Reverse Engineering (3.5/Pathfinder)

[Morithias]

If there was a country that had guns, say Spain, and a country that didn't have guns say Japan.

And a Princess bought a musket from a travelling merchant.

What would the DC be for the PC's to reverse engineer it and build her another one?

Would it just be the standard "exotic weapon" DC 18? Or the Complex 20? Or even higher?

Eat Musket? (Sorry I couldn't resist, that Rusty Plush doll is just so cute)

Edit: If there is no RAW and it falls under DM fiat...well what would you suggest?

[only1doug]

I'd say that they have to use Craft: Gunsmith to construct a gun, a skill that they would start with 0 ranks in.

By examining a working gun the Player or NPC would be allowed access to the skill. There are dangers associated with badly made guns so you would need to consider quality ratings and misfire chances.

Iron Kingdoms RPG deals with a lot of these details, it might be worth checking out.

[docnessuno]

Duplicating a Renaissance firearm would be easy enough. The suggested method (craft: gunsmith) would work well, allowing even a PC with 0 ranks to do it by taking 20.

The 'hard' part is undoubtly replicating the gunpowder. Unless the characters have access to a recipe, it would ivolve lots of trial and error, many high DC (20-25) alchemy checks and would be prone to go BOOM quite often during the development process.

[Ashtagon]

You wouldn't be able to take 20 on the Craft/guns check, because there is a penalty for failure (loss of raw materials). Ditto (and how!) for Craft/alchemy and making the gunpowder.

If I were GMing that game, I'd decide ahead of time whether I wanted this to be possible at all, and tell the players ooc that it can't be done if that is my decision. Otherwise, it's literally going to break the campaign.

If I decided it is possible, rather than have the PCs do it personally, I'd make it into a quest to "recruit" a gunsmith. Better to make an adventure out of it than reduce such a major event to a set of dice rolls.