How would you adapt the typical gunslinger trope to a fantasy setting ?

Or, y'know, has wands instead of guns.

Idris Elba

Best witch coming through

Best way is to find the nearest widely available equivalent to guns in the setting, and the nearest equivalent to the gritty Western protag, and combine them.

Also viable is to use alchemy/artificing to make gunpowder weapons or something like them, but as says this can annoy because it might disrupt the 'tone' of the setting. Personally I think it's fair game if it isn't breaking the physics of the setting or relying on huge mountains of metagaming bullshit.

Less good is to just straight up push an expy of a Clint Eastwood or John Wayne character into the game with the minimum of changes to make it possible to actually exist in-universe. This can work well for pulp or otherwise weird games, but is shit for anything serious.

The most retarded answer is "lol guns don't make sense in medieval fantasy xD". Sadly there's always one tard who will roll this old nonsense out. Send them to wikipedia and laugh at them.

moron answer is to either just make him a wizard or someone with crossbows instead

correct answer is to take advantage of the fact that gunslinger and ronin/samurai are basically the exact same stock character and use that instead, because every fantasy setting has room for that kind of swordfighter

Aren't gunslingers just the archetype of a vagrant solitary fighter that lives by his own code and is deadly with their weapon of choice?

I'd make a swordsman that used to be vassal of a knight's house but got disowned and now walks the land. Give him a rapier or other one handed sword.

Or an old thief that fell out of that life after doing a good deed that ruined what little he had, but he could not NOT do. Give him throwing knives and a shortsword.

An old beastmaster that refused to continue serving a corrupt lord who was cruel to animals. He released those that he could and left on his own steed later.

Just make someone that wanders with a reason, I guess

>doesn't ride on a flying cannon sponge

So close to perfection.

>thinks swords and guns are the same
>calls others morons

Thanks for the laugh, retard.

>b-b-b-b-b-b-but muh archetypes!

Save it for your monthly writing class, shitlord.

They exist along side swordsmen and wizards just fine.

As part of the colonist in a new land many people have begun to spread out and stake a claim of their own.

Gunsmiths are just as revered and legendary as any weapon or armor smith with uniquely personalized weapons .

You'll see people in nice cloths carrying them as well as a sword and you'll see a barbarian with a pistol with the thigh bone of a bore cut out ahd slipped onto the barrel as a grisly decoration.

You go to the old wise man and he presses some bullets for you after he's meticulously weighed and measured the various powered regents in a mortar and pestel and warns you to be judicious with these bullets.

You see a rituals being done and a painted shaman scribing the name of a hated foe onto the bullet.

You see a madien tending to her families cattle and later covered in the blood of a monster she just shot through the chest with the rifle she had at her side.

It's not hard people.

A rogue who specializes in throwing knives/darts seems like it would be the closest approximation.

The correct answer to the OP is, make a Samurai. Any other opinion is just flat wrong.

"gunslinger" and "someone who fights with guns" aren't the same, the OP asked for "the typical gunslinger trope"

if he just meant "uses ranged weapons" than this entire thread is pointless in how obvious the answer is

what system has this?

if you mean how do you have guns in a fantasy setting make sense, guns are a weapon of the proletariat

being a martial fighter requires expensive gear and the supporting network of armorers and materials to work from there, being a wizard requires some sort of rare talent or study most people don't have access to

with some materials, the steps written down by someone else and a bit of practice you can make and use a gun in your own peasant home

The problem is that there are three primary gunslinger archetypes.

the warcraft RPG setting for 3.5 has both tech users and wizards, with a prestige class that lets you shoot spells out of your gun

Which are?

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

...

I'm pretty sure those are the same archetypes as samurai.

Sorcerer.

Why do many fucking players want to be gunslingers in D&D but nobody ever wants to play my wild&weird western games

I hate to go there, but I can't help but feel it's a form of special snowflakism, but from realismfags and historyfags rather than kitsune weeaboos

So...what kind of Knowledge (engineering) check would you have to make to craft a revolver in your general fantasy setting?

I want to introduce firearms into my GM's homebrew setting, but all sneaky like.

>but all sneaky - like
Expect your character to end up the pioneer of !Russian Roulette if he figures it out.

I think it dépends on what you like in the gunslinger trope. See what you really like in this archetype and go full speed on it. There will always be a way to do it. But generally, I would say that a fantasy gunslinger would be a Van Helsing archetype, ranged weapons, lots of alchemist stuffs to be able to respond to a lot of situation and create explosions (because explosions are cool). Add a hat and a cocky attitude and you got your guy.

Nah. If I want to play a western I want to go full blown simulation and play me some Aces and Eights. If we are playing Fantasy, I just want me some guns without feeling super op.

Nice

For simplicity, they're the Eastwood, the Wayne, and the Peckinpah. Generally speaking the Eastwood is distant but not removed from society and is morally ambiguous in thought if not always in action, the Wayne is a part of society and generally strives to act in ways that benefit others, the Peckinpah has no real attachment to society and behaves as he sees fit according to his desires.

The Lady from The Quick and the Dead is an Eastwood, Will Kane from High Noon is a Wayne, and The Stranger from High Plains Drifter is a Peckinpah.

>If we are playing Fantasy, I just want me some guns without feeling super op.

y tho

why can't you use a bow like a regular human bean

Setting aside the fact that in the real world it took something like 500 years from the first firearms to what's in your picture, you'd need several different knowledge checks and crafting checks to create a firearm. Then you'd need even more to create a cartridged bullet.

all three of those apply to samurai

there's a reason kurosawa took from westerns for his period pieces, and in turn had his taken for sphagetti westerns

Because the Revolver or level action rifle have become legendary in their own way. "The gun that conquered the West" sort of deal. These are guns that take on names onto themselves. You pass these guns from father to son as heirlooms. I don't know. I love firearms of all sorts, and nothing holds the same mystique as a Classic Revolver or Lever Action Rifle.

guns are cool, bows aren't

it's really not hard to understand

guns are also more interesting from a roleplaying perspective because they have more quirks. because of legolas and a general lack of care/autism in the rules most games treat a bow like a machine gun

>implying fantasy has to be medieval
Wild West fantasy, motherfuckers.

By the same metric you can equally take away from knights.

We've established nobody wants to play those though, they want to bring their guns to King Arthur's Court

Nobody wants to play Wild West Fantasy, if it is going to be Wild West we want it Simulation. Rolling for diseases, becoming a whore and going up the whore track. Panning for Gold. Getting gutshot and dying. Not being cursed by some uga booga.

Just like muh Dark Tower!

Yes, but his setting already has the most basic gun powder cannons. And it has magic.

So what kind of DC are we looking at? 30? 40? 50?

Because I'm patient, I can put in the time.

Sure but 'legendary=/=fantasy' and there's plenty of legendary swords n bows and shiet

you sound like one of those no good dirty rotten stinkin' 'realism' fags I mentioned earlier...

No need to bother replying tbqh, I'm sure this is just a matter of taste and not something an actual conversation can be had on. I like wild west games and full tacticool modern games where you pump vampires full of lead in a back alley, but I just really dislike guns (hell, even crossbows) when it comes to mythological antique fantasy. Krishna's bow and Excalibur not Muskets and .44 Caliber okay

Okay then, 400 years removed. In all seriousness, what kind of gun are you trying to make? If by revolver you mean "series of barrels attached to a stock, fired in sequence by a match" then you'll get a very different answer from, "rotating magazine firing self-primed metallic cartridges utilizing a double action system."

you can, gunfighter for america, knight errant for europe, samurai for japan, every culture has something like this

samurai/gunfighter have more in common though, what with a focus on a weapon that's not actually the most effective thing at the time but is still supper fucking rad and a bunch of other quirks (as well as being around at relatively the same timeframe, or at least having some overlap)

That sounds stupid as hell. Might as well bring a anime catgirls to the court, too.

>you sound like one of those no good dirty rotten stinkin' 'realism' fags I mentioned earlier...
less that and more that it's a lot easier to pimp a gun than a bow and in general guns can be justified to have more fun/roleplay uses besides "shoot arrow at man" and "shoot LOTS of arrows at man" and maybe you turn into green arrow and shoot a rope that has an arrow attached to it or something

but I bet you imagine that king arthur and his knights had full plate armor with fancy helmets right? because guns and that were contemporaries ("bulletproof" came from this era) in the 15-60 hundreds

Psh, only if you're an aforementioned dirty rotten stinkin' realism fag. There's the classic wuxia 'shoot an arrow into the sky, close to melee, arrow comes down 5 sword blows later and pierces your enemies skull as you've lead them to the landing point.' That's pretty fun in my mind.

Or 'pinning people to walls' with arrows. Sure if you go all no-magic and reductionist bows are lame but, like, so are swords.

So really, what are these 'fun roleplay uses' exclusive to guns AND ONLY GUNS that aren't just 'shoot bullet at man' or 'shoot LOTS of bullets at man' and maybe you turn into Punisher and shoot a bullet that explodes or something

I mean fine, you like guns, that's fine. What I don't get is why you like guns to the exclusion of other ranged weapons.

What exactly is going to be a more effective personal weapon at the time than a gun? The primary depiction of samurai is the Sengoku period, roughly 200-400 years prior to the Wild West. If you're placing them around the same timeframe then most of your samurai are going to be bureaucrats and courtiers and the rest military. That in turn brings up another difference, samurai were an educated, aristocratic class.

King Arthur was early medieval, centuries before full plate. And revolvers (the gunslinger's weapon of choice) was centuries after. Revolvers and Arthur weren't contemporaries by a long shot.

>What exactly is going to be a more effective personal weapon at the time than a gun?
The rifle is superior to the revolver, but the revolver is more iconic.

>The primary depiction of samurai is the Sengoku period,
It really isn't. The iconic pop culture samurai is the Edo period wandering swordsman. A Sengoku era Samurai would be armoured the fuck up and swinging around a club, spear or bow/musket.

Is the setting based on late 15th century or later technology, but before flintlock firearms? if so, then do it by carrying several wheel lock or dog lock pistols. Matchlock pistols, which existed earlier, present various problems for adventurers.

Is the setting based on pre-15th century technology? Then use short bows, thrown weapons, or slings.

> The primary depiction of samurai is the Sengoku period, roughly 200-400 years prior to the Wild West
But this is not the samurai that get compared to gunslingers. It's the post war era wandering ronin stuff that gets compared, it's the sword ban era stuff that gets compared, and that's relatively contemporary.

>What exactly is going to be a more effective personal weapon at the time than a gun?
Besides rifles? Fucking bows are more effective than guns for hundreds of years, guns simply have the advantage of being easier to train for and mass produce (it's kind of like a reverse katana, where the easier to produce spear shits all over it)

>King Arthur was early medieval, centuries before full plate.
This was my point. All sorts of fantasy stuff has knights wearing full plate even if it doesn't really match the intended timeframe, so why not bring other stuff from the full plate era like guns?

>And revolvers (the gunslinger's weapon of choice) was centuries after.
This is true, but I was talking about guns in general. Stuff like the arquebus and other flintlock weapons was the same time as full plate.

Nearly all depictions of King Arthur are all High Medieval or early Modern period due to the popularity of the stories in the style of chivalric romance. The Arthurian cycle is compilation of tales and folklore spanning upwards of 1000 years.

>Handsome, wandering man of little words who is incredibly deadly yet unassuming
That's a monk

>I want to use ranged weapons
>okay
>I want to use a ranged weapon that nobody else uses
>uh...
>I want to use a ranged weapon that makes flashes and booms so everyone can know that a cool guy with a cool weapon is around XDDD

Gunslingers are just evocation wizards who want to be young, manly, and modern, and not an old guy in a bathrobe. Fuck gunslinger players

I like guns in my fantasy, and arqubusiers are cool but I wouldn't call them gunslingers. The idea of the gunslinger is inextricably linked with revolvers and the American West. Just throwing in whatever leaves a bad taste in my mouth, like that guy that insists on playing a kitsune sorcerer in a game set during the Hundred Years War.

The wandering swordsman era was early Edo period, late 17th century, a good 150-200 years prior to gunslingers.

>So really, what are these 'fun roleplay uses' exclusive to guns AND ONLY GUNS that aren't just 'shoot bullet at man'

You can do all kinds of stuff with a bit of gunpowder. Guns produce heat and light, which again has all kinds of potential one off uses. You can do wacky stuff like put a knife on a gun or a gun in your knife. Because of their more complicated method of reloading you have to think about this handicap a lot more instead of just grabbing another arrow. You don't need to be really strong to be effective with a gun which leads to more potential character types that use them effectively and has potential interesting consequences for the overall world. Guns have a variety in designs and types that lead to more interesting diversity in potential murder objects while bows work on a sliding scale of "use the biggest bow my strength can handle"

What do bows have that guns don't? If you're going to talk about wuxia shit, don't act like you can't do that with guns too by say, reflecting your shot off a bunch of things to land the attack at the right time.

I prefer my fantasy settings with guns.

The guns are just stupid rare.

I like how Skullkickers did it.

wizard comes from a completely different place from gunslinger though, not the least of which is because wizardry is something that requires a ton of study and time and/or being a mutant

why are slings so rare in fantasy? I feel like a character with a sling and a bag of stones or lead pellets would make a great stand-in, and ammunition would be easy to come by.

Slings were the default weapon for halflings back in the day.

Use a matchlock or wheellock pistol? Surely you're not playing in a retarded nonsense setting where plate armour exists but primitive guns don't. Right?

You pick up 2e's Gothic Earth supplements and you roll a fucking gunslinger.

Look at how Fable 2 did it.

>knifegun
>wacky
'put a spike on it' is kinda bog-standard. And 'Light and Heat?' Use a torch!

Bows and swords can have a variety in designs too- your argument that they just get bigger and badder is just an effect of simple weapon charts from games with simple weapon subsystems. You could have thousands of little bonuses for bows too, just like guns- oh these are harpy feathers for the shafts, it's a dragon heartstring, it's living wood from a treant, this does blah blah blah.. Saying only guns can have finicky attachments and mechanical differences is just special casing them and blaming simple weapon rules on the weapons themselves.

nitpicks aside

I don't think you can convince me guns have anything bows don't except for one thing
>You don't need to be really strong to be effective with a gun which leads to more potential character types that use them effectively and has potential interesting consequences for the overall world.

You're dead on here, I agree entirely.

But this is where our incontrovertible difference in opinions shows up I think.

You think the consequences of guns are cool. I think the consequences are SHIT for fantasy*
*Or at least the fantasy I like running, obviously there are fantasy settings where guns are fine

Once people have guns and gunpowder, blowing shit up and hordes of effective but unskilled ranged fighters are things, and those things encourage conformity and the supremacy of intelligent bipeds. Yeah, you could come up with reasons why it ain't so, but at the end of the day, the introduction of gunpowder changes shit, and for a setting full of 'timeless ancient mystical wonder' 'Change' is not necessarily something desirable.

So I guess that's they way I see it. You want guns because you want a SETTING that has guns, just as a player who wants to play an elf wants a setting with elves. Which is why 'okay but you're the only person in the entire universe with a gun/pointy ears' probably isn't going to satisfy you.

I think it's because
1- Not cool. Seriously, you're throwing a rock, but with a cloth to help. Just throwing a rock might actually be cooler because of cavemen cred and 'lolol I killed it with a thrown rock'

2- mechanics. Generally slings do 1dASS damage and arrows and bows are easy to get and do like twice the damage as a sling.
2a- Magic slings might not even exist on random treasure tables

Came here to say this. You make a ronin OP.

Surely you're not playing in a retarded 'oh despite there being magic and gods and dragons and shit physics are exactly the same and technology and human culture inexplicably developed exactly as it did IRL' setting, right?

In real life rocks thrown from a sling are really really dangerous. A one pound bullet moving at 100 meters per second is not something to be taken lightly.

Well, I gotta go, hope my posts gave you insight into why some people think guns don't work in fantasy and wasn't just interpreted as REEEE I HATE GUNS REEEE

I know. In fact, I think slings do shit damage because Gygax probably got sick of people using nothing else- iirc back in the day all weapons did 1d6, so everyone used an iron spike because it was the cheapest possible 'weapon' until differing weapon dice got introduced.

Or just use the more typical medieval fantasy settings with guns in them.

Okay...don't.

Introducing guns can seriously upset a medieval setting, destroying some of the base assumptions made in worldbuilding and can have long reaching implications to a carefully crafted setting.

For instance, feudalism can't exist with guns. Why spend all that time and money on professional knights when you can just bum rush the enemy with massed musketeers. Hell, your position as an ad hoc mercenary makes no sense because they can just get an angry mob with some guns to squash any problem. I'm not even starting at what kind of nonsense you can do with True Strike and guns.

But if you're truly serious about making a gun then you need something like a DC 30 in Smithing extended test to forge the proper steels, A DC 35 in Smithing to get the shape right and a DC35 test in alchemy to make the powder with a DC 40 test in Knowledge (alchemy) to know what the formula actually is.

Mind, this is for a matchlock musket, not a flintlock or revolver. The DM is well within his rights to say that you don't have enough experience making firearms so the powder fizzles, the match goes out, the pan was insufficiently primed, the bullet wasn't wadded right so the shot is stuck in the barrel, the barrel has a slight bend in it so it can't hit a thing, or the gun explodes because you put too much powder in it. It took CENTURIES to get guns to even practical levels so trying to get something that works in a year or two is just not realistic.

I like this guy he made me laugh.

Please though nobody respond seriously.

>Feudalism can't exist without guns
Magic threats have to be solved with magic problems, that nobles have. God every time this argument gets made it gets fucking stupider. It's a fantasy setting. Saying a gun can't exist but a fucking wand of fireballs can is retarded, because both operate on the same level. Can your average peasant adhoc a musket together in his basement? No? Then there's no fucking problem.

>Why spend all that time and money on professional knights when you can just bum rush the enemy with massed musketeers.

The place of professional knights is replaced by superhumans in the feudal structure. It doesn't matter if you have massed muskets when the Lord is a Fifth Level Fighter who can take like ten shots before dying.

>Saying a gun can't exist but a fucking wand of fireballs can is retarded
he never said that, though

...

>Saying a gun can't exist but a fucking wand of fireballs can is retarded, because both operate on the same level.

Wand of fireballs- requires a hella powerful wizard and loads of gold, also can ONLY BE USED BY WIZARDS

Gun- requires a blacksmith

And if you're going with 'no wands are easy to make and anyone can use them' congratulations, guns no have no reason to ever be invented

>he never said that, though

Fuck I just bit b8 didn't I

But conveniently every other piece of technology aside from guns is the same, huh?

Really makes you think

>if i mockingly greentext a valid point it stops being a valid point!

thanks reddit :^)

3.5 had a feat for dual wielding wands.

>Day pdf
Wow. Nostalgiabomb

Deadlands Reloaded has Hexslingers that can engrave spells into bullets

>how would you adapt the knight errant into a fantasy setting?
Gunslingers are a fantasy trope you dingus

You take gunslingers, you give them guns, you put them into setting.

>This is a setting where you can get hit by a exploding cloud of fire, get hosed with acid, get chomped on by a fuckhuge dragon and live
>b-but muh guns are hyperrealistic instakill deathbuttons that instakill hyperrealistically

I want "guns are too powerful for fantasy setting" meme to die.

>just make guns instakill but they work 10% of the time lmao

I want this meme to die too. Yeah, good job, you gave save-or-die to more characters, clap clap clap. This doesn't solve anything.

>I want "guns are too powerful for fantasy setting" meme to die.

But how do you think most melee classes would do against gunslingers ?

Kill them with your metal stick? Swords and other pointy and/or heavy objects don't stop being deadly because guns exist

oh right, there's one more meme i want to die

>it's a world of high magic and heroic feats
>but fighter isn't allowed to be "unrealistic"