You are adept at using guns effectively.
- You gain proficiency with Firearms.
- If you roll a misfire on an attack with a firearm, you can use your reaction to roll a d20. If the number rolled is higher than the weapon’s misfire score, the firearm does not misfire. You cannot use this feature of this feat again until you complete a short or long rest.
- When you use the Attack action and attack with a one-handed weapon, you can use a bonus action to attack with a loaded firearm with the light property you are holding.
THIS IS UNOFFICIAL MATERIAL
These game mechanics are usable in your campaign if your DM allows them but not refined by final game design and editing. They aren’t officially part of the Dungeons & Dragons game and aren’t permitted in D&D Adventurers League events unless otherwise stated. To use this content, toggle the Critical Role content on in the character builder.
Praise Critical Role for this being added here. It's bound to make campaigns interesting.
I'm trying to think of a practical purpose for the third bullet point and I'm struggling. Given that you have to reload palm pistols (the only light firearm), you essentially get one shot then have to stow your main hand weapon and reload for a turn if you want to fire again, or carry lots of disposable palm pistols. I'd rather run something like this:
*If you use your action to attack with a one handed firearm and have no weapon or shield in your other hand, you may make one additional attack with that firearm provided it has ammunition loaded to do so.
All they did was take the third bullet point from the Crossbow Expert feat and adapt it to firearms. I'm sure they did it to maintain balance.
Hand Crossbows also require two hands to be reloaded as well.
Except crossbow mastery also allows you to ignore the loading quality of crossbows, meaning you don't need a free hand in order to reload it (somehow). This feat doesn't include such a feature, and so you can fire *one* shot from your offhand pistol (the only light pistol being the palm pistol, which has a 1 bullet capacity) before having to either reload (putting away your other weapon to free up a hand to do so and then using up one of your attacks), swap out the pistol for another weapon, or just ignore it for the rest of the fight. In essence, third bullet point is almost *never* going to be useful on any build. Even if the third bullet point can't be replaced with mine (on reflection, it's almost objectively better than crossbow master and so quite unbalanced) having a third feature that was at least *relevant* to a serious build would be nice.
Crossbow Expert doesn’t ignore needing two hands to reload a crossbow. It ignores the Loading property. The Loading property says nothing about not needing two hands, you still need two hands. You just get to reload faster.
Loading. Because of the time required to load this weapon, you can fire only one piece of ammunition from it when you use an action, bonus action, or reaction to fire it, regardless of the number of attacks you can normally make.
And here’s a clarification from Sage Advice. http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/sageadvice_feats
“The latter property requires you to have a bolt to fire from the hand crossbow, and the hand crossbow isn’t going to load itself (unless it’s magical or a gnomish invention). You need to load each bolt into the weapon, and doing so requires a hand.”
Huh, I was not aware of this. Looking through PHB I found no rule explicitly saying you needed a hand free to load the hand crossbow, and tables I've played at before allowed you to dual wield a hand crossbow and melee weapon with crossbow mastery, so I assumed this was the correct ruling. The sage advice however, definitely makes sense, even if it rains quite hard on certain dual wield builds. Thank you for pointing me to that article.
I still think that bullet point three will almost never see use, but then it is a homebrew so it can always be edited at the table, and the feat still serves its basic purpose: granting firearm proficiency to non-gunslingers. Happy shooting to you good sir/madam.
Happy shooting to you as well. In my home games, I hand wave past needing two hands, but then my first AL character got stamped out by the official ruling. Just wouldn't want that to happen to others.
I play in a campaign where I am a Gunslinger Fighter (Pirate Captain,) and my friend plays as a Swashbuckler Rogue (First Mate.) I make her pistols, she stabs and shoots people. Dash into an enemy, strike at them, get a free disengage with Fancy Footwork, then, backstep and shoot them to finish them off, or even if you miss your swing and sneak attack, backstep a 10 feet, turn toward another enemy your ally is engaged with and boom! Another chance at a sneak attack.
Considering the super low cost of palm pistols (and its ammunition) you can craft a bunch of them (or buy em, if you dont have a gunslinger in your party) and have them stowed in your bag or strapped across you. Since dropping a weapon isn't supposed to cost any action whatsoever, you can keep drawing Palm Pistols with your free action each turn, you won't ever have to worry about running out of loaded pistols even if you melee attack and fire each turn.
Just be sure to pick up your precious pistols once the battle is over.
That's, actually a very historically accurate tactic for a pirate.
Old flintlock pistols like the ones shown in your picture are all one-shot weapons, so people would strap a bunch of them to themselves and just draw & drop one whenever needed. Blackbeard himself wore on average 10 flintlocks and a blunderbuss in addition to his swords. He even reportedly wore as many as 17 pistols on one occasion! Which is very hard when you don't have enchanted pockets.
There was also a practice of having a length of thin rope tied to a ring on the butt of each pistol and the other to their belt, so the dropped pistols weren't lost or accidentally stepped on in the middle of a fight. This also had the added benefit of the person ending a shootout with a skirt made from guns, which is a totally badass visual. Even despite the bruised legs.
And if your DM tries to give you grief over the bits of rope getting in the way please note that most of it was usually coiled inside the holster next to the barrel of the gun just because of this issue.
You know I’m just trying to figure how much ammo can fit in the pistol I’ve been to pretty much every site on here and none of them helped
each pistol has a loading quality and misfire score. the reload # it the max number of bullets in the gun at one time, and the misfire score is the chance it has to break
Maybe the third bullet point could come in handy when you're feeling confident the bonus attack would finish off a creature? That makes sense to me anyway.
I'm confused, if you were to use this, could you reload a palm pistol as a bonus action?
As mentioned above, the third bullet point becomes usefull if you want it to be. If your gun only holds one shot, you can carry multiple guns. That way you could use the bonus attack multiple rounds in a row.
Question- Is there any chance I can add this in the feat list on my character sheet here in d&d beyond???
I am confused by this feat and the gunslinger subclass. Specifically the third bullet point here.
If I am a Gunslinger that wields a scimitar and a palm pistol and want to use my action to attack with the scimitar and my bonus to attack with the palm pistol then I need this feat right?
I feel like this third point should say "loaded, one-handed firearm" instead of "light" and that light firearms can just be used for bonus action attacks like light melee weapons can be used. You'll likely be at disadvantage anyway (if going for the same target) or need to spend a grit point for a straight roll.
Just my two cents here. Would love to know what other people think of this feat being needed for a sword+gun dual-wielding Gunslinger.
You should be able to! On the very first page of your character sheet settings, the one where you choose whether your HP increase will be fixed or manual, you can choose to allow external content. There should be a button for critical role content and eberron content. Choose to allow critical role content and you should be all set!
With using the bonus action to attack with a loaded light property firearm, does that put it into the ruling for two weapon fighting where the firearm damage would just be a straight roll with no dexterity bonus like if it were a light melee weapon?
I'd say no because like with crossbow expert this is a special attack that is separate from usual two weapon fighting and therefore not subject to the rules for an offhand attack.
With the new Artificer class you can enchant ranged weapons so that they don’t require reloading. In my game I have a player who multiclassed as a Gunslinger/Artificer and by level 5 he can fire over and over again without any issue.
Subsequently we have a Blood Hunter in the party who wields a longsword and handcrossbow with the crossbow expert feat and can attack with the sword and shoot with a bonus action without needing to reload. If you asked your DM they might allow you to kindly call if the “crossbow (and other assorted hand held ranged weapon) expert feat” if you’re missing an Artificer in your party