The player, very specifically, did not want crossbows. They wanted guns. Which I did talk to them about the difference in the feats and such, but no dice.
Normally, I would have simply given them Palm Pistols from Exandria and called it a day, but very specifically they wanted Gunblades that could double as melee weapons as well as guns themselves. The reason why they're 1d6 is because they're roughly the same damage as a shortsword and I wanted the weapon to have the same damage type for both the blade and the projectile for ease. The trade off being the versatility between using the gun portion or the blade portion whenever they wanted, swapping between attacks, etc. I could have still made it a 1d8, grant it, but hey.
Oh yeah nah, now I'm confident it's just a build issue (if you can really call being damage-competitive with a full Fighter an "issue"). Insisting on the weapons being specifically gunblades when they already planned to take the Gunner feat just shows a lack of mechanical competency. You don't need a melee weapon if you have Gunner; if they really understood what Gunner does, they would have taken the more powerful guns rather than insisting on the melee option. Running a build focused on two-weapon fighting on a Rogue/Artificer is also a really weird choice; your bonus action is so crowded it's impossible to use all your character's features while also making your two-weapon attacks.
It seems to me that this player wants a highly flexible character that can do everything, but also wants to top the damage charts like a more optimized build would. You just can't do both (nor should you be able to).
Oh yeah nah, now I'm confident it's just a build issue (if you can really call being damage-competitive with a full Fighter an "issue"). Insisting on the weapons being specifically gunblades when they already planned to take the Gunner feat just shows a lack of mechanical competency. You don't need a melee weapon if you have Gunner; if they really understood what Gunner does, they would have taken the more powerful guns rather than insisting on the melee option. Running a build focused on two-weapon fighting on a Rogue/Artificer is also a really weird choice; your bonus action is so crowded it's impossible to use all your character's features while also making your two-weapon attacks.
It seems to me that this player wants a highly flexible character that can do everything, but also wants to top the damage charts like a more optimized build would. You just can't do both (nor should you be able to).