Why are GMs so against Gunslingers?

What about muskets? Even with all the feats piled on and archetype you need a move action to reload.

It's because GM's are too chicken shit to overrule the books
>but GM, the book says I can have a six shooter exploding sixes and fast reloads at level 1
>who gives a fuck. My setting has black powder. Better get good at measuring powder by feel while dodging blades.

It takes far too long for other classes to catch up to guns power, and once they surpass it, the guns damage is static, meaning they won't even use it.

So I generally bypass it, make it a one hit wonder with alot of miss fires. Also: take into the account that if guns are widely used, then those level one commoners will be turned to meat chunks unless they themselves are also gun slingers. At that point, we arnt running a fantasy game, we are running a magi-tech game.

>a lot of misfires
You are cancer

At 1d10 damage (no bonuses) with a -4 penalty unless you're proficient in it (exotic weapon) that's less than what you could get with many 2-handed martial weapons. Besides, the fighter doesn't get a -4 penalty to his next attack if he rolls a 1-2 on swinging his sword.

I don't care as I allow it in more modern fantasy settings. It's simply as good as other ranged options.
In settings with more ancient setting, I disallow its usage since it isn't thematic to the feel of the campaign and the setting.

In a game of pretends, who give a shit about realism and physics?
Maybe some retards, but thank God I don't play with those types. Its about the challenges, the antagonists and how my players tackle and handle them. Not paying taxes, taking a dump or operating a gun shop.

Reliable firearms changed the world.

As magic/alchemy can easily act as a force multiplier tor them as much as regular weapons it takes a ton of very specific ruling to not era-skip the moment they become anything but crazy novelties.

I mean for one, knights in armor logically stops being a thing when rifles enter the stage.

>tfw people add hand crossbows and repeating crossbows because muh tolkien and muh agincourt, but throw in some proper muskets and they get triggered even though it's the same fucking thing they're trying to emulate with crossbow types that would realistically be useless

>I don't care as I allow it in more modern fantasy settings. It's simply as good as other ranged options.

Yeah, in a D&D 4e game I played an Artificer with a rifle once. We literally just went 'Counts as Superior Crossbow' and moved on. Yes, the people with swords were doing more damage. I was still doing fine and didn't care about damage.

Knights in armor really, really loved pistols. Feudalism survived the appearance of guns for centuries, and while armor got lighter, it was still worn both as long range protection, status symbol, and more importantly melee protection

Also breechloading rifles were not a fucking gamechanger. The british rifle corps is seriously the most fucking overrated unit of the napoleonic wars and it was barely any better than everyone else's smoothbore-using skirmishers.

As a DM, I am not against guns or gunslingers.
But it does complicate things as far as tech-level in the setting goes.

Should I make:
>Realistic medieval guns that take 2-3 rds to reload, have shit range compared to a bow or crossbow, but deal massive damage?
That isn't fun to play
>Unrealistically advanced guns, in terms of firing-rate, which for some reason do no more damage than a crossbow or bow?
That breaks immersion / common sense.
>Unrealistically advanced guns in terms of setting tech-level, that ignore armor, deal mroe damage than bows or crossbows, have similar range, and a higher firing rate?
That breaks balance.

So, there it is. It presents a big fucking hurdle, because what people want from a gunslinger-character is a "cowboy" - but a cowboy transported to medieval times would rule the world. So it leaves it to the GM to balance combat mechanics, immersion in the setting and fun/feel of playing the character.

>breechloading
Meant muzzleloading. That said the first breechloaders were also in no way gamechangers. It took until the apparition of the bolt and lever actions for napoleonic sword & gun warfare to well and truly die.

>Also breechloading rifles were not a fucking gamechanger. The british rifle corps is seriously the most fucking overrated unit of the napoleonic wars and it was barely any better than everyone else's smoothbore-using skirmishers.

You lying fucker. How else could they have Sean Bean go multiple movies without dying if they were not that good?

Guns don't destroy a fantasy setting as much as most GMs are too lazy and/or stupid to do the work necessary to make guns work in a fantasy setting.

And I say that as a GM.

Note; The Napoleonic Wars - at which point medieval-style armour had been done away with, more than a century ago, for anything but ceremonial purposes.

People in full armor still existed though in modern times if you want to talk about realism. Knights they may not be, but they still fight and kill dressed out in full "plating".
And body armor is still a thing even with the invention of gunpowder.
The only thing that change is that most armor is concerned about negating piercing damage than slashing, that's all.

Early modern guns had the same range and reload time as a crossbow (practice ranges up to the 18th century were often 200 yards, the bullets were made to fit tighter which slowed down reload time but allowed significantly better accuracy, it's only the appearance of volley fire in the 17th century that led to armies pushing for 3-5 shots a minute).

If your autism can tolerate a heavy cranequin arbalest reloading in 6 seconds, it can tolerate a musket doing the same.

And at which points guns have been a mainstay of european warfare for 300 years, 400 if you count field artillery.

Also while cuirassier armor was annoying, heavy and expensive as fuck, it was anything but ceremonial and considered a lifesaver at 50 yards.

This. If a wheel-lock sporting character wants to play that, then they also better understand the kinematica of actually using one of those. Will it punch through the armor of a well equipped bad guy? Yes. Do you basically have your one shot? Yep.

Most people get too nerdy about their character and imagine all kinds of improbable shit their character could do that would basically be impossible or so improbable as to be a once in a campaign kinda thing.

Since when does ancient crossbow and bows fire a arrow in 6 second?
You already forgo common sense.

>I mean for one, knights in armor logically stops being a thing when rifles enter the stage.

hardly. Thick plates can still realistically stop a bullet unless they're modern rifle bullets. Ned Kelley from the 1880s even had to be shot in the legs since the guns can't penetrate his protection of what it appears to be a suit of makeshift plate armour

>inb4 someone posts a youtube of a 20 pound bow being loosed weakly 10 times in a minute
Reminder that english military manuals considered it unlikely that a full contingent of archers could keep up the beating up of long term campaigning with remotely anywhere near the effectiveness of an equally sized troop of musketeers. This is the nation that desperately clung to the warbow even past the point where it could pierce harness when horse archer nomads were already taking to firearms like pigs in shit.

The major problem is that what people want from a "Gunslinger" is 19th-Century guns. Accurate riflers, repeating revolvers, an occasional blunderbuss/shotgun.

What a "gunslinger" should be in a medieval setting is a dude with 2-3 single shot pistols, that take too long to reload during a fight, and one musket or similar, that ought to be high-dmaage, but slower to reload than a crossbow.

But then again, going for realism, Any plate armour should practically ignore regular arrows and bolts.

Because when firearms became something a single person could effectively use in battle only retards continued using swords and armour.

If they're good then they make bows and crossbows useless, and that's bad.
If they're bad then nobody will want to use them and people will be mad, and that's bad.
I am yet to see them done well. I don't even know what I'd consider "done well".
Also people who want to use them tend to be super edgy types who'd be using a katana otherwise.

>slower to reload than a crossbow.
That was literally never the case.

A crossbow that was anywhere nearly as powerful or long ranged as a musket took a full minute to reload, even the most annoying muzzle loader to reload ever, the long rifle, took half that long.

> Having explosives available
> Not wanting to explode shit

Do you even PC?

>If they're good then they make bows and crossbows useless, and that's bad.
>better have a hand crossbow because I get triggered otherwise
I bet you also believe knights didn't use crossbows or guns.

Im not sure what you mean by "early modern" - early pistols were certainly highly inaccurate, as both the burn-rate of black powder and the machining of barrels was highly unreliable before the industrial revolution.
But again, the most modern gun-examples that you could really defend in terms of "d&d"-tech level is maybe 17th-centure early rifles and muskets. That could be fun, but it won't include precision sniping, or repeating revolvers, which is what players want.

I have no idea what you're talking about.
I'm not talking about accuracy or realism or whatever, I don't care for it.
I just mean that if you add guns to D&D, they will either be better or worse than the existing ranged options.
Although I suppose they could be identical, but then what's the point?

Early modern is 1500-1800

And crossbows were no more accurate than blackpowder guns, which could easily manage "minute of man" sniping. Although the best assassination method was to get up close and personal with a pistol.

>but then what's the point?
Having thematically appropriate gear for your musketeer and swashbuckler type characters without reskinning them as fucking crossbows because the thought of black powder triggers the muh Tolkien autists.

The kind of ships, dress and attitude a lot of the vanilla D&D settings use is already 1500s at the earliest.

If one of my players wanted to do that then I'd just let them use hand crossbow stats for it.
Also,
>worrying about historical accuracy in D&D now that the official setting and content has present day attitudes towards race, gender and sexuality

Because they destroy the mage's tyranny on the setting and introduce a mage>martial>gunslinger rock>paper>scissors dynamic.
Guns and swords co-existed for a very long time. And magic missile casting motherfuckers have insecurity issues when casting "headshot" takes a fraction of a second and looks much cooler.

>Why are GMs so against Gunslingers?
Having a class based around a single weapon/technique is usually bad. See the PF Gunslinger which is a one-trick pony, or the Cavalier of the same school.

>Do firearms really destroy fantasy settings?
Only if the GM is uneducated or the players think that gunpowder = instant mass pike&shot formations.

Early gunpowder was best used as a siege weapon, bombards and gunpowder charges being able to reduce castle walls to rubble better than a trebuchet. It took a while though before they developed wheeled carriages to give cannons proper move-ability though.

Early handguns were a bit rubbish until the arquebus. People meme that these guns were some sort of knight-killing armor-piercing magic weapon, but the arquebus existed alongside crossbows which were similar in power, similar in range, better in accuracy, and easier to reload. The downside was that these crossbows were more expensive, while matchlock guns were cheaper to make and easier to train with. So they took off because it was easier for Europeans to field mass forces with projectile weapons in a short amount of time. It wasn't until the flintlock musket, around the 17th century, which is three centuries after the first cannons were used in Europe during the 14th century.

Derp. Meant to add *It wasn't until the flintlock musket that gunpowder weapons actually became far better than any other ranged weapon that could be fielded.

Pathfinders Psionic ranger, the Marksman, has a gun archetype.

I got volley combat style banned. Theortical damage at Level 13 was somewhere in the 1300's. Thats assuming I crit every shot. But I did do +22 per shot anyways. I had 7 shots a round.

I'm not super familiar with the marksmen, but.
>Theortical damage at Level 13 was somewhere in the 1300's. That's assuming I crit every shot
That's a rather large assumption, even if you use the power that expands your crit range.

How are you even getting seven attacks
3 from a Level 1 full attack
+1 Rapid Shot
+1 Expend Psi Focus for an extra shot.

Two Weapon fighting?

It's kinda funny since 2e ravenloft had Pistoleer as an all-classes-allowed kit.

The sample pistoleers in that book? A couple of mages who wanted a way to cast headshot without blowing their spell slots on MM.

Thing is, most creatures past level 3 have so much HP that 1d10+(between 1-9) per attack is fuck all compared to other classes.

People are just pissed at their /k/ommando friends chimping out like monkeys when anything related to guns are bought out at the table due to the popularity of quick shot fps.

So, they removed them as a middle finger to them.
As usual, it just take one asshole to ruin things for everyone. Admittedly in this case, there are a lot of those assholes.

>2e ravenloft had Pistoleer as an all-classes-allowed kit.
What book's that in? It's not Domains of Dread

I just want to play in a setting where guns and fantasy to co-exist.

>tfw you will never play a Dark Tower game

Champions of the Mist, it's a small softcover splat with a couple cool ideas for kit (including a potion-specialist caster that works well for NPC witches, kits for some of the secret societies mentioned in DoD, and a couple of universal kits like survivor, accursed, pistoleer and spiritualist)

Ravenloft is also generally higher tech level than normal AD&D.

Than AD&D, sure. But C&T still had a full slate of guns from match to flintlocks.

3e is higher tech than AD&D across the board and the guns in WotC editions still took huge nerfs while the devs suddenly started trying to shove in crossbows for everything that would have been a firearm (Hand Crossbows in 2e were completely fucking useless except as a poison delivery mechanism).

Dual revolvers. Level 13. Augment Bolt as hard as you can. Augment Prescience Offensive as hard as you can. Use combat style abilty to expend psionic focus for an additional attack.

They don't, really.

Fantasy settings can use whatever time period as a reference point, not just early medieval age. My setting's civilisations are all either in Renaissance or very late medieval age transitioning into it. One nations does exactly what said and uses them extensively; others have followed suit, at least in siege and naval warfare.

The matchlock musket dominated crossbows entirely. The arquebus was also not significantly less expensive, was fielded predominantly in the 16th century already, and the crossbow was not a sniper weapon.

knights co-existed alongside guns for hundreds of years
and even if guns dominate setpiece battles, the small scale at which most RPGS have (5v5, 3v3, rarely more than a dozen goons at any moment) would make swords and bows far more effective

You know, I let my players once try that. It quickly escalated into an arms race. BETWEEN THE PCs. Firearms are a terrible place because no one wants a gun that does maybe crossbow damage, or they don't want to accept that yes, reloading will take 6 seconds. It simply wasn't worth the headache.

This is your answer OP, it's because the average /tg player goes armchair historian and thinks guns are point and click murder tools

Speaking of crossbows - how viable is the idea of a nation;s elite military using heavy crossbows as their main weapon? Assuming the nation was a shitland for decades before its not!English Civil War that saw a new dynasty come to power and with it - systemic reform and not!New Model Army? It still uses cannons on ships and is beginning to use them for siege warfare.

At the same time, a rival nation (although it does not escalate to war just yet, just the usual tension between two strong forces) is exclusively using gunpowder weaponry.

as far as the napoleonic wars, people complained that it "took a mans weight in musket balls" to kill your target

i don't get why there has to be some sort of special snowflake class for gun users when the Fighter fits that very well since they're designed to be proficient in all weapons, even bows can be used by them.

>how viable is the idea of a nation;s elite military using heavy crossbows as their main weapon?

Extremely if you base your game on Dominions late era.

It's O.K. Veeky Forums, I still love you even if you are retarded.

Firearm options:
1) A feat gives +1 Dex, makes you proficient in all firearms, proficient in making your own black powder, and prevents guns you use from exploding on a natural 1
2) A fighting style available to fighters and rangers makes them proficient in firearms and prevents explosions on a natural 1
3) An invocation warlocks can learn replicates the effects of the fighting style in #2
4) A rogue archetype grants proficiency in firearms, prevents explosions on a natural 1, allows the rogue to use their Cunning Action to reload a firearm, and gives them various trick shots as class abilities.
5) The madman Jesse Eight-Fingers has combined knowledge of The Way, alchemy, and even stranger sciences. He might be willing to part with a magic firearm--attuning with it prevents it from exploding on a natural 1.

Firearms come in two major types: sidearms and longarms. Both require an action to load, both require an attack to fire, both will explode in the user's hands, dealing 2d10 damage, on a natural 1.

The sidearm is one-handed and deals 1d10+Dex, the longarm is two-handed, heavy, and deals 2d10+Dex. If you have the Extra Attack class feature you may draw as many sidearms in a turn as you have attacks.

This is also generally true of arrows but RPGs still stat them as point and shoot murder tools.

If gunpowder doesn't exist sure. If it does it starts getting iffy.

Like, England was always desperately short in saltpeter, gunpowder reached a truly absurd 18d per musket shot during some phases of the civil war and they still never switched back to either bows or crossbows as a mainstay. Longbow units were considered unfit for anything but the most backwater of militia units.

>misfires are explosions
literally retarded

in DnD, arrows are about as deadly as swords

The main argument I present when worldbuilding is that cutting edge gun technology and early rifling is a know-how of the other rival nation which is very protective of it - whatever "authentic" firearms the Crossbow nation got, it was salvaged from proxies. So they have to R&D it themselves in a highly federalised empire with the new empress maintaining support of local nobility by further federalisation - not the best environment for mass replacement of old weaponry with guns. Especially considering that the nation is not industrialised and is just now entering Renaissance.

The issue I have with gunslingers is that their class is based around one weapon that you can't really find anywhere else. No ancient temple has a flaming revolver in it. And they break really easily and if the gunslinger doesn't have a gun he is fucked until he can fix it.

>R&D
This isn't how early modern research works (and debatably this isn't even how modern research works outside of cliches like the Manhattan project, fundamental research is almost always ultimately independent of what the brass expects). There is no R&D, there is no central research, there is no federal budget. These conceptions of war are mid-late 19th century at the earliest.

Have any of you guys in this thread played Mount and Blade? Specifically With Fire and Sword.

I found the way firearms were done in that to be fantastic, even if the game lacked polish overall.
Sure, for infantry, pike and shot inevitably ended up ruling the battlefield. But the thing is, pike and shot blobs are not that hard to pick apart with pistol cavalry using good timing or a dense enough wave of shitty infantry followed closely by heavy swordsmen.

But the thing I liked most about firearms wasn't how they played out in a full scale battle. What I liked was playing a character with two pistols and a sabre and fighting in the swirling melee, doing most of the work with the sabre, but always taking the chance to pull out a pistol and put a lead ball through a dangerous looking opponent's face at point-blank range. There really is nothing better than blocking the guy's blow, finishing him with the sabre, pulling out your pistol, shooting the guy behind him, then spinning on the spot, pulling out the second pistol, and shooting the guy who was about to bring a massive greatsword down on your head. But the thing is, there is absolutely no way whatsoever that you can reload those pistols in a proper melee. You're far too vulnerable and it takes far too long. So while guns are pretty much a guaranteed 1-shot-kill at very close range, you really only have one shot per pistol per fight. And they're pretty damn inaccurate too, so they're pretty useless against individual enemies at anything but close range.

They also up the stakes of combat dramatically and I like that. In the medieval Mount and Blade Warband, you, alone, in plate, with a good shield, on an armoured horse, can easily wipe out an entire squad of archers without really taking damage, and the entirety of your tactics will be pretty much just
>charge
>slash
>repeat
Whereas in WFaS with the threat of firearms you have to very carefully time your incursions into effective musket range.

Interesting point - I will be honest, I've never quite went into too much detail about it, although I do understand that in an early modern kingdom there won't be a centre-directed research programme (also note that I mention heavy federalisation).

How would it happen then? Down to top? Independent inventors presenting their ideas to the leaders?

First, these are primitive firearms that mostly pop up in the hands of desperate or foolhardy NPCs. Second, any Variant Human, or anyone in one of four different classes can ignore that drawback by level 3 at the latest without having to skip an ASI.

While we're on the subject, I'm working on a setting based on the Thirty Year's War and the greater world at the time. What system would work well for it?

>i don't get why there has to be some sort of special snowflake class for [insert weapon] users when the Fighter fits that very well since they're designed to be proficient in all weapons, even bows can be used by them.

>even if the game lacked polish overall

What are you talking about, it had a lot of polish?

Most of the time it would be down to top. You'd probably have a smattering or troops belonging to various nobles and warlords mixed in with the actual royal or imperial army, sometimes not particularly officially.

A lot of new developments would be fielded as a pet project of a particular unit commander; a lot of soldiers in particularly wealthy units (especially cavalry) actually brought their own gear so long as it fit some expectations (e.g. a swedish cavalryman was expected to show up with a brace of pistols and a rapier). The first bayonets were originally a hunting tool to be able to spear boars and bears after shooting them; the socket was probably a state-directed development in the 18th century (which is when these start to be a thing in Europe mostly, with things like artillery standardization and shit), the first flintlock was an independent development that caught the eye of a unit commander.

The first pistol cavalry troops were german mercenaries in the early 16th century, it then caught on and even royal units starting fielding them.

Colonels had a lot of leeway in how to kit their men, especially the ones who actually owned their regiment.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess has a bunch of modules set in the 1600s, a few against the backdrop of the thirty years war, so maybe look at that?

It's pretty much just cleaned up basic tho, so keep that in mind

I wouldn't say it's absolutely amazing but I was fond of A Mighty Fortress, which was the AD&D supplement for the period.

>You'd probably have a smattering or troops belonging to various nobles and warlords mixed in with the actual royal or imperial army
Yes, this is how it works in the kingdom. The Imperial army - The Firestarters - are there only to impose the capital's will and maintain stability since even years later the old dynasty's loyalists still cling to power. Local lords meanwhile have their own armies, levied by the capital in times of war +not!Magdeburg Law levies from Free Cities.

This is extremely useful information user, you have my thanks.

Would you care to share more common pitfalls/advice about building a Renaissance setting?

>sniper weapon
wtf does that even mean?

For me it's a simple reason but not the usual "gunpowder ruined it!"

Any game I've ever ran that had an Archer was the same sort of character. He had trick arrows or arrows for the occassion. One might have a little container full of slippery slidey grease that could trip the enemy up, one shattered like glass and made a lot of noise to distract guards, some were pitch soaked and burst into flame. It's always cool seeing the character adapt his items to suit a purpose. The two times we had a Gunslinger, he wanted to do sort of the same thing but instead of different arrows, it was different guns. A gun for shooting Undead! A gun for shooting people! This gun shoots dinosaurs better! It ended up with him having a dozen or so pistols hanging from him because it was super duper important that he use quick draw talents to change guns on the fly instead of changing types of ammunition so he could cover himself and the party in a thick cloud of smoke that nobody could see into or out of.

It probably could work, maybe my player is just a wally.

kek
go away Carlos
Fucking Polish Hussars honestly broke how well-done firearms were in that game. They take like 3-4 shots to kill.

/thread

Mostly avoid laying on the whig history too thick
Witch hunts were mostly common in border areas and protestant areas.
If you have a !not-Catholic church, making it too monolithic isn't the best idea, there were actually a lot of internal disagreements during the period and it holding together was a mix of political miracles. The upper ranks being corrupt and heavily tilted towards the nobility though? Mostly true, but also largely true in protestant churches (moreso even in some cases).
Not everything is misery and desolation, but you're still at the tail end of the existence of public baths in western Europe. Mentalities are also incredibly all over the place, renaissance humanism covers a surprisingly broad swathe of mentalities, some of which would seem incredibly modern when looked at closely.
Not every peasant is a superstitious illiterate or a poor dirt farmer, serfdom in western europe is mostly becoming vestigial at this point.

Also it's very easy to over-idealize your favorite country. Poland was still a serfdom-happy shithole with an inflated noble class, England was still a third rate backwater, France was still largely a feudal mess with increasingly absolutist kings whose means of keeping control gradually crippled the country, Spain, Russia and Turkey were not necessarily the great Satan (depending on who you favor) but were pretty bad too. Pick your poison when designing shit.

Can someone explain this to me? Because it seems to me that a unit of longbow men could fuck up a bunch of unarmoured line infantry, but I am not a clever man.

Muskets were superior to crossbows, but the matchlock arquebus could be outmatched by the very best late-period crossbows. These crossbows though were, as pointed out, much more expensive than an arquebus because it had more complicated mechanisms and parts. The musket would develop shortly after which would put the need for crossbows to rest.

Inb4 people try and argue that cuiriassers wore armour for protection from guns

>different guns
Just tell the player to prepare different ammo pouches ffs. Normal lead apostles, silver apostles, cold iron apostles.

Real life wasn't like shogun total war where archers can out range rifles

>unarmored
They still wore heavy leather and padded jacks at the minimum, with heavy troops still in breastplate and half-plate that longbows would struggle with.

The warbow requires a person at always peak condition to function at peak. The gun requires a person in mediocre condition to shoot. A warbow can also not be shot like these youtubers who shoot 12 times a minute using dinky ass 20 pounder bows, and their range isn't significantly better.

An arrow also has way, way less kinetic energy than an early musket and is mostly only useful if incredibly accurate (not that much of a given) or as massed indirect fire (which is entirely countered by cannon).

Isn't that true for all FANTASY characters? Like wizards whole deal is fucking up the very fabric of reality.

Also for people who want guns in 5e without committing suicide trying to figure out rules and who think the DMG stats are retarded: just reskin crossbows, there, voila. Crossbows should also not fucking reload in 6 seconds, and bows shooting at full power every six seconds is equally debatable.

What triggered me about that game is that bows and arrows are so vastly superior to firearms. Shields too - just get a handful of the best Polish mercenaries with shields and swords, and plow through the enemy like paper.

>Fucking Polish Hussars honestly broke how well-done firearms were in that game. They take like 3-4 shots to kill.
Or one arrow.

>No ancient temple has a flaming revolver in it.
Why not?

Yeah. There's a reason why modern soldiers wear "plate carriers" where either a ceramic or a steel plate is used (often the preference of the soldier) offering similar levels of protection.