Mild rant!

You guys had a cool mid and high level gunslinger NPC in the Caligo II game. I built him for you, and he was pretty well built from that perspective.

One of the things that I tried to emphasize but didn't really come across is, he was using revolvers, not (single shot) pistols. The revolvers are under advanced firearms in the Pathfinder rules- a category explicitly stated to be more powerful.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---fin ... s/firearms

In Pathfinder organized play, only early weapons are allowed. Early weapons are like, a single shot pistol, a pepperbox, a musket, etc. Advanced weapons are like, pistol, revolver, shotgun. The early weapons existed for a long time before the "advanced" versions came around, and a third category ("modern") would be needed for stuff from the 20th century (and isn't specified in the rules at all)- that would be the category with autoloading pistols, rifles, shotguns, and automatic rifles / submachine guns.

The dual wield revolver thing was very powerful. Each revolver held up to six bullets, and on a single round at endgame he could fire off four rounds from each gun. With Rapid Reload, reloading cartridges was down to a free action (that could happen once per round). So at endgame, the cycle was:

Round 1: (6/6)
Full attack- 4 shots from each gun. (2/2)
Free action- Reload one of the guns. (6/2)

Round 2: (6/2)
Free action- Reload the other gun (6/6)
Full attack- 4 shots from each gun (2/2)

Round 3: (2/2)
Free action- Reload a gun (6/2)
Full attack- 4 shots from one gun, 2 from the other. (2/2)

(round 3 repeats)

Alternatively, one of the rounds could be a free action reload and a move action reload, leaving a standard available to move or shoot. This round would leave you with both guns loaded for next round.


In practice, this was a lot of damage, because the guns almost never miss.



So here's the interaction that made it so good:

1)- Advanced Firearms allowed meant that each gun could hold a lot of bullets.
2)- Advanced Firearms reload with a move action, or, with Rapid Reload, a free action.
3)- My Two Weapon Fighting rules allow Improved Two Weapon Fighting (the feat that grants the second off-hand attack) to also grant the third and fourth offhand attacks. This is a much needed buff for melee guys but is an unquestionable boost here.
4)- I allowed reloading one gun while holding two guns. I think I may have charged a feat for this.

But...
5)- I stated that the "reload" free action could only be done once a round. This, as it turns out, was prescient.



My solution was to change the firearm's to-hit to count HALF of armor and natural armor, instead of ignoring it totally. I felt this worked pretty good, but it still was a really powerful NPC, and the players definitely noticed.



A more typical game wouldn't have had the advanced firearms. What would that have looked like?


When I went to look it up, I was pretty shocked. The "weapon cord" was being used by players in Pathfinder Society play to essentially cycle a huge number of guns. This meant that gunslingers in Pathfinder were doing way the hell too much damage, and also that they had guns tied to their arms that they were bouncing and jiggling around to get their full attacks off. This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of (but KEEP READING). The devs piled into the thread, and at that point it was HEYYYY EVERYBODY- GET IN HEEEEERRRE. The devs first proposed that you simply couldn't do endless free actions (the rules even state that), and that was almost going to be the ruling, but then the guns-are-yoyos-or-something guys pointed out that it's a free action to get an arrow from a quiver, and so by those rules archers couldn't take full attacks. Several society GMs were like "ok, I'm fine with nerfing archers", but the devs went silent, then delivered the hammer, and changed the rules of the weapon cord. So archers are ok, and the yoyo-guns were gone.

And at that point I was pretty happy for never even briefly considering a weapon cord as an allowed item in game. If it was advantageous to tie weapons to yourself, it would have been done by our ancestors. It was not, so it sucks IRL, and if that reason isn't obvious, it's because we aren't gambling our lives on this, and they were.


Then, shit slowly got strange. The gunslinger's reload action is his limiting reagent, and this is sketchy design, because it is just waiting for players to do dumb fucking shit. Without a rule about how reloading works, or how many guns you can usefully keep on your person, the game seems to have some players who carry a fuck lot of loaded guns (and quick draw them), which is fairly ludicrous but not entirely impossible, and others who...
Uh...

Take two levels of alchemist. Because the alchemist can get a discovery (which I would never allow, but whatever) that GROWS YOU A THIRD ARM.


So the gunslinger sits there full attacking with two single shot pistols, reloading each one instantly with his THIRD FUCKING ARM.





They tried to make Billy the Kid or Han Solo, and got some black powder eldritch horror as a player class.






The thing is, I'm sure you could rule out these things. Many players will refuse to play a three armed cowboy because that's dumb as fuck, and likewise they won't coat themselves in guns because that's also a terrible character vision (and that one at least has some other serious mechanical downsides). But there's always going to be some guy coming up with a way to make it work. Pathfinder printed a spell that makes a ghost hand that reloads for you, so you could be shooting while three spectral hands reload for you. Or I guess two spectral reload you, and one gives you a spectral handy.


So, what's the RIGHT answer?


And I think we need the right question. Firstly, why is it so important that the gunslinger both (1) be able to fire seven (pathfinder standard) or eight (with my houserules for two weapon fighting feats) times in a round EVER and also (2) be limited by a set of dev rules or house rules or anything to prevent this from happening via some obscure rulings and item changes?

In other words, if the gunslinger shooting his full attack is broken, then why waste time coming up with halfassed reasons as to why?



The model we had was cool. The guy spent feats to be good at shooting, which is what most characters in D&D spend feats on. He had a bit of drama when it came to reloading, but he had more burst shots than any other character. The only downside was that he was too powerful- and after my nerf ("Gun AC") even that was a lot less of an issue. Certainly, no one was trying to summon ghost hands or grow vestigial arms, or even enchant the guns to reload themselves. The fact that auto-loading guns don't exist in Pathfinder as a 3rd level spell or +1 equivalent enchantment is absolutely due to balance concerns- third level spells summon balls of fire, blasts of lightning, and literal angels, in addition to letting you fly, not like, but better than, a bird. And spells go to levels higher than three.


I don't know what I'll do next time. Unlike Zem, I definitely want firearms in my games, and I want them to be interesting and desirable. I'm not sure I want them to slam through great wyrm red dragon scales like they don't exist (the scales are harder and thicker than steel!), however, nor do I want to play a bunch of games with rules to try to limit power based on something that, by the logic of the game, shouldn't be a big deal. But if you guys have any ideas about this, let me know. If I run in Caligo again, I'll want a gunslinger to be available, and in the ideal world, a player *could* want to play it- but in that world, I wouldn't want *every* player to feel like they SHOULD play it.

For the record:

Archer at 1-5 level: 1 or 2 shots.
Gunslinger at 1-5 level: 1 or 2 shots.
Melee at 1-5 level: 1 or 2 swings that could be telling blows.

Archer at 6-10 level: 2 or 3 shots.
Gunslinger at 6-10 level: 2 to 4 shots.
Gunslinger without "stuff" at 6-10 level: 2 to 3 shots.
Melee at 6-10 level: 2 to 4 swings.

Archer at 11-15 level: 3 or 4 shots.
Gunslinger at 11-15 level: 3 to 6 shots.
Gunslinger without "stuff" at 11-15 level: 2 to 3 shots.
Melee at 11-15 level: 3 to 6 swings.

Archer at 16+: 4 or 5 shots.
Gunslinger at 16+ level: 4 to 8 shots.
Gunslinger without "stuff" at 16+: 2 to 3 shots.
Melee at 16+ level: 4 to 8 swings.

Without bullshit to reload fast, the gunslinger just *stops advancing*. With that stuff, the gunslinger advances super fast, and in large part because his 7 or 8 shots actually hit. The -15 to hit with the third iterative can turn it into a miss, but it is way less likely to do so than with the fighter, whose final attacks are almost sheer luck when they hit opponents. The 20th level fighter might have up to +40 to hit, but his final blow will be at +25 versus AC 42. The gunslinger will be at +20 versus AC 20. He should advance, but his damage per full attack shouldn't essentially scale equal to his attacks.

I thought the gunslinger was a fun mechanic, and it was cool to have him on our team. Not so cool to be fighting them.

The guns-on-a-rope thing is obviously ridiculous, but it DOES make me wonder what's reasonable. Like, could a gunslinger carry two pistols in holsters on his hip, then have two additional pistols in his pack? Not that I'm saying those additional pistols would always be loaded, but if he were to know he's going into combat, could he spend a couple of rounds to pull out those pistols, load them, go into combat holding the additional pistols, shoot them off, drop them, then use his hip pistols for the remainder of the combat, firing and reloading as normal?

Not that I think it's a good idea to just leave pistols lying around in the middle of combat....

I shall ponder this some more as I fetch my Starbucks, but for now, I'll point out the two things that jump to mind.

Part of the incredible power of the gun was how easy it was to learn. The training required for an archer was much longer than for a guy with a gun. You've got this device that you give to someone, train him for a few weeks, and now he's as good as he's going to get. With modern guns, the accuracy of the device is such that you can become an incredible marksman, but for early guns... no. They just weren't that accurate. Why spend years perfecting your aim when the damn thing veers off in a random direction? Now we may be talking about different eras, of course, but for the most part... give a guy a gun, done.

So at first level you put this gun slinger up against an archer and say they should be similar. I say they should not. The gun slinger should win. He has gone through basic training, and he will almost assuredly kill an archer. But the archer advances, and... the gun slinger should not. Some, I guess, but not nearly what this system indicates.


The second problem is that early guns are all about getting off those first shots. Everyone is loaded and ready to go... boom. Maybe there is time to reload and try again, or maybe there's a reason bayonets are a thing.


So I think the first problem is the gun slinger simply does not fit the D&D advancement system, and I think the reloading speed by 20th level is extremely unrealistic. This doesn't really help you.

Also, I would outright ban anything that grows a third goddamned arm. That's fucking retarded.

By the way, the "I allowed reloading one gun while holding two guns. I think I may have charged a feat for this" is utterly ridiculous. We'll take a revolver to a shooting range. Take one hand and point is down range. In the other hand, you have a revolver with six empty cartridges. Conveniently on the table in front of you will be six new rounds. Your challenge will be to reload the revolver without dropping it. You have two minutes (12 rounds instead of a "free" action). Hint: You will fail.



Anyway, after further pondering, I have come to the following conclusion: Guns are dumb. The argument is very simple... Guns are why we do not have knights in armor. Ignore wizards, druids, and clerics, of course, but just consider the fighting-man. He will fall to guns. If armor helped against guns, then at least generals in the American Revolution or Civil War would have worn something. They didn't (though admittedly in the Revolution it was still considered poor form to take out leaders). Blades were relevant only after the shots were fired. When guns appeared, armor went away.

What would a gun really do? Well, it should be easier to do a touch range attack with a gun than an arrow. At short range, a bullet will not be affected by wind nor the drop from gravity, but an arrow will. At longer range, the gun will be affected, but the arrow much more. Additionally, at longer range a person can properly dodge an arrow if they see it coming. That's only for touching the enemy, but armor can stop an arrow. Agincourt may indicate that an English longbow can puncture armor, but there's a pretty good theory that it was more about the mud that was causing men in heavy armor to get stuck. Anyway, armor doesn't stop a bullet, so it should just be a touch AC. For touch AC, that's being liberal with the dex bonus. Obviously moving targets are harder to hit, but does it matter if Dex 10 guy is moving at 30 or a Dex 20 guy is moving at 30? Being all nimbly bimbly jumping from limb to limb is great, but you can't dodge a bullet. You are making it harder to aim for an archer or a gun slinger, but whereas you can hit duck when the arrow is fired, you cannot duck for a bullet. Someone could argue it should be touch AC with only half the dex bonus counted. Anyway, once it hits, armor is at best damage reduction.

So let's say a bullet does 3d6 (I have no idea what they actually use), so full plate might be DR5. But realistically, a bullet should also do something like Wounding 3 since it will rip up the insides. Someone in full plate should need to be removed from that armor before anyone can do a healing check to stop the Wounding. I know that's more realism that we typically use, but I'm just trying to figure out in D&D terms why guns are dumb.

If you have real-world guns with real-world steel armor and real-word swords, you have a problem. Guns win. In my opinion, you need to figure out why in your world they are balanced. Does their version of gunpowder suck? Does rolling a 1 to hit cause the gun to explode and cause 4d8 damage to the shooter? And if so, will you create a feat to make that go away and again give the world back to gun slingers? Whatever the limitation is, it can't simply be overcome by a feat.


I have trouble with muzzle loaded lead shot. But you went all the way to revolvers, which presumably means rifles have, well, rifled barrels. You have cartridges. They have accuracy, and while you allowed reloading faster than is plausible, it's still pretty fast. Muzzle loads are much better than men with swords. Cartridges and revolvers and rifles are much better than muzzle loads. I can't imagine balancing two gigantic steps away because we know they do not balance. You need some external force to make them balance. Whatever force that is will dictate the abilities and whatnot.

He had the six bullets in cartridges, so he assuredly was never messing with six rounds individually on this. I think it wouldn't be impossible to swap magazines on a modern pistol, and it's reasonable to assume someone who spent a feat (a measure of competence that allows you to deflect arrows with your hand) could pull something like that off.

My point with that was- the gunslinger you had took a combination of feats and weapons that allowed him to get his full attack cycle off. In Pathfinder, there are ways to accomplish such an action. But the full attack cycle just seems too strong.




While armor is somewhat effective against guns, it's nothing close to its defense against the slashing and piercing weapons that allowed a small amount of force to be so fatal. There was a long period where the weaker armors were abandoned but the most protective stuff still was around for the top guys, because it did work pretty well against firearms- but yea, the overall move away from armor was guns. But it's not necessarily the type of guns that are in a given game.



In Europe the generals still were wearing some armor then. Armor didn't go away until after rifles, it was still practical and worn in the era of the musket- the "early firearms" of Pathfinder.



Honestly, I'd assume half the armor bonus and half the dex bonus. Armor definitely is effective at least against the type of weaponry we saw (handguns and mustkets), but clearly not fully so. The dex bonus on an arrow is vastly more reasonable than versus a gun- the archer winds up, the arrow has a path that can be seen, and there's evidence of people dodging or catching arrows some of the time in history. With a gun, you pretty much have to not be where the guy is pointing it.

I also think that the damage numbers you mention are too much. A blow with a longsword is 1d8, and a longsword is a lot more devastating than a handgun bullet. Pathfinder has values that make pretty good sense for the smaller weapons:

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---fin ... s/firearms

I think 1d8 is a reasonable and defensible value for pistols and revolvers. I think the long gun values are too low- 1d12 on a musket and 1d10 on a rifle both seem too low. People survive small weapons fire with some moderate degree of regularity, but a rifle shot will kill or maim much more often- there's just so much more force being delivered.



The Pathfinder stuff does have rules that make guns not an auto-pick, but the gunslinger mostly exists to minimize those penalties. Everything seems ok up until those iterative shots start going out.


At low level, the gunslinger has a real chance of a misfire fucking up his current and next rounds, and he can't take more than 2 shots in a round, and definitely can't do that multiple rounds in a row. At high level, he becomes some sort of missile turret.




In fairness, I went to revolvers, but I did not go to rifles. Even though those are similar tech levels in the real world and in pathfinder, a musket shooter would have found ways to reload faster, but he wouldn't have been on a rifle.

The Pathfinder guns do have several rules involving misfires, and of course there's junk to reduce it, so I never considered it a balancing factor, rather a low level garbage thing. Basically, if he rolled a one, he'd have to clear the gun and wouldn't be making his remaining attacks with it that round or the next. But I honestly think that happened 0 times? Either way, a low level gunslinger is dealing with 1-3 on a d20 often misfiring and then, after a misfire, the next shot has a large chance (like 1-7 or something on the d20) of exploding. But since the gunslinger has ways to minimize this, it's not a huge penalty.

If the only balancing factor is going to end up being the shots per round, then I would first want to make that a hard limit, and second provide the gunslinger with some other factor that scales up with level. For example, if you can shoot your guns once each at 5th level, at 6th level maybe you could shoot your guns once each, but with a damage bonus on each shot. Then at 11th level, instead of getting six fucking shots or whatever, maybe that damage bonus goes up a bit, and you are still taking two shots.

This would involve not having revolvers- it would be limited to the simple weapons, so these would be pistols or something- and that could well be good enough.


I think at low levels, the gun rules are pretty reasonable. They try to simulate reality without going too far into fiddly details (ex: "armor is ignored totally" is fast and easy compared to halving the armor, and way faster and easier than some table that tells you how much your armor type provides versus guns). Once the gunslinger is allowed to shoot 6 shots in a round, I really feel that there's no way to make that ok with how easy it is to hit with guns.



Thanks! This has been bugging me for awhile.

I have used the fast-load tools for a revolver. The six rounds are anchored in a thingy. The first thing to understand is that "fast-load" is a relative term. Yes, I only fussed with it for an afternoon and presumably this person would have spent a long time learning it. That said, it takes two hands. Seriously, there's just no way to do it with one hand. And this is with seriously modern equipment. This is not like "juggling is hard for me so juggling is impossible." There are two things that need independent manipulation.


And Marines still carry swords. I understand the firearms were weaker, but you're still getting shot. If you're thinking of Cortes and the like, they wore armor and carried muskets because their enemies had bows and small pox.


Nope. What does a hit with a longsword mean? I believe it means you got a cut on your arm. Maybe a slash along some ribs. It does not mean your guard was completely down and he chopped right into your torso. The thing that comes closest to that would be a critical hit. A critical hit with a longsword of a first level character might drop him, but that's not a guarantee. It probably won't kill. But in reality, if someone just stood there helpless while someone else took a full swing, he will die. So we can conclude that even a critical hit is not as bad as just taking a full, unimpeded longsword swing to the head.

With a gun, you aren't deflecting some of the blow with your own sword. You aren't swinging out of the way. You're getting fucking shot. Perhaps the bullet stays intact, and perhaps it fractures to send parts through assorted organs. The impact alone will stagger you.


I don't believe those statements are true, at least not without medical treatment. The other thing to consider is accuracy. Small arms often mean a bit of a gunfight with hastily aimed weapons. Yes, someone may survive a shot to the limbs so long as it avoids major arteries. A rifle usually means the shooter has a bit more time to aim, so it would be a torso or head shot.

People do survive torso shots, but only because of our medical capabilities. That can be replaced with a healing spell, but... they are down for the fight.

But the complexity is that the accuracy of the shot is really what dictates the damage. That's true for everything, but it's far more relevant for a gun. We can assume a critical hit with a sword means you stuck it where it needed to go. Getting shot in the arm is going to be pretty bad, but torso or head shot it completely crippling. It's more like the critical damage should be x5, and it should critical on 12-20.


This is really the problem. I do not believe there is as much room for advancement as other classes, especially when things start becoming impossible.


So, just to be clear, I assume that when we say "rifle" we mean "breech-loaded rifle." I say that because a muzzle-loaded rifle has been around a long fucking time, beating the revolver by centuries. A revolver with metal cartridges is pretty close in time to a breed-loaded rifle.


And that's the problem... the gun stays the same. Training has nothing to do with whether a cartridge explodes.

The other problem is that clearing a gun is something we do for automatic and semi-automatic weapons. It makes absolutely no sense for a revolver. There is nothing to clear. You can have a dud, and then you just pull the trigger again to go on the next shot. The jackets are ejected when you reload.


Maybe... I could see this being more reasonable. The placement of the shot is what dictates damage, and training would improve that.

I find your argument compelling, and I won't use those rules going forward.

My root assumption- which is incorrect- is that the gunslinger getting his full attack was an intended thing. In fact, the devs have taken a lot of steps to remove it from being easy or even possible in some cases, and at this point I think that the ones that are allowed by rules are oversights. I'm positive that the developers who wrote the idiotic third arm thing (which came out before the gunslinger) didn't think there was a problem with their idiotic idea, because they wrote it explicitly such that the arms don't grant any extra attacks or actions. When that ability came out, you could basically use it to hold extra things, or have a choice of weapons to use in a round. That's still fucking ludicrous and I'd never allow it, but I'm pretty sure it was balanced mechanically, at least with the stuff that existed at the time.

Meanwhile, other stuff that granted free reloads was always third party products or strange options that weren't allowed in their official play. I think their actual goal was to make it so that someone using a modern firearm (again, not in their base rules, which cover early and advanced) would behave similar to reality, and then have that explosive capability reduced by the reload action cost in their game.

And they probably didn't consider the idiot with 16 guns or whatever, plus Quick Draw.


In any event, the instant magazine reload was essentially the same power as a modern autoloading pistol- something that their rules don't even cover by default (they do have modern firearms rules that extend from that, but they are not meant for use in a historical setting- they are suitable for WWII era and beyond era characters and campaigns, and in those rules, a fighter would also be using guns, as would a rogue, etc, should those classes even be around- the misfire odds are low as a base [not needing gunslinger grit to mitigate], and the autoloading feature gives you a new ready round every shot without ghost hands or a third arm or whatever, and in those settings guns are considered simple or martial weapons).




You are only allowed to use swords in the army, actually. The Marines have dress swords that they don't bring to combat.

But to your point, I disagree- inexpensive armor became a lot less useful, and expensive armor became less useful, but it was still greatly effective compared to not wearing armor. Remember that there's a great variety in the types of shots being flung around too, as well as distance to be considered.




I very strongly believe that. Like the bullet or the arrow, a longsword hit it means a lot of things in d20. It could mean a grazing attack, or a strong effective attack, and arguably it could mean a near miss (especially at high level). When I say that a longsword is far more devastating, I mean that- swords are ludicrously dangerous and fatal, especially a solid hit. It took guns being reliable and able to fire quickly at medium ranges before a sword wasn't considered a mandatory arm.




I disagree with your interpretation of an attack roll here, but more importantly, you're assuming that a successful hit with the bullet is entering your body, but the successful hit with the longsword could be a parry or trivial scratch- that's definitely playing unevenly in that interpretation.



My example is assuming medical treatment, of course, just as the swordplay generally assumes medical or magical treatment in a normal game.



Well, the game does allow us to model accuracy as well as power. From Pathfinder:
An early pistol will deal 1d8. It will target touch AC up to 20 feet, and shoot up to 200 feet. Reloads with a standard action.
An advanced revolver will be exactly like that, except with the new cycling. Reloads with a move action.
A modern pistol will still deal that 1d8, but it will target touch AC up to 80 feet, and shoot up to 800 feet. It has a large capacity. Reloads with a swift action, and the reload replaces the magazine.

Then their long gun equivalents:
An early musket will deal 1d12. It will target touch AC up to 50 feet, and shoot up to 400 feet. Reloads with a full round action.
An advanced rifle will deal 1d10. It will target touch AC up to 80 feet, and shoot up to 800 feet. Reloads with a move action.
A modern rifle is the same as the advanced rifle, but it has a large capacity and reloads with a swift action, and the reload replaces the magazine.

So you can see that the big boosts are to range increments and to reload capacity. There's also a misfire stat that falls dramatically, but that mostly allows people who aren't giant risk takers to use guns- not really important for a balance discussion, because we didn't have a problem with every single character using guns, we had a problem where the gunslinger was too effective. Those rules generate results that match reality- in a modern era game, the guns are so good and easy to use that everyone would, and in the eras we are playing, that's not the case.



Eh. I think it's pretty uncontroversial that long guns are more devastating when they hit. There's just so much more kinetic energy being delivered. I agree that the difference there is less important than range increments (accuracy modeling), but it still strikes me as off to only have the damage per bullet be a slight amount higher. In any event, I didn't feel the need to houserule this.



I actually do think that the critical rate on the modern firearms is off, but I don't feel that 20 x4 is wrong for the early and advanced guys. I think that the rules are generally accurate that it's much easier to hit with a gun than it with an arrow or sword, and I also think that they are generally accurate to not have massive damage associated with a single bullet. The damage an arrow does is not out of comparison to a bullet, but the damage a melee weapon does with its modeled attack cycle over a time period is simply more. I think that your general argument about the guns being nerfed just to try to bring them to balance is not really grounded in reality- I think they hit about the right range for crit rate, crit damage, and base damage.



I think that the grit resource can model this ok from a reality tuned perspective, and I think that the gunslinger class itself is a good one. There's an archetype called "bolt ace" that throws away all the firearms stuff and instead applies the class to crossbows (for campaigns that don't have firearms), and while the class is an effective crossbowman, the big drama with the full attacks being way to good goes away instantly. So I'm of the opinion that the problem lies in the firearm rules, and the designers having a system that is meant to limit your attack cycle (something that works poorly in D&D, because you end up capping out quickly), but without actually having rules that say that, resulting in a bunch of player work arounds to turn get away with way too many fucking attacks that never miss- something you shouldn't be seeing until much later in tech.





No one on Caligo knew that you should rifle a barrel for greater effect, is my point, so there were no rifles. It didn't match real world advancement.




Ok, don't get hung up on this. It's not a problem. Pathfinder is simulationists like us ultimately. They do it like you want them to.

If you don't believe me, here's how it works:

---
Each weapon has a misfire chance. Most of them misfire on a 1. If a gun misfires, it gains the "broken" condition. It also increases its misfire range by 4, so if it started with 1, now it will misfire on any natural 1-5 on the d20. If an early firearm with the "broken" condition misfires, it deals damage in a burst and explodes. If it is nonmagical, it's totally destroyed. If it is magical its considered "wrecked"- it can't be used at all, but you could put it back together with magic or recraft it (so your +5 gun needs to be remade, but you don't have to remake the +5 part). "Broken" is a condition Pathfinder applies to weapons sometimes, and so these rules are in addition to the normal fact that being "broken" really sucks.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/c ... TOC-Broken

So anyone who picks a gun up is dealing with this. Being a gunslinger, however, gives you the ability to "quick clear", where you spend a round clearing the gun which removes the "broken" condition it gained from misfiring (it can't help you if it got sundered or whatever). But a misfire is still a huge deal for a gunslinger, and it's still based on the properties of the gun.

...so you get around THAT with magic. The "reliable" weapon property. This is equivalent to a +1 bonus.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/mag ... s/reliable
And it reduces your misfire chances by 1. Since some guns misfire on a 1, this means those guns don't misfire. Other guns that misfire on a 1 or 2 now have half the chance to misfire. This is a property of the gun (and magic, to boot).

By midgame, the gunslinger can prevent an early firearm from exploding. It will still misfire, and still get broken, but it acts like an advanced firearm and doesn't blow up in his face. This is the only one where a class feature interacts with the property of the gun, and it's not removing the misfire chance. (this ability is expert loading)

The net effect is, the gunslinger has to deal with misfires at low level, and always if he's going for exotic weaponry, but he has tools to deal with misfires- he gets better at minimizing how long he is down for misfiring ("lose a round or two" instead of "repair gun at camp with gunsmithing feat"), and the Reliable magic weapon property in my opinion mostly removes this mechanic as a serious limiter at high levels.

That's why I said, it's not a real limitation- but it's not because the gunslinger changes weapon properties, it's because he has resources to let him stay in play. If you want to calculate the damage over six rounds versus a great wyrm or whatever, you definitely need to model the misfire chances into that (if he misfires into his cycle on round 2, he won't be shooting the rest of that round, and next round might get off one shot, depending, but definitely not his cycle), but IMO it doesn't drop it by so much as to be considered a balance point.

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Well, the misfire chance is supposed to model something that doesn't go correctly. That shot misses, and now the gun is "broken" until you do something to fix it. I wouldn't be opposed to rules for "dud rounds" as separate from the misfire chance, and that's a good point.

My limited experience sitting across the table from a 4th level gunslinger was, each of his die rolls was fraught with peril. He couldn't shoot every round, and he would select a target that had a lot of health and armor. He did misfire once, and then he drew his sword and switched to melee for the rest of that fight, because spending the round fixing his gun would have hurt the party, because the bad guy fucking hurt (and he'd have had to reload after that). But he did crit once and that just totally smashed. I was very impressed with the class for delivering such a wild flavor with fucking cool decisions to make. In Caligo you had an experience with a much higher level guy, and obviously I handed out a weapon class that had most of the properties of an advanced firearm, and even one of the modern (the magazine reload). Importantly, I didn't realize how much the gunslinger was balanced around NOT getting his full attack. As an allied NPC, I figured I was mostly safe if I built him optimally and handed him to the group. Sweetcheeks proceeded to fucking wreck house lol. That was great fun, but if that was a base creation option in a fresh game you'd have to pin me down on exactly what the rules were, and you'd be mightily pissed if I cut off your attack cycle with some houserule halfway through because I can't do math or something- and you'd be even more pissed if you dodged that option based on that nerf fear, and then had to deal with pew-pew-pew-pew big bad end guys.




Yea, that's what I'm going for. I want to push the damage into the high level model of "I'm good at aiming" instead of "as long as I can magic up a crew to serve my pistols, we're gonna have a fully automatic good time".