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;
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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.
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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.
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Strict RAW, I agree with what was said above. However, there's one potential counterargument to point 1 that I'll put up.
The Barricade Buster appears to be a pepperbox. 8 barrels rotating around a central shaft. It's possible that it's a revolver that automatically rotates the next barrel into shooting position, or it could be that manually rotating the barrels is fast enough to be reload zero. The magazine in either case would be like a revolver speed loader.
If the barrels auto-advance, you would indeed have to pick your sequence for special ammunition. However, if you're manually rotating the barrels, you could argue that you could pick which barrel you rotate to to select a preloaded special ammo. That's a conversation with your GM.
For instance, I had a character with a similar weapon (Pepperbox) in PF1 that kept a ghost killing shot in one of the chambers.
Baricade buster reload (moving from one chamber to the next) is 0.
What is not 0 is loading the magazine with ammunition, nor installing the magazine in the gun. The repeating trait (which the gun has) says that it has a magazine. And that loading magazine into the gun is 3 actions. It doesn't specify how many actions it takes to load a magazine with ammunition. In the least charitable view, it could be 1 action per round of ammunition to load a magazine.
Regardless of if it's a traditional magazine or a pepperbox situation where you could choose which barrel to fire (potentially) you would still need to remember which barrel has which ammo.
If if you can select which barrel...it doesn't overcome the issue that loading the magazine into the gun is on it's own 3 actions. Which is typically your full turn, which means you have don't have enough actions to use quick alchemy (which has ammunition go inert at the end of your turn) in the same turn as loading the magazine into the gun.
I agree with what you're generally saying thistledown, but it doesn't change the problems that the OP would have attempting to use Quick Alchemy or the need to track ammo location, or that they would need to spend extra actions to activate ammo before firing.
I suppose if your point was that you could keep 1 or 2 special rounds in a magazine and choose to use them at the right time, then yes, I think that's true. But it's not advantageous enough to try to make your whole character around always using these rounds. Or even filling half a magazine with the free ammo you would get from Munitions Crafter.
Eh, I guess since it's free it'd be worth putting a couple in every magazine to give you options. But spending the extra action to activate the ammo....possibly not worth it compared to making an extra shot.
If the barrels auto-advance, you would indeed have to pick your sequence for special ammunition. However, if you're manually rotating the barrels, you could argue that you could pick which barrel you rotate to to select a preloaded special ammo. That's a conversation with your GM.
That is a good point. Not being able to choose the order of ammunition also appears to be based on narrative description of the weapon and how it is loaded, rather than something that is written into the game rules.
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I quite agree Claxon - the action economy on activating and on magazine reloads is a big hit. And some clarity on filling up the magazine would be nice.
Though not related to ammo, I'll point out the other oddness of the barricade buster: Range 40', Volley 20'. That puts you in a very small window for effective range. There's probably things that can help with that, but it's something to be aware of.
I did recently take a Barricade Buster on my Exemplar. He hasn't looked at any special ammo yet as he's only a couple games in, and won't be getting much free / fast ammo because he's not a gunslinger. But Sparking it as Starshot turns it into a grenade launcher with a 60' range, so that's fun.