Hello, I have a question about barricade buster.
repeating weapon is a type of ranged weapon with a shorter reload time. These weapons can't be loaded with individual bolts or bullets like other crossbows and firearms; instead, they require a magazine of specialized ammunition to be loaded into a special slot. Once that magazine is in place, the ammunition is automatically loaded each time the weapon is cocked to fire, reducing its reload to the value in its reload entry (typically 0).
1/Is it possible to use alchemical and magical ammunition with a barricade buster ?
2/An alchemical or magical ammunition needs an activation to function, is it possible with its weapon ?
3/ Is it possible to use Munitions Crafter to create the ammunition in batches 4 (two times) to obtain an 8-Round Magazine ?
4/ Is it possible to use Munitions Machinist to create alchemical ammunition also counts as 1 action toward activating that ammunition for a barricade buster ?
Beast gunner dedication :
Spellsling [three-actions] Requirements You’re wielding your bonded beast gun or another magic firearm;
....
Special If you also have the Spell-Woven Shot action you can load and activate a piece of magical ammunition as a free action before making a Spellsling attack once per 10 minutes.
5/Is it possible to activate a magical ammunition with a barricade buster ?
Thanks for your future answer.
It should be possible to use magical or alchemical ammunition, depending on the requirements of the specific kind. By which I mean, certain kinds of ammunition can only be applied to arrows or bolts for instance. Obviously those wouldn't be available. Anything that says it can be applied to any kind of ammunition should theoretically work.
It is possible to activate, and to your point many require an activation.
Now, while this is possible it is tricky. Why?
Because this is a magazine fed weapon. You would either have to know which round in your magazine is the magical/alchemical one, or fill the whole thing with your special ammo. And then, because it's likely going to be after the end of the road you load the magazine, you will need to spend an action to activate the round before shooting. Meaning each turn you would spend an action to activate, and then an action to fire.
So while feasible, not efficient in terms of action economy.
It does look like Munitions crafter would apply. If you were 4th level, you could make 6 batches of ammunition, which each time creates 4 rounds. So you could whip up just 8 rounds, which you would load into your magazine. I guess a key point here is, your creating individual rounds (metal sphere for this gun) which you then load into the magazine.
Munitions machinist does look like it would apply, but it wouldn't really help. You need to make the ammunition, load it into a magazine, load the magazine into the weapon, and then fire. If you could somehow compress all of the aforementioned actions into 1 turn, then Munitions Machinist line about counting as 1 action towards activating the ammunition would apply. But it's simply not feasible. You're not going to create the ammunition, load the ammunition into the magazine, and load the magazine into the gun before the ammo goes inert.
The rules for Repeating weapons regarding how to reload their magazine isn't very specific or clear.
* It doesn't list a price for buying additional magazines to pre-load and have on hand.
* It doesn't tell us how the magazines themselves are reloaded with rounds.
I don't have much guidance to give for that first point. For the second, I treat reloading a magazine the same as reloading a non-Repeating firearm. So it costs an Interact action for each round loaded, and any feats that work with Reloading firearms also work with Reloading the magazine (in addition to the Repeating trait rules saying that feats for Reloading firearms also work with Reloading a magazine into a firearm).
So:
1) Yes, magical and alchemical ammunition can be loaded into a magazine just like it can be into a firearm.
With the note that Claxon mentioned, that you can't reorder the ammunition without unloading it and reloading it again. You will need to keep track of which round is up next in the firearm if you have mixed ammunition. And if the special ammunition has to be activated, then that would cost an action before firing the round as normal.
2) I would say yes. It becomes a balance problem if you aren't allowed to use the activation action because of a narrative description of the weapon.
3) Yes, Munitions Crafter still just creates standard Rounds for the weapon. Those rounds can then be reloaded into the magazine and then the magazine can be loaded into the firearm.
4) Technically yes - though it is probably a bad idea. You could create the round and have the creation act as one action towards activation of the round. But then you would have to load the round into a magazine and then load the magazine into the firearm. It is very unlikely that you can do all of that Reloading before the end of the current turn when the ammunition activation expires.
5) Yes. This feels like a repeat of question 2.