How would you design a gunpowder mage? What power would you give it?

It's based on a novel trilogy that seems kinda mandatory if you're interested in a gunpowder mage.

They use gunpowder as a mana source, basically, and can manipulate its direction of energy or detonate it at a distance.

Attached: Promise+of+Blood[1].jpg (500x500, 53K)

Hallmark traits of a Gunpowder Mage:

>Ability to use any firearm created regardless of origin of creation
>magically produce ammunition into firearms while magic is flowing
>ability to carry vast array of firearms in magical pocket dimension
>ability to swap to any of said firearms quickly and without difficulty
>can use your own explosions to propel yourself further in the same manner as flight
>EXPLOSIONS

Truly, Gunpowder Mages are a terrific sight to their enemies.

Attached: DOOM.jpg (435x244, 28K)

And then they shoot god in the face. Good job, God.

Yeah, but Kresimir isn't really a god, he's just a damn old wizard. And then it doesn't really work.

Shooting wizards is a specialty of powder mages, because a rifle with a headshot can kill them before they know to bring a sorcerous guard up. Ultimately all Taniel did was shoot a wizard with a surprise headshot, which is exactly what powder mages' specialty is.

The thing about incredibly old wizards is that if they say they're god, you believe them and start running because they didn't get that way by being easy to kill or sane.

A major thematic point of the books is how powder magic - a relatively recent discovery and obviously a fantastical equivalent of gunpowder in warfare - is coming to threaten more "traditional" forms of magic, not necessarily by being generally stronger, but by being really good at things older forms of magic are weak against. Shooting a "god," who is really just a wizard really strong in ye olden magic, is just the ultimate development of that theme, so I really think it gets more shit than it deserves for sounding kind of silly in an out-of-context summation. It's at least well-developed and foreshadowed rather than being le ebin power escalation.

Yes, and it ends up being empowered by one of angry-quiet-waifu's red stripe bullets too. Which, yes, are some as yet unknown stripe of magic somehow unrelated to chosen spells.

It's still hilarious. "Hey, let's go shoot god in the face."

I'm only a little bit into Dying Earth, but I haven't seen any spells that are used spur of the moment that require components.

Angry quiet waifu is a bit harder to defend, except to say that she still manages to be best girl, unlike that cheating whore Vlora.

It's pretty heavily implied in the third book that ka-poel is a savage equivalent of a predeii and just pretends to be young, though

it's never explained why she's mute, though, she just is

I remember that, but they never do anything with her magic except "it's not gunpowder, it's not chosen stuff, it's super duper savage".
see for the entire series

>they never do anything with her magic except
Taniel figures out later on, I don't remember if it's book two or three, that it's actually blood magic - the red stripes on her bullets were her blood.

other than that it's basically just hollywood voodoo though

When I say 'do anything with it' they don't even try to fit it in. I mean, they sort of put in most of the effort for the chosen stuff, less so for the powder mages, and then "eh, let's throw bitchtits in"

Oh, you mean development-wise. Eh, I can see where that's coming from, you're not wrong. Powder magic and privileged sorcery are both pretty well explained in how they work and what they do. Since it's a foreign magic few in the Nine even know exists I didn't think much of it at the time, but come to think of it, it's the only magic whose fundamental operating principles aren't really explained.

second series is probably going to elaborate on it more, though

It's possible the RPG will, too. You kinda have to have a solid explanation of a magic's operating principles if it's an RPG.

Make him a Warlock/Alchemist instead.

Attached: 1280px-Press_illustration_for_Act2_(scene3)_of_'Le_Freischütz'_at_the_Théâtre_Lyrique_1 (1280x997, 436K)

i just skimmed over the rpg and it seems to say pretty much nothing about bone-eyes

You have the pdf?

can you share?

i found it in the pdf share thread that's in the archive (not the alive one that's currently in the catalogue)

Witchpowder, or enchanted gunpowder, is a substance made by alchemy unique to the Bullet Mages. Because of it's wholly destructive nature, it was long restricted to Imperial Armies, used only in times of warfare when collateral damage was an acceptable outcome.

The powder used must be hand-crafted by the bullet mage themselves, and fired by a gun that the bullet mage has ritually attuned themselves to. The basic components of the witchpowder are like mundane gunpowder- saltpeter, charcoal, sulfur, but additional components must be infused via alchemy to charge the witchpowder with a unique effect.

Contrary to popular belief, the actual bullet is not of immediate consequence to the charge, though bullet mages have been known to use silver and cold iron for dealing with exotic vermin.

Unlike normal gunpowder, witchpowder has a quirk that is both blessing and a curse- it will not go off unless the Bullet Mage that crafted it is consciously firing the gun. Inconvenient for Bullet Mages who hoped to sell their wares, but a blessed thing when flames fail to cook off your own bullets.

The most common, and often first Infusion a Bullet Mage learns is Blazepowder, which infuses the bullet with a charge that, on impact, releases a blast of flame. The more powerful the Bullet Mage, the bigger the flame. An evolution of that formula is Bombpowder, which creates an explosive blast at the point of impact.

More sinister Bullet Mages aren't content to leave the field a mess of scattered organs and limbs. One particularly depraved individual created a powder formula that summoned dozens of angry, venomous spiders to swarm and bite everything in the area. This formula is lost to us, as after the first few uses of such a novel weapon, many bandits and bounty hunters put aside their differences to ensure that such a depraved weapon and the mind that made it were forever lost- a lesson best learned by any Bullet Mage who feels like getting creative with their murders.

For starters, I'd go with the route seen in Iron Kingdoms: it's not some kind of "elementalist of gunpowder", it's a gish-type tradition of arcane magic that combines gunslinging with arcane spellcasting. It's an uncommon archetype in fantasy, I known, but we have examples of this in both Warmachine (Cygnar Gun Mages) and in Deadlands Classic (the Hexslinger/Shootist).

Now, a lot of the "enchanted bullets" stuff would actually be spells, so the hexslinger's features should focus around passively augmenting its ability to combine gunplay with magic.

For a kneejerk opinion on this in D&D 5e, I'd most likely give it these traits:
>Level 2: Gain Proficiency with Pistols.
>Level 2: Can use Pistols as an Arcane Focus.
>Level 6: Can cast Touch spells as Ranged spells with the Range of a pistol shot by expending ammunition.
>Level 10: A variant of Extra Attacks which can only be used to cast a spell or shoot a pistol.
>Level 14: Can change the area of effect of a ranged spell to be a Line, Sphere or Cone.

first thing I thought of was this guy.

Attached: Cholmondeley.jpg (720x404, 28K)

I would give him the power of Smith & Wesson, Colt, Ruger, and Armalite.

MEIN SOHN

Link? Diving into those threads is diving into the mouth of madness.

...

gunpower mage like rifle mage or like mage with EXPLOSIONS?
Der Freischütz if first

youtube.com/watch?v=FeyP70LP92Y

Too bad it's trash

Too bad you're trash

keep youre hate boner in your pants guy, not everything needs to be a shit post about how you dont like DnD

>oh no my self worth is suffering because someone has different tastes

This is the only obvious route. Guns as a focus for the spells.

Attached: 7aac16ecfdf489f38ab40b2f718b501854e55859_hq.gif (540x304, 1.96M)