I'm watching Critical Role, and it definately seems like Percy gets a LOT less out of his guns than the drawbacks.
The Pepperbox is a one handed longbow with a 1/20 chance of misfire, oh and you have to reload every six shots, and if you misfire and fail the repair check (an action!? To get your primary means of engaging in combat back in action!?) the thing breaks, and you have to spend actual time repairing it, spending half the bloody cost of the bloody thing again! This could happen more than once an adventure. The misfire happened twice in one fight for Percy!
That, right off the bat, is a shite weapon. He would be noticably more effective with a longbow. It never misfires, does close enough to the same damage as to make no real difference, and has the same range. And without a feat, Pepperbox still basically needs two hands, bc you have to have a free hand to reload.
Bad News also isn't that great, for a weapon that misfires 3x as often (on a 1,2, or 3), and has to be reloaded every time. And has to be crafted special. It's....a magic item that breaks 15% of the times you use it, at best requiring an Action to fix, with a decent chance to really break, requiring a bunch of gold and some out of combat time to rebuild. 2d12 and sniper range is cool, but the archetype needs to really shine to make this a better option that normal weapons.
And it kinda doesn't. Percy wasn't overpowered before Matt started nerfing his archetype. The grit mechanic is cool, but it doesn't do as much as the good fighter archetypes. Why this over a simple Archer fighter? Other than cool factor, obv.
What am I missing, here? This seems strictly less useful than a warlock with Eldritch Blast and one or more Invocations to boost it.
Idk, every single time I've seen a gun-type weapon introduced into a campaign it's broken one way or the other. To make it more realistic, you'd have to utterly DESTROY the other ranged weapons in damage. The problem is, the historical fact that firearms are vastly superior to any other type of weapon in D&D and since magic is balanced to be similar enough to the damage of weaponry, even magic shouldn't be able to compare to a firearm (gun > sword = bow = cantrip)
This leads to the problem of what do you do to make it more balanced? Well, some muskets used to misfire, so let's add a misfire rule into the gun use (we'll ignore the fact that crossbows used to jam and bowstrings used to snap for purposes of this). Well now it's a 5% chance to not shoot (0% if you are a halfling!). But this gun is just a normal hand gun, what about more powerful rifles?
Well, we have to increase the range and the damage, so how do we balance that? Let's add more chance of failure!
It's a vicious cycle that basically comes down to: Never, ever put guns in your medieval-type fantasy campaign. Alternatively, if you are going to use guns, replace ALL other weapons and just make it a Shadowrun or Wild West-type adventure. To try to implement guns and swords together and it NOT be a Star Wars-type game, where both guns and swords are lasers, means you're going to deal with either an unbalanced or un-fun weapon.
“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
For one thing, by the time guns were actually deadlier than a longbow in the hands of a trained archer, guns had already obsoleted archery as a means of making war due to convenience, and being vastly cheaper and easier while being deadly enough. Why spend all that money to train archers from before puberty when a gun is just as effective in the hands of someone who has trained for literally 1 day? Also, composite bows, which were the best you could get for range and damage, were much more easily fouled by inclement weather. Animal glue is not good at staying together in high humidity, and arrows have more surface area than a bullet to be pushed down by rain or thrown around by wind. None of which DnD even vaguely attempts to model in any way.
But even early muskets were better machines of war because you could field a much larger musket weilding force, more quickly, at lower expense, and with less preparation, and you can use a bayonet to turn a musket into a smallish polearm. That is a huge deal, in pre-modern warfare, and the above factors are what obsoleted bows and eventually traditional melee weapons. Not damage.
Long after that transition, guns became good enough to "destroy" other weapons in terms of range and damage. By that time, no one was fielding archers in war, and no one had been for at least a couple generations.
All that said, misfires are not at all required to balance guns. Guns don't need to be vastly more damaging than bows or melee weapons, but they should beat everything but longbows in range. A one handed ranged weapon with shortbow range, reload every 4-6 shots, and 1d8 damage, would be a great weapon.
The gunslinger class can make it an excellent weapon. I'd rather see firearms require a bonus action to Aim, or they are fired with Disadvantage, and have Gunslingers ignore that trait. Because until rifling, guns were not accurate weapons.
A gunsmith class/subclass/feat could allow making rifled guns that don't have that trait.
Even a misfire with a lower chance of misfire eg on a 1, roll Misfire check. On X roll, the gun jams, and you have to spend a bonus action or one of your attacks to clear the jam. otherwise, it's just a miss, and you can continue shooting. No "if you roll poorly to fix the misfire the gun breaks and has to basically be rebuilt at half the original cost."
That rebuild thing is the biggest issue I have. I'd be fine with the misfire rules, if Gunslingers could ignore the chance of total breakage, and have reduced hassle with misfires as long as they service their guns every long rest. Early style guns should be a fire once and hope it doesn't break situation in the hands of a noob, not in the hands of the genius inventor/gunslinger.
Archers historically weren't THAT well trained. Archery basically consisted of volley shots to weaken the forces before the armies clashed (and to continue volleying into the back ranks). It didn't require a precision strike. These weren't Hawkeye/Green Arrow archers, these were soldiers who had a bow to shoot before the armies came together.
Your "trained" archers took a few weeks to train at most, and most learned through hunting. The remainder of that time was spent training with melee weapons, because that's where the skill and training mattered. Inversely, the earliest firearms required far more training because the matchlock fuses required precise and trained movement. Even skilled gunmen sometimes had accidents; unskilled gunmen often caused more harm than good.
As for guns not being immediately stronger than bows as far as damage is concerned, that's patently false. There was an IMMEDIATE impact (pun not intended) when guns showed up into warfare because of their ability to pierce armor that bows simply could not.
https://bowvsmusket.com/ talks about the impact of the firearms on warfare, the advantages of it, and the training required to do it effectively. It addresses the myths such as the cheaper costs, easier training, not as powerful/accurate as bows, as well as your assertion that nobody was fielding archers by the time the firearm was making the other weapons "obsolete".
As for your idea with the firearm: 1d10 would probably be closer to accurate damage-wise for a 1-handed matchlock (or the less dangerous flintlock). But then again, you are probably better off making it a magic-infused weapon that shoot bullets of energy like the Gunsmith Artificer or guns in games like Final Fantasy Tactics that shoot spells at longer range (maybe cantrips or spells that require attack rolls like fire bolt at 150-500 feet instead of their normal distance)
“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
It took a while before a gun could reliably pierce a steel plate any better than an arrow. By which time guns had already replaced bows, for many reason that have nothing to do with damage.
You're simply wrong about archer training. Not only were most mounted combatants outside of europe archers who trained with the bow more than most other weapons, or at least as much as, but archer units in the time leading up to the proliferation of gunpowder weapons were shooting from a young age to maximize draw strength, and thus range, and to be able to shoot quickly.
Also, again, the logistics are easier with guns. Making a mostly moisture proof keg or skin for powder is much easier than keeping a composite bow from being made unusable by wet weather. Not to mention, again, the fact that bullets are less impacted by wind and rain in flight than an arrow is.
Things I didn't mention before:
Physical strength. A musket shoots with the same power regardless of the physical strength of the user.
You can train someone to use a musket in literally a few days. Practice will make them faster to reload, but basic lethality takes a few days, and quick learners will pick it up enough to be effective by the end of day 1. Shooting a bow with a draw high enough to be useful as artilery, at basic proficiency, takes at least a few weeks. That's basic proficiency, assuming the peasant you've drafted can physically draw the bow well enough to shoot a worthwhile distance. And once enemies close, your archers are probably screwed.
A bayonet-fixed musket is a very deadly, easy to use, melee weapon.
Regardless, no. I'm not better off doing any of that.
I generally like to treat guns like magic weapons, they are "wands for fighters and rogues".
They don't really require much special training to use (needing a feat is dumb) because... as mentioned it takes a day to learn to shoot (not well, but shoot).
I treat them as as a magic wand that uses up "charges"
Normally I like going for the "pirate" feel, were you have flint/wheel lock and you just don't reload inside combat. So you reload the charges during a Short Rest.
I don't believe arquebus were the kinds of weapons an "adventurer" used as they were basically battle field/siege warfare due to the requirements of fielding them.
That gets into what kind of campaign setting you want. I do like the idea of a a bit more modernizing game where swords and sorcery exists, but this "new stuff" is starting to get good enough to compete. I always hated in SpellJammer that they had cannons, but then made them not worth using.
I generally like to treat guns like magic weapons, they are "wands for fighters and rogues".
They don't really require much special training to use (needing a feat is dumb) because... as mentioned it takes a day to learn to shoot (not well, but shoot).
I treat them as as a magic wand that uses up "charges"
Normally I like going for the "pirate" feel, were you have flint/wheel lock and you just don't reload inside combat. So you reload the charges during a Short Rest.
I don't believe arquebus were the kinds of weapons an "adventurer" used as they were basically battle field/siege warfare due to the requirements of fielding them.
That gets into what kind of campaign setting you want. I do like the idea of a a bit more modernizing game where swords and sorcery exists, but this "new stuff" is starting to get good enough to compete. I always hated in SpellJammer that they had cannons, but then made them not worth using.
I agree with a lot of this.
The arquebus should be a dangerous feature of a battle, not a thing a character casually carries around as his personal weapon.
Something like a pepperbox, on the other hand, I'm fine with in my fantasy games.
My solution to the difference between 1 day of training and shooting well is this, I think:
Proficiency: You can spend 6 hours learning to shoot a firearm, operate it (reload and clear jams), and clean and maintain it. You gain proficiency on attack rolls with a single class of firearms, and with the tools and actions involved in maintenance and fixing misfires. This can be done by spending at least half an hour per day in this pursuit, until you have spent the requisite 6 hours.
All firearms would have a chance to misfire, but without the breakage chance of Mercer's guns. You make a misfire roll, and if you roll under 10, it would just require that you clear the chamber as a bonus action. Spending half an hour every long rest maintaining the gun reduces the chance of a jammed chamber, allowing you add your proficiency bonus to the Misfire Check.
Additionally, firearms gain the Aim property. If you don't spend a bonus action or half your movement to Aim, you roll with disadvantage on your first attack with a firearm in that round.
Then, a feat would be a bit like the crossbow expert feat mixed with how the brawler feat makes you not suck at unarmed fighting.
You have spent extensive time and effort training in the use, repair, and maintenance of gunpowder weapons. You gain proficiency in all firearms, and the tools used to maintain, clean, and repair firearms. You have advantage on checks to maintain or repair firearms and on Misfire Checks, you can reload using the Interact Action on your turn, and you ignore the Aim property on firearms. Instead, when you Aim, you gain Advantage on your next attack roll with the weapon.
Additionally, you do not have Disadvantage on ranged attack rolls made with a firearm while threatened by an attacker.
and any gun related subclasses could have their own benefits that work well with guns. Also, I might make up a gunfighter fighting style, although Archery works fine for most characters.
I'd love to figure out a good way to model the cloud of smoke that comes with early firearms, too, but I think the above is already complicated in comparison to most 5e stuff.
It took a while before a gun could reliably pierce a steel plate any better than an arrow. By which time guns had already replaced bows, for many reason that have nothing to do with damage.
You're simply wrong about archer training. Not only were most mounted combatants outside of europe archers who trained with the bow more than most other weapons, or at least as much as, but archer units in the time leading up to the proliferation of gunpowder weapons were shooting from a young age to maximize draw strength, and thus range, and to be able to shoot quickly.
Also, again, the logistics are easier with guns. Making a mostly moisture proof keg or skin for powder is much easier than keeping a composite bow from being made unusable by wet weather. Not to mention, again, the fact that bullets are less impacted by wind and rain in flight than an arrow is.
Things I didn't mention before:
Physical strength. A musket shoots with the same power regardless of the physical strength of the user.
You can train someone to use a musket in literally a few days. Practice will make them faster to reload, but basic lethality takes a few days, and quick learners will pick it up enough to be effective by the end of day 1. Shooting a bow with a draw high enough to be useful as artilery, at basic proficiency, takes at least a few weeks. That's basic proficiency, assuming the peasant you've drafted can physically draw the bow well enough to shoot a worthwhile distance. And once enemies close, your archers are probably screwed.
A bayonet-fixed musket is a very deadly, easy to use, melee weapon.
Regardless, no. I'm not better off doing any of that.
Feel free to contribute, at some point, though.
So, you didn't read that link and just stayed with your original opinion regardless of evidence presented from historical accounts of people who lived and trained soldiers in those time periods. Good to know, I'll just ignore you from this point on.
“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
Lol ok. Nah, I read the thing. I've also spent years researching this subject, and seen contradictory accounts of all kinds on the specific claims made in the account quoted in that linked article.
To me, that, and physical evidence, and recreation of early guns and armor of the same period, paint a story of wildly variant firearm efficacy until sometime in the late 15th century, at the earliest, depending on where in the world you look. Before then, the accuracy and stopping power of firearms varied even more than the sturdiness of the average sword. Which is to say, vastly more than most people think.
But hey, feel free to find someone else's thread to crap in.
I generally like to treat guns like magic weapons, they are "wands for fighters and rogues".
They don't really require much special training to use (needing a feat is dumb) because... as mentioned it takes a day to learn to shoot (not well, but shoot).
I treat them as as a magic wand that uses up "charges"
Normally I like going for the "pirate" feel, were you have flint/wheel lock and you just don't reload inside combat. So you reload the charges during a Short Rest.
I don't believe arquebus were the kinds of weapons an "adventurer" used as they were basically battle field/siege warfare due to the requirements of fielding them.
That gets into what kind of campaign setting you want. I do like the idea of a a bit more modernizing game where swords and sorcery exists, but this "new stuff" is starting to get good enough to compete. I always hated in SpellJammer that they had cannons, but then made them not worth using.
I really like the idea that they are similar to wands. This makes some of the more unique mechanics (the scattering of pellets from a shotgun, burst fire of a rifle, etc) easier to implement. I agree that a feat requirement shouldn't bar entry to use a firearm, but I personally like some sort of feat or class ability to be able to gain proficiency in firearms or a specific type of gun.
I won't even consider the "wizards can't use technology" trope, because I'm super tired of it, but if that works for you that's awesome. I loved it in Arcana (arcanum?) back in the day.
I'm not sure how well it works in 5e, where most characters will have some amount of magic, though.
But yeah, even if a setting I built had gun-like wands, it would still also have actual guns.
I'm also fine with guns being available to anyone willing to learn to use them. Note that the 6 hours teaches you how to use one class of guns. And you have to burn your Bonus action to not have Disadvantage, because shooting fast is very inaccurate if you are *just* proficient with the gun.
Specific class options and feats can make you expert in firearms, and ignore that trait, getting full use out of your guns.
If this results in most characters having basic proficiency and carrying at least a basic hunting rifle or pistol, that's fine. (With me)
Side note:
cantrips are better than weapons in 5e. I keep forgetting to address this. The cantrip just works, at full power, regardless of class features. Weapons meet the power level of the combat cantrips when combined with class features and high damage stats. And no weapons require a save instead of an attack roll.
Just, that has been bugging me.
Anyway, yeah, I'm fine with guns being proficiencies. I'd put some in simple weapons and some in martial, maybe make the martial ones take longer to learn, but otherwise I'm just fine with them being easy to learn to use.
I won't even consider the "wizards can't use technology" trope, because I'm super tired of it, but if that works for you that's awesome. I loved it in Arcana (arcanum?) back in the day.
I'm not sure how well it works in 5e, where most characters will have some amount of magic, though.
But yeah, even if a setting I built had gun-like wands, it would still also have actual guns.
I'm also fine with guns being available to anyone willing to learn to use them. Note that the 6 hours teaches you how to use one class of guns. And you have to burn your Bonus action to not have Disadvantage, because shooting fast is very inaccurate if you are *just* proficient with the gun.
Specific class options and feats can make you expert in firearms, and ignore that trait, getting full use out of your guns.
If this results in most characters having basic proficiency and carrying at least a basic hunting rifle or pistol, that's fine. (With me)
Side note:
cantrips are better than weapons in 5e. I keep forgetting to address this. The cantrip just works, at full power, regardless of class features. Weapons meet the power level of the combat cantrips when combined with class features and high damage stats. And no weapons require a save instead of an attack roll.
Just, that has been bugging me.
Anyway, yeah, I'm fine with guns being proficiencies. I'd put some in simple weapons and some in martial, maybe make the martial ones take longer to learn, but otherwise I'm just fine with them being easy to learn to use.
Cantrips are designed to be as effective, not more effective than melee weapons. This was done to keep the caster active in the fight over longer periods than in previous versions. Nothing made less sense in previous versions than a wizard running out of spells (although, I'm not sure d10 or d12 were thought of as being equal). Aside from that, it made giving wands less important (Unless it's a wand of cure light wounds; those are always useful).
Muskets can be fired (not necessarily safely) without proficiency. I mean, you point the dangerous end toward your opponent. QED. Yet, to become proficient with it meant you could use it to kill a deer or man running through the forest. So, I don't think they necessarily require a proficiency, but to effectively use it in combat you would.need to be proficient. That being said, muskets are different than AK47s as pistols are different than muskets.
To remedy the above problem, give a negative modifier (at the DMs discretion) to anybody firing a gun that isn't proficient in it (I'm looking at you, Han Solo). Sure, the more they use it, the lower the penalty becomes. This also allows personal experience to come into play. Pistols are very different than rifles like a hand crossbow is different than from a light crossbow. The differences between a single shot pistol and a hand crossbow are relatively small. so if you're proficient with a hand crossbow and pick up a pistol, the learning curve isn't as high,
The breakdown rule is useful and we need to remember that the Critical role characters (for the most part) came from another system. Mercer admitted this as much in ep 1.
Obv im aware they were playing in pathfinder before converting to 5e.
Im also very familiar with the history of guns in DnD and DnD based games. I've never found having a chance of the gun breaking to where you have to repair it out of combat to be remotely useful. Misfire by itself is one thing. Your primary weapon becoming unusable until you can take a rest is not good design. Even if we imagine that it can be, the Gunslinger as written does not get that much in benefits. Compare it to the good fighter archetypes, like EK and Battlemaster, and it falls short, imo, even before considering misfire and breakdown rules.
And cantrips are better than melee weapons. They just aren't better than a melee weapon focused character using a melee weapon. But a charismatic rogue who somehow gets a sorcerer cantrip will hit just as hard with it as an actual caster, while a high Dex sorcerer with a Rapier (and proficiency) will not be nearly as effective as a rogue, fighter, or ranger with that weapon.
And srsly, you don't think I know the history of magic, spells running out, and why cantrips are at will in 5e? Really? Come on, man. Of course I'm familiar with all that.
Edit: shoot. I'm coming across kinda Aggro here. I apologize for that.
The idea of breakdown comes from the fact that they don't want the gun to explode. What happens when a crossbow misfires? It may break. What happens to a bow when you fumble? the string and/or bow may break. How does a gun break aside from exploding (the gunpowder has to go somewhere)? Breakdown allows for the ranged weapon to be checked when not in combat. if it can apply to other ranged (and not thrown) weapons, why not guns? are you willing to fire a gun that has already misfired?
Since mending takes 10 minutes ( or 600 rounds), it's not useful in combat. There's a reason why broken ranged weapons are dropped for melee when they break. You're not going to sit in a combat situation to check what broke.
Multifocused characters are different than straight classed anything. A ranger doesn't get spells until later but casts them as well as a low-level druid. not better, not worse, but merely different. this being said, a rogue casting a cantrip would be a higher level than a sorcerer casting said cantrip. the rogue's dc save would be lower as well. there is balance (although, sometimes I wondered with Mr. Cook).
I do not know what you do and do not know. I'm not a psychic e-reader. That being said, I don't take any malice from your words, but rather a passion for a shared pastime. sometimes, it's better to assume the lack of knowledge than to assume they know it all. besides, not everybody may know.
The idea of breakdown comes from the fact that they don't want the gun to explode. What happens when a crossbow misfires? It may break. What happens to a bow when you fumble? the string and/or bow may break. How does a gun break aside from exploding (the gunpowder has to go somewhere)? Breakdown allows for the ranged weapon to be checked when not in combat. if it can apply to other ranged (and not thrown) weapons, why not guns? are you willing to fire a gun that has already misfired?
Since mending takes 10 minutes ( or 600 rounds), it's not useful in combat. There's a reason why broken ranged weapons are dropped for melee when they break. You're not going to sit in a combat situation to check what broke.
Multifocused characters are different than straight classed anything. A ranger doesn't get spells until later but casts them as well as a low-level druid. not better, not worse, but merely different. this being said, a rogue casting a cantrip would be a higher level than a sorcerer casting said cantrip. the rogue's dc save would be lower as well. there is balance (although, sometimes I wondered with Mr. Cook).
I do not know what you do and do not know. I'm not a psychic e-reader. That being said, I don't take any malice from your words, but rather a passion for a shared pastime. sometimes, it's better to assume the lack of knowledge than to assume they know it all. besides, not everybody may know.
I don't think bows should break in DnD either. Not everything that is realistic is good game design.
Im ok with misfire without breakdown because everyone wants guns to hit harder and shoot farther than bows, and the chance to burn an extra action once in a while is an ok price for that.
But if you want a Gunslinger to be equal to an Eldritch knight or battle master, it needs to be balanced with the drawbacks in mind, or it needs to mitigate/eliminate the drawbacks as part of what makes it cool.
You've misunderstood my point about cantrips. Probably my bad, so I'll try to explain better.
The cantrip is essentially a weapon. The difference between actual weapons and cantrips is that weapons require class features beyond "you can use this" to match the cantrip.
If we look at a cantrip vs a weapon, the cantrip doesn't need any special class features. It's power is held inside the cantrip itself. The power of weapons come into full effect in combination with character abilities.
So a rogue and a sorcerer should be about equal when using at will character abilities, which is as it should be, but a commoner getting Create Bonfire makes him more dangerous than if he has a sword. Or even a bow.
Because he can set a fire under you, and keep it there for 1 minute while doing other things, or make a new one when you move, or put it in a pinch point so you have to take damage to get to him, etc.
In general, ignoring class features, a melee guy getting a bit of magic is more of an upgrade than a magic guy getting a weapon proficiency.
doesnt really matter in terms of reviewing two classes, but that wasn't the context it was brought up in.
The idea of breakdown comes from the fact that they don't want the gun to explode. What happens when a crossbow misfires? It may break. What happens to a bow when you fumble? the string and/or bow may break. How does a gun break aside from exploding (the gunpowder has to go somewhere)? Breakdown allows for the ranged weapon to be checked when not in combat. if it can apply to other ranged (and not thrown) weapons, why not guns? are you willing to fire a gun that has already misfired?
Since mending takes 10 minutes ( or 600 rounds), it's not useful in combat. There's a reason why broken ranged weapons are dropped for melee when they break. You're not going to sit in a combat situation to check what broke.
Multifocused characters are different than straight classed anything. A ranger doesn't get spells until later but casts them as well as a low-level druid. not better, not worse, but merely different. this being said, a rogue casting a cantrip would be a higher level than a sorcerer casting said cantrip. the rogue's dc save would be lower as well. there is balance (although, sometimes I wondered with Mr. Cook).
I do not know what you do and do not know. I'm not a psychic e-reader. That being said, I don't take any malice from your words, but rather a passion for a shared pastime. sometimes, it's better to assume the lack of knowledge than to assume they know it all. besides, not everybody may know.
I don't think bows should break in DnD either. Not everything that is realistic is good game design.
Im ok with misfire without breakdown because everyone wants guns to hit harder and shoot farther than bows, and the chance to burn an extra action once in a while is an ok price for that.
But if you want a Gunslinger to be equal to an Eldritch knight or battle master, it needs to be balanced with the drawbacks in mind, or it needs to mitigate/eliminate the drawbacks as part of what makes it cool.
You've misunderstood my point about cantrips. Probably my bad, so I'll try to explain better.
The cantrip is essentially a weapon. The difference between actual weapons and cantrips is that weapons require class features beyond "you can use this" to match the cantrip.
If we look at a cantrip vs a weapon, the cantrip doesn't need any special class features. It's power is held inside the cantrip itself. The power of weapons come into full effect in combination with character abilities.
So a rogue and a sorcerer should be about equal when using at will character abilities, which is as it should be, but a commoner getting Create Bonfire makes him more dangerous than if he has a sword. Or even a bow.
Because he can set a fire under you, and keep it there for 1 minute while doing other things, or make a new one when you move, or put it in a pinch point so you have to take damage to get to him, etc.
In general, ignoring class features, a melee guy getting a bit of magic is more of an upgrade than a magic guy getting a weapon proficiency.
doesnt really matter in terms of reviewing two classes, but that wasn't the context it was brought up in.
As a whole (and admittedly, my characters have yet to reach level 17), I think it will balance out in the long run. you really hope that the tank isn't #1 on the DPS. A gunslinger is not a straight fighter class (at least I don't think it is, but I may be wrong). I assumed it was more roguelike.
To the cantrips: a cantrip is just another weapon, in my humble opinion. it's basically, for most casters, an unlimited ammo gun ala John Woo. I personally liked it a bit better when they weren't unlimited, but that's my opinion. Like any weapon, it basically comes down to how often you swing and connect. If a character gets saves vs your cantrip and reduces your damage by half (or all if they have uncanny dodge), you mitigate some of the damage. at lower levels, it balances out with the weapon doing a bit more damage over the cantrip because the average weapon does about a d8 while the cantrip does about a d6+1. So, all in all, about the same. As the characters level, the caster will do more damage while the melee guy has more HP, still all in all, fair. The reason magic seems to be more of a boost is because there are creatures that are immune to non-magical damage. This necessitates magic having to be given to the melee fighters. There are very few creatures I remember from all the years of DnD that are magic resistant. You also meet the magic damage only creatures at lower levels.
Why would a spell caster need a melee weapon when they have unlimited spells via cantrips?
People like mixing sword and spell. I've seen many *many* sorcerers and wizards in 5e use weapons.
Anyway, I'm not going to continue a tangential debate about cantrips and weapons. IMO, cantrips are balanced against weapon+basic class features, and thus from a non-player character POV, are more powerful *when compared outside of the class structure*
If you disagree, that's fine, I don't think it's gonna lead us anywhere to keep debating it.
Continuing to watch critical role, and...yeah, the drawback is *much* more than the benefit of the pepperbox. It's...he would be better off with less damage per hit. The subclass isn't that bad, it really is just the guns itself.
The fact that a single attack can turn into losing your primary means of combat at a rate of about *10%!?* is just bad design.
And that is ignoring guns with higher misfire rate.
Early firearms had a chance of misfiring. Guns today have a chance at misfiring. The only thing is that guns today have such a minuscule chance of misfiring that it's almost completely negligible. Even if they do misfire, no person even slightly trained to use firearms would have such a catastrophic misfire that it breaks the gun so much that it can't be used.
Even centuries ago, misfires that catastrophic were not common, and when they did happen, you lost fingers, got severely burned, or at worst lost your hand altogether.
TLDR; if your gun (no matter what century the gun is from) misfires to the point that the gun breaks and is unusable, you aren't just inconvenienced, you're more than likely missing fingers.
On another note, I really don't think that there should be ANY drawbacks to using firearms in D&D. Why would there be? Firearms are obviously superior to bows and crossbows. If there was any real, perceptible drawbacks, we wouldn't have armies equipped with them since the late 1300s. If you're worried about "balance" then either increase the number of enemies players face, increase the health or AC of the enemies, or simply don't allow firearms in your game. I was running a sci-fi game for a bit, and just using the modern weapons in the DMG, enemy creatures went down in one or two attacks. I'm not talking CR1/8 creatures, I mean level-appropriate CR 1/2/3 creatures. Firearms are simply much more deadly, and handicapping players for using them makes about as much sense as telling equipping the modern US army with muskets.
I'm watching Critical Role, and it definately seems like Percy gets a LOT less out of his guns than the drawbacks.
The Pepperbox is a one handed longbow with a 1/20 chance of misfire, oh and you have to reload every six shots, and if you misfire and fail the repair check (an action!? To get your primary means of engaging in combat back in action!?) the thing breaks, and you have to spend actual time repairing it, spending half the bloody cost of the bloody thing again! This could happen more than once an adventure. The misfire happened twice in one fight for Percy!
That, right off the bat, is a shite weapon. He would be noticably more effective with a longbow. It never misfires, does close enough to the same damage as to make no real difference, and has the same range. And without a feat, Pepperbox still basically needs two hands, bc you have to have a free hand to reload.
Bad News also isn't that great, for a weapon that misfires 3x as often (on a 1,2, or 3), and has to be reloaded every time. And has to be crafted special. It's....a magic item that breaks 15% of the times you use it, at best requiring an Action to fix, with a decent chance to really break, requiring a bunch of gold and some out of combat time to rebuild. 2d12 and sniper range is cool, but the archetype needs to really shine to make this a better option that normal weapons.
And it kinda doesn't. Percy wasn't overpowered before Matt started nerfing his archetype. The grit mechanic is cool, but it doesn't do as much as the good fighter archetypes. Why this over a simple Archer fighter? Other than cool factor, obv.
What am I missing, here? This seems strictly less useful than a warlock with Eldritch Blast and one or more Invocations to boost it.
We do bones, motherf***ker!
Idk, every single time I've seen a gun-type weapon introduced into a campaign it's broken one way or the other. To make it more realistic, you'd have to utterly DESTROY the other ranged weapons in damage. The problem is, the historical fact that firearms are vastly superior to any other type of weapon in D&D and since magic is balanced to be similar enough to the damage of weaponry, even magic shouldn't be able to compare to a firearm (gun > sword = bow = cantrip)
This leads to the problem of what do you do to make it more balanced? Well, some muskets used to misfire, so let's add a misfire rule into the gun use (we'll ignore the fact that crossbows used to jam and bowstrings used to snap for purposes of this). Well now it's a 5% chance to not shoot (0% if you are a halfling!). But this gun is just a normal hand gun, what about more powerful rifles?
Well, we have to increase the range and the damage, so how do we balance that? Let's add more chance of failure!
It's a vicious cycle that basically comes down to: Never, ever put guns in your medieval-type fantasy campaign. Alternatively, if you are going to use guns, replace ALL other weapons and just make it a Shadowrun or Wild West-type adventure. To try to implement guns and swords together and it NOT be a Star Wars-type game, where both guns and swords are lasers, means you're going to deal with either an unbalanced or un-fun weapon.
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“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
I definitely don't agree with most of that.
For one thing, by the time guns were actually deadlier than a longbow in the hands of a trained archer, guns had already obsoleted archery as a means of making war due to convenience, and being vastly cheaper and easier while being deadly enough. Why spend all that money to train archers from before puberty when a gun is just as effective in the hands of someone who has trained for literally 1 day? Also, composite bows, which were the best you could get for range and damage, were much more easily fouled by inclement weather. Animal glue is not good at staying together in high humidity, and arrows have more surface area than a bullet to be pushed down by rain or thrown around by wind. None of which DnD even vaguely attempts to model in any way.
But even early muskets were better machines of war because you could field a much larger musket weilding force, more quickly, at lower expense, and with less preparation, and you can use a bayonet to turn a musket into a smallish polearm. That is a huge deal, in pre-modern warfare, and the above factors are what obsoleted bows and eventually traditional melee weapons. Not damage.
Long after that transition, guns became good enough to "destroy" other weapons in terms of range and damage. By that time, no one was fielding archers in war, and no one had been for at least a couple generations.
All that said, misfires are not at all required to balance guns. Guns don't need to be vastly more damaging than bows or melee weapons, but they should beat everything but longbows in range. A one handed ranged weapon with shortbow range, reload every 4-6 shots, and 1d8 damage, would be a great weapon.
The gunslinger class can make it an excellent weapon. I'd rather see firearms require a bonus action to Aim, or they are fired with Disadvantage, and have Gunslingers ignore that trait. Because until rifling, guns were not accurate weapons.
A gunsmith class/subclass/feat could allow making rifled guns that don't have that trait.
Even a misfire with a lower chance of misfire eg on a 1, roll Misfire check. On X roll, the gun jams, and you have to spend a bonus action or one of your attacks to clear the jam. otherwise, it's just a miss, and you can continue shooting. No "if you roll poorly to fix the misfire the gun breaks and has to basically be rebuilt at half the original cost."
That rebuild thing is the biggest issue I have. I'd be fine with the misfire rules, if Gunslingers could ignore the chance of total breakage, and have reduced hassle with misfires as long as they service their guns every long rest. Early style guns should be a fire once and hope it doesn't break situation in the hands of a noob, not in the hands of the genius inventor/gunslinger.
We do bones, motherf***ker!
Archers historically weren't THAT well trained. Archery basically consisted of volley shots to weaken the forces before the armies clashed (and to continue volleying into the back ranks). It didn't require a precision strike. These weren't Hawkeye/Green Arrow archers, these were soldiers who had a bow to shoot before the armies came together.
Your "trained" archers took a few weeks to train at most, and most learned through hunting. The remainder of that time was spent training with melee weapons, because that's where the skill and training mattered. Inversely, the earliest firearms required far more training because the matchlock fuses required precise and trained movement. Even skilled gunmen sometimes had accidents; unskilled gunmen often caused more harm than good.
As for guns not being immediately stronger than bows as far as damage is concerned, that's patently false. There was an IMMEDIATE impact (pun not intended) when guns showed up into warfare because of their ability to pierce armor that bows simply could not.
https://bowvsmusket.com/ talks about the impact of the firearms on warfare, the advantages of it, and the training required to do it effectively. It addresses the myths such as the cheaper costs, easier training, not as powerful/accurate as bows, as well as your assertion that nobody was fielding archers by the time the firearm was making the other weapons "obsolete".
As for your idea with the firearm: 1d10 would probably be closer to accurate damage-wise for a 1-handed matchlock (or the less dangerous flintlock). But then again, you are probably better off making it a magic-infused weapon that shoot bullets of energy like the Gunsmith Artificer or guns in games like Final Fantasy Tactics that shoot spells at longer range (maybe cantrips or spells that require attack rolls like fire bolt at 150-500 feet instead of their normal distance)
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“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
It took a while before a gun could reliably pierce a steel plate any better than an arrow. By which time guns had already replaced bows, for many reason that have nothing to do with damage.
You're simply wrong about archer training. Not only were most mounted combatants outside of europe archers who trained with the bow more than most other weapons, or at least as much as, but archer units in the time leading up to the proliferation of gunpowder weapons were shooting from a young age to maximize draw strength, and thus range, and to be able to shoot quickly.
Also, again, the logistics are easier with guns. Making a mostly moisture proof keg or skin for powder is much easier than keeping a composite bow from being made unusable by wet weather. Not to mention, again, the fact that bullets are less impacted by wind and rain in flight than an arrow is.
Things I didn't mention before:
Physical strength. A musket shoots with the same power regardless of the physical strength of the user.
You can train someone to use a musket in literally a few days. Practice will make them faster to reload, but basic lethality takes a few days, and quick learners will pick it up enough to be effective by the end of day 1. Shooting a bow with a draw high enough to be useful as artilery, at basic proficiency, takes at least a few weeks. That's basic proficiency, assuming the peasant you've drafted can physically draw the bow well enough to shoot a worthwhile distance. And once enemies close, your archers are probably screwed.
A bayonet-fixed musket is a very deadly, easy to use, melee weapon.
Regardless, no. I'm not better off doing any of that.
Feel free to contribute, at some point, though.
We do bones, motherf***ker!
I generally like to treat guns like magic weapons, they are "wands for fighters and rogues".
They don't really require much special training to use (needing a feat is dumb) because... as mentioned it takes a day to learn to shoot (not well, but shoot).
I treat them as as a magic wand that uses up "charges"
Normally I like going for the "pirate" feel, were you have flint/wheel lock and you just don't reload inside combat. So you reload the charges during a Short Rest.
I don't believe arquebus were the kinds of weapons an "adventurer" used as they were basically battle field/siege warfare due to the requirements of fielding them.
That gets into what kind of campaign setting you want. I do like the idea of a a bit more modernizing game where swords and sorcery exists, but this "new stuff" is starting to get good enough to compete. I always hated in SpellJammer that they had cannons, but then made them not worth using.
We do bones, motherf***ker!
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“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
Lol ok. Nah, I read the thing. I've also spent years researching this subject, and seen contradictory accounts of all kinds on the specific claims made in the account quoted in that linked article.
To me, that, and physical evidence, and recreation of early guns and armor of the same period, paint a story of wildly variant firearm efficacy until sometime in the late 15th century, at the earliest, depending on where in the world you look. Before then, the accuracy and stopping power of firearms varied even more than the sturdiness of the average sword. Which is to say, vastly more than most people think.
But hey, feel free to find someone else's thread to crap in.
We do bones, motherf***ker!
My worry with making it a proficiency is you have to think about who get and doesn't get access.
Think about your world. We think about using proficiency, but what does the mechanic do?
It's designed to gate off weapons from certain classes for balance
There are "warrior" classes that get all the weapons.
Semi-warrior which get some of them. (Rogue, bard, cleric, druid, blade warlock)
Casters which get almost none.
Then the question is are they "martial" (we already covered that they are pretty 'cause' weapons).
If they are martial what other semi-warrior classes get them.
If honestly be more tempted to make them a wand, a caster can't use depending on the setting.
Going with the idea that magic and technology don't mix.
I won't even consider the "wizards can't use technology" trope, because I'm super tired of it, but if that works for you that's awesome. I loved it in Arcana (arcanum?) back in the day.
I'm not sure how well it works in 5e, where most characters will have some amount of magic, though.
But yeah, even if a setting I built had gun-like wands, it would still also have actual guns.
I'm also fine with guns being available to anyone willing to learn to use them. Note that the 6 hours teaches you how to use one class of guns. And you have to burn your Bonus action to not have Disadvantage, because shooting fast is very inaccurate if you are *just* proficient with the gun.
Specific class options and feats can make you expert in firearms, and ignore that trait, getting full use out of your guns.
If this results in most characters having basic proficiency and carrying at least a basic hunting rifle or pistol, that's fine. (With me)
Side note:
cantrips are better than weapons in 5e. I keep forgetting to address this. The cantrip just works, at full power, regardless of class features. Weapons meet the power level of the combat cantrips when combined with class features and high damage stats. And no weapons require a save instead of an attack roll.
Just, that has been bugging me.
Anyway, yeah, I'm fine with guns being proficiencies. I'd put some in simple weapons and some in martial, maybe make the martial ones take longer to learn, but otherwise I'm just fine with them being easy to learn to use.
We do bones, motherf***ker!
how is the breakdown rule useful?
Obv im aware they were playing in pathfinder before converting to 5e.
Im also very familiar with the history of guns in DnD and DnD based games. I've never found having a chance of the gun breaking to where you have to repair it out of combat to be remotely useful. Misfire by itself is one thing. Your primary weapon becoming unusable until you can take a rest is not good design. Even if we imagine that it can be, the Gunslinger as written does not get that much in benefits. Compare it to the good fighter archetypes, like EK and Battlemaster, and it falls short, imo, even before considering misfire and breakdown rules.
And cantrips are better than melee weapons. They just aren't better than a melee weapon focused character using a melee weapon. But a charismatic rogue who somehow gets a sorcerer cantrip will hit just as hard with it as an actual caster, while a high Dex sorcerer with a Rapier (and proficiency) will not be nearly as effective as a rogue, fighter, or ranger with that weapon.
And srsly, you don't think I know the history of magic, spells running out, and why cantrips are at will in 5e? Really? Come on, man. Of course I'm familiar with all that.
Edit: shoot. I'm coming across kinda Aggro here. I apologize for that.
We do bones, motherf***ker!
The idea of breakdown comes from the fact that they don't want the gun to explode. What happens when a crossbow misfires? It may break. What happens to a bow when you fumble? the string and/or bow may break. How does a gun break aside from exploding (the gunpowder has to go somewhere)? Breakdown allows for the ranged weapon to be checked when not in combat. if it can apply to other ranged (and not thrown) weapons, why not guns? are you willing to fire a gun that has already misfired?
Since mending takes 10 minutes ( or 600 rounds), it's not useful in combat. There's a reason why broken ranged weapons are dropped for melee when they break. You're not going to sit in a combat situation to check what broke.
Multifocused characters are different than straight classed anything. A ranger doesn't get spells until later but casts them as well as a low-level druid. not better, not worse, but merely different. this being said, a rogue casting a cantrip would be a higher level than a sorcerer casting said cantrip. the rogue's dc save would be lower as well. there is balance (although, sometimes I wondered with Mr. Cook).
I do not know what you do and do not know. I'm not a psychic e-reader. That being said, I don't take any malice from your words, but rather a passion for a shared pastime. sometimes, it's better to assume the lack of knowledge than to assume they know it all. besides, not everybody may know.
We do bones, motherf***ker!
People like mixing sword and spell. I've seen many *many* sorcerers and wizards in 5e use weapons.
Anyway, I'm not going to continue a tangential debate about cantrips and weapons. IMO, cantrips are balanced against weapon+basic class features, and thus from a non-player character POV, are more powerful *when compared outside of the class structure*
If you disagree, that's fine, I don't think it's gonna lead us anywhere to keep debating it.
Meanwhile, how about those guns?
We do bones, motherf***ker!
Continuing to watch critical role, and...yeah, the drawback is *much* more than the benefit of the pepperbox. It's...he would be better off with less damage per hit. The subclass isn't that bad, it really is just the guns itself.
The fact that a single attack can turn into losing your primary means of combat at a rate of about *10%!?* is just bad design.
And that is ignoring guns with higher misfire rate.
We do bones, motherf***ker!
Early firearms had a chance of misfiring. Guns today have a chance at misfiring. The only thing is that guns today have such a minuscule chance of misfiring that it's almost completely negligible. Even if they do misfire, no person even slightly trained to use firearms would have such a catastrophic misfire that it breaks the gun so much that it can't be used.
Even centuries ago, misfires that catastrophic were not common, and when they did happen, you lost fingers, got severely burned, or at worst lost your hand altogether.
TLDR; if your gun (no matter what century the gun is from) misfires to the point that the gun breaks and is unusable, you aren't just inconvenienced, you're more than likely missing fingers.
On another note, I really don't think that there should be ANY drawbacks to using firearms in D&D. Why would there be? Firearms are obviously superior to bows and crossbows. If there was any real, perceptible drawbacks, we wouldn't have armies equipped with them since the late 1300s. If you're worried about "balance" then either increase the number of enemies players face, increase the health or AC of the enemies, or simply don't allow firearms in your game. I was running a sci-fi game for a bit, and just using the modern weapons in the DMG, enemy creatures went down in one or two attacks. I'm not talking CR1/8 creatures, I mean level-appropriate CR 1/2/3 creatures. Firearms are simply much more deadly, and handicapping players for using them makes about as much sense as telling equipping the modern US army with muskets.
Mrfluckoff