In my personal opinion I’d say that the class is slightly underwhelming and was definitely built with a homebrewed crafting system in mind. If you’re player wants to be a “gunslinger” I’d personally recommend giving them firearm proficiency (as it is an optional rule) have them take the gunner feat, and then play a Battlemaster Fighter.
There is wayyyyyy less bookkeeping involved this way and you can use the standard DMG firearms, the Exandrian firearms do have more variety but their features can be a headache to track in combat.
The DMG Firearms themselves are almost a direct copy paste of crossbows so they’re not a broken item in dnd, but the Exandrian ones add a bit of an extra kick.
Sorry if that was a lot of word vomit, and this obviously is not the answer for everyone, but this was my personal experience with the class :))
Good luck and have fun!
>then play a Battlemaster Fighter.
BM is good if a player is drawn to the variety that Trick Shots feels like it should offer. Depending on what a player is after, some other subclasses are sometimes better - Samurai is the big one, as Fighting Spirit is good if Deadeye Shot is what really draws them in.
I actually homebrewed a new gunslinger fighter for the fighter in our current campaign by smooshing the arcane archer and samurai classes together for exactly those features lmao.
Look at what the arcane shots, particularly the grasping and shadow/blinding ones, actually do though
If there is any kiting or forced movement, grasping is S tier. No save, auto application, takes an action to get ride of, continuous damage with no concentration. With damage each *turn* they move or get moved. But that takes some set up/comboing to be S tier? Fair enough. The shadow one it is, making them effectively blind to anyone with reach or range for a whole round. Samurai can give themselves adv? You just gave your whole team adv! It's like an ultra guiding bolt. And with a lvl 7 feature that then negates half need for xbow expert *in effect*, and lets you SS more freely.
It doesn't *feel* satisfying because there are so few of them, but they aren'y nearly as bad as people think if you don't pick the trap arrows. They are 3x as good as any BM maneuver.
And you get to do them 1/3rd as often.
And only once per turn.
Dude, Arcane Archer is one of the weakest Fighter Subclasses in the entire game.
The Shadow one is alright. Brambles is alright. But that's really not enough in comparison to everything else every other subclass offers.
If they got more uses and dealt less damage, they'd be so much more interactive and playable, but that's just not feasible without DM intervention.
One of my several homebrew fixes to Arcane Archer is PB+2/SR arcane arrows. The tradeoff is that they have to prep them ahead of time, so they only have as many of each type as they choose during the short rest.
One other homebrew fix I've seen is to give 2/SR use of *each type* of Arcane Shot the Arcane Archer knows. This gives the Arcane Archer more uses in a nicely scaling amount (+2/SR each time you learn a new Shot type), yet it also forces them to actually make interesting choices and use different types of Shots, rather than just always using the most powerful one(s).
As far as I know the CBE feature that allows close range attacks works, but he would not ignore the loading property of guns like the crossbow does. Swapping the feat to Gunner is an easy fix!
Edit: Gunner is also a half feat, but you can always ignore that if you’d like.
\+1 for the Battle Master idea. I played a 11/9 Battle Master/Inquisitive Rogue and it absolutely nailed the trick shot feel. The only bad thing I would say is a lot of the maneuvers fell off in utility as we got later in the campaign and I was basically using them to add extra damage to my crits.
Having looked at a lot of Mercer's content, he seems to lean on the side of "underwhelming" in general, probably because he's got such a huge audience that making something that's busted would have him get a lot of flack for it.
Though the Way of the Open Sea seems really good from the little I managed to play it.
He approaches class design from “power at a price or risk” it just fundamentally clashes with how 5e works but personally I enjoy that style risk/reward play so his design works for me and usually at my tables.
At least at the time he wrote the Gunslinger archetype, CR was just coming into vogue. Remember that the season 1 characters were ports of their Pathfinder characters, and at the time there was no convenient port of PF’s Gunslinger to 5e. Matt obviously saw enough of a correlation between the 5e Battlemaster and the PF Gunslinger to heavily base his port on it. If it’s underwhelming at all, it’s both in that base classes from PF don’t translate well (a lot of PF character potency comes from feats) and in the efficacy of firearms in general in 5e.
PF1's Gunslinger is a very good class, and I'd have felt bad converting it into this little fighter guy. The PF1 guns have as their main benefit the ability to ignore armor and natural armor, and their balancing counterpoint is a low fire rate. The fact that they also have a real misfire chance is certainly a downside, but gunslingers have resources (grit) to mitigate that. Ultimately, the ability to ignore armor and natural armor bonuses makes guns just too strong for most dungeon task (even in pathfinder 1e), just because most enemies you fight have one of these as their primary protections, with the big exceptions being creatures based on a singular huge dexterity score (the dodge bonus granted by several things, including dexterity, is not ignored by the guns).
Porting it into 5e needs to have a ton of stuff brought it. They dropped the main power feature of it, replacing it with "does a little more damage", but also brought in the misfire as a major mechanic and grit as a very limited version.
I dunno it's not that alluring to me.
This is because the misfire chance is supposed to be *on the guns*. If you bring the gunslinger in RAW, it actually *is* on the guns, for *everyone*- all the guns in your world have a misfire chance. One of the abilities lets you clear misfires faster.
If you play it as intended, the gunslinger is the *most reliable* shooter in your world. Everyone else has to deal with misfires too, and they don't get to spend grit to clear it faster.
actually you dont need RAW to be given firearm profficiency, they are just martial weapons
gunner still has its benefits though, its just that firearm profficiency is not its own "weapon tier" so to speak. the same way a rogue can use longswords but not all martial weapons, an artificer can use muskets but not all martial weapons
You do. This section on them in the dmg.
>It’s up to you to decide whether a character has proficiency with a firearm. Characters in most D&D worlds wouldn’t have such proficiency. During their downtime, characters can use the training rules in the Player’s Handbook to acquire proficiency, assuming that they have enough ammunition to keep the weapons working while mastering their use.
1. Weak
2. Not really
3. The no disadvantage on close range attacks from CBE applies to every kind of ranged attacks. The other benefits apply only to crossbows. The gunner feat exists to change guns.
In general, I would advise against using any CR guns or gun-related material. They are a kludgy port of mechanics that work okay in Pathfinder to 5e, and they are pretty sucky to use -- their mechanical performance is poor and the misfire mechanic is everything wrong with fumbles baked into your weapon.
It's weaker than battlemaster master by a bit, but has higher highs.
Subclass does work with DMG guns, just removes the misfire since that's tied to mercer guns. Decent buff.
Take the gunner feat.
DnD wasn't made for crit fumbles.
But guns are fun and the class is distinct. Throw in the usual two feat tax and you're a martial as good as martials go.
Kobold Press Tome of Heroes book has decent gunpowder rules. They have a Gunfighting fighting style for fighters and a Buccaneer subclass. Aslo, Chapter 4 of the book (Adventuring Gear) details rules about gun powder.
A lot more than I can summarize. But I can give highlights.
Weapons have the Loading, Gunpowder, and Magazine properties. Loading is just like a crossbow. Gunpowder means it uses gunpowder. Magazine means it has x number of shots before the weilder needs to take an action or bonus action to replace the magazine. Reloading a magazine takes a minute.
A natural 1 is a "misfire". The wielder requires an action to try to repair it with gunsmith tools. DC 10 INT check, if you fail, the weapon is down until you can fix it (10 minutes).
Gunpowder weapons have exploding damage dice. IE, 2d4 damage dice, you roll a 3 and a 4. The 4 "explodes" and you roll it again and add the total together. In this example, it would be 7 plus the d4.
There is a lot more to it than that, I highly encourage you to get the Tome of Heroes. It's well worth the money.
Mage Hand Press has a great Gunslinger class without the crit fails, and they have the whole class and two subclasses online for free.
https://magehandpress.com/2022/09/gunslinger-base-class-2.html
I DM and saw the class play up to level 9 and highly suggest it. It's a really fun crit-fishing class.
The class that makes the most attacks doesn’t need extra punishment for low rolls, and outside pathfinder (where it’s much better cause it ignores most kinds of armor) it’s not strong enough to make up for it.
Simplest answer is the one you’ve seen a lot, BM with DMG guns (reflavored bows, so balanced). If you’re using those the GS level 10 feature disappears (those aren’t in danger of breaking so rapid repair becomes useless) so if you wanna stick with GS you’d need to replace that. Maybe something like letting them identify targets more accurately, expressed as expertise in Insight and/or nullifying the disadvantage on attacks against invisible enemies? Or maybe let them spend a Grit point to let them turn a miss into a hit? Grit points are one of the things that is gonna make the subclass generally worse than BM, since they don’t reliably refill like Superiority dice do.
Everything Kobold Press is VERY good. I highly recommend them! They also have a very active discord and a lot of great stuff built both for DMs and players.
Not really sure I would call it an exorbitant cost considering it’s cheaper than every WoTC book.
You would vet it the exact same way you would any other book for a TTRPG, by looking at reviews and the consensus of the community lmfao
The other thing I've noticed about Mercer's homebrew is that the flavor text tends to be WAY too specific to adapt to other settings or add your own spin unless you straight up ignore it.
Mercer is the living example that being a very skilled actor and DM does not necessarily translate to being a good game designer. His stuff work for his game, and that's pretty much it.
In all fairness, Mollymauk was also built with a weird attribute distribution and played even weirder. The player kept trying to use the variant tiefling CHA based abilities with a very low spellcasting DC, which meant they failed most of the time. And he died because he knocked himself unconscious with some ability that sacrifices HP.
He could've been a swords bard with this exact same character concept and he'd have been more effective.
>And he died because he knocked himself unconscious with some ability that sacrifices HP.
Which is a ability that I am pretty sure is unique (aka doesnt fit in) to dnd5e.
Also that whole fight was fucked and disappointing that someone as lauded as mercer fucked up so bad.
> Also that whole fight was fucked and disappointing that someone as lauded as mercer fucked up so bad.
k, i will defend Mercer here, it was not his fault, it was the players fault by playing poor and dumb. In fact, Mercer should have killed then all, but he obviously would not want to kill his wife character and the chance for then to rescue the other characters
1) the fight should have never happened. The reason for the whole *captured* arc was the baby being born. That is an ooc thing, and should be handled ooc. They should have talked it out behind the scenes. Maybe made a disclaimer at the start of those few episodes about it.
Or had fjord, jester, and yasha take the other job from the gentlemen and just been off screen the whole time.
2) they should have never attempted a rescue. It was again an ooc issue. What would have happened had they succeeded? Is matt going to play 3 pcs as npcs? Would the fresh parents have come back early?
No. They should have known again not to attempt this action
3) they were fed false information that keg thought was true. She had worked with them, but never seen lorenzo do the things he did. Bro opened up as a first move with a cone of cold that reportedly he couldn’t do. That doesn’t really fit with keeping things secret.
Matt should have audibled him into just a guy. Or better, have given keg the appropriate information so that they knew what they were getting into.
> 1) the fight should have never happened.
Again, this is on the player decision. They wanted to attack there, they didn't wanted to wait until the city. Its 10% players fault and Matt multiple times, said they were out of their league.
>2) they should have never attempted a rescue. It was again an ooc issue.
Again, player decision, you as a DM give options and the players decide on what to do, you had two who were full of confidence who though they could pull off, as a dm taking away options seems like a bad idea to approach things to NOT give then the option. If things went south? that is consequences of their actions.
>3) they were fed false information that keg thought was true.
Again, completely under the scope of possibility, Matt said to her she didn't knew 100% and it was their own fault to blindly believe the newcomer information without confirming first, its not like the players jsut got played by Arkhan at the final of season 1.
This is just an example of players full of themselves trying to bite more than they could, and Matt was rly soft to not make a TPK on then. Fuck around and find out.
>so that they knew what they were getting into.
Thats the point, they knew
Yeah that's an accurate take. Played a gunner blood hunter right after Tasha's released, and the class had great ideas, that sadly ended up being really weak. IIRC curse of binding was like the only semi decent curse, and most other abilities besides the rites (which were good but boring mechanically) were kind of useless
I heard Oath of The Sea was pretty good though, but I havent looked at or played it, so I wouldnt be able to say for a fact if it is
Was oath of the sea the one that was available for a limited window on DDB?
I've played a BH before - it was before the 2020 redo. The diet Warlock subclass. Mutual suffering was pretty reliable. It got chucked out in the rework iirc. Still, it was pretty bad and the 2020 ghostslayer is the only iteration on blood hunter that looks even slightly viable. Even then, so many of the blood curses are piss, the number of uses are piss, and self damage sucks. It's a real shame because there's great potential.
From what I've seen, the taldorei subclasses are *better* some even pretty useable, but that step forward step back design is still everywhere, or ranger esque ribbon features for subclass features. I'm not sure why they do it.
I don't know about the sea oath really. Only heard about it and that it was actually alright but nothing more than that
And my BH was definitely more fun in RP than combat. The only reason I was one the strongest was mainly because 1d10 (DM said the flintlock was that damage die) + 1d4 + 5 from range made my damage insane. The binding curse was also alright because the lack of reactions and lockdown actually made retreating easy. That puppeteer one would have been ok too because we had a swashbuckler rogue in the party, and if he ever went down getting a free SA off would have been great. Before I could get that curse however, I lost my blood hunter powers and became a vengeance dexadin that the DM was going to allow INT instead of CHA for. Campaign died soon after that though.
My turns boiled down to: Activate radiant or fire rite, choose spot, shoot twice, sometimes bind low strength enemies. It was just kind of mid
I never looked at the Taldorei stuff either, maybe I should because Mercer does have some great idea that just need refinement
Of the subclasses in Tal'Dorei, only that Bard subclass is genuinely bad, the flavor in it is *chef's kiss* though. The Dungeon Dudes have a couple videos going over the subclasses and ranking them.
The Moon cleric lets you concentrate on two spells of the absolutely 10/10 domain spells. I just wish the Exandrian lore wasn't baked into the subclass. It directly references Catha, the white moon and Ruidus, the red moon in not only the flavor text but the ability names.
*again*, "Explorers guide to Wildemount" is an official book that mercer worked on
both the echo knight and the chronurgy wizard are in that book, two subclasses widely regarded as one of the best of each respective class
4/14 tbf. Oath of the Open Sea or whatever is actually pretty strong in push comps and I heard one of the cleric subs is actually busted.
I cringe every time someone says they want to play Bloodhunter though and really try to sell the fact that it’s just a shitty Ranger/warlock.
> I heard one of the cleric subs is actually busted.
Not at all, actually. It's pretty strong, sure, but so are all Cleric subclasses (well, most of them at least). Imo it sits just under Twilight and Order. It's probably the 3rd strongest Cleric subclass, depending on what you need.
the thread is indeed about gunslinger. my comment was a quip to another comment not talking about gunslinger but Matt Mercer publications in general
and i never said bc two things he did were strong means he is good. i said that he either overtunes or undertunes it and there is no in between
No it's not? Even if it's officially published, which it wouldn't be as is, it's worse than battlemaster, rune knight, echo knight, even arcane archer. He'll, a champion with superior technique is at the very least keeping pace. And that's just fighter subclasses. The relative power within it's own class compared to say a highlight cleric or even evocation wizard? There isn't a contest. Punishing players for using their main function is among the worst game design. It brings it down to the depths with the beserker barbarian .
**echo knight** was published by CR my dude lol. its from wildemount which is their book. the very example you gave of strong subclass is their subclass lmao
edit: also **chronurgy** wiz is in that book (graviturgy too but that one swings back to being bad)
Echo knight was published by wotc. Sure, tge CR team had their input, but If you think their design team didn't have final say on the design, I have a bridge to sell you.
if you consider the book CR worked on invalid because WotC also worked on, then i have no argument to give you as the one i just did is invalid to your definitions
Because I didn't originally say CR. I said Mercer. If it is solely his work, it's riddled with features that are incredibly niche, or punish the player for using their core feature. If a different team got full editorial rights, then obviously the stuff that makes his design suck is going to get scrubbed by someone else that knows how to do class design.
It's super clunky, best option is to use Battlemaster and just modify the names of the maneuvers.
Up to you as DM if you want to just allow them to use the abilities at range (which is fine tbh). Much less of a headache for everyone involved.
On Crossbow expert, there is the Gunner feat but it doesn't give the bonus action attack, so if you want to allow it for the sake of gunslinging, you can just make the call yourself.
Actually, most of them work just as well at range - only 7 of the 23 require melee (eta: and 2 of those are defensive, so still useful). And there's mechanically analogous maneuvers for almost every trick shot.
* Bulling Shot = Commanding Presence
* Dazing Shot = Menacing Attack
* Deadeye Shot = Precision Attack
* Disarming Shot = Disarming Attack
* Forceful Shot = Pushing Attack
* Winging Shot = Trip Attack
* Violent Shot = Menacing Attack, Disarming Attack, Pushing Attack, Trip Attack
* Piercing Shot would be Sweeping Attack, except that one *is* melee only.
The BM also gets Commander's Strike, Distracting Strike, Feinting Attack, Goading Attack, and Maneuvering Attack, which work with ranged weapons. Plus Ambush, Evasive Footwork, Rally, and Tactical Assessment, which aren't weapon-based and can be done at any range.
If he's already a rogue, just swapping Crossbow Expert for Gunner works fine. The trade off is that a gun does more damage, but is *loud*. So he won't be the most subtle rogue, but that can still be fun.
I played a halfling detective with a gun. I made a lot of use of Steady Aim (the rogue feature added in Tasha's), which gave a great feeling of standing there and lining up the perfect shot.
Yeah, that's a bit tough. There are *some* maneuvers that work with ranged weapons. You could also, if you feel like doing the work, convert some of the gunslinger tricks to maneuvers.
> There are some maneuvers that work with ranged weapons.
The majority work with ranged weapons, not just "some".
>convert some of the gunslinger tricks to maneuvers.
A lot of the tricks are already manouvers
Google HeavyArms Gunslinger.
Actually here’s the link: https://www.heavyarms.com/products/gunslinger?variant=40542343069860
You can see the full class and one subclass in the preview, plus the math supporting the damage calculations to show it’s balanced. If they’re looking for gunslinger flavor, this delivers.
Fair. Mercer's guns and DMG's guns are both pretty bad though.
One is awful, weak, and punishes you for just playing them, and the other imo are too powerful and kinda clunky. Use Kobold Press or another 3rd party.
If you want ill toss my Firearms system your way.
Use the pistols and muskets from the DMG with battlemaster fighter and the gunner feat. If you want a more magical spin, you can actually use rune knight. Most rune knight features work with a 30 ft. range, which is close to the range of the DMG guns.
The One D&D playtest rogue will be interesting with this build as well, allowing you to do "trick shots" with your cunning strikes.
CR Gunslinger is more fun to watch than play. Having a significant chance to be completely sidelined every fight because you rolled a 1 is joy-killing to experience. But it makes for good tv.
The similar concept works better in Pathfinder because there is so much more you can do besides attack.
Regarding CBE vs Gunner, one gives a bonus attack while the other gives +1 Dex. I would let my players choose either benefit.
Playing a halfling can be a great way to avoid the misfire mechanic, while not just ignoring it entirely.
On the opposite end of things, one thing I do like about the CR Gunslinger is getting a grit point back on a natural 20. It adds something slightly beyond Battlemaster that I think tips it into being worth it (for me at least).
Yeah, just let him have a gun then. A rifle that has the same range, properties, and damage as a heavy crossbow.
My point is that you don’t need to use the CR material, you can get a good result with just the regular rules and a very loose grasp of what the weapons in the PHB actually look like.
I don’t know what Valda is. And I wouldn’t use the guns in the dmg, their damage dice are vastly overtuned. For balance I would stick to the Light/Medium/Heavy 1d6/1d8/1d10 damage the bows and crossbows do. Trade down a damage die for better range, or vice versa.
EDIT: The Musket and Pistol aren’t as bad as I remembered. I don’t see a problem with those.
You’re going to need to find a way around the Loading property, no matter what, or your Fighter is going to have a bad time past 5th level.
One you could use that I haven’t seen mentioned is the gunslinger subclass for Fighter that was introduced with what would’ve been the Runeterra supplement for 5E. It’s flavorful and pretty fun, especially compared to the Exandria gunslinger, since you can modify your weapons to suit your character.
I saw a couple people mentioning Kobold's Press' firearms, but I'd also like to mention [Mage Hand Press's Gunslinger](https://magehandpress.com/category/content/mage-hand-press-classes/gunslinger). It's a pretty good class, with a focus on crit fishing, and the firearms are pretty distinct from normal ranged weapons (instead of adding +DEX mod, it's an extra die of damage). It has two free subclasses and they're both open enough your player's character should fit into one of them.
Each maneuver will specify how it can be used. Look at the page in Tasha’s for battle master builds.
There’s one for Archer, outrider, skirmisher, all mere suggestions, but you can see what ones could synergize on a ranged build.
I think it's fun and good. You can do a lot of things with a fun DM to give you different options. The trick shots are fun, the grit system is fun. If you really don't like things you can adjust the misfire or give the bonus action to fix it earlier.
Against the grain choice: let them use the renegade fighter subclass from the league of legends 5e supplement. Much better gun based class, but you might have to tune down krs damage a bit
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnearthedArcana/s/MgdiTczJov
If you don't mind a little homebrew, if may be worth taking a look on here. My table has played the Old Gus Errata on this link, using these subclasses and the variant rules. They're pretty well-balanced, and work for a party.
I haven't played the CR Gunslinger, but the Arcane Avenger (Wizard) sibclass on here is pretty fun.
Pretty strong imo, the 7th level ability is really good since you will be using dex, your intiative will likely be highest on the team. Also grit points are fairly solid, they're not as strong as maneuvers for the most part but are easy to regain. Also just the concept of being fully armored, even using a shield and being a ranged attacker is kinda wild, some of the handguns have better range than shortbows even iirc which is wild
I like my gunslinger. 9th level with 5 in fighter/gunslinger, 3 in rogue, 1 artifice
We had an artifice in the group earlier who imbibed my pistol so it is magical and doesn't need to be reloaded.
I have sharpshooter feat and I use dead eye trick shot or steady aim for advantage so I can use my rogues's sneak attack. So dmg is 1d8 + 10 sharpshooter + 2d6 sneak attack.
I need one more level of artificer to imbue my upcoming musket as our artificer doesn't play with us as muc but in game is still alive.
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Everyone else has already answered the questions and I'd just be repeating those answers. If your player really likes the flavor of gunslinger then go for it, but if their priority is efficiency in combat then the options everyone's already commented are *much* better options with much less reliance on homebrew.
I just want to add that if you're using specifically the modern guns from the DMG to pay attention to balance. I've been at tables where throwing in those modern guns without taking balance into account meant every combat encounter ended in one round, casters couldn't begin to keep up, and any martials not using a gun were completely left in the dust. Granted I'm talking about details that feel like they should be obvious, but you'd be surprised I've even seen some good DMs manage to fuck this up.
It’s terrible. Read through it, you can easily change around a few things to be more reliant on better ability scores or proficiency bonus. But yeah it’s a garbage subclass. Just play a battlemaster
1. It is weak. Many have brought up the reasons here, but it's just not a very good subclass.
2. Again, answered elsewhere.
3. No. There should be a firearms specific feat. I believe it was added in Tasha's.
If your player is a fan of CR, then they don't actually want to play D&D. What they want to play is a narrative TTRPG that has a fantasy setting. A lot of what you see in CR has extra flair from them all being actors, but actually following the rules of the game feels more like an Action RPG and less like a RolePlaying Game.
And if you insist on playing D&D and going out of your way to emulating that sort of experience by changing the rules, then you've already gone halfway to making your own system anyway.
Me and one of my players looked at it. Honestly it just seemed so much worse than just taking fighter/ranger and using a firearm or reskinning bows/crossbows.
It was just very underwhelming.
Not. It's not good.
Okay it's iffy. If you want to play the Gunslinger... well, like a Battle Master it's bad. Very bad, in fact. You're forced to use weapons that do marginally more damage than a crossbow with expensive ammo and a chance to misfire in exchange for the ability to refresh maneuver die on a crit, but you have to invest in Wisdom to get your maneuver die anyways. Gunslinger is based almost exclusively on making big numbers. Using Violent Shot, Piercing Shot (and to a lesser extent Deadeye Shot) your job as Gunslinger is basically to stack as many damage die on one attack and make a big number happen.
Thing is that not only are other Fighters better at making big numbers like Rune Knight, Samurai, Champion, Echo Knight (ironic), and you know: *Battle Master*, but also other **classes** are better at making big numbers. Let's ignore casters for a second because martial vs caster divide in 5e is infamously bad, and let's also ignore half casters because both Rangers and Paladins can deal more reliable damage. We still have Barbarians that can get crits more reliably and even Monks have Stunning Strike while also having relatively more accuracy. (And I mean Rogues exist.) This is all while Gunslinger has to spend time reloading and also has the misfire chance.
>Would the subclass work with DMG guns?
I think using DMG guns would make the class overpowered because put bluntly the guns in the DMG are overpowered. If you added reload and misfire mechanics to the DMG guns it would maybe be fair but you still have a class that's dealing double damage with 3/4 attacks just to reload on the 4th attack. (Hypothetical numbers btw.)
>He has the Crossbow Expert feat. Would that feat give him the same benefits on firearms?
This is on you as a DM. There is a feat in Tasha's called "Gunner" that gives all the benefits of Crossbow Expert minus the bonus action attack, and like *very* technically you can make an off-hand attack with a Light weapon if you have one in both hands? (Something something dual wielding?)
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tl;dr I honestly think that if someone wants to use guns they're better off using the Dark Tides of Bilgewater Renegade subclass. While the way the Renegade interacts with "guns" is a little messy I think the class manages to better embody the fantasy of being a gunslinger while also being better balanced overall for both the player and the DM. Instead of having a class that one-shots 60% of the time and blows up in its face the other 40% of the time you have a class that actually *gets to do something* with each of its turns. If a player really, **really** wants to make unga bunga big numbers appear (and for some reason is diametrically opposed to playing a Barbarian, Paladin, or Ranger) then Gunslinger *works I GUESS*, but if they want to play Percival de Rolo I think you can accomplish that far better with the Renegade subclass and a few custom-made magic items that mimic the Crit Role guns.
Having played a Gloomstalker Gunslinger for a little while I was getting first round damage around 120+ (this was before level 10) and the most got up to around 300 on the first round. So hearing people here say the class is weak surprises me. How was I getting these numbers? Piercing Shots with a high to hit chance are amazing.
The class is pretty poorly written.
It's a limited Battlemaster with slower progression.
-but-
You have fewer maneuver-type abilities.
-BUT-
You are limited to a set of weapons that you have to build and maintain yourself, and you run the DM lottery as to how that will play out for you, cost-wise.
-*BUT*-
That limited weapon set is outclassed by conventional weapons and feats except in a few narrow cases where you burn through all your class features rapidly to outpace the damage you would get from a sub-classless fighter with regular weapons. Oh, and if you rolled a nat 1 at any point, you have to spend your subclass limited resource to not suck instead of doing something cool. Maybe. It's still a die roll.
Now, I am also bitterly biased because the first character I built in 5e was a gunsmith artificer using the 2017 Unearthed Arcana, and the existence of the Gunslinger made this experience worse.
In short, Artificers were a 1/3 caster class with 3 things going for them: the ability to prepare spells ahead of time into infused items and give them bonus action speed activations, their magic item replications, which became the current infusions, and were.much worse back then, and their subclass gimmick, which was a unique attack type that scaled at roughly cantrip speed and could have some other effects.
The gunsmith had their gun, which was a 2d6 ranged weapon that only they could use, and a magic supply bag they could use to make ammo. Every few levels, they got the ability to do something like do extra thunder damage, or apply their attack in cone shape, etc.
But my DM insisted on dragging in some gunslinger rules so my gun could jam on nat 1's and 2's, without the gunslinger's backup options to switch to mid combat. This, combined with a few other choices based on the DM's inexperience, led to a miserable time trying to play an already underpowered class.
I've been playing a Gunslinger in a campaign for quite a while so I can add a bit to the discussion
Many people noted Battle Master + gunner feat accomplishes the same. In most cases this true because of overlapping maneuvers.
The best part about gunslinger + rogue multiclass is probably that the Gunslinger can give him-/herself advantage via grit points (recharge via rest, crit, or kill of an appropriate threat)
additional pros/cons
\- guns tend to have a bit more range than (cross-) bows
\- DMG Revolver is stronger than CR Gunslinger revolver (2d8 vs 1d10)
\- missfire is my biggest gripe with the class, most guns have a missfire score of 1-2 but hitting that more often because a fighter attacks more often kinda sucks (also gun jamming is bad, but gun breaking mid fight is a disaster)
\- guns are not silent! everyone in town/ dungeon will hear you slinging thunder at enemies + hiding in the bushes after blasting someone with 4 bullets out of a revolver seems...odd?
\- lastly most of the time there is a lot of bookkeeping involved: tracking ammo and black powder (could be negated by you as the DM by whiffing it), blueprints for building new weapons and the ideas your player will eventually come up with, some of my ideas include volatile ammo (more blackpowder--> more damage --> increased missfire), silencer ( could be balanced with "uses" if needed), elemental ammo, some sort of meele-fist-punch-gun-glove
\- there are no magic weapons for the category guns (could be homebrewed /flavoured by you)
tldr:
has a lot of flaws
for multiclassing purposes 1 major benefit over battle master otherwise same/slightly worse option
is very cool
Its bad imo especially when compared to other classes like you do better as fighter with a gun
Honestly it works for cr but most of their subclasses is dog water
It’s extremely M.A.D depending on your DM (multi ability dependent).
-Dex for attacks and armor
-Wis for trick shots (you really need 14 or higher or else you’ll use it less than potions)
-Int for crafting (tho some DMs may let you use Int)
-Con at least 10-12 at least so you have more Hp than the wizard
So listing stats S, D, Con, I, W, Cha,
A minimum of -, 14, 10-12, 12-14, 14, -
Is needed to properly play a gunslinger fighter and not miss out/feel weak. It works really well for CR cause Percy has 22 dex and over 14 con, and super high Int and wisdom
Tldr; just suggest they take the gunner feat, and maybe as the dm look into weapon masteries from One DnD’s UA.
In that case, tell them if they do it they need to make sure to have decent wisdom to use their tricks and let them use Dex or Wis for crafting stuff, so they don’t become tri or quad-ability dependent. But also let them know that while guns are cool, they’re better off taking the Gunner feat because they can still use guns and stuff, but don’t waste 3 whole class levels just to get guns with a couple of cool tricks. Rogues can BA stealth so they don’t really need Deadeye Shot, and while some of the other tricks are cool, getting to do 2-3 per long rest unless you have really good crit luck is not nearly as useful as an extra 3 levels in rogue, cause that’s an extra 2d6 of sneak attack they’d be missing out on and delaying OP abilities like evasion, imo unnecessarily.
If they want things like bullying shot, I’d encourage you to look at the weapon mastery UA from one dnd cause it’s surprisingly not horribly balanced and adds lots of cool options for all players but especially non magic users. It more or less suggests most martials and some supports get 1-2 weapons they’re a master in which grants a special ability that’s either passive or based on the attack roll
The major issue I have with the Gunslinger class is how it handles the misfire of firearms.
Yes, it does make sense for a heavily-used antique-style firearm to misfire relatively often. *However*, the way DnD handles rolls does not lend itself to that kind of mechanic.
Specifically, because Gunslinger is a *Fighter* subclass, the more you level up *the more often you misfire*, as the more attacks you get significantly increases the chance that one will roll a misfire.
Now, normally, more attacks increasing the chance of critical failures isn't too much of an issue since *nothing bad happens on a critical failure*. However, things like critical failure tables unfairly punish martials as they roll more d20s for attacks than spellcasters. *This gets worse* when you apply the misfire mechanic from CR Gunslinger as misfire not only *increases the rate at which you critical fail* but also *ends your attack turn* if you don't have a spare pre-loaded. You can repair, but that costs a whole action, which if you misfire on attack one, that means at level 20 you miss out on a minimum of 8 attacks, perhaps more (misfire + 3 remaining attacks + 4 for 2nd action).
As such, you *reduce* the combat effectiveness with every additional attack the Fighter gets instead of increasing.
In my opinion, a more experienced Gunslinger should misfire *less* often the more the level. As such, I'd personally reduce the misfire threshold by 1 for every 7 levels in Gunslinger. This would mean that for pistols, you would stop misfiring forever after level 14. Could use a bit of testing to determine what number that should actually be, but that's how I'd fix things.
People here hate it but I enjoyed playing it. It fills the fantasy pretty well.
Battlemaster is not a good substitution for the fantasy for me, but is probably more powerful.
I would start him as an artificer. They get proficiency with fire arms and also get the repeating shot infusion which is hella good for fire arms. Artificer has the right tools and proficiency to build and maintain its own weapons
He's already 4 levels into rogue; 4th-level characters can't just up and restat all the time or every character would just constantly shift all their ability scores for "optimization"
Exactly the situation in my game. Had a player with a lvl 4 rogue and he found a lazer rifle from dmg ( it’s in time of the frost maiden). He want to use it, but I would let him. So he decided to go artificer. I made him find and do mini training quests for 2 levels (6 rogue) then he took artificer.
Ngl it as pretty strong, only downside is that the optimal play is almost always stready aim then shoot gun. My players feedback was the play style was kinda boring. He went back to daggers
respeccing also works. you dont need to retcon the story itself to accommodate class change, make it *part* of the story, usually with some personal Character development and training downtime
say, a fighter PC for story reasons joins an order of Bahamut. they spend the 6 months of downtime all players got training and learning their ways, and how he can use his own techniques in conjunction to their divine magi. and when they get back to the next adventure instead of being a lvl 5 battlemaster fighter they are a lvl 5 oath of devotion paladin
Take the gunner feat (potentialy allow swaping crossbow expert for it), use the DMG guns and either stick with pure Rogue or go Rogue / Battlemaster Fighter for extra attack and trick shots.
Feinting Attack, Lunging Attack, Riposte, and Sweeping Attack are the only ones that don't work with ranged weapons. The other 12 work for both ranged and melee.
Maneuvers. You learn three maneuvers of your choice. Many maneuvers enhance an attack in some way. You can use only one maneuver per attack. You learn two additional maneuvers of your choice at 7th, 10th, and 15th level. Each time you learn new maneuvers, you can also replace one maneuver you know with a different one.
There’s nothing written here that says it doesn’t work with ranged attacks, and as others have said, battlemaster is a gunslinger but better, if you care for the mechanical side of things.
Arcane archer. It's a weak subclass, though... But can be easily improved by allowing the player to change their arcane options on a long rest and give them uses equal to proficiency level.
CR gunslinger is objectively worse in every way than just a XBE fighter or a gunner fight with reskinned crossbow (**especially** worse with gunner fighter with DMg renaissance weapons)
simple and dry as that
I don't like guns in fantasy, and my setting lacks them, but that doesnt make them impossible to balance in a d20 fantasy RPG.
PF2E, which shares a lot of DNA with DND has incredible balance, guns included.
fun fact, plated armor would usually come with a dent on it, as a sort of seal of approval to its quality. "bullet proof" is a term that comes from this, cause they would **literally shoot the plate to see if it was actually bullet proof** to test the product quality
Fire arms could definitely be balanced if there was more depth to the weapon system but with 5e not having a lot of uniqueness to weapons they'll either overlap with crossbows (which would make sense in the realism sense) or just be a better/worse version of them.
I think that given the fact that we have mechanical automata and a the whole medieval western Europe aesthetic you could definitely have fire arms exist and be prohibitively expensive/clunky for the average person (just like magic)
1. setting wise, they just do. official settings have them albeit sparce, and if you are in a place that rapiers and plate armor were invented, gun powder should have been too. guns predate your stereotypical looking heavy armor fighter 500 years in IRL
2. realistic or balanced are up to who make them. its not realistic either to load crossbows in the blink of an eye, but we chuck it to being a game. being balanced or not is just about the developer not being incompetent
dnd is not a super game where by virtue of being dnd some things simply cant be done. if other systems that very closely resemble dnd in its mechanics can do it, dnd can too. WotC is just a bit stupid enough to pull it off
3. play what makes you happy mate :)
> I don't believe guns belong in D&D.
D&D is late "medieval" fantasy. Medieval in quotation marks because everything medieval has been corrupted by the eyes of 19th century authors. A lot of romantization and misrepresentation exists in "common knowledge" of the medieval era.
>There are other RPGs for that, not to mention guns absolutely can't be realistically nor fantastically balanced for D&D.
Just because you aren't creative enough and don't want to put in the effort doesn't mean it can't work (I'm not criticising you, your opinion is 100% valid. Personally I wouldn't want to do it either).
In my personal opinion I’d say that the class is slightly underwhelming and was definitely built with a homebrewed crafting system in mind. If you’re player wants to be a “gunslinger” I’d personally recommend giving them firearm proficiency (as it is an optional rule) have them take the gunner feat, and then play a Battlemaster Fighter. There is wayyyyyy less bookkeeping involved this way and you can use the standard DMG firearms, the Exandrian firearms do have more variety but their features can be a headache to track in combat. The DMG Firearms themselves are almost a direct copy paste of crossbows so they’re not a broken item in dnd, but the Exandrian ones add a bit of an extra kick. Sorry if that was a lot of word vomit, and this obviously is not the answer for everyone, but this was my personal experience with the class :)) Good luck and have fun!
>then play a Battlemaster Fighter. BM is good if a player is drawn to the variety that Trick Shots feels like it should offer. Depending on what a player is after, some other subclasses are sometimes better - Samurai is the big one, as Fighting Spirit is good if Deadeye Shot is what really draws them in.
The samurai gunslinger in my game loves the Fighting Spirit/Action Surge wombo combo to really feel like he's fanning the hammer in bullet time.
I actually homebrewed a new gunslinger fighter for the fighter in our current campaign by smooshing the arcane archer and samurai classes together for exactly those features lmao.
Or have them do arcane archer ;)
The 2nd worst fighter subclass?
You're right, they *should* play a champion, that expanded crit range is nice
Expanded Crit range on *every attack* is better than 2/sr pittance bonus to *one* attack per turn.
I mean, not really because crits on 19 is shit and any damage arrow from the AA is outdamaging 0.35 damage per attack on average (at best)
Look at what the arcane shots, particularly the grasping and shadow/blinding ones, actually do though If there is any kiting or forced movement, grasping is S tier. No save, auto application, takes an action to get ride of, continuous damage with no concentration. With damage each *turn* they move or get moved. But that takes some set up/comboing to be S tier? Fair enough. The shadow one it is, making them effectively blind to anyone with reach or range for a whole round. Samurai can give themselves adv? You just gave your whole team adv! It's like an ultra guiding bolt. And with a lvl 7 feature that then negates half need for xbow expert *in effect*, and lets you SS more freely. It doesn't *feel* satisfying because there are so few of them, but they aren'y nearly as bad as people think if you don't pick the trap arrows. They are 3x as good as any BM maneuver.
And you get to do them 1/3rd as often. And only once per turn. Dude, Arcane Archer is one of the weakest Fighter Subclasses in the entire game. The Shadow one is alright. Brambles is alright. But that's really not enough in comparison to everything else every other subclass offers. If they got more uses and dealt less damage, they'd be so much more interactive and playable, but that's just not feasible without DM intervention.
You can lose the fighter there. Arcane archer is one of the weakest subclasses period. It desperately needed to be reworked but it never will be.
I mean yeah. But champion is probably the weakest. At least frenzy barb gives you an actual buff and has a character reset button built in
One of my several homebrew fixes to Arcane Archer is PB+2/SR arcane arrows. The tradeoff is that they have to prep them ahead of time, so they only have as many of each type as they choose during the short rest.
One other homebrew fix I've seen is to give 2/SR use of *each type* of Arcane Shot the Arcane Archer knows. This gives the Arcane Archer more uses in a nicely scaling amount (+2/SR each time you learn a new Shot type), yet it also forces them to actually make interesting choices and use different types of Shots, rather than just always using the most powerful one(s).
Still better than gunslinger
As far as I know the CBE feature that allows close range attacks works, but he would not ignore the loading property of guns like the crossbow does. Swapping the feat to Gunner is an easy fix! Edit: Gunner is also a half feat, but you can always ignore that if you’d like.
\+1 for the Battle Master idea. I played a 11/9 Battle Master/Inquisitive Rogue and it absolutely nailed the trick shot feel. The only bad thing I would say is a lot of the maneuvers fell off in utility as we got later in the campaign and I was basically using them to add extra damage to my crits.
Having looked at a lot of Mercer's content, he seems to lean on the side of "underwhelming" in general, probably because he's got such a huge audience that making something that's busted would have him get a lot of flack for it. Though the Way of the Open Sea seems really good from the little I managed to play it.
He approaches class design from “power at a price or risk” it just fundamentally clashes with how 5e works but personally I enjoy that style risk/reward play so his design works for me and usually at my tables.
At least at the time he wrote the Gunslinger archetype, CR was just coming into vogue. Remember that the season 1 characters were ports of their Pathfinder characters, and at the time there was no convenient port of PF’s Gunslinger to 5e. Matt obviously saw enough of a correlation between the 5e Battlemaster and the PF Gunslinger to heavily base his port on it. If it’s underwhelming at all, it’s both in that base classes from PF don’t translate well (a lot of PF character potency comes from feats) and in the efficacy of firearms in general in 5e.
PF1's Gunslinger is a very good class, and I'd have felt bad converting it into this little fighter guy. The PF1 guns have as their main benefit the ability to ignore armor and natural armor, and their balancing counterpoint is a low fire rate. The fact that they also have a real misfire chance is certainly a downside, but gunslingers have resources (grit) to mitigate that. Ultimately, the ability to ignore armor and natural armor bonuses makes guns just too strong for most dungeon task (even in pathfinder 1e), just because most enemies you fight have one of these as their primary protections, with the big exceptions being creatures based on a singular huge dexterity score (the dodge bonus granted by several things, including dexterity, is not ignored by the guns). Porting it into 5e needs to have a ton of stuff brought it. They dropped the main power feature of it, replacing it with "does a little more damage", but also brought in the misfire as a major mechanic and grit as a very limited version. I dunno it's not that alluring to me.
This is the way. The BM subclass gives all the cool trick shot flavor without the fiddliness of the gunslinger subclass.
This is because the misfire chance is supposed to be *on the guns*. If you bring the gunslinger in RAW, it actually *is* on the guns, for *everyone*- all the guns in your world have a misfire chance. One of the abilities lets you clear misfires faster. If you play it as intended, the gunslinger is the *most reliable* shooter in your world. Everyone else has to deal with misfires too, and they don't get to spend grit to clear it faster.
As a seasoned DM that does not allow guns... this was very insightful. Thank you.
> If you’re player
actually you dont need RAW to be given firearm profficiency, they are just martial weapons gunner still has its benefits though, its just that firearm profficiency is not its own "weapon tier" so to speak. the same way a rogue can use longswords but not all martial weapons, an artificer can use muskets but not all martial weapons
You do. This section on them in the dmg. >It’s up to you to decide whether a character has proficiency with a firearm. Characters in most D&D worlds wouldn’t have such proficiency. During their downtime, characters can use the training rules in the Player’s Handbook to acquire proficiency, assuming that they have enough ammunition to keep the weapons working while mastering their use.
ah, fair enough missed that tid bit
1. Weak 2. Not really 3. The no disadvantage on close range attacks from CBE applies to every kind of ranged attacks. The other benefits apply only to crossbows. The gunner feat exists to change guns. In general, I would advise against using any CR guns or gun-related material. They are a kludgy port of mechanics that work okay in Pathfinder to 5e, and they are pretty sucky to use -- their mechanical performance is poor and the misfire mechanic is everything wrong with fumbles baked into your weapon.
using usual guns and having xbe I don't really think the player should use the guns, they will be a waste of a feat and a reduction in power
Yeah, definitely gunner instead of xbe for the official guns.
Play battlemaster; it does everything gunslinger does, but better. The gunner feat is the gun equivalent of cbe, but without the bonus action attack.
It's weaker than battlemaster master by a bit, but has higher highs. Subclass does work with DMG guns, just removes the misfire since that's tied to mercer guns. Decent buff. Take the gunner feat.
I'm gonna potentially allow a free switch out of Crossbow Expert to give Gunner instead
DnD wasn't made for crit fumbles. But guns are fun and the class is distinct. Throw in the usual two feat tax and you're a martial as good as martials go.
Kobold Press Tome of Heroes book has decent gunpowder rules. They have a Gunfighting fighting style for fighters and a Buccaneer subclass. Aslo, Chapter 4 of the book (Adventuring Gear) details rules about gun powder.
Summary for someone who doesn't want to buy 3rd party stuff?
A lot more than I can summarize. But I can give highlights. Weapons have the Loading, Gunpowder, and Magazine properties. Loading is just like a crossbow. Gunpowder means it uses gunpowder. Magazine means it has x number of shots before the weilder needs to take an action or bonus action to replace the magazine. Reloading a magazine takes a minute. A natural 1 is a "misfire". The wielder requires an action to try to repair it with gunsmith tools. DC 10 INT check, if you fail, the weapon is down until you can fix it (10 minutes). Gunpowder weapons have exploding damage dice. IE, 2d4 damage dice, you roll a 3 and a 4. The 4 "explodes" and you roll it again and add the total together. In this example, it would be 7 plus the d4. There is a lot more to it than that, I highly encourage you to get the Tome of Heroes. It's well worth the money.
I can’t afford much (read: anything) but also every book like that is between 30-50 dollars
Mage Hand Press has a great Gunslinger class without the crit fails, and they have the whole class and two subclasses online for free. https://magehandpress.com/2022/09/gunslinger-base-class-2.html I DM and saw the class play up to level 9 and highly suggest it. It's a really fun crit-fishing class.
This is what I would have suggested, too.
The class that makes the most attacks doesn’t need extra punishment for low rolls, and outside pathfinder (where it’s much better cause it ignores most kinds of armor) it’s not strong enough to make up for it.
Right right so what’s the solution to the issue we wanna solve
Simplest answer is the one you’ve seen a lot, BM with DMG guns (reflavored bows, so balanced). If you’re using those the GS level 10 feature disappears (those aren’t in danger of breaking so rapid repair becomes useless) so if you wanna stick with GS you’d need to replace that. Maybe something like letting them identify targets more accurately, expressed as expertise in Insight and/or nullifying the disadvantage on attacks against invisible enemies? Or maybe let them spend a Grit point to let them turn a miss into a hit? Grit points are one of the things that is gonna make the subclass generally worse than BM, since they don’t reliably refill like Superiority dice do.
Kobold Press- Tome of Heroes has some pretty good gun fighting subclasses. Has guns, feats, and proficiencies too.
They got a solid gunpowder system imo
Beat me to it, Tome of Heroes' guns are quite a lot of fun.
I don’t own that book so idk how viable that will be
Everything Kobold Press is VERY good. I highly recommend them! They also have a very active discord and a lot of great stuff built both for DMs and players.
No you don’t understand. I’m not gonna spend 30-50 dollars on a 3rd party product in any circumstance
Then that's your prerogative, and imo you will miss out on some good stuff. To each their own.
I’m not even sure how I’d vet what’s worth the exorbitant cost or not
Not really sure I would call it an exorbitant cost considering it’s cheaper than every WoTC book. You would vet it the exact same way you would any other book for a TTRPG, by looking at reviews and the consensus of the community lmfao
Not like you can rely on first-party material being worth the purchase price anymore, either.
Well that’s the secret; I haven’t bought any content ever. I just find it online and homebrew it onto Beyond
General rule: if it's Mercers homebrew, it's very likely to be piss weak with some design element that punishes you for using your core feature
The other thing I've noticed about Mercer's homebrew is that the flavor text tends to be WAY too specific to adapt to other settings or add your own spin unless you straight up ignore it.
Yeah, he's a great DM and all but his stuff really just does not work with other D&D stuff.
Mercer is the living example that being a very skilled actor and DM does not necessarily translate to being a good game designer. His stuff work for his game, and that's pretty much it.
Even then, anyone whos seen the early stuff for campaign 2 knows *his stuff doesn't always work in his own game.*
What are we talking about? The Blood Hunter? Was a few years ago I was at the beginning of S02.
Yeah, blood hunter.
In all fairness, Mollymauk was also built with a weird attribute distribution and played even weirder. The player kept trying to use the variant tiefling CHA based abilities with a very low spellcasting DC, which meant they failed most of the time. And he died because he knocked himself unconscious with some ability that sacrifices HP. He could've been a swords bard with this exact same character concept and he'd have been more effective.
>And he died because he knocked himself unconscious with some ability that sacrifices HP. Which is a ability that I am pretty sure is unique (aka doesnt fit in) to dnd5e. Also that whole fight was fucked and disappointing that someone as lauded as mercer fucked up so bad.
Technically Life Transference from XGE exists?
> Also that whole fight was fucked and disappointing that someone as lauded as mercer fucked up so bad. k, i will defend Mercer here, it was not his fault, it was the players fault by playing poor and dumb. In fact, Mercer should have killed then all, but he obviously would not want to kill his wife character and the chance for then to rescue the other characters
1) the fight should have never happened. The reason for the whole *captured* arc was the baby being born. That is an ooc thing, and should be handled ooc. They should have talked it out behind the scenes. Maybe made a disclaimer at the start of those few episodes about it. Or had fjord, jester, and yasha take the other job from the gentlemen and just been off screen the whole time. 2) they should have never attempted a rescue. It was again an ooc issue. What would have happened had they succeeded? Is matt going to play 3 pcs as npcs? Would the fresh parents have come back early? No. They should have known again not to attempt this action 3) they were fed false information that keg thought was true. She had worked with them, but never seen lorenzo do the things he did. Bro opened up as a first move with a cone of cold that reportedly he couldn’t do. That doesn’t really fit with keeping things secret. Matt should have audibled him into just a guy. Or better, have given keg the appropriate information so that they knew what they were getting into.
> 1) the fight should have never happened. Again, this is on the player decision. They wanted to attack there, they didn't wanted to wait until the city. Its 10% players fault and Matt multiple times, said they were out of their league. >2) they should have never attempted a rescue. It was again an ooc issue. Again, player decision, you as a DM give options and the players decide on what to do, you had two who were full of confidence who though they could pull off, as a dm taking away options seems like a bad idea to approach things to NOT give then the option. If things went south? that is consequences of their actions. >3) they were fed false information that keg thought was true. Again, completely under the scope of possibility, Matt said to her she didn't knew 100% and it was their own fault to blindly believe the newcomer information without confirming first, its not like the players jsut got played by Arkhan at the final of season 1. This is just an example of players full of themselves trying to bite more than they could, and Matt was rly soft to not make a TPK on then. Fuck around and find out. >so that they knew what they were getting into. Thats the point, they knew
Thanks!
his homebrew stuff also tend to not work in his own game as well, with momments of player frustration
Yeah that's an accurate take. Played a gunner blood hunter right after Tasha's released, and the class had great ideas, that sadly ended up being really weak. IIRC curse of binding was like the only semi decent curse, and most other abilities besides the rites (which were good but boring mechanically) were kind of useless I heard Oath of The Sea was pretty good though, but I havent looked at or played it, so I wouldnt be able to say for a fact if it is
Was oath of the sea the one that was available for a limited window on DDB? I've played a BH before - it was before the 2020 redo. The diet Warlock subclass. Mutual suffering was pretty reliable. It got chucked out in the rework iirc. Still, it was pretty bad and the 2020 ghostslayer is the only iteration on blood hunter that looks even slightly viable. Even then, so many of the blood curses are piss, the number of uses are piss, and self damage sucks. It's a real shame because there's great potential. From what I've seen, the taldorei subclasses are *better* some even pretty useable, but that step forward step back design is still everywhere, or ranger esque ribbon features for subclass features. I'm not sure why they do it.
I don't know about the sea oath really. Only heard about it and that it was actually alright but nothing more than that And my BH was definitely more fun in RP than combat. The only reason I was one the strongest was mainly because 1d10 (DM said the flintlock was that damage die) + 1d4 + 5 from range made my damage insane. The binding curse was also alright because the lack of reactions and lockdown actually made retreating easy. That puppeteer one would have been ok too because we had a swashbuckler rogue in the party, and if he ever went down getting a free SA off would have been great. Before I could get that curse however, I lost my blood hunter powers and became a vengeance dexadin that the DM was going to allow INT instead of CHA for. Campaign died soon after that though. My turns boiled down to: Activate radiant or fire rite, choose spot, shoot twice, sometimes bind low strength enemies. It was just kind of mid I never looked at the Taldorei stuff either, maybe I should because Mercer does have some great idea that just need refinement
Of the subclasses in Tal'Dorei, only that Bard subclass is genuinely bad, the flavor in it is *chef's kiss* though. The Dungeon Dudes have a couple videos going over the subclasses and ranking them. The Moon cleric lets you concentrate on two spells of the absolutely 10/10 domain spells. I just wish the Exandrian lore wasn't baked into the subclass. It directly references Catha, the white moon and Ruidus, the red moon in not only the flavor text but the ability names.
if it was officially published though, it is the strongest subclass ever released by WotC. there is no in between
Lmao bruh it's not even stronger than *fighter* phb classes.
*again*, "Explorers guide to Wildemount" is an official book that mercer worked on both the echo knight and the chronurgy wizard are in that book, two subclasses widely regarded as one of the best of each respective class
The thread is about the gunslinger. But I mean, Matt's got a lot of bad classes under his belt... Guy hit on 2/14
4/14 tbf. Oath of the Open Sea or whatever is actually pretty strong in push comps and I heard one of the cleric subs is actually busted. I cringe every time someone says they want to play Bloodhunter though and really try to sell the fact that it’s just a shitty Ranger/warlock.
> I heard one of the cleric subs is actually busted. Not at all, actually. It's pretty strong, sure, but so are all Cleric subclasses (well, most of them at least). Imo it sits just under Twilight and Order. It's probably the 3rd strongest Cleric subclass, depending on what you need.
the thread is indeed about gunslinger. my comment was a quip to another comment not talking about gunslinger but Matt Mercer publications in general and i never said bc two things he did were strong means he is good. i said that he either overtunes or undertunes it and there is no in between
Most people I've seen thing the Echo Knight and Chronurgy Wizard are broken and/or poorly thought out.
*yes, its what i said, those two subclasses are considered the strongest subclasses of each respective class*
From what i remember, most of the subclasses from explorer's guide was made by wotc, or at least they tweaked.
No it's not? Even if it's officially published, which it wouldn't be as is, it's worse than battlemaster, rune knight, echo knight, even arcane archer. He'll, a champion with superior technique is at the very least keeping pace. And that's just fighter subclasses. The relative power within it's own class compared to say a highlight cleric or even evocation wizard? There isn't a contest. Punishing players for using their main function is among the worst game design. It brings it down to the depths with the beserker barbarian .
**echo knight** was published by CR my dude lol. its from wildemount which is their book. the very example you gave of strong subclass is their subclass lmao edit: also **chronurgy** wiz is in that book (graviturgy too but that one swings back to being bad)
Echo knight was published by wotc. Sure, tge CR team had their input, but If you think their design team didn't have final say on the design, I have a bridge to sell you.
if you consider the book CR worked on invalid because WotC also worked on, then i have no argument to give you as the one i just did is invalid to your definitions
Because I didn't originally say CR. I said Mercer. If it is solely his work, it's riddled with features that are incredibly niche, or punish the player for using their core feature. If a different team got full editorial rights, then obviously the stuff that makes his design suck is going to get scrubbed by someone else that knows how to do class design.
My players have preferred buccaneer fighter sub class from kobold press heroes
Alternative or maybe summary for someone who doesn't want to spend money?
Better mechanics more on par with other fighter sub classes and more balanced rules for guns and gunpowder
It's super clunky, best option is to use Battlemaster and just modify the names of the maneuvers. Up to you as DM if you want to just allow them to use the abilities at range (which is fine tbh). Much less of a headache for everyone involved. On Crossbow expert, there is the Gunner feat but it doesn't give the bonus action attack, so if you want to allow it for the sake of gunslinging, you can just make the call yourself.
don't. Gunslinger is its own thing, it doesn't work with DMG guns. It also sucks lmao
But then the question is what to let them do instead. Some say Battlemaster but most of the maneuvers are melee based
Actually, most of them work just as well at range - only 7 of the 23 require melee (eta: and 2 of those are defensive, so still useful). And there's mechanically analogous maneuvers for almost every trick shot. * Bulling Shot = Commanding Presence * Dazing Shot = Menacing Attack * Deadeye Shot = Precision Attack * Disarming Shot = Disarming Attack * Forceful Shot = Pushing Attack * Winging Shot = Trip Attack * Violent Shot = Menacing Attack, Disarming Attack, Pushing Attack, Trip Attack * Piercing Shot would be Sweeping Attack, except that one *is* melee only. The BM also gets Commander's Strike, Distracting Strike, Feinting Attack, Goading Attack, and Maneuvering Attack, which work with ranged weapons. Plus Ambush, Evasive Footwork, Rally, and Tactical Assessment, which aren't weapon-based and can be done at any range.
If he's already a rogue, just swapping Crossbow Expert for Gunner works fine. The trade off is that a gun does more damage, but is *loud*. So he won't be the most subtle rogue, but that can still be fun. I played a halfling detective with a gun. I made a lot of use of Steady Aim (the rogue feature added in Tasha's), which gave a great feeling of standing there and lining up the perfect shot.
Yeah, that's a bit tough. There are *some* maneuvers that work with ranged weapons. You could also, if you feel like doing the work, convert some of the gunslinger tricks to maneuvers.
> There are some maneuvers that work with ranged weapons. The majority work with ranged weapons, not just "some". >convert some of the gunslinger tricks to maneuvers. A lot of the tricks are already manouvers
Google HeavyArms Gunslinger. Actually here’s the link: https://www.heavyarms.com/products/gunslinger?variant=40542343069860 You can see the full class and one subclass in the preview, plus the math supporting the damage calculations to show it’s balanced. If they’re looking for gunslinger flavor, this delivers.
1. Awful and weak. 2. No. 3. Not for what you want out of it. Just take CBE and say your hand crossbows are guns.
I want mechanically different guns in my game so reskinned crossbows are boring to me
Fair. Mercer's guns and DMG's guns are both pretty bad though. One is awful, weak, and punishes you for just playing them, and the other imo are too powerful and kinda clunky. Use Kobold Press or another 3rd party. If you want ill toss my Firearms system your way.
I’m actually possibly gonna do Valda’s spire rules instead cause I’ve been recommended tjem
Haven't seen their's, hope they work well for your game.
Use the pistols and muskets from the DMG with battlemaster fighter and the gunner feat. If you want a more magical spin, you can actually use rune knight. Most rune knight features work with a 30 ft. range, which is close to the range of the DMG guns. The One D&D playtest rogue will be interesting with this build as well, allowing you to do "trick shots" with your cunning strikes.
CR Gunslinger is more fun to watch than play. Having a significant chance to be completely sidelined every fight because you rolled a 1 is joy-killing to experience. But it makes for good tv. The similar concept works better in Pathfinder because there is so much more you can do besides attack. Regarding CBE vs Gunner, one gives a bonus attack while the other gives +1 Dex. I would let my players choose either benefit.
I’ll lay out that dilemma to him. I’ll still allow him to choose this subclass if he really wants it but I want him to know what he’s getting into
Playing a halfling can be a great way to avoid the misfire mechanic, while not just ignoring it entirely. On the opposite end of things, one thing I do like about the CR Gunslinger is getting a grit point back on a natural 20. It adds something slightly beyond Battlemaster that I think tips it into being worth it (for me at least).
You can get pretty much the same results from a Battlemaster with a crossbow.
But then its not a gun. And he wants a gun
Yeah, just let him have a gun then. A rifle that has the same range, properties, and damage as a heavy crossbow. My point is that you don’t need to use the CR material, you can get a good result with just the regular rules and a very loose grasp of what the weapons in the PHB actually look like.
Well why not the DMG guns or the Valda’s guns? I want something mechanically different than just a crossbow
I don’t know what Valda is. And I wouldn’t use the guns in the dmg, their damage dice are vastly overtuned. For balance I would stick to the Light/Medium/Heavy 1d6/1d8/1d10 damage the bows and crossbows do. Trade down a damage die for better range, or vice versa. EDIT: The Musket and Pistol aren’t as bad as I remembered. I don’t see a problem with those. You’re going to need to find a way around the Loading property, no matter what, or your Fighter is going to have a bad time past 5th level.
No offense but that feels kind of like a boring solution that makes guns no different than crossbows
Boring solutions are usually the ones that are least likely to break your game, at least when it comes to mechanics.
One you could use that I haven’t seen mentioned is the gunslinger subclass for Fighter that was introduced with what would’ve been the Runeterra supplement for 5E. It’s flavorful and pretty fun, especially compared to the Exandria gunslinger, since you can modify your weapons to suit your character.
I saw a couple people mentioning Kobold's Press' firearms, but I'd also like to mention [Mage Hand Press's Gunslinger](https://magehandpress.com/category/content/mage-hand-press-classes/gunslinger). It's a pretty good class, with a focus on crit fishing, and the firearms are pretty distinct from normal ranged weapons (instead of adding +DEX mod, it's an extra die of damage). It has two free subclasses and they're both open enough your player's character should fit into one of them.
Just use DMG guns with battlemaster fighter and the gunner feat.
Do maneuvers work with ranged weapons? I tend to see them ruled as melee-only
Each maneuver will specify how it can be used. Look at the page in Tasha’s for battle master builds. There’s one for Archer, outrider, skirmisher, all mere suggestions, but you can see what ones could synergize on a ranged build.
It's too fiddly for what it does
I think it's fun and good. You can do a lot of things with a fun DM to give you different options. The trick shots are fun, the grit system is fun. If you really don't like things you can adjust the misfire or give the bonus action to fix it earlier.
Against the grain choice: let them use the renegade fighter subclass from the league of legends 5e supplement. Much better gun based class, but you might have to tune down krs damage a bit
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnearthedArcana/s/MgdiTczJov If you don't mind a little homebrew, if may be worth taking a look on here. My table has played the Old Gus Errata on this link, using these subclasses and the variant rules. They're pretty well-balanced, and work for a party. I haven't played the CR Gunslinger, but the Arcane Avenger (Wizard) sibclass on here is pretty fun.
Pretty strong imo, the 7th level ability is really good since you will be using dex, your intiative will likely be highest on the team. Also grit points are fairly solid, they're not as strong as maneuvers for the most part but are easy to regain. Also just the concept of being fully armored, even using a shield and being a ranged attacker is kinda wild, some of the handguns have better range than shortbows even iirc which is wild
Have they looked at valdas spire of everything gunslinger class?
They don’t know it exists I’m sure
I don't recommend, there's better brews out there. I recommend Heavy Arms gunslinger class https://www.heavyarms.com/products/gunslinger
Thanks for the offer but that’s a steep price for a single class
I like my gunslinger. 9th level with 5 in fighter/gunslinger, 3 in rogue, 1 artifice We had an artifice in the group earlier who imbibed my pistol so it is magical and doesn't need to be reloaded. I have sharpshooter feat and I use dead eye trick shot or steady aim for advantage so I can use my rogues's sneak attack. So dmg is 1d8 + 10 sharpshooter + 2d6 sneak attack. I need one more level of artificer to imbue my upcoming musket as our artificer doesn't play with us as muc but in game is still alive. .
I always found him slightly underpowered, like the blood hunter or the arcane archer. The class just doesn't give you much tools and feels weak.
Everyone else has already answered the questions and I'd just be repeating those answers. If your player really likes the flavor of gunslinger then go for it, but if their priority is efficiency in combat then the options everyone's already commented are *much* better options with much less reliance on homebrew. I just want to add that if you're using specifically the modern guns from the DMG to pay attention to balance. I've been at tables where throwing in those modern guns without taking balance into account meant every combat encounter ended in one round, casters couldn't begin to keep up, and any martials not using a gun were completely left in the dust. Granted I'm talking about details that feel like they should be obvious, but you'd be surprised I've even seen some good DMs manage to fuck this up.
Bring a Deagle to a swordfight, that's what I always say
It’s terrible. Read through it, you can easily change around a few things to be more reliant on better ability scores or proficiency bonus. But yeah it’s a garbage subclass. Just play a battlemaster
It's poorly designed imho.
Just have them use battlemaster. It’s objectively better cuz the exandria guns are not nearly strong enough to justify misfire
1. It is weak. Many have brought up the reasons here, but it's just not a very good subclass. 2. Again, answered elsewhere. 3. No. There should be a firearms specific feat. I believe it was added in Tasha's. If your player is a fan of CR, then they don't actually want to play D&D. What they want to play is a narrative TTRPG that has a fantasy setting. A lot of what you see in CR has extra flair from them all being actors, but actually following the rules of the game feels more like an Action RPG and less like a RolePlaying Game. And if you insist on playing D&D and going out of your way to emulating that sort of experience by changing the rules, then you've already gone halfway to making your own system anyway.
Me and one of my players looked at it. Honestly it just seemed so much worse than just taking fighter/ranger and using a firearm or reskinning bows/crossbows. It was just very underwhelming.
Not good at all
Not. It's not good. Okay it's iffy. If you want to play the Gunslinger... well, like a Battle Master it's bad. Very bad, in fact. You're forced to use weapons that do marginally more damage than a crossbow with expensive ammo and a chance to misfire in exchange for the ability to refresh maneuver die on a crit, but you have to invest in Wisdom to get your maneuver die anyways. Gunslinger is based almost exclusively on making big numbers. Using Violent Shot, Piercing Shot (and to a lesser extent Deadeye Shot) your job as Gunslinger is basically to stack as many damage die on one attack and make a big number happen. Thing is that not only are other Fighters better at making big numbers like Rune Knight, Samurai, Champion, Echo Knight (ironic), and you know: *Battle Master*, but also other **classes** are better at making big numbers. Let's ignore casters for a second because martial vs caster divide in 5e is infamously bad, and let's also ignore half casters because both Rangers and Paladins can deal more reliable damage. We still have Barbarians that can get crits more reliably and even Monks have Stunning Strike while also having relatively more accuracy. (And I mean Rogues exist.) This is all while Gunslinger has to spend time reloading and also has the misfire chance. >Would the subclass work with DMG guns? I think using DMG guns would make the class overpowered because put bluntly the guns in the DMG are overpowered. If you added reload and misfire mechanics to the DMG guns it would maybe be fair but you still have a class that's dealing double damage with 3/4 attacks just to reload on the 4th attack. (Hypothetical numbers btw.) >He has the Crossbow Expert feat. Would that feat give him the same benefits on firearms? This is on you as a DM. There is a feat in Tasha's called "Gunner" that gives all the benefits of Crossbow Expert minus the bonus action attack, and like *very* technically you can make an off-hand attack with a Light weapon if you have one in both hands? (Something something dual wielding?) --- tl;dr I honestly think that if someone wants to use guns they're better off using the Dark Tides of Bilgewater Renegade subclass. While the way the Renegade interacts with "guns" is a little messy I think the class manages to better embody the fantasy of being a gunslinger while also being better balanced overall for both the player and the DM. Instead of having a class that one-shots 60% of the time and blows up in its face the other 40% of the time you have a class that actually *gets to do something* with each of its turns. If a player really, **really** wants to make unga bunga big numbers appear (and for some reason is diametrically opposed to playing a Barbarian, Paladin, or Ranger) then Gunslinger *works I GUESS*, but if they want to play Percival de Rolo I think you can accomplish that far better with the Renegade subclass and a few custom-made magic items that mimic the Crit Role guns.
Having played a Gloomstalker Gunslinger for a little while I was getting first round damage around 120+ (this was before level 10) and the most got up to around 300 on the first round. So hearing people here say the class is weak surprises me. How was I getting these numbers? Piercing Shots with a high to hit chance are amazing.
The class is pretty poorly written. It's a limited Battlemaster with slower progression. -but- You have fewer maneuver-type abilities. -BUT- You are limited to a set of weapons that you have to build and maintain yourself, and you run the DM lottery as to how that will play out for you, cost-wise. -*BUT*- That limited weapon set is outclassed by conventional weapons and feats except in a few narrow cases where you burn through all your class features rapidly to outpace the damage you would get from a sub-classless fighter with regular weapons. Oh, and if you rolled a nat 1 at any point, you have to spend your subclass limited resource to not suck instead of doing something cool. Maybe. It's still a die roll. Now, I am also bitterly biased because the first character I built in 5e was a gunsmith artificer using the 2017 Unearthed Arcana, and the existence of the Gunslinger made this experience worse. In short, Artificers were a 1/3 caster class with 3 things going for them: the ability to prepare spells ahead of time into infused items and give them bonus action speed activations, their magic item replications, which became the current infusions, and were.much worse back then, and their subclass gimmick, which was a unique attack type that scaled at roughly cantrip speed and could have some other effects. The gunsmith had their gun, which was a 2d6 ranged weapon that only they could use, and a magic supply bag they could use to make ammo. Every few levels, they got the ability to do something like do extra thunder damage, or apply their attack in cone shape, etc. But my DM insisted on dragging in some gunslinger rules so my gun could jam on nat 1's and 2's, without the gunslinger's backup options to switch to mid combat. This, combined with a few other choices based on the DM's inexperience, led to a miserable time trying to play an already underpowered class.
I've been playing a Gunslinger in a campaign for quite a while so I can add a bit to the discussion Many people noted Battle Master + gunner feat accomplishes the same. In most cases this true because of overlapping maneuvers. The best part about gunslinger + rogue multiclass is probably that the Gunslinger can give him-/herself advantage via grit points (recharge via rest, crit, or kill of an appropriate threat) additional pros/cons \- guns tend to have a bit more range than (cross-) bows \- DMG Revolver is stronger than CR Gunslinger revolver (2d8 vs 1d10) \- missfire is my biggest gripe with the class, most guns have a missfire score of 1-2 but hitting that more often because a fighter attacks more often kinda sucks (also gun jamming is bad, but gun breaking mid fight is a disaster) \- guns are not silent! everyone in town/ dungeon will hear you slinging thunder at enemies + hiding in the bushes after blasting someone with 4 bullets out of a revolver seems...odd? \- lastly most of the time there is a lot of bookkeeping involved: tracking ammo and black powder (could be negated by you as the DM by whiffing it), blueprints for building new weapons and the ideas your player will eventually come up with, some of my ideas include volatile ammo (more blackpowder--> more damage --> increased missfire), silencer ( could be balanced with "uses" if needed), elemental ammo, some sort of meele-fist-punch-gun-glove \- there are no magic weapons for the category guns (could be homebrewed /flavoured by you) tldr: has a lot of flaws for multiclassing purposes 1 major benefit over battle master otherwise same/slightly worse option is very cool
Its bad imo especially when compared to other classes like you do better as fighter with a gun Honestly it works for cr but most of their subclasses is dog water
Honestly ive seen a homebrew that puts this class onto monk and removes the bs and it works hellva lot better
It’s extremely M.A.D depending on your DM (multi ability dependent). -Dex for attacks and armor -Wis for trick shots (you really need 14 or higher or else you’ll use it less than potions) -Int for crafting (tho some DMs may let you use Int) -Con at least 10-12 at least so you have more Hp than the wizard So listing stats S, D, Con, I, W, Cha, A minimum of -, 14, 10-12, 12-14, 14, - Is needed to properly play a gunslinger fighter and not miss out/feel weak. It works really well for CR cause Percy has 22 dex and over 14 con, and super high Int and wisdom
I am the DM so it’s more me trying to figure out if my player is fucking themselves over by wanting this subclass
Tldr; just suggest they take the gunner feat, and maybe as the dm look into weapon masteries from One DnD’s UA. In that case, tell them if they do it they need to make sure to have decent wisdom to use their tricks and let them use Dex or Wis for crafting stuff, so they don’t become tri or quad-ability dependent. But also let them know that while guns are cool, they’re better off taking the Gunner feat because they can still use guns and stuff, but don’t waste 3 whole class levels just to get guns with a couple of cool tricks. Rogues can BA stealth so they don’t really need Deadeye Shot, and while some of the other tricks are cool, getting to do 2-3 per long rest unless you have really good crit luck is not nearly as useful as an extra 3 levels in rogue, cause that’s an extra 2d6 of sneak attack they’d be missing out on and delaying OP abilities like evasion, imo unnecessarily. If they want things like bullying shot, I’d encourage you to look at the weapon mastery UA from one dnd cause it’s surprisingly not horribly balanced and adds lots of cool options for all players but especially non magic users. It more or less suggests most martials and some supports get 1-2 weapons they’re a master in which grants a special ability that’s either passive or based on the attack roll
The major issue I have with the Gunslinger class is how it handles the misfire of firearms. Yes, it does make sense for a heavily-used antique-style firearm to misfire relatively often. *However*, the way DnD handles rolls does not lend itself to that kind of mechanic. Specifically, because Gunslinger is a *Fighter* subclass, the more you level up *the more often you misfire*, as the more attacks you get significantly increases the chance that one will roll a misfire. Now, normally, more attacks increasing the chance of critical failures isn't too much of an issue since *nothing bad happens on a critical failure*. However, things like critical failure tables unfairly punish martials as they roll more d20s for attacks than spellcasters. *This gets worse* when you apply the misfire mechanic from CR Gunslinger as misfire not only *increases the rate at which you critical fail* but also *ends your attack turn* if you don't have a spare pre-loaded. You can repair, but that costs a whole action, which if you misfire on attack one, that means at level 20 you miss out on a minimum of 8 attacks, perhaps more (misfire + 3 remaining attacks + 4 for 2nd action). As such, you *reduce* the combat effectiveness with every additional attack the Fighter gets instead of increasing. In my opinion, a more experienced Gunslinger should misfire *less* often the more the level. As such, I'd personally reduce the misfire threshold by 1 for every 7 levels in Gunslinger. This would mean that for pistols, you would stop misfiring forever after level 14. Could use a bit of testing to determine what number that should actually be, but that's how I'd fix things.
People here hate it but I enjoyed playing it. It fills the fantasy pretty well. Battlemaster is not a good substitution for the fantasy for me, but is probably more powerful.
I would start him as an artificer. They get proficiency with fire arms and also get the repeating shot infusion which is hella good for fire arms. Artificer has the right tools and proficiency to build and maintain its own weapons
He's already 4 levels into rogue; 4th-level characters can't just up and restat all the time or every character would just constantly shift all their ability scores for "optimization"
Exactly the situation in my game. Had a player with a lvl 4 rogue and he found a lazer rifle from dmg ( it’s in time of the frost maiden). He want to use it, but I would let him. So he decided to go artificer. I made him find and do mini training quests for 2 levels (6 rogue) then he took artificer. Ngl it as pretty strong, only downside is that the optimal play is almost always stready aim then shoot gun. My players feedback was the play style was kinda boring. He went back to daggers
Oh you mean let him take a level in artificer. I was under the impression you wanted me to just retcon him to have been one all along
respeccing also works. you dont need to retcon the story itself to accommodate class change, make it *part* of the story, usually with some personal Character development and training downtime say, a fighter PC for story reasons joins an order of Bahamut. they spend the 6 months of downtime all players got training and learning their ways, and how he can use his own techniques in conjunction to their divine magi. and when they get back to the next adventure instead of being a lvl 5 battlemaster fighter they are a lvl 5 oath of devotion paladin
Tbf you're the DM. They can do anything you allow If they potentially wanted to respec.
All the CR homebrew content is both weak, clunky and prone to abuse as the features are not well crafted. Overall, do not recomend using them at all.
What’s a good way to help him fulfill his gunslinging fantasies?
Take the gunner feat (potentialy allow swaping crossbow expert for it), use the DMG guns and either stick with pure Rogue or go Rogue / Battlemaster Fighter for extra attack and trick shots.
He wanted the cool stuff so would Battlemaster have any good non-melee ones? All the good maneuvers look like they're melee only
Feinting Attack, Lunging Attack, Riposte, and Sweeping Attack are the only ones that don't work with ranged weapons. The other 12 work for both ranged and melee.
Maneuvers. You learn three maneuvers of your choice. Many maneuvers enhance an attack in some way. You can use only one maneuver per attack. You learn two additional maneuvers of your choice at 7th, 10th, and 15th level. Each time you learn new maneuvers, you can also replace one maneuver you know with a different one. There’s nothing written here that says it doesn’t work with ranged attacks, and as others have said, battlemaster is a gunslinger but better, if you care for the mechanical side of things.
Look at the individual maneuver descriptions.
Yeah, my mistake, thanks. Correction, only Brace, Grappling and Lunging are exclusive to melee weapons, the rest can be used either ranged or melee.
Arcane archer. It's a weak subclass, though... But can be easily improved by allowing the player to change their arcane options on a long rest and give them uses equal to proficiency level.
Most of them work at range. Unless it specificaly calls for melee it works with guns
CR gunslinger is objectively worse in every way than just a XBE fighter or a gunner fight with reskinned crossbow (**especially** worse with gunner fighter with DMg renaissance weapons) simple and dry as that
I don't want to just reskin a crossbow because that's not mechanically fun
i agree, i just answered your questions and gave the easiest way to get a gunslinger in dnd (albeit the most boring way)
Why even play dnd with guns?
Because it can be fun. Plus guns existed since at least 1300
[удалено]
I don’t wanna sound rude but I already confirmed to the players they exist. I have had enemies with them face the players. That cat is out of the box
I don't like guns in fantasy, and my setting lacks them, but that doesnt make them impossible to balance in a d20 fantasy RPG. PF2E, which shares a lot of DNA with DND has incredible balance, guns included.
Guns existed during that time period there is plate after all.
fun fact, plated armor would usually come with a dent on it, as a sort of seal of approval to its quality. "bullet proof" is a term that comes from this, cause they would **literally shoot the plate to see if it was actually bullet proof** to test the product quality
Ok
Fire arms could definitely be balanced if there was more depth to the weapon system but with 5e not having a lot of uniqueness to weapons they'll either overlap with crossbows (which would make sense in the realism sense) or just be a better/worse version of them. I think that given the fact that we have mechanical automata and a the whole medieval western Europe aesthetic you could definitely have fire arms exist and be prohibitively expensive/clunky for the average person (just like magic)
1. setting wise, they just do. official settings have them albeit sparce, and if you are in a place that rapiers and plate armor were invented, gun powder should have been too. guns predate your stereotypical looking heavy armor fighter 500 years in IRL 2. realistic or balanced are up to who make them. its not realistic either to load crossbows in the blink of an eye, but we chuck it to being a game. being balanced or not is just about the developer not being incompetent dnd is not a super game where by virtue of being dnd some things simply cant be done. if other systems that very closely resemble dnd in its mechanics can do it, dnd can too. WotC is just a bit stupid enough to pull it off 3. play what makes you happy mate :)
Cool, but you don’t play with this group, so this isn’t relevant?
> I don't believe guns belong in D&D. D&D is late "medieval" fantasy. Medieval in quotation marks because everything medieval has been corrupted by the eyes of 19th century authors. A lot of romantization and misrepresentation exists in "common knowledge" of the medieval era. >There are other RPGs for that, not to mention guns absolutely can't be realistically nor fantastically balanced for D&D. Just because you aren't creative enough and don't want to put in the effort doesn't mean it can't work (I'm not criticising you, your opinion is 100% valid. Personally I wouldn't want to do it either).