular flask of Greater Alchemist's Fire for 2500gp.
Pure physics shows that one can simply add more explosive mass to produce greater results. Your volume of explosive mass isn't suddenly going to start producing diminishing volumes of gas just because you brought more of it.
The more likely explanation for the alchemist fire situation is that it is relatively easy to get the basic effect of alchemists fire into a given volume of liquid but hard to get a drastically increased effect from the same volume. A larger volume may simply be considered too unwieldy to throw or just isn't needed for non-adventuring uses. Making a jumbo jug of alchemist's fire should give vastly increased effects scaling with volume.
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That assumes they know what you're trying to do, have casters with the spell prepared, and that you didn't try to pick off any obvious sentries before enacting your plan. Hell, you could go full sapper and spend a few days digging a tunnel and advance your plan without even contrived risks.
Easily discovered with appropriate divinations or even just common spies.