Understandably, the DM doesn't like it when we come up with solutions to something he thought was a clever twist. But now, I think he's ignoring the written game mechanics/lore to obviate the solution.
So, very cool, he introduced firearms, and as an Artificer, I can use the Hunting Rifle we took off an opponent's corpse. Dm's twist to not have that become a game-breaker, is that ammunition is, of course, limited for such an "exotic" weapon, and I can't make more key ingredient, gunpowder (discovering the formula for gunpowder is part of my personal quest in this homebrewed campaign setting). After the grace period of a few days of game time and a few combats, now that I've looted 100 pieces of ammo from our last foe, he will keep track of ammo spent, so that conserving ammo is a factor in encounters. Fair enough.
Except, I have the Repeating Shot Infusion - "If the weapon lacks ammunition, it produces its own, automatically creating one piece of magic ammunition when the wielder makes a ranged attack with it." So I would say that means I will never run out.
As part of leveling up, I emailed him about this. His reply "... So, agree to all except the repeating shot replicating the ammo. The formula for gunpowder has been lost, so you do not know how to replicate it. That is why it is so important for you to the quest to rediscover it."
I explained that _I_ am not replicating or making gunpowder, I'm not actually doing anything. The _gun_ is making magic bullets as part of the infusion. Nothing that requires any particular knowledge, it's magic.
Still no, that I am replicating and need to know the formula myself. If I was saying a spell "Create Gunpowder!" I would agree that it might require me to have an idea in my head of what ingredients I am pulling from the ether, but I am not.
If it was a bow, making magic arrows, it wouldn't require me to have studied to be a fletcher...
I know that this takes some urgency out of the quest he gave me, to recover the secret of gunpowder, but it seems silly to deny that the infusion does what it does.
There is some lack of clarity in the repeating shot. A bow requires ammunition (an arrow) but that is all that is needed so it is clear repeating shot means you are not limited in the number of times you shoot the arrow. With guns it is not as clear, modern guns have a single cartridge as a bullet that acts as projectile and propellent but in early guns they were seperate and it is not clear whether ammunition means all that is needed to fire the gun or just the projectile.
Even if we say it is clear that the ammunition includes the propellent it is fully within the DMs rights to edit the rules for the fun of the whole table. If a DM belives that a twilights cleric's twilight sanctuary breaks the game or makes it less fun for other characters whose temporary HP features become redundent they have every right to nerf the feature or ban the subclass. The same applies here.
The limit on ammunition was to in your own words so that it didn't "become a game breaker". What you are saying is you have a feature thast allows you to break the game and you demand to be allowed to do so.
If you don't accept his rule the DM s options are then:
Submit to your request so you lose your personnal quest and the rest of the party have less fun because you are the far stringer than the rest of the party
Remove Firearms from the game, e.g. an assassin sneaks into your room while you sleep and steals your gun or a Giff Warload (with enough allies to overwhelm the party) appears and demand his gun back.
Kick you from the game
End the game
As a DM I would go with option 2 or 3 though would hope it doesn't go that far.
From a mechanical point of view that simply isn't how repeating shot works. Repeating shot explicitly bypasses the Loading property. It also clearly states that the weapon magically produces its own ammunition, implicitly bypassing the Ammunition property. The fact that it can only be used on weapons that have the Ammunition property reinforces that you can ignore the ammunition property. As long as your ranged weapon has the Ammunition property, which a hunting rifle does, the Repeating Shot infusion would work on it. Now, it's worth noting that modern and futuristic firearms do have an additional property: Reload. RAW, Reload would not be bypassed by Repeating Shot, despite logic determining that it should. This doesn't mean that Repeating Shot wouldn't work, it's just something to keep in mind.
However, From a balance and narrative standpoint, I think the DM has every right to place this limitation on repeating shot. As has been mentioned, it gives you infinite access to a very powerful weapon very early, and it essentially eliminates your personal quest. At the same time, 100 pieces of ammunition for a powerful weapon like that should still last you a long time. You could even choose to study and experiment with the ammo you have to help expedite your progress in discovering the recipe for gunpowder, or at least making the infusion work. This would take quite a bit of time and likely consume the ammo in the process, but it could be a middle ground to negotiate with your DM.
The DM has made a specific, explicit exception for firearms in their setting, so whatever they say is final; no other rule can override a DM's ruling.
It sounds like they basically made a bargain with you (advancing knowledge of the firearm is a personal quest) so any limits they impose on that is part of the bargain. It's also reasonable if you don't know anything about gunpowder then any magic you use isn't necessarily able to know either; this is different from making a renaissance bullet (it's just a metal ball) or an arrow (wooden shaft, fletching and an arrowhead), neither of which you necessarily need to be able to make to understand.
But from the perspective of someone that doesn't know how to make gunpowder, it's just a powder that goes "bang", if you don't know what it consists of then how can your magic?
Ultimately though it's the deal you are being given; either take the superior weapon with some limitations tied to this personal quest, or use a simpler weapon you already understand.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Honestly I'm with the dm on this, if he gave you a really cool weapon like a hunting rifle which does a fair bit of damage and just gave you a limitation, and isnt cool with your workaround, then you really shouldnt press the issue
also, its within the dms rights to overlook/decide how to use certain rules/how things work thats in the dmg
But from the perspective of someone that doesn't know how to make gunpowder, it's just a powder that goes "bang", if you don't know what it consists of then how can your magic?
I'm not disagreeing with the rest of your post, but this specifically is just a bad argument. You don't know how to teleport, so why does your misty step know how to? You don't know how to suture a critical stab wound, so why does your cure wounds do so? You don't know how to create improvised explosives, so why can you cast fireball? You don't know how to track a deer in the woods, so why can you cast locate creature? The point of magic is that you use magic to do things that you otherwise don't have the knowledge or ability to do.
I'm not attacking you specifically. I just see this argument made all the time and it really needs to stop.
I'm not disagreeing with the rest of your post, but this specifically is just a bad argument. You don't know how to teleport, so why does your misty step know how to?
We're not talking about a teleport spell for teleportation, we're talking about an infusion on a specific weapon that needs to somehow produce all the necessary components for that weapon to function in order for it to have the desired effect.
Artificers are meant to be magical inventors, and infusions are a mechanic of that theme, so what they're doing is "inventing" magic to enhance a weapon, but if they don't understand that weapon, or an aspect of the weapon, it's perfectly reasonable that they wouldn't be able to magically enhance it in any way that requires more knowledge than they currently have.
And actually if you know misty step you do know how to teleport, that's what learning a spell is whether it's knowledge gifted by a deity or other patron, a formula copied into your spellbook etc., because knowledge is a core component of how you learn and prepare spells.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
I like ThelonelyMagi's solution. If things like Hunting Rifles count as magical then an artificer could not infuse it and would be limited by the ammo requirements just like the DM wants.
@Conforama, I ran into the same thing with a game DM'd by a friend of mine. He wanted to introduce firearms to the game but I put up my hand and explained to him what that could mean since I was playing an artificer. In the end we agreed to limit firearms to just muskets/black powder. I don't agree with how your DM explained why your artificer cannot infuse a hunting rifle, but I DO agree that it would be game breaking. As a good player you should work with your DM on a reason that is acceptable and doesn't result in something too overpowered.
Personally, I would recommend not going beyond muskets with D&D rules. Ranged combat is already powerful enough in 5E. Boosting it with more modern firearms will heighten already existing gremlins in the rules.
Part of the confusion stems from the fact that the weapons that use ammunition in standard DnD settings are mostly bow-based (with some exceptions like slings and blowguns) because they're standard weapons in every setting along with swords, axes, daggers, etc. The ammunition for them is mundane, and there's only four types (sling bullets, blowgun darts, arrows, and crossbow bolts).
Firearms are an optional addition that are usually more powerful and as such, are more open to DM interpretation as to how they're implemented in the world.
I would rule it the same way as your DM; there's a difference between creating a mundane piece of ammunition that the weapon itself fires, compared to creating complex ammunition where the ammo itself provides the "means" of propelling the projectile.
Another compromise could be that you offer to pick the magic stone cantrip at your next lvl up (you can swap cantrips) and use a bonus action to ‚prime‘ the magic bullets your repeating shot muscet creates.
It would be unlimited, but you would spend one of your known cantrips and a bonus action.
A little late to the discussion, but as a DM I read their response as "I have just spent several hours putting together a questline for you to discover the secrets to making gunpowder, tying it to the main storyline with new plothooks, and I do not want to have to rewrite the whole thing because you have an ability which renders the whole thing moot".
As a DM, I would rule that the ability does create the projectile, but not the propellant. As such, once you have the ability to make gunpowder, you needn't worry about carrying all the musket balls around - just prime and fire, the magic will take care of the bullet.
I don't really see it in conflict with their quest really. When his quest is complete and gun powder is rediscovered they'll no longer be limited to his 1 magic item that requires attunement but could arm a kingdom, the world or whoever they deem fit to share the knowledge with. This could greatly affect the balance of power in the world at large. I think the end goal of this quest is much larger then personal power.
Infusing an item as written is basically a prototype for a permanent magical item. Having a prototype of something your working towards (even if more complex in this case) I think is fine. If the DM has given them 100 ammunition already this is pretty moot until the DM decides he runs out. At that point the character might be more advanced and have other spells they could make a prototype with. The example above of having firebolt, magic stone etc from above to replicate the idea of how a completed product mightwork even without the details would work for me. Creating things this way as an artificer is really cool to me. If the DM doesn't plan to have the ammo fully run out for a long period of time allowing this doesn't seem to be a big boon (they are allowing the rest of the features from what I understand, just not ammo creation).
If this is going to cause a power imbalance amongst the party I'd likely toss a couple things the other players way to even it out a bit the next time treasure/items are rewarded. I prefer to buff others (I know this means I change encounters too) then strip away when I can. Without knowing if any other balancing factors are there it likely already has that imbalance. Maybe they've thought of something like the ammo you do find is so old that some of it misfires (on really bad misfires you could injure yourself with old ammo) and that balances things out with the 100 current ammo. I'm also basing this off a fight averaging a few rounds and using this item every round. If it's not a dungeon dive this could last a really long time already.
In the end it's the DM's world and they can make adjustments to abilities they find overpowered - it does sucks when it's a surprise nerf after the fact compared to how it's written or assumed to work. I don't generally change official stuff, but any homebrew stuff my players bring comes with the caveat of it's it's too strong we'll nerf it later but keep the flavor. For me this might fall in that category considering it's optional nature and exception in the world. I don't really have enough information to know if just creating the ammo itself is the straw that would cross that line.
I don't think it's a big enough problem to leave the game over as a player or make a big fuss over. Unless it's a repeated pattern of running into abilities you've built around that just don't work. I'd at least wait to see how it plays out, 100 ammo is pretty generous for lost knowledge already.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Understandably, the DM doesn't like it when we come up with solutions to something he thought was a clever twist. But now, I think he's ignoring the written game mechanics/lore to obviate the solution.
So, very cool, he introduced firearms, and as an Artificer, I can use the Hunting Rifle we took off an opponent's corpse. Dm's twist to not have that become a game-breaker, is that ammunition is, of course, limited for such an "exotic" weapon, and I can't make more key ingredient, gunpowder (discovering the formula for gunpowder is part of my personal quest in this homebrewed campaign setting). After the grace period of a few days of game time and a few combats, now that I've looted 100 pieces of ammo from our last foe, he will keep track of ammo spent, so that conserving ammo is a factor in encounters. Fair enough.
Except, I have the Repeating Shot Infusion - "If the weapon lacks ammunition, it produces its own, automatically creating one piece of magic ammunition when the wielder makes a ranged attack with it." So I would say that means I will never run out.
As part of leveling up, I emailed him about this. His reply "... So, agree to all except the repeating shot replicating the ammo. The formula for gunpowder has been lost, so you do not know how to replicate it. That is why it is so important for you to the quest to rediscover it."
I explained that _I_ am not replicating or making gunpowder, I'm not actually doing anything. The _gun_ is making magic bullets as part of the infusion. Nothing that requires any particular knowledge, it's magic.
Still no, that I am replicating and need to know the formula myself. If I was saying a spell "Create Gunpowder!" I would agree that it might require me to have an idea in my head of what ingredients I am pulling from the ether, but I am not.
If it was a bow, making magic arrows, it wouldn't require me to have studied to be a fletcher...
I know that this takes some urgency out of the quest he gave me, to recover the secret of gunpowder, but it seems silly to deny that the infusion does what it does.
Thoughts?
I'm with the DM on this.
There is some lack of clarity in the repeating shot. A bow requires ammunition (an arrow) but that is all that is needed so it is clear repeating shot means you are not limited in the number of times you shoot the arrow. With guns it is not as clear, modern guns have a single cartridge as a bullet that acts as projectile and propellent but in early guns they were seperate and it is not clear whether ammunition means all that is needed to fire the gun or just the projectile.
Even if we say it is clear that the ammunition includes the propellent it is fully within the DMs rights to edit the rules for the fun of the whole table. If a DM belives that a twilights cleric's twilight sanctuary breaks the game or makes it less fun for other characters whose temporary HP features become redundent they have every right to nerf the feature or ban the subclass. The same applies here.
The limit on ammunition was to in your own words so that it didn't "become a game breaker". What you are saying is you have a feature thast allows you to break the game and you demand to be allowed to do so.
If you don't accept his rule the DM s options are then:
As a DM I would go with option 2 or 3 though would hope it doesn't go that far.
From a mechanical point of view that simply isn't how repeating shot works. Repeating shot explicitly bypasses the Loading property. It also clearly states that the weapon magically produces its own ammunition, implicitly bypassing the Ammunition property. The fact that it can only be used on weapons that have the Ammunition property reinforces that you can ignore the ammunition property. As long as your ranged weapon has the Ammunition property, which a hunting rifle does, the Repeating Shot infusion would work on it.
Now, it's worth noting that modern and futuristic firearms do have an additional property: Reload. RAW, Reload would not be bypassed by Repeating Shot, despite logic determining that it should. This doesn't mean that Repeating Shot wouldn't work, it's just something to keep in mind.
However, From a balance and narrative standpoint, I think the DM has every right to place this limitation on repeating shot. As has been mentioned, it gives you infinite access to a very powerful weapon very early, and it essentially eliminates your personal quest. At the same time, 100 pieces of ammunition for a powerful weapon like that should still last you a long time.
You could even choose to study and experiment with the ammo you have to help expedite your progress in discovering the recipe for gunpowder, or at least making the infusion work. This would take quite a bit of time and likely consume the ammo in the process, but it could be a middle ground to negotiate with your DM.
How to add tooltips on dndbeyond
The DM has made a specific, explicit exception for firearms in their setting, so whatever they say is final; no other rule can override a DM's ruling.
It sounds like they basically made a bargain with you (advancing knowledge of the firearm is a personal quest) so any limits they impose on that is part of the bargain. It's also reasonable if you don't know anything about gunpowder then any magic you use isn't necessarily able to know either; this is different from making a renaissance bullet (it's just a metal ball) or an arrow (wooden shaft, fletching and an arrowhead), neither of which you necessarily need to be able to make to understand.
But from the perspective of someone that doesn't know how to make gunpowder, it's just a powder that goes "bang", if you don't know what it consists of then how can your magic?
Ultimately though it's the deal you are being given; either take the superior weapon with some limitations tied to this personal quest, or use a simpler weapon you already understand.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Honestly I'm with the dm on this, if he gave you a really cool weapon like a hunting rifle which does a fair bit of damage and just gave you a limitation, and isnt cool with your workaround, then you really shouldnt press the issue
also, its within the dms rights to overlook/decide how to use certain rules/how things work
thats in the dmg
I'm not disagreeing with the rest of your post, but this specifically is just a bad argument. You don't know how to teleport, so why does your misty step know how to? You don't know how to suture a critical stab wound, so why does your cure wounds do so? You don't know how to create improvised explosives, so why can you cast fireball? You don't know how to track a deer in the woods, so why can you cast locate creature?
The point of magic is that you use magic to do things that you otherwise don't have the knowledge or ability to do.
I'm not attacking you specifically. I just see this argument made all the time and it really needs to stop.
How to add tooltips on dndbeyond
We're not talking about a teleport spell for teleportation, we're talking about an infusion on a specific weapon that needs to somehow produce all the necessary components for that weapon to function in order for it to have the desired effect.
Artificers are meant to be magical inventors, and infusions are a mechanic of that theme, so what they're doing is "inventing" magic to enhance a weapon, but if they don't understand that weapon, or an aspect of the weapon, it's perfectly reasonable that they wouldn't be able to magically enhance it in any way that requires more knowledge than they currently have.
And actually if you know misty step you do know how to teleport, that's what learning a spell is whether it's knowledge gifted by a deity or other patron, a formula copied into your spellbook etc., because knowledge is a core component of how you learn and prepare spells.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Easiest solution for the DM is just to make the Hunting Rifle magical. Just give it the ability to do magical damage and problem solved.
I like ThelonelyMagi's solution. If things like Hunting Rifles count as magical then an artificer could not infuse it and would be limited by the ammo requirements just like the DM wants.
@Conforama, I ran into the same thing with a game DM'd by a friend of mine. He wanted to introduce firearms to the game but I put up my hand and explained to him what that could mean since I was playing an artificer. In the end we agreed to limit firearms to just muskets/black powder. I don't agree with how your DM explained why your artificer cannot infuse a hunting rifle, but I DO agree that it would be game breaking. As a good player you should work with your DM on a reason that is acceptable and doesn't result in something too overpowered.
Personally, I would recommend not going beyond muskets with D&D rules. Ranged combat is already powerful enough in 5E. Boosting it with more modern firearms will heighten already existing gremlins in the rules.
Current Characters I am playing: Dr Konstantin van Wulf | Taegen Willowrun | Mad Magnar
Check out my homebrew: Items | Monsters | Spells | Subclasses | Feats
Part of the confusion stems from the fact that the weapons that use ammunition in standard DnD settings are mostly bow-based (with some exceptions like slings and blowguns) because they're standard weapons in every setting along with swords, axes, daggers, etc. The ammunition for them is mundane, and there's only four types (sling bullets, blowgun darts, arrows, and crossbow bolts).
Firearms are an optional addition that are usually more powerful and as such, are more open to DM interpretation as to how they're implemented in the world.
I would rule it the same way as your DM; there's a difference between creating a mundane piece of ammunition that the weapon itself fires, compared to creating complex ammunition where the ammo itself provides the "means" of propelling the projectile.
Another compromise could be that you offer to pick the magic stone cantrip at your next lvl up (you can swap cantrips) and use a bonus action to ‚prime‘ the magic bullets your repeating shot muscet creates.
It would be unlimited, but you would spend one of your known cantrips and a bonus action.
Attack: [roll]3d20dl2+6[/roll] Damage: [roll](if([roll:-1:critical], =0, 1d8, 2{1d8}.expand()))+4[/roll] Sneakattack: [roll](if([roll:-2:critical], =0, 2d6, 2{2d6}.expand()))[/roll]A little late to the discussion, but as a DM I read their response as "I have just spent several hours putting together a questline for you to discover the secrets to making gunpowder, tying it to the main storyline with new plothooks, and I do not want to have to rewrite the whole thing because you have an ability which renders the whole thing moot".
As a DM, I would rule that the ability does create the projectile, but not the propellant. As such, once you have the ability to make gunpowder, you needn't worry about carrying all the musket balls around - just prime and fire, the magic will take care of the bullet.
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
I don't really see it in conflict with their quest really. When his quest is complete and gun powder is rediscovered they'll no longer be limited to his 1 magic item that requires attunement but could arm a kingdom, the world or whoever they deem fit to share the knowledge with. This could greatly affect the balance of power in the world at large. I think the end goal of this quest is much larger then personal power.
Infusing an item as written is basically a prototype for a permanent magical item. Having a prototype of something your working towards (even if more complex in this case) I think is fine. If the DM has given them 100 ammunition already this is pretty moot until the DM decides he runs out. At that point the character might be more advanced and have other spells they could make a prototype with. The example above of having firebolt, magic stone etc from above to replicate the idea of how a completed product might work even without the details would work for me. Creating things this way as an artificer is really cool to me. If the DM doesn't plan to have the ammo fully run out for a long period of time allowing this doesn't seem to be a big boon (they are allowing the rest of the features from what I understand, just not ammo creation).
If this is going to cause a power imbalance amongst the party I'd likely toss a couple things the other players way to even it out a bit the next time treasure/items are rewarded. I prefer to buff others (I know this means I change encounters too) then strip away when I can. Without knowing if any other balancing factors are there it likely already has that imbalance. Maybe they've thought of something like the ammo you do find is so old that some of it misfires (on really bad misfires you could injure yourself with old ammo) and that balances things out with the 100 current ammo. I'm also basing this off a fight averaging a few rounds and using this item every round. If it's not a dungeon dive this could last a really long time already.
In the end it's the DM's world and they can make adjustments to abilities they find overpowered - it does sucks when it's a surprise nerf after the fact compared to how it's written or assumed to work. I don't generally change official stuff, but any homebrew stuff my players bring comes with the caveat of it's it's too strong we'll nerf it later but keep the flavor. For me this might fall in that category considering it's optional nature and exception in the world. I don't really have enough information to know if just creating the ammo itself is the straw that would cross that line.
I don't think it's a big enough problem to leave the game over as a player or make a big fuss over. Unless it's a repeated pattern of running into abilities you've built around that just don't work. I'd at least wait to see how it plays out, 100 ammo is pretty generous for lost knowledge already.