A while ago i started a campaign (the players started at lvl 3 and are now lvl 6) and one of my player's is playing a Gunslinger Fighter. Originally i was very excited to see someone play this since i had seen it in Critical Role and it looked very fun and it started out great. Me and him decided to have him start with the pistol that is described in the gunslinger section of the fighter class and it was perfectly balanced. He did decent damage and was helping the team quite a bit. I would even say he was one of the strongest characters on the team. But around the end of level 4 he had finished building the Bad News weapon but there was one thing i had not concidered. At level 4 he had decided to take the gunner feat instead of an ability score improvement and if you don't know what the gunner feat does it makes it so you don't have to reload firearms when shooting them. Normally you have to reload Bad News after every shot but now he didn't need to do this. I pretty quickly caught on to that this was quite overpowered since he could dish out 8d12+6 damage per turn if he used his extra attack and action surge feature. I decided to make it so that the feat instead made so that you can use a Bonus action to reload instead of an action. I did this to try and make it more balanced but then he instead asked the teams Artificer to put the repeating shot infusion on his Bad News which made it so that he still doesn't need to reload. He also got a +1 enchantment on the weapon so now he can dish out 8d12+8 damage per turn at level 6. Last session he dealt more than half of the HP of a monster they were fighting and honestly im just kind of sick of it. I've tried to talk to him about how he wants to make it more balanced but he just says i should make the encounters stronger instead which i do not want to do since then they would level up faster and i like the pace at which they level up right now. Does any of you have an idea of how i could nerf this character or if i even should do it. Thanks in advance and sorry i wrote so much :(
Edit: I forgot since he has weapon plus one and the archery fighting style he can deal 8d12+12 damage per turn not 8d12+6. Also thank you a lot to every single one of you for giving me tips, i appreciate it a lot!
The issue seems to be with the player not the PC. It seems they want to hog all the limelight by being far more 0owerful than the rest of the party.
D&D should be fun for everyone. If the gunslinger is doing 60 damage per round and the Barbarian 20 that is likely not to be fun for the barb. You are clearly not happy with his damage output so it is not fun for you. You could give the Barbarian a magic weapon that does an extra 1d12 damage on a hit or something to level it up (and everyone else in a similar vain) and beef up the enemies but as they are still level 6 characters, with level 6 hit points, if the players roll well for initiative the combat is easy and if they roll poorly they TPK.
As DM you make the rules, if you say the Artificer can not make a repeating shot, or that it requires a bonus action that is the case.
I've tried to talk to him about how he wants to make it more balanced but he just says i should make the encounters stronger instead which i do not want to do since then they would level up faster and i like the pace at which they level up right now.
This is the problem. Tell him flat out that no, making the encounters harder is not the solution because the other PCs are perfectly balanced as it is. Then take away Bad News, and tell him he can only have the pistol, or you will HB it so that most enemies from now on are resistance / immune to firearm damage.
Gunner ignores Loading, but not Reload. Repeating Shot is the same. Talk to the player, inform them that Gunslinger guns are special in their properties and that normal workarounds don't work. Repeating Shot can still bypass ammunition, but the gun still needs to be prepped to fire, so they're still limited in how many shots they can fire a turn. That this is how it will be from now on for balance purposes.
A couple of more specific points:
-As a bit of consolation, you could still allow the reload of a single gun as part of an Attack action. This would still let them fire 2 shots during an Action Surge. -His note about making encounters stronger rings hollow when encounter balance has to be based on a whole party, and if they're stronger and he goes down, that's a likely death spiral for the party. D&D is a group game, not a game of one person becoming far stronger than everyone else and outshining them, and he needs to understand that. -If you're happy with the progression speed, you can also run the campaign with milestone leveling.
Exactly what Athanar said. You need to read the Gunsliger subclass since it says those guns have their own rules:
Firearm Properties
Firearms are a new and volatile technology, and as such bring their own unique set of weapon properties. Some properties are followed by a number, and this number signifies an element of that property (outlined below). These properties replace the optional ones presented in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Firearms are ranged weapons.
Reload. The weapon can be fired a number of times equal to its Reload score before you must spend 1 attack or 1 action to reload. You must have one free hand to reload a firearm.
Gunner and Repeating shot only affect the Loading Property, but not the Reload one that Bad News and the other weapons described in the subclass have. The rest of the Feat still works perfectly, as well as Repeating shot affecting amunition.
Just applying this rules that are explained in the class, you will have a more controled Gunsliger not longer killing everything on sight, but working as intended (still dealing a lot of dmg per turn on long range or even at 5ft because of gunner)
Talk to the player and bring this to him so you reach an agreement and still enjoy the game.
8d12+8 using action surge basically translates to 4d12+4 in all other rounds. There has to be some attack rolls in there too. So some attacks will miss. So .... 30 damage. Single target. If we assume a high hit rate of 75%, then it's more like 23.
And that's absolutely within the realm of reason and not overpowered. But it's possible that it doesn't mesh very well with the rest of the party. To be precise, the comparable damage for a Warlock using Agonizing Blast is 22,5.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
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A while ago i started a campaign (the players started at lvl 3 and are now lvl 6) and one of my player's is playing a Gunslinger Fighter. Originally i was very excited to see someone play this since i had seen it in Critical Role and it looked very fun and it started out great. Me and him decided to have him start with the pistol that is described in the gunslinger section of the fighter class and it was perfectly balanced. He did decent damage and was helping the team quite a bit. I would even say he was one of the strongest characters on the team. But around the end of level 4 he had finished building the Bad News weapon but there was one thing i had not concidered. At level 4 he had decided to take the gunner feat instead of an ability score improvement and if you don't know what the gunner feat does it makes it so you don't have to reload firearms when shooting them. Normally you have to reload Bad News after every shot but now he didn't need to do this. I pretty quickly caught on to that this was quite overpowered since he could dish out 8d12+6 damage per turn if he used his extra attack and action surge feature. I decided to make it so that the feat instead made so that you can use a Bonus action to reload instead of an action. I did this to try and make it more balanced but then he instead asked the teams Artificer to put the repeating shot infusion on his Bad News which made it so that he still doesn't need to reload. He also got a +1 enchantment on the weapon so now he can dish out 8d12+8 damage per turn at level 6. Last session he dealt more than half of the HP of a monster they were fighting and honestly im just kind of sick of it. I've tried to talk to him about how he wants to make it more balanced but he just says i should make the encounters stronger instead which i do not want to do since then they would level up faster and i like the pace at which they level up right now. Does any of you have an idea of how i could nerf this character or if i even should do it. Thanks in advance and sorry i wrote so much :(
Edit: I forgot since he has weapon plus one and the archery fighting style he can deal 8d12+12 damage per turn not 8d12+6. Also thank you a lot to every single one of you for giving me tips, i appreciate it a lot!
I have a few solutions.
Outlaw guns in the area they are in.
Make his gun explode.
Have a talk with your player about this. Most of the time this fixes a lot of issues and gives them your perspective on this.
Just let them do it. D&D is not about winning or losing, but having fun.
The issue seems to be with the player not the PC. It seems they want to hog all the limelight by being far more 0owerful than the rest of the party.
D&D should be fun for everyone. If the gunslinger is doing 60 damage per round and the Barbarian 20 that is likely not to be fun for the barb. You are clearly not happy with his damage output so it is not fun for you. You could give the Barbarian a magic weapon that does an extra 1d12 damage on a hit or something to level it up (and everyone else in a similar vain) and beef up the enemies but as they are still level 6 characters, with level 6 hit points, if the players roll well for initiative the combat is easy and if they roll poorly they TPK.
As DM you make the rules, if you say the Artificer can not make a repeating shot, or that it requires a bonus action that is the case.
This is the problem. Tell him flat out that no, making the encounters harder is not the solution because the other PCs are perfectly balanced as it is. Then take away Bad News, and tell him he can only have the pistol, or you will HB it so that most enemies from now on are resistance / immune to firearm damage.
Make them take a different feat / ability score increase
Gunner feat:
Gunslinger subclass:
I would say that means the feat is incompatible with the gunslinger subclass, as it is referring to firearms as described in the dmg.
Gunner ignores Loading, but not Reload. Repeating Shot is the same. Talk to the player, inform them that Gunslinger guns are special in their properties and that normal workarounds don't work. Repeating Shot can still bypass ammunition, but the gun still needs to be prepped to fire, so they're still limited in how many shots they can fire a turn. That this is how it will be from now on for balance purposes.
A couple of more specific points:
-As a bit of consolation, you could still allow the reload of a single gun as part of an Attack action. This would still let them fire 2 shots during an Action Surge.
-His note about making encounters stronger rings hollow when encounter balance has to be based on a whole party, and if they're stronger and he goes down, that's a likely death spiral for the party. D&D is a group game, not a game of one person becoming far stronger than everyone else and outshining them, and he needs to understand that.
-If you're happy with the progression speed, you can also run the campaign with milestone leveling.
Exactly what Athanar said. You need to read the Gunsliger subclass since it says those guns have their own rules:
Firearm Properties
Firearms are a new and volatile technology, and as such bring their own unique set of weapon properties. Some properties are followed by a number, and this number signifies an element of that property (outlined below). These properties replace the optional ones presented in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Firearms are ranged weapons.
Reload. The weapon can be fired a number of times equal to its Reload score before you must spend 1 attack or 1 action to reload. You must have one free hand to reload a firearm.
Gunner and Repeating shot only affect the Loading Property, but not the Reload one that Bad News and the other weapons described in the subclass have. The rest of the Feat still works perfectly, as well as Repeating shot affecting amunition.
Just applying this rules that are explained in the class, you will have a more controled Gunsliger not longer killing everything on sight, but working as intended (still dealing a lot of dmg per turn on long range or even at 5ft because of gunner)
Talk to the player and bring this to him so you reach an agreement and still enjoy the game.
8d12+8 using action surge basically translates to 4d12+4 in all other rounds. There has to be some attack rolls in there too. So some attacks will miss. So .... 30 damage. Single target. If we assume a high hit rate of 75%, then it's more like 23.
And that's absolutely within the realm of reason and not overpowered. But it's possible that it doesn't mesh very well with the rest of the party. To be precise, the comparable damage for a Warlock using Agonizing Blast is 22,5.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.