Well i've already given how long it would take to craft pepper box, but Pistol would be 75gp and 15 days. Should you successful pass your check to craft on a long rest, that's just a days worth.
Here's the firearm table from the gunslinger archetype for convenience:
Um so I want to craft a pepperbox in a campaign I'm playing and I looked and couldn't find what you need to craft one? I thought I saw it somewhere before but I can't find it now so I was wondering what materials I would need and how long it might take to make it in the campaign.
Um so I want to craft a pepperbox in a campaign I'm playing and I looked and couldn't find what you need to craft one? I thought I saw it somewhere before but I can't find it now so I was wondering what materials I would need and how long it might take to make it in the campaign.
125gp of materials, & 25 days. Listening the exact materials arn't as much as important as the accessibility. You'd need a forge and access to market of materials, primarily iron, brass, steel, flint & lumber. Having the exact ratio and knowledge of materials wouldn't allow the use of crafting the gun during travel, if that's your intent? As you need the right facilities, it really is a downtime activity while you are in a town.
Okay, thank you so much. Another question though, how would one determine the DC of a gun? I'm wanting to craft a pepperbox so I was wondering how to figure that out.
I havnt included any as the dc is very much at the DM's discretion as the variables of any two different campaigns may vary immensisly. DC would probably have to be costantly adjusted based on what guns the player wants over others, they may not even want to bother with some of the guns at all. Putting that to one side though, here's what I feel would be reasonable:
Musket: N/A a starting gun, you already know how to make it Palm Pistol (if not chosen as a starting gun): DC10 Pistol (if not chosen as a starting gun): DC12 Pepperbox: DC14 Blunderbus: DC17 Bad New/Hand Mortar: (DC20) But I personally would not let them attempt to draft too often, for instance i would specify they'd have to be in a peaceful environment where they could focus, calculate and sketch without issue so as in their room at a tavern. I would not allow drafting on a bumpy caravan ride, especially after having recently nearly died in a fight. On the event of failure i'd also argue they would need some small amount of downtime to think about the issue before they attempted again. On a success they'd need to craft that item before entertaining the idea of drafting more, and even then only a good time after getting use to the new weapon they'd just crafted. Obviously all of this is very much case by case, and up to DM's discretion. Alternatively Use lower DC's but require multiple checks over a period of time.
Okay, thank you so much. Another question though, how would one determine the DC of a gun? I'm wanting to craft a pepperbox so I was wondering how to figure that out.
The above is for drafting the design which is an Intelligence (Tinkering) Check, required if the design for the gun doesn't already exist/PC doesn't have access to the blueprint. Once you've succeeded this check, you don't need to ever make it again as you now know how to make the gun, and can begin the actual crafting.
Then during the actual crafting process that would typically be Dexterity (Tinkering) complication Checks, the frequency of these is up to the DM, might be once every 5 days of crafting, or twice, one in the middle and one at the end, or maybe they ask for no check at all. The difficulty of these may rise and fall based in different variables, but it shouldn't be too hard for the pepperbox, being an early access gun. As such, if I was in the DM role I'd probably only require 2 checks A DC13 at the 15 day mark, and a DC15 check 5 days before the predicted completion day. With both checks the amount failed by is how many days extra work/money required to fix issue, before repeating the check, and if they roll a nat 20 they could maybe shave up to 5 days off the total crafting time.
General rule of thumb for DC range of checks for crafting: Musket: Very Easy - Easy (5-10) Pistol/Palm Pistol - Close to Easy (8-12) Pepperbox - Easy to Moderate (10-15) Blunderbuss Easy to Hard (10-20) Bad News/Mortar Moderate to Very Hard (15-25) If many checks are made over the crafting period DC should skew to easier end range, but if there's not many checks then towards harder end range. I personally would edge towards fewer crafting checks: Musket/Pepperbox: 2 Checks Pistol/Palm Pistol: 1 Check Blunderbuss: 3 Checks Bad News: 4 Checks Hand Mortar: 5 Checks
Hi, sorry if I'm necroing this post, I just wanted to check material prices. Is it really more expensive to craft ammo than to buy it?
I was running some numbers and material price + BP prices (since we don't have an artificer in the party) actually goes over the outright cost of ammo for example the pepperbox: At best you are purchasing .08 lbs per gp when buying the keg, meaning you have to use 2.5gp (to get 20BP) At worst you're buying .04 lbs per gp when buying the pocket flask (doubling the gp required to 5gp for 20BPs) This plus the cost of the raw materials which you need 2GPs worth of materials.
That's 4.5gp (or 7GP if you buy BP in smaller amounts) in both raw materials and BPs for a batch of Pepperbox ammo, when the ammo itself costs 4gp outright.
Is this normal? Or am I looking at things wrong?
I get that the incentive is to craft yourself the BP but even then, if you craft a keg's worth it would require 1.25gp worth of BP crafted + the 2gp of raw materials, making the savings of 7sp and 5cp per batch. Which, ain't bad by any means, but this would use your downtime for the foreseeable future, which is a valuable resource in a long-term campaign.
And also, I get this all can be fixed by just DM saying "hurdur BP now costs half" but I wanted to consult with someone who actually invested time into gathering the info.
The Cost for the Ammo column is for just the bullet for Palm pistol, pistol, musket, pepperbox, blunderbuss, it doesn't include the black powder, you have to buy/craft blackpowder separately regardless. Only the Hand Mortar and Bad news do as they are the only two that use a primitive form of preloaded cartridge.
The total cost for Buying 20 ammunition for a pepperbox (Bullet + Blackpowder) is 4g (bullets) + 4g, 3.5gp, or 2.5gp (flask, horn, keg) Crafting would cost 2g + 1.75gp. For time consumption it works out a total 10.8 hours of downtime per batch (BP and bullets) of 20 (assuming a day of crafting is only 8 hours of that day.
We should also give an example for bad news since its ammo is both the bullet and blackpowder, This one is actually a bit simpler: The total cost for Buying 5 ammunition for a Bad News is 10g Crafting 5 ammo would cost just 5g (2.625gp of which is from the blackpowder used, assuming market value of a horn of blackpowder (35gp for 2lbs) as the true value for blackpowder) For time consumption it works out a total 10.1 hours (assuming player crafted blackpowder first instead of bought) of downtime per batch of 5 (assuming a day of crafting is only 8 hours of that day.
Yes a player may need to spend a decent chunk of time crafting some blackpowder, a week for 4lbs but thats 400 pepperbox shots, which aint a bad exchange in my opinion, however you are unfortunately completly right. Assume on average a group of of lv5 players has 3 encounters a day, and assume they take 4 rounds per encounter, and assume they never have to reload (But in exchange ignore action surge) and so always shoot twice a round. This works out 24 shots a day so 4lbs of blackpowder which took 7 days to craft lasts 16.7 days. So you are fully right to worry since crafting is eating up 30% of their time. However you have to consider other aspects of a campaign. As the campaign carries on, if the player lives in a world without gunpowder and so they are the pioneer and only crafter, they could employ people to make it for them, or pay an enchanter to create a device that creates blackpowder for them. So there are means around it if the thing stopping them from just buying BP is a lack of it in the world at campaign start.
This becomes worse with Bad news, lets assume they are lv11 now (3 attacks), every round is alternating 2 then 1 shots to account for reload, and they make 1 action surge during the day which counts as 2 shots, but otherwise maintain 3 encounters lasting 4 rounds. As such they make 20 shots a day. With each shot cartridge requiring 3 BP charges to craft, this means 4lbs of black powder will then last 6.7 days, as such, they would be spending over 50% of their time crafting black powder.
So in conclusion you are right, its a massive trade off of crafting time if you have to craft the blackpowder, but at the end of the day, thats kind of the point. If you want to be the only person in the world making it, and so you build a character that are the only one who can attend to their needs, Whare else other more standard people can outsource to their requirements to buisnesses, thats the penalty of having the monopoly on it, not to mention blackpowder is a ***** to make and comes with danger. Sometimes you've got to bite the bullet and outsource to a dedicated crafter. Think of it this way, imagine if the entire party had to craft their armor and weapons from beginning to end of campaign, from arrows all the way up to +3 plate armor? the campaign would be 90% downtime crafting. Even Percy from critical role didn't craft most of his own Bp during the livestream, he shopped at Victor's, and then used it to build other cool stuff.
As you said though you could slash prices evenly in half across the board for everything, a lot of the pricing in D&D is super inconsistent. What I've gathered here is a just a middle ground between official prices in DMG and Gunslinger on DMGuild, other item and crafting costs and well educated guesses.
In my own HB campaign I run, guns have already been established but are quite rare, only seen along the coast being more commonly used with ship cannons, or within specific factions such as "The Geared garrison" A Gnomish founded association of tinkers that are a sort of cross between the brotherhood of steel (Fallout) and Piltover Concil (Arcane: league of legends).
Tbf with the release of vox machina animated series its an easy assumption to make as its been revealed Percy uses a preloaded speed reloader tool to reload each barrel simultaneously. But its not really cartridge as its not left inside the pepperbox just a delivery system.
The Cost for the Ammo column is for just the bullet for Palm pistol, pistol, musket, pepperbox, blunderbuss, it doesn't include the black powder, you have to buy/craft blackpowder separately regardless. Only the Hand Mortar and Bad news do as they are the only two that use a primitive form of preloaded cartridge. <snip>
I have to say that this makes no sense to me. While you're free to run your games however you want and I appreciate how much thought you've put into this, the subclass itself (https://www.dndbeyond.com/subclasses/gunslinger) makes no reference to black powder or any charges being necessary. It simply states a cost for the ammo (eg 4gp for 20 pepperbox ammo) and then goes on to state that the gunslinger can craft ammo for half the cost:
Ammunition
All firearms require ammunition to make an attack, and due to their rare nature, ammunition may be near impossible to find or purchase. However, if materials are gathered, you can craft ammunition yourself using your Tinker’s Tools at half the cost. Each firearm uses its own unique ammunition and is generally sold or crafted in batches listed below next to the price.
You can flavor that however you want, but making it cost twice what the designer intended seems a bit much. I think the class is fairly well balanced without nerfing ammo like this.
Well i've already given how long it would take to craft pepper box, but Pistol would be 75gp and 15 days. Should you successful pass your check to craft on a long rest, that's just a days worth.
Here's the firearm table from the gunslinger archetype for convenience:
Um so I want to craft a pepperbox in a campaign I'm playing and I looked and couldn't find what you need to craft one? I thought I saw it somewhere before but I can't find it now so I was wondering what materials I would need and how long it might take to make it in the campaign.
125gp of materials, & 25 days. Listening the exact materials arn't as much as important as the accessibility. You'd need a forge and access to market of materials, primarily iron, brass, steel, flint & lumber. Having the exact ratio and knowledge of materials wouldn't allow the use of crafting the gun during travel, if that's your intent? As you need the right facilities, it really is a downtime activity while you are in a town.
Okay, thank you so much. Another question though, how would one determine the DC of a gun? I'm wanting to craft a pepperbox so I was wondering how to figure that out.
The above is for drafting the design which is an Intelligence (Tinkering) Check, required if the design for the gun doesn't already exist/PC doesn't have access to the blueprint. Once you've succeeded this check, you don't need to ever make it again as you now know how to make the gun, and can begin the actual crafting.
Then during the actual crafting process that would typically be Dexterity (Tinkering) complication Checks, the frequency of these is up to the DM, might be once every 5 days of crafting, or twice, one in the middle and one at the end, or maybe they ask for no check at all. The difficulty of these may rise and fall based in different variables, but it shouldn't be too hard for the pepperbox, being an early access gun. As such, if I was in the DM role I'd probably only require 2 checks A DC13 at the 15 day mark, and a DC15 check 5 days before the predicted completion day. With both checks the amount failed by is how many days extra work/money required to fix issue, before repeating the check, and if they roll a nat 20 they could maybe shave up to 5 days off the total crafting time.
General rule of thumb for DC range of checks for crafting:
Musket: Very Easy - Easy (5-10)
Pistol/Palm Pistol - Close to Easy (8-12)
Pepperbox - Easy to Moderate (10-15)
Blunderbuss Easy to Hard (10-20)
Bad News/Mortar Moderate to Very Hard (15-25)
If many checks are made over the crafting period DC should skew to easier end range, but if there's not many checks then towards harder end range. I personally would edge towards fewer crafting checks:
Musket/Pepperbox: 2 Checks
Pistol/Palm Pistol: 1 Check
Blunderbuss: 3 Checks
Bad News: 4 Checks
Hand Mortar: 5 Checks
Hi, sorry if I'm necroing this post, I just wanted to check material prices. Is it really more expensive to craft ammo than to buy it?
I was running some numbers and material price + BP prices (since we don't have an artificer in the party) actually goes over the outright cost of ammo for example the pepperbox:
At best you are purchasing .08 lbs per gp when buying the keg, meaning you have to use 2.5gp (to get 20BP)
At worst you're buying .04 lbs per gp when buying the pocket flask (doubling the gp required to 5gp for 20BPs)
This plus the cost of the raw materials which you need 2GPs worth of materials.
That's 4.5gp (or 7GP if you buy BP in smaller amounts) in both raw materials and BPs for a batch of Pepperbox ammo, when the ammo itself costs 4gp outright.
Is this normal? Or am I looking at things wrong?
I get that the incentive is to craft yourself the BP but even then, if you craft a keg's worth it would require 1.25gp worth of BP crafted + the 2gp of raw materials, making the savings of 7sp and 5cp per batch. Which, ain't bad by any means, but this would use your downtime for the foreseeable future, which is a valuable resource in a long-term campaign.
And also, I get this all can be fixed by just DM saying "hurdur BP now costs half" but I wanted to consult with someone who actually invested time into gathering the info.
The Cost for the Ammo column is for just the bullet for Palm pistol, pistol, musket, pepperbox, blunderbuss, it doesn't include the black powder, you have to buy/craft blackpowder separately regardless. Only the Hand Mortar and Bad news do as they are the only two that use a primitive form of preloaded cartridge.
The total cost for Buying 20 ammunition for a pepperbox (Bullet + Blackpowder) is 4g (bullets) + 4g, 3.5gp, or 2.5gp (flask, horn, keg)
Crafting would cost 2g + 1.75gp.
For time consumption it works out a total 10.8 hours of downtime per batch (BP and bullets) of 20 (assuming a day of crafting is only 8 hours of that day.
We should also give an example for bad news since its ammo is both the bullet and blackpowder, This one is actually a bit simpler:
The total cost for Buying 5 ammunition for a Bad News is 10g
Crafting 5 ammo would cost just 5g (2.625gp of which is from the blackpowder used, assuming market value of a horn of blackpowder (35gp for 2lbs) as the true value for blackpowder)
For time consumption it works out a total 10.1 hours (assuming player crafted blackpowder first instead of bought) of downtime per batch of 5 (assuming a day of crafting is only 8 hours of that day.
Yes a player may need to spend a decent chunk of time crafting some blackpowder, a week for 4lbs but thats 400 pepperbox shots, which aint a bad exchange in my opinion, however you are unfortunately completly right. Assume on average a group of of lv5 players has 3 encounters a day, and assume they take 4 rounds per encounter, and assume they never have to reload (But in exchange ignore action surge) and so always shoot twice a round. This works out 24 shots a day so 4lbs of blackpowder which took 7 days to craft lasts 16.7 days. So you are fully right to worry since crafting is eating up 30% of their time. However you have to consider other aspects of a campaign. As the campaign carries on, if the player lives in a world without gunpowder and so they are the pioneer and only crafter, they could employ people to make it for them, or pay an enchanter to create a device that creates blackpowder for them. So there are means around it if the thing stopping them from just buying BP is a lack of it in the world at campaign start.
This becomes worse with Bad news, lets assume they are lv11 now (3 attacks), every round is alternating 2 then 1 shots to account for reload, and they make 1 action surge during the day which counts as 2 shots, but otherwise maintain 3 encounters lasting 4 rounds. As such they make 20 shots a day. With each shot cartridge requiring 3 BP charges to craft, this means 4lbs of black powder will then last 6.7 days, as such, they would be spending over 50% of their time crafting black powder.
So in conclusion you are right, its a massive trade off of crafting time if you have to craft the blackpowder, but at the end of the day, thats kind of the point. If you want to be the only person in the world making it, and so you build a character that are the only one who can attend to their needs, Whare else other more standard people can outsource to their requirements to buisnesses, thats the penalty of having the monopoly on it, not to mention blackpowder is a ***** to make and comes with danger. Sometimes you've got to bite the bullet and outsource to a dedicated crafter. Think of it this way, imagine if the entire party had to craft their armor and weapons from beginning to end of campaign, from arrows all the way up to +3 plate armor? the campaign would be 90% downtime crafting. Even Percy from critical role didn't craft most of his own Bp during the livestream, he shopped at Victor's, and then used it to build other cool stuff.
As you said though you could slash prices evenly in half across the board for everything, a lot of the pricing in D&D is super inconsistent. What I've gathered here is a just a middle ground between official prices in DMG and Gunslinger on DMGuild, other item and crafting costs and well educated guesses.
In my own HB campaign I run, guns have already been established but are quite rare, only seen along the coast being more commonly used with ship cannons, or within specific factions such as "The Geared garrison" A Gnomish founded association of tinkers that are a sort of cross between the brotherhood of steel (Fallout) and Piltover Concil (Arcane: league of legends).
I had missed entirely the fact that the pepperbox still needed BP to work even if you bought the ammo. (Thought it worked more like modern firearms)
That clears it up enormously, thanks for taking the time to reply!
Tbf with the release of vox machina animated series its an easy assumption to make as its been revealed Percy uses a preloaded speed reloader tool to reload each barrel simultaneously. But its not really cartridge as its not left inside the pepperbox just a delivery system.
I have to say that this makes no sense to me. While you're free to run your games however you want and I appreciate how much thought you've put into this, the subclass itself (https://www.dndbeyond.com/subclasses/gunslinger) makes no reference to black powder or any charges being necessary. It simply states a cost for the ammo (eg 4gp for 20 pepperbox ammo) and then goes on to state that the gunslinger can craft ammo for half the cost:
You can flavor that however you want, but making it cost twice what the designer intended seems a bit much. I think the class is fairly well balanced without nerfing ammo like this.
what materials would I need for the pistol