This is the Gunslinger subclass. There are many subclasses like it, but this one is Critical Role’s. If you’ve ever wished to be a crack shot, lethal at range, and a deadly tinkerer, the Gunslinger might be the fighter subclass for you. Introduced to fifth-edition Dungeons & Dragons as a homebrew subclass made by Mathew Mercer for his player Taliesen Jaffe for the first campaign of Critical Role, the Gunslinger fulfills a specific type of fiction surrounding the idea of a gunslinger. A crafter of their own firearms, the Gunslinger is an innovator in the art of death from afar. But this innovation comes at a cost and their often one-of-a-kind weapons can prove to be unpredictable.

• Gunslinger fighter features
• Pros
• Cons
• Building a Gunslinger fighter
• Sample build

A note about Critical Role content and Gunslinger firearms

The Gunslinger is not official content. It's a homebrew subclass originally designed for a specific player's needs and for a character brought over from another TTRPG system. That said, the Gunslinger may not be for everyone and may not be usable at some tables.

Additionally, because it isn't an official subclass, it doesn't use the firearms or associated rules for them found in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Instead, Mercer created his own firearms and rules, with some key differences:

• Reload: The official firearms use the property Reload (X shots), while the Gunslinger uses Reload X. This means that anything in the rules that refers to the Reload property doesn’t apply to Gunslinger firearms, as it is a different, unofficial property.
• Ammunition: Ammunition is an official property that has two different versions, one for bows and crossbows and one for firearms. Gunslinger firearms use neither of these options. Instead, ammunition is a special trait of the subclass itself. This means anything that refers to the ammunition property, such as the artificer's Repeating Shot infusion, doesn't apply to the Gunslinger's firearms.

Gunslinger fighter features

At 3rd level, the Gunslinger unlocks several features relating to the crafting and use of firearms, the key one being Gunsmith. This feature allows a subclass to not only craft their own unique firearms but also repair them should they misfire. These firearms are powerful, with some unique abilities compared to the official options found in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, but they can be unpredictable—even unreliable—in the heat of battle.

• Firearm Proficiency (3rd level): You gain proficiency in all firearms, allowing you to add your proficiency bonus to attacks made with said weapons.
• Gunsmith (3rd level): The Gunsmith feature grants proficiency in tinker's tools and allows you to craft ammunition for your firearms, including unique Exandrian firearms. This feature also lets you repair weapons that have misfired.
• Adept Marksman (3rd level): This feature grants you a number of trick shots, unlocking more at higher levels, as well as giving you a pool of grit points with which to use them.
• Quickdraw (7th level): At 7th level, the Quickdraw feature boosts your initiative, and also allows you to holster and draw your weapons more quickly, letting you stow one weapon and draw a second as part of a single object interaction on your turn.
• Rapid Repair (10th level): If one of your firearms is jammed by a misfire, you can now attempt to repair it as a bonus action. Vital if your main weapon suffers a poorly timed failure in combat.
• Lightning Reload (15th level): You’re even quicker on the draw, now able to reload a firearm as a bonus action!
• Vicious Intent (18th level): Your attacks now score a critical hit on a result of a 19 or 20 instead of just a 20. You also regain a grit point whenever you roll a critical hit.
• Hemorrhaging Critical (18th level): The wounds dealt by your critical hits linger, with any enemy struck in such a way suffering additional damage at the end of its next turn.

Pros

The Gunslinger is an evocative subclass, summoning a strong narrative image of the inventive, shoots-from-the-hip archetype of Western movies. Crafting your own firearms and ammunition can be rewarding if you enjoy downtime activities that provide direct benefits to combat rather than being roleplay-focused.

Trick shots provide some fantastic opportunities for support tactics, letting you daze, disarm, or move your enemies around from a distance, so your melee-focused allies can rush in and reap the rewards of your deadly precision.

Thanks to the unique firearm rules the Gunslinger uses, they synergize excellently with the base fighter class. The ability to reload as an action or by burning an attack means that you have multiple opportunities in combat to ensure you’re battle-ready with your blunderbuss, which only improves when you unlock the Lightning Reload feature.

Cons

The most obvious weakness of the Gunslinger is the misfire rule, which is ostensibly a "critical fumble" rule. Rolling below a weapon's misfire score—which ranges from 1 to 3—results in the attack automatically missing, much like if you’d rolled a natural 1. But that’s not all, because a misfired weapon then requires an action to attempt to repair it. Doing so requires an ability check made with your tinker's tools. If that check fails, the weapon breaks and it must be mended outside of combat at a cost.

This leads into the second major downside of the Gunslinger: It relies heavily on the active investment by the Dungeon Master not only to facilitate the time and resources for a Gunslinger to craft their ammunition and repair their weapons but also to make new ones. There are no rules for unlocking new firearms as the character levels, so the DM must take the time to work with you to make them available. For firearms such as the musket or pepperbox, which can be purchased, this can be as simple as ensuring there is a merchant available. But if your DM's setting doesn’t have firearms for sale, or if you want your own bad news or hand mortar, your DM will need to work with you to concoct a crafting system.

Building a Gunslinger fighter

Ability scores

Being a ranged subclass, it should come as no surprise that you’ll want a high Dexterity score to make sure your shots land. For 1st and 2nd level, before you get to pick the subclass, consider focusing on using a bow or crossbow. Once you reach 3rd level and pick Gunslinger, not only will you be able to start using firearms, but your saving throw DC for trick shots will benefit from your high Dexterity.

Because you’ll be fighting at a distance from your enemies, consider forgoing the typical fighter mainstay of Constitution as your secondary ability score in favor of Wisdom, which will increase the number of grit points you have. This can also allow you to venture into some useful skills, such as Insight or Perception. It can also be worth discussing with your Dungeon Master about what ability score they intend for you to use with your tinker's tools when crafting and repairing firearms and ammunition. A solid argument can be made for using your Wisdom modifier.

Races

With the new degree of flexibility coming to the Ability Score Increase racial trait, first showing up as an optional rule in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, and now appearing as a core rule for newer races, you have more room to focus on other traits a race offers. The suggestions below look at the various traits each race has that synergize with the Gunslinger subclass, assuming you are able to freely assign your ability score increases.

• Rock gnome: Rock gnomes have the Artificer's Lore trait, which could be useful when attempting to craft your next firearm. The gnome's lore of being natural tinkerers also lends itself well to the Gunslinger's flavor.
• Variant human: If your Dungeon Master allows the variant human, this race is a great choice for picking up an extra feat. Coming in at 1st level with one of the recommended feats below can make for a powerful Gunslinger.
• Owlin: The owlin from Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos makes for a great sniper Gunslinger. Their Flight trait plus Stealth proficiency allows them to silently reach vantage points from which to get the perfect shot.
• Fairy: Here's another flying race, this time from The Wild Beyond the Witchlight. Its Fairy Magic trait gives you the useful faerie fire spell, which gives advantage on attack rolls made against affected creatures.
• Changeling: If you want to play your Gunslinger as more of an assassin-type character, the changeling is right for you. The ability to shift their appearance means they can blend in, disguising themselves until they have the perfect shot.

A note on the harengon race

The rabbit-like harengon from The Wild Beyond the Witchlight has an aptly named Hare-Trigger trait that adds your proficiency bonus to your initiative rolls. At first glance, this may seem perfect as combined with Quickdraw from the Gunslinger, you’d be adding your proficiency bonus twice. Unfortunately, the rules don’t work that way—you can only add your proficiency bonus to a roll once.

Feats

The most obvious criteria for feats would be ones that improve your Dexterity or Wisdom, but the Gunslinger invites some interesting feat options due to the way it not only fights at range but also how their firearms work.

• Firearm Specialist: This feat was literally made for the subclass. While firearm proficiency is redundant for the Gunslinger, the ability to use your reaction to potentially negate a misfire is incredibly valuable. Combine that with the ability to attack with a loaded firearm as a bonus action, and you have a potent feat option for the Gunslinger.
• Artificer Initiate: This feat on the surface might not seem that useful, but I have one word for you: mending. You can take this cantrip as part of the feat and, with your DM's approval, have a quick and cost-effective way to repair your broken firearms. Obviously, this relies on your DM ruling that a weapon broken by a misfire is within the scope of one or more castings of the spell.
• Sharpshooter: Back to another obvious feat choice. With Sharpshooter, you won't suffer from disadvantage on long-range shots, you can ignore anything but total cover, and you can boost your damage by +10 at the cost of a -5 to hit. All of these combine beautifully with the Gunslinger to turn you into a deadly sniper.
• Fey Touched: And here we are with what might seem like an odd choice. The Wisdom score increase will help get you more grit points, but what’s really interesting is the spell choices. Misty step is a surprisingly useful spell as a Gunslinger, allowing you to get out of melee range without provoking opportunity attacks as a bonus action or just teleport up to the perfect vantage point. Your 1st-level Divination or Enchantment spell options are not to be sniffed at either. If you go with an Enchantment option, bane is a great pick as you can not only make your targets more vulnerable to your trick shots but also help out your allies. Alternatively, you could take the Divination spell hunter's mark, which increases the damage you deal to a marked creature, and you have advantage on Wisdom checks made using Perception or Survival to find that creature.
• Piercer: We’ll finish off with another obvious choice. Piercer not only improves your Dexterity but lets you reroll the damage of one attack per turn for all but one of the Gunslinger's firearms. Finally, the critical hit effect of the feat works nicely with the improved critical hit range of Vicious Intent.

Special mention for draconic gifts

The feats Gift of the Chromatic Dragon and Gift of the Gem Dragon are also worth considering for your Gunslinger. Gift of the Chromatic Dragon allows you to infuse your weapons with damage types other than piercing, which can be great for getting around resistances, plus the Reactive Resistance feature gives your character a bit more survivability should they end up in hot water. Gift of the Gem Dragon can boost your Wisdom score and give you the ability to move enemies away from you should they hit you, giving you the breathing room you need to get out of melee range.

Gunslinger fighter sample build

Below, you’ll find a 10th-level Gunslinger build that focuses on sniping from long range. I chose owlin for the ability to fly and Stealth proficiency as this will help them get into the perfect vantage point undetected. I also chose to make them Small to help with squeezing into places. Assuming a cooperative Dungeon Master, I equipped them with the long-range bad news, plus a pistol for close-quarter combats.

I split Ability Score Improvements between Dexterity and the Sharpshooter feat. In order to make using the feat even easier with D&D Beyond’s digital dice, I added a second bad news and pistol, and customized them to include the -5 to hit and +10 to damage. Finally, for trick shots, I went with two support options, Disarming Shot and Dazing Shot, and two high-damage options, Piercing Shot and Violent Shot.

How will you build your Gunslinger?

The Gunslinger is a divisive subclass that isn’t for everyone. The use of misfire rules and the reliance on your Dungeon Master needing to facilitate access to your subclass features can make it a poor fit for some tables. However, if you want to take aim at the classic gunslinger archetype, a crack shot with a score to settle, or maybe you fancy yourself the next Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III, it can be the subclass for you!

To build a Gunslinger, hop into D&D Beyond's character builder. Enable "Critical Role Content" under the "Home" tab and start tinkering! Just remember to aim with your eye, shoot with your mind, and kill with your heart!

Davyd is a moderator for D&D Beyond. A Dungeon Master of over fifteen years, he enjoys Marvel movies, writing, and of course running D&D for his friends and family, including partner Steph and his daughter Willow (well, one day). They live with their two cats Asker and Khatleesi in the south of England.