This is the Gunslinger subclass. There are many subclasses like it, but this one is Critical Role’s. If you’ve ever wished to be a crack shot, lethal at range, and a deadly tinkerer, the Gunslinger might be the fighter subclass for you. Introduced to fifth-edition Dungeons & Dragons as a homebrew subclass made by Mathew Mercer for his player Taliesen Jaffe for the first campaign of Critical Role, the Gunslinger fulfills a specific type of fiction surrounding the idea of a gunslinger. A crafter of their own firearms, the Gunslinger is an innovator in the art of death from afar. But this innovation comes at a cost and their often one-of-a-kind weapons can prove to be unpredictable.
A note about Critical Role content and Gunslinger firearms
The Gunslinger is not official content. It's a homebrew subclass originally designed for a specific player's needs and for a character brought over from another TTRPG system. That said, the Gunslinger may not be for everyone and may not be usable at some tables.
Additionally, because it isn't an official subclass, it doesn't use the firearms or associated rules for them found in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Instead, Mercer created his own firearms and rules, with some key differences:
- Reload: The official firearms use the property Reload (X shots), while the Gunslinger uses Reload X. This means that anything in the rules that refers to the Reload property doesn’t apply to Gunslinger firearms, as it is a different, unofficial property.
- Ammunition: Ammunition is an official property that has two different versions, one for bows and crossbows and one for firearms. Gunslinger firearms use neither of these options. Instead, ammunition is a special trait of the subclass itself. This means anything that refers to the ammunition property, such as the artificer's Repeating Shot infusion, doesn't apply to the Gunslinger's firearms.
Gunslinger fighter features
At 3rd level, the Gunslinger unlocks several features relating to the crafting and use of firearms, the key one being Gunsmith. This feature allows a subclass to not only craft their own unique firearms but also repair them should they misfire. These firearms are powerful, with some unique abilities compared to the official options found in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, but they can be unpredictable—even unreliable—in the heat of battle.
- Firearm Proficiency (3rd level): You gain proficiency in all firearms, allowing you to add your proficiency bonus to attacks made with said weapons.
- Gunsmith (3rd level): The Gunsmith feature grants proficiency in tinker's tools and allows you to craft ammunition for your firearms, including unique Exandrian firearms. This feature also lets you repair weapons that have misfired.
- Adept Marksman (3rd level): This feature grants you a number of trick shots, unlocking more at higher levels, as well as giving you a pool of grit points with which to use them.
- Quickdraw (7th level): At 7th level, the Quickdraw feature boosts your initiative, and also allows you to holster and draw your weapons more quickly, letting you stow one weapon and draw a second as part of a single object interaction on your turn.
- Rapid Repair (10th level): If one of your firearms is jammed by a misfire, you can now attempt to repair it as a bonus action. Vital if your main weapon suffers a poorly timed failure in combat.
- Lightning Reload (15th level): You’re even quicker on the draw, now able to reload a firearm as a bonus action!
- Vicious Intent (18th level): Your attacks now score a critical hit on a result of a 19 or 20 instead of just a 20. You also regain a grit point whenever you roll a critical hit.
- Hemorrhaging Critical (18th level): The wounds dealt by your critical hits linger, with any enemy struck in such a way suffering additional damage at the end of its next turn.
Pros
The Gunslinger is an evocative subclass, summoning a strong narrative image of the inventive, shoots-from-the-hip archetype of Western movies. Crafting your own firearms and ammunition can be rewarding if you enjoy downtime activities that provide direct benefits to combat rather than being roleplay-focused.
Trick shots provide some fantastic opportunities for support tactics, letting you daze, disarm, or move your enemies around from a distance, so your melee-focused allies can rush in and reap the rewards of your deadly precision.
Thanks to the unique firearm rules the Gunslinger uses, they synergize excellently with the base fighter class. The ability to reload as an action or by burning an attack means that you have multiple opportunities in combat to ensure you’re battle-ready with your blunderbuss, which only improves when you unlock the Lightning Reload feature.
Cons
The most obvious weakness of the Gunslinger is the misfire rule, which is ostensibly a "critical fumble" rule. Rolling below a weapon's misfire score—which ranges from 1 to 3—results in the attack automatically missing, much like if you’d rolled a natural 1. But that’s not all, because a misfired weapon then requires an action to attempt to repair it. Doing so requires an ability check made with your tinker's tools. If that check fails, the weapon breaks and it must be mended outside of combat at a cost.
This leads into the second major downside of the Gunslinger: It relies heavily on the active investment by the Dungeon Master not only to facilitate the time and resources for a Gunslinger to craft their ammunition and repair their weapons but also to make new ones. There are no rules for unlocking new firearms as the character levels, so the DM must take the time to work with you to make them available. For firearms such as the musket or pepperbox, which can be purchased, this can be as simple as ensuring there is a merchant available. But if your DM's setting doesn’t have firearms for sale, or if you want your own bad news or hand mortar, your DM will need to work with you to concoct a crafting system.
Building a Gunslinger fighter
Ability scores
Being a ranged subclass, it should come as no surprise that you’ll want a high Dexterity score to make sure your shots land. For 1st and 2nd level, before you get to pick the subclass, consider focusing on using a bow or crossbow. Once you reach 3rd level and pick Gunslinger, not only will you be able to start using firearms, but your saving throw DC for trick shots will benefit from your high Dexterity.
Because you’ll be fighting at a distance from your enemies, consider forgoing the typical fighter mainstay of Constitution as your secondary ability score in favor of Wisdom, which will increase the number of grit points you have. This can also allow you to venture into some useful skills, such as Insight or Perception. It can also be worth discussing with your Dungeon Master about what ability score they intend for you to use with your tinker's tools when crafting and repairing firearms and ammunition. A solid argument can be made for using your Wisdom modifier.
Races
With the new degree of flexibility coming to the Ability Score Increase racial trait, first showing up as an optional rule in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, and now appearing as a core rule for newer races, you have more room to focus on other traits a race offers. The suggestions below look at the various traits each race has that synergize with the Gunslinger subclass, assuming you are able to freely assign your ability score increases.
- Rock gnome: Rock gnomes have the Artificer's Lore trait, which could be useful when attempting to craft your next firearm. The gnome's lore of being natural tinkerers also lends itself well to the Gunslinger's flavor.
- Variant human: If your Dungeon Master allows the variant human, this race is a great choice for picking up an extra feat. Coming in at 1st level with one of the recommended feats below can make for a powerful Gunslinger.
- Owlin: The owlin from Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos makes for a great sniper Gunslinger. Their Flight trait plus Stealth proficiency allows them to silently reach vantage points from which to get the perfect shot.
- Fairy: Here's another flying race, this time from The Wild Beyond the Witchlight. Its Fairy Magic trait gives you the useful faerie fire spell, which gives advantage on attack rolls made against affected creatures.
- Changeling: If you want to play your Gunslinger as more of an assassin-type character, the changeling is right for you. The ability to shift their appearance means they can blend in, disguising themselves until they have the perfect shot.
A note on the harengon race
The rabbit-like harengon from The Wild Beyond the Witchlight has an aptly named Hare-Trigger trait that adds your proficiency bonus to your initiative rolls. At first glance, this may seem perfect as combined with Quickdraw from the Gunslinger, you’d be adding your proficiency bonus twice. Unfortunately, the rules don’t work that way—you can only add your proficiency bonus to a roll once.
Feats
The most obvious criteria for feats would be ones that improve your Dexterity or Wisdom, but the Gunslinger invites some interesting feat options due to the way it not only fights at range but also how their firearms work.
- Firearm Specialist: This feat was literally made for the subclass. While firearm proficiency is redundant for the Gunslinger, the ability to use your reaction to potentially negate a misfire is incredibly valuable. Combine that with the ability to attack with a loaded firearm as a bonus action, and you have a potent feat option for the Gunslinger.
- Artificer Initiate: This feat on the surface might not seem that useful, but I have one word for you: mending. You can take this cantrip as part of the feat and, with your DM's approval, have a quick and cost-effective way to repair your broken firearms. Obviously, this relies on your DM ruling that a weapon broken by a misfire is within the scope of one or more castings of the spell.
- Sharpshooter: Back to another obvious feat choice. With Sharpshooter, you won't suffer from disadvantage on long-range shots, you can ignore anything but total cover, and you can boost your damage by +10 at the cost of a -5 to hit. All of these combine beautifully with the Gunslinger to turn you into a deadly sniper.
- Fey Touched: And here we are with what might seem like an odd choice. The Wisdom score increase will help get you more grit points, but what’s really interesting is the spell choices. Misty step is a surprisingly useful spell as a Gunslinger, allowing you to get out of melee range without provoking opportunity attacks as a bonus action or just teleport up to the perfect vantage point. Your 1st-level Divination or Enchantment spell options are not to be sniffed at either. If you go with an Enchantment option, bane is a great pick as you can not only make your targets more vulnerable to your trick shots but also help out your allies. Alternatively, you could take the Divination spell hunter's mark, which increases the damage you deal to a marked creature, and you have advantage on Wisdom checks made using Perception or Survival to find that creature.
- Piercer: We’ll finish off with another obvious choice. Piercer not only improves your Dexterity but lets you reroll the damage of one attack per turn for all but one of the Gunslinger's firearms. Finally, the critical hit effect of the feat works nicely with the improved critical hit range of Vicious Intent.
Special mention for draconic gifts
The feats Gift of the Chromatic Dragon and Gift of the Gem Dragon are also worth considering for your Gunslinger. Gift of the Chromatic Dragon allows you to infuse your weapons with damage types other than piercing, which can be great for getting around resistances, plus the Reactive Resistance feature gives your character a bit more survivability should they end up in hot water. Gift of the Gem Dragon can boost your Wisdom score and give you the ability to move enemies away from you should they hit you, giving you the breathing room you need to get out of melee range.
Gunslinger fighter sample build
Below, you’ll find a 10th-level Gunslinger build that focuses on sniping from long range. I chose owlin for the ability to fly and Stealth proficiency as this will help them get into the perfect vantage point undetected. I also chose to make them Small to help with squeezing into places. Assuming a cooperative Dungeon Master, I equipped them with the long-range bad news, plus a pistol for close-quarter combats.
I split Ability Score Improvements between Dexterity and the Sharpshooter feat. In order to make using the feat even easier with D&D Beyond’s digital dice, I added a second bad news and pistol, and customized them to include the -5 to hit and +10 to damage. Finally, for trick shots, I went with two support options, Disarming Shot and Dazing Shot, and two high-damage options, Piercing Shot and Violent Shot.
How will you build your Gunslinger?
The Gunslinger is a divisive subclass that isn’t for everyone. The use of misfire rules and the reliance on your Dungeon Master needing to facilitate access to your subclass features can make it a poor fit for some tables. However, if you want to take aim at the classic gunslinger archetype, a crack shot with a score to settle, or maybe you fancy yourself the next Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III, it can be the subclass for you!
To build a Gunslinger, hop into D&D Beyond's character builder. Enable "Critical Role Content" under the "Home" tab and start tinkering! Just remember to aim with your eye, shoot with your mind, and kill with your heart!
Davyd is a moderator for D&D Beyond. A Dungeon Master of over fifteen years, he enjoys Marvel movies, writing, and of course running D&D for his friends and family, including partner Steph and his daughter Willow (well, one day). They live with their two cats Asker and Khatleesi in the south of England.
Halfling Gunslinger ftw.
I feel like a big consideration for Con is the handedness issue. Much like the Alchemist Artificer.
If they need to repair their weapon, they must have the Tinker Tools in hand to attempt that check. Meaning it is quite problematic in terms of two handed weapons. It also conflits with a sword gun style (which some features tend to promote). Much less any uses of shields etc. 5E's 1 free item interaction goes a long way to helping with this but it still causes some jumbles.
Similiarlly to the alchemist's lv 5 ability conflicting with a few things.
Handedness is a big con and requires some juggling depending on buildi.
I'm loving the breakdowns and sample builds! This one and the bloodhunter one have been very informative and inspiring!
Besides Khrangar's great suggestion to make a Halfling Gunslinger to leverage their luck, I would like to add that the Portent ability of a School of Divination Wizard can help a lot with avoiding misfires in critical situations.
A 2-level multiclassing dip or a full-fledged allied wizard can be great assets when you want to go headlong with a Violent Shot.
It's arguably supposed to be problematic; this is why the Gunslinger can quickly stow a jammed weapon and draw another, as you can repair it later.
While I really like the idea of this sub-class, I've always found it a bit awkward and annoying to play in practice; the custom firearms rules more often than not slow play down, especially the Misfires, and some of the sub-class features are a bit clunky. The other major issue is with weapon progression; none of this is formalised in the sub-class, and it obviously all happened behind the scenes between Matt Mercer and Taliesin Jaffe, and on D&D Beyond we're limited to those weapons as basic options. Of course all of this is understandable; as the article says, this sub-class was created for a specific character, Percy, so they could keep playing after a switch from Pathfinder to 5th edition, and it has to be seen through that lens, and it did its job well.
It works well enough, and I love the theme, but in practice you're better off playing a Battle Master with firearms proficiency or even the Gunner feat, as you'll be just as good, if not better, with guns overall.
It's for some of these reasons that I created my own Gunfighter sub-class as a rework using the DMG firearms; I find it a lot smoother to play, and tried to more firmly establish it as being a weaker, firearm only Battle Master but with enough added to distinguish it and balance it out. Plus I went massively overboard on a crafting section to formalise weapon customisation over time; that isn't specifically for the Gunfighter either, but the Gunfighter is well equipped for it as standard (e.g- an Artificer could use it, though they can lean on infusions to avoid the need).
Halfling? Lucky feat? Multiclass into artificer for infinity ammo? The most broken things are not in the guide 😅
Got to say, I took advice from other DMs on this when considering whether to let a player use this subclass. Being honest...I really don't like this homebrew. It just feels a mix between broken and fiddly depending on situation.
For me, I actively chose not to allow a player to use it but that was because my world doesn't have firearms, or much of any terribly well advanced technology. Something is keeping it all down to a lower level. What I find myself wondering though is whether the misfire/repair rules are going to be terribly fun in longer campaigns. It kinda feels like when video games have durability on weapons. It becomes more of a pain to constantly repair them than the fun you can have with them.
Maybe that's just me.
Repeating Shot, by RAW, does not work for Exandrian guns, as Davyd stated. Some DMs let it go, but even a Repeating Shot'd Exandrian gun can misfire. In terms of sheer mechanical effectiveness, there's very little a Gunslinger can accomplish that an equivalent longbow-wielding archer Battlemaster can't do as well or better with no chance of misfire. Heh, one plays the Gunslinger either as an homage to Percival or because they really want that Western death-tinkerer flair. Repeating Shot can work into it, but it can also feel like cheating. As someone who's done both (i.e. Repeating Shot pistol and a naked, ammo-needed rifle), I can certainly attest to that.
The Owlin gunslinger is a snowy owl is his name is Flint Westwood, the fastest critter in the West, on this side of this here game ranch.
A Fistful of Coppers
Battlemaster with the gunner feat is a better gunslinger than the Gunslinger.
I like the Gunslinger, but in practice it's mostly a slightly worse Battlemaster. It does have enough different things it can do with its Superiority Dice equivalent, but Battlemaster does a similar thing just as well in most cases.
In my games I'd gladly ignore the Misfire mechanic, as it isn't counterbalanced by anything justifying such an extreme risk.
I have a Minotaur gunslinger ready to go now lol
No. Thanks.
I wish the Exandrian firearms had the Ammunition trait, like they should. Without it, the Artificer's Repeating Shot Infusion won't work on them :/
*thinks of a Centaur Gunslinger Fighter named Wot'n Centaurnation*
That's by design, this guide isn't about optimising or 'breaking' the build, but building something that hits at the fundamentals (and won't make your DM cry)
Unfortunately they can't have the trait because it's not in the System Reference Document.
I already have one. Meet Bullette:
By any chance are they working on Spelljammer, with that picture of a Giff?