So I’m going to be allowing guns in my first ever homebrew world, however I can’t seem to get my head around the way ammo crafting operates.
The class seems to state that a Gunslinger can use Tinkers Tools to craft ammo at half the purchasing cost. What I can’t see in this description:
- What materials are required
- How long this takes
- What limits there are on crafting
I’m reading the class description here on Beyond. Is there a more detailed one somewhere that contains some of this missing information? Guns are going to be extremely rare in my world as most technology has been gobbled up by rulers and the military after an apocalyptic event, so just going out and buy ammo won’t really be an option for my players. I like the idea of it being scarce and rare and something they need to work to craft, I just can’t seem to find any solid info on how this works.
I don't think there are any exact rules on this (at least not in the books I have access to) so I've always just winged it.
If you find "Pistol (Exandria) Bullets" when managing inventory you'll see they show in bundles of 20.
So I just arbitrarily decided that in a reasonable sized town a gunslinger can acquire the materials (and any required space) necessary to make one batch of 20 in a day. Exactly what the materials are doesn't really matter - its an abstraction anyway. In a large city a gunslinger has easier access to materials so could make a couple of batches (40) in a day.
Whatever rules you decide are probably fine IMHO, as long as you stay consistent. I don't think a gunslinger should be penalised more than other ranged weapon users regarding access to ammo really, so you may want to be more lenient if your campaign is mostly wilderness-based.
“In addition to the appropriate tools for the item to be crafted, a character needs raw materials worth half of the item’s selling cost. To determine how many workweeks it takes to create an item, divide its gold piece cost by 50. A character can complete multiple items in a workweek if the items’ combined cost is 50 gp or lower. Items that cost more than 50 gp can be completed over longer periods of time, as long as the work in progress is stored in a safe location.”
Rules give renaissance bullets a cost of 3 gp. It doesn’t specify how many bullets, but then they weigh 2 pounds, so maybe it is a batch of 20, which would be more in keeping with other ammunition. If we go with that, it would cost 1.5 gp in materials (half the selling cost) and take 3/50 work weeks, which is .06 weeks, so .42 days, so about 10 hours to make 20 bullets. (I should add, the term "workweek" is not defined, neither in terms of how many days are considered a workweek, nor how many hours are in one work day. For my math, I went with a 7-day week and a 24-hour day. Arguably, someone playing in FR might use a tenday, or another world might have some other system. or you might want to only consider working hours of the day, which you'd then have to define. Changes to these will obviously change the math of how long it takes.)
So that’s for the time. Materials are whatever you (the DM) want them to be. Lead would be a typical choice for bullets, but maybe in your world, they can only be crafted from some special, rare metal — if you want to clamp down on how easy it is to make them. Or maybe they can be made from whatever spare metal the players find if you want it to be easy. For example, that longsword the bandit had is worth 15gp, so they could melt down enough of it to make 10 batches of bullets.
By RAW, once you have the tool proficiency and the tools, time and materials are the only limits. In this case 1.5 gp of whatever stuff, and about 10 hours of down time. Then, poof, you've got 20 bullets. It’s then up to you as DM to decide how much of the materials the players find, so there’s an easy way to limit it. It’s also up to you how easily you want them to have downtime enough to make them.
Hi all.
So I’m going to be allowing guns in my first ever homebrew world, however I can’t seem to get my head around the way ammo crafting operates.
The class seems to state that a Gunslinger can use Tinkers Tools to craft ammo at half the purchasing cost. What I can’t see in this description:
- What materials are required
- How long this takes
- What limits there are on crafting
I’m reading the class description here on Beyond. Is there a more detailed one somewhere that contains some of this missing information? Guns are going to be extremely rare in my world as most technology has been gobbled up by rulers and the military after an apocalyptic event, so just going out and buy ammo won’t really be an option for my players. I like the idea of it being scarce and rare and something they need to work to craft, I just can’t seem to find any solid info on how this works.
I don't think there are any exact rules on this (at least not in the books I have access to) so I've always just winged it.
If you find "Pistol (Exandria) Bullets" when managing inventory you'll see they show in bundles of 20.
So I just arbitrarily decided that in a reasonable sized town a gunslinger can acquire the materials (and any required space) necessary to make one batch of 20 in a day. Exactly what the materials are doesn't really matter - its an abstraction anyway. In a large city a gunslinger has easier access to materials so could make a couple of batches (40) in a day.
Whatever rules you decide are probably fine IMHO, as long as you stay consistent. I don't think a gunslinger should be penalised more than other ranged weapon users regarding access to ammo really, so you may want to be more lenient if your campaign is mostly wilderness-based.
The general crafting rules are in Xanathar’s:
“In addition to the appropriate tools for the item to be crafted, a character needs raw materials worth half of the item’s selling cost. To determine how many workweeks it takes to create an item, divide its gold piece cost by 50. A character can complete multiple items in a workweek if the items’ combined cost is 50 gp or lower. Items that cost more than 50 gp can be completed over longer periods of time, as long as the work in progress is stored in a safe location.”
Rules give renaissance bullets a cost of 3 gp. It doesn’t specify how many bullets, but then they weigh 2 pounds, so maybe it is a batch of 20, which would be more in keeping with other ammunition. If we go with that, it would cost 1.5 gp in materials (half the selling cost) and take 3/50 work weeks, which is .06 weeks, so .42 days, so about 10 hours to make 20 bullets. (I should add, the term "workweek" is not defined, neither in terms of how many days are considered a workweek, nor how many hours are in one work day. For my math, I went with a 7-day week and a 24-hour day. Arguably, someone playing in FR might use a tenday, or another world might have some other system. or you might want to only consider working hours of the day, which you'd then have to define. Changes to these will obviously change the math of how long it takes.)
So that’s for the time. Materials are whatever you (the DM) want them to be. Lead would be a typical choice for bullets, but maybe in your world, they can only be crafted from some special, rare metal — if you want to clamp down on how easy it is to make them. Or maybe they can be made from whatever spare metal the players find if you want it to be easy. For example, that longsword the bandit had is worth 15gp, so they could melt down enough of it to make 10 batches of bullets.
By RAW, once you have the tool proficiency and the tools, time and materials are the only limits. In this case 1.5 gp of whatever stuff, and about 10 hours of down time. Then, poof, you've got 20 bullets. It’s then up to you as DM to decide how much of the materials the players find, so there’s an easy way to limit it. It’s also up to you how easily you want them to have downtime enough to make them.