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
That may not actually be true. Check out this demonstration as recent as 1961 (where, you may be surprised to learn, bows were still used by special forces) regarding the relative damage of bows and firearms (and note that here we're dealing with far, far more effective weaponry than medieval firearms being compared to a bow): https://youtu.be/eOM4IQjQtM4
Primitive guns and bows coexisted for an awfully long time in history, with each having their various pros and cons. The medieval period went from about the 5th-16th century, with bows being prominent for that entire period, but guns have been around since about the 10th century. It was centuries before firearms really started getting good enough to the point that they started rendering the bow obsolete. You may find the discussion here (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Analysis/FantasyGunControl) useful.
Actually guns can break in many other ways than exploding. The trigger mechanism can jam, the misfired bullet can become stuck in the barrel, in the case of a bolt action action rifle the shell clearing mechanism can become jammed. These are just a few ways a firearm can become broken. All of these would be a hassle and could take 30 seconds or 3 hours to fix depending on the exact issue and the degree of the problem.
Actually guns can break in many other ways than exploding. The trigger mechanism can jam, the misfired bullet can become stuck in the barrel, in the case of a bolt action action rifle the shell clearing mechanism can become jammed. These are just a few ways a firearm can become broken. All of these would be a hassle and could take 30 seconds or 3 hours to fix depending on the exact issue and the degree of the problem.
Ok...so, what?
Does that solve a problem in the game? Is it balanced with the rest of what the item does? Does it add to the fun?
The problems of Percy, and the gunslinger class, in particular, is not that the weapons presented are suboptimal weapons. It's a good baseline to build off of, but he didn't have access to any better ones, and he never made any better ones even when he had the downtime to do so. He kept getting surprised when his non-magical magical weapons and his non-magical bullets started lagging behind the others at the end of the game.
The list of available weapons and modifications were essentially left to Taliesin Jaffe outside of the few guns he looted from Ripley.
The problems of Percy, and the gunslinger class, in particular, is not that the weapons presented are suboptimal weapons. It's a good baseline to build off of, but he didn't have access to any better ones, and he never made any better ones even when he had the downtime to do so. He kept getting surprised when his non-magical magical weapons and his non-magical bullets started lagging behind the others at the end of the game.
The list of available weapons and modifications were essentially left to Taliesin Jaffe outside of the few guns he looted from Ripley.
Well, that's a thing, but it also isn't the main problem, IMO. It's the guns themselves. Percy did incredible damage, and certainly needed to put a basic damn enchantment on his weapons like a normal adventurer, but the action economy penalty for using the weapons is just greater than the on-hit damage boost for the using them.
In the interest of making them interesting or worth taking
The type of training an archer would have would depend on battlefield role and the country they fought in. Samurai archers were extremely well trained for finesse, especially when shooting from horseback. If you look at medieval England, the archers training was for strength because the British longbow had a pul;l back force of well over 100 pounds, and they were reported to have a firing rate (volley shooting) of over 10 shots per minute (which is much faster than it sounds for a longbow).
In the mid-late 19th century firearms were just heading past muskets with packed powder and bullets and stepping into the rifled barrels and clip/revolver. Even "clockwork" magazine fed chainguns existed in the final decade. All of these weapons would take a few seconds to load at the quickest, even for a calm and well trained marksman.
The firearms (black powder one in this story arc) would be well placed as somewhere in between crossbows and composite bows. Reloading should feel faster than a crossbow (extremely difficult to load, yet extreme penetration potential) for the cost of jamming, thus the reload "clip" mechanic works well. The weapon breaking is too far, especially because magic weapons are automatically masterwork and critical failing is not in the standard rules, but you could houserule a critical fail or double 1/20 in succession badly damages the weapon and it needs to be taken apart and fixed (this can be inbuilt into the gunslinger class).
In the interest of making them interesting or worth taking
The type of training an archer would have would depend on battlefield role and the country they fought in. Samurai archers were extremely well trained for finesse, especially when shooting from horseback. If you look at medieval England, the archers training was for strength because the British longbow had a pul;l back force of well over 100 pounds, and they were reported to have a firing rate (volley shooting) of over 10 shots per minute (which is much faster than it sounds for a longbow).
In the mid-late 19th century firearms were just heading past muskets with packed powder and bullets and stepping into the rifled barrels and clip/revolver. Even "clockwork" magazine fed chainguns existed in the final decade. All of these weapons would take a few seconds to load at the quickest, even for a calm and well trained marksman.
The firearms (black powder one in this story arc) would be well placed as somewhere in between crossbows and composite bows. Reloading should feel faster than a crossbow (extremely difficult to load, yet extreme penetration potential) for the cost of jamming, thus the reload "clip" mechanic works well. The weapon breaking is too far, especially because magic weapons are automatically masterwork and critical failing is not in the standard rules, but you could houserule a critical fail or double 1/20 in succession badly damages the weapon and it needs to be taken apart and fixed (this can be inbuilt into the gunslinger class).
That all sounds fine. My preference is just stick to the misfire, with no breakage, and otherwise use the DMG firearms. I'm also fine with skipping a lot of the development of firearms, and heading straight toward revolvers and rifling.
And of the apsect that people often forget is that in the very beginning Crit role was a Pathfinder campain, before they started streaming and switched to D&D 5e.
In Pathfinder you have two types of AC, the normal full AC, that takes your armor bonus and your Dex bonus into account.
And the Flat footed Ac or surprised AC, in some cases where you where taken by surprise and wasn't prepared, this AC was SINGIFICALLY less then the other AC.
Nearly ALL the Touch spells where resolved vs the Flat Footed AC, since it is easier to touch someone with your hand then to actually attack him or something.
And for the Gunslinger class, Fire arms ALWAYS hits on the flat footed AC, showing the superior Penetration power of such weapon.
So while a ranger wiht a Long Bow had to hit on a 17, a Gunslinger would hit on a 12...
And also One Handed fire arms had 3x the crit DMG and 2 handed fire arms up to 4x crit dmg.
Off course the downside of this was the misfire chances, but you could use Grit points to repair the condition on the fly, and at higher lvls you could do it with a swift action( cause PF as 2x more types of actions then D&D).
So off course when they switched to D&D and Matt converted the class to D&D, somethings where lost, since in D&D you have AC and thats it, and you have action, bonus action and move.
One way around it would have been to add a new trait to the fire arms, Armor Penetration, where given the weapon bonus, you'd ignore that much of the targets AC +1( so a non magical firearm would give a -1 penalty on the target AC, while a +1 gun would give a -2 on AC penalty)
And also since Crit roles focused hugely on the RPing and story telling, they rarely power game or Meta game the shit out of the game, so yeah Talie did rarely if ever upgraded his weapons and ammos.
to add to "chaosrex's" point: we could refer to talisin's ridiculous single-round damage record during "the search for Grog" one shot as an argument of how gunslingers CAN be seriously OP, even taking into account the drawbacks that are written into the rules. either that, or someone needs to figure out how to replicate the luck that tal has when rolling while playing a De Rolo.
just my two pence....
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Rogues do it better from behind....
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Ludic: adjective (formal). showing spontaneous and undirected playfulness.
Actually guns can break in many other ways than exploding. The trigger mechanism can jam, the misfired bullet can become stuck in the barrel, in the case of a bolt action action rifle the shell clearing mechanism can become jammed. These are just a few ways a firearm can become broken. All of these would be a hassle and could take 30 seconds or 3 hours to fix depending on the exact issue and the degree of the problem.
We do bones, motherf***ker!
The problems of Percy, and the gunslinger class, in particular, is not that the weapons presented are suboptimal weapons. It's a good baseline to build off of, but he didn't have access to any better ones, and he never made any better ones even when he had the downtime to do so. He kept getting surprised when his non-magical magical weapons and his non-magical bullets started lagging behind the others at the end of the game.
The list of available weapons and modifications were essentially left to Taliesin Jaffe outside of the few guns he looted from Ripley.
Well, that's a thing, but it also isn't the main problem, IMO. It's the guns themselves. Percy did incredible damage, and certainly needed to put a basic damn enchantment on his weapons like a normal adventurer, but the action economy penalty for using the weapons is just greater than the on-hit damage boost for the using them.
We do bones, motherf***ker!
In the interest of making them interesting or worth taking
The type of training an archer would have would depend on battlefield role and the country they fought in. Samurai archers were extremely well trained for finesse, especially when shooting from horseback. If you look at medieval England, the archers training was for strength because the British longbow had a pul;l back force of well over 100 pounds, and they were reported to have a firing rate (volley shooting) of over 10 shots per minute (which is much faster than it sounds for a longbow).
In the mid-late 19th century firearms were just heading past muskets with packed powder and bullets and stepping into the rifled barrels and clip/revolver. Even "clockwork" magazine fed chainguns existed in the final decade. All of these weapons would take a few seconds to load at the quickest, even for a calm and well trained marksman.
The firearms (black powder one in this story arc) would be well placed as somewhere in between crossbows and composite bows. Reloading should feel faster than a crossbow (extremely difficult to load, yet extreme penetration potential) for the cost of jamming, thus the reload "clip" mechanic works well. The weapon breaking is too far, especially because magic weapons are automatically masterwork and critical failing is not in the standard rules, but you could houserule a critical fail or double 1/20 in succession badly damages the weapon and it needs to be taken apart and fixed (this can be inbuilt into the gunslinger class).
That all sounds fine. My preference is just stick to the misfire, with no breakage, and otherwise use the DMG firearms. I'm also fine with skipping a lot of the development of firearms, and heading straight toward revolvers and rifling.
We do bones, motherf***ker!
And of the apsect that people often forget is that in the very beginning Crit role was a Pathfinder campain, before they started streaming and switched to D&D 5e.
In Pathfinder you have two types of AC, the normal full AC, that takes your armor bonus and your Dex bonus into account.
And the Flat footed Ac or surprised AC, in some cases where you where taken by surprise and wasn't prepared, this AC was SINGIFICALLY less then the other AC.
Nearly ALL the Touch spells where resolved vs the Flat Footed AC, since it is easier to touch someone with your hand then to actually attack him or something.
And for the Gunslinger class, Fire arms ALWAYS hits on the flat footed AC, showing the superior Penetration power of such weapon.
So while a ranger wiht a Long Bow had to hit on a 17, a Gunslinger would hit on a 12...
And also One Handed fire arms had 3x the crit DMG and 2 handed fire arms up to 4x crit dmg.
Off course the downside of this was the misfire chances, but you could use Grit points to repair the condition on the fly, and at higher lvls you could do it with a swift action( cause PF as 2x more types of actions then D&D).
So off course when they switched to D&D and Matt converted the class to D&D, somethings where lost, since in D&D you have AC and thats it, and you have action, bonus action and move.
One way around it would have been to add a new trait to the fire arms, Armor Penetration, where given the weapon bonus, you'd ignore that much of the targets AC +1( so a non magical firearm would give a -1 penalty on the target AC, while a +1 gun would give a -2 on AC penalty)
And also since Crit roles focused hugely on the RPing and story telling, they rarely power game or Meta game the shit out of the game, so yeah Talie did rarely if ever upgraded his weapons and ammos.
"Normality is but an Illusion, Whats normal to the Spider, is only madness for the Fly"
Kain de Frostberg- Dark Knight - (Vengeance Pal3/ Hexblade 9), Port Mourn
Kain de Draakberg-Dark Knight lvl8-Avergreen(DitA)
to add to "chaosrex's" point: we could refer to talisin's ridiculous single-round damage record during "the search for Grog" one shot as an argument of how gunslingers CAN be seriously OP, even taking into account the drawbacks that are written into the rules. either that, or someone needs to figure out how to replicate the luck that tal has when rolling while playing a De Rolo.
just my two pence....
Rogues do it better from behind....