Gunslinger, Mysterious Stranger

[ThinkMinty]

So...Gunslinger. How does that one play, exactly? It looks boss, I just need further insight than the SRD provides.

I like the fluff of Mysterious Stranger, but unsure how the crunch plays out.

[Geddy2112]

Gunslingers are damage dealing monsters who really shine from levels 5-10. After that they still do work, but get outshined by casters(but so do all the other martial classes). Basically you get a gun, you load up on ranged feats(Point blank shot, deadly aim, etc) and you shoot things that don't comply.

Mysterious stranger loses out on gun training and quick clear, which is bad. However, focused aim is incredible, and so is clipping shot. Lucky makes up for your being charisma based instead of wisdom based, and once you get strangers fortune you don't need to worry about quick clear(or just carry multiple guns). Overall it crunches about the same. Really, the archtype is designed to be a dip to get guns into other classes with high charisma and low wisdom-basically your bards and paladins, although it serves oracles and sorcerers decently well.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Gunslingers make all other noncasters obsolete with their extreme damage dealing and accuracy, and whose power to shred through the hp of any foe is pretty much just limited by how much money you feel like spending (ie, you can sandbag the easy fights with practically free ammo and save the paper cartridge and special ammo cheese for tough fights to trivialize them, and still pay less than a flask throwing build while doing far more damage). They're mostly balanced by playing a game of "mother, may I?" with the DM over tech levels. At the lowest gun tech levels, they're almost balanced due to the misfire chances (not that those are a good means of balancing guns, but yeah) and the effort it takes to full attack with the guns. Higher tech levels mean almost no misfire chance, full attacking with TWO pistols is super easy and cheap, and you're really broken.

You get to attack touch AC from close range (though there's items to expand that range, don't worry!) and unlike any other ranged touch attack in the game, you can use Deadly Aim to add lots of damage and still only miss on a 1 'cause....touch AC. Pistols offer a way to TWF with this cheese. And then you get to add dex to damage, which is pretty nice since ranged characters tend to want dex... (Mysterious Stranger replaces the dex with charisma, iirc, and is thus weaker....unless they still haven't fixed the wording and it adds BOTH, in which case it's even more broken than normal gunslinger). You can also add sneak attack (unlike splash weapons), if you have any.
Using the right equipment to reload as a free action means being able to full attack with the above onslaught every single round.

True story: My friend played a gunslinger, but used a light crossbow instead, substituting the "gun" references to "crossbow" for deeds and other class features (in some cases making them useless if they address features/limits of a gun that crossbows don't have) and went along, using the much-maligned simple weapon and having to target full AC. And he was the only PC to survive the entire campaign w/o being killed and replaced by a new character and was consistently one of the best damage-dealers in the party (adding dex to his damage as still quite the boost). Just saying...

[legomaster00156]

True story: My friend played a gunslinger, but used a light crossbow instead, substituting the "gun" references to "crossbow" for deeds and other class features (in some cases making them useless if they address features/limits of a gun that crossbows don't have) and went along, using the much-maligned simple weapon and having to target full AC. And he was the only PC to survive the entire campaign w/o being killed and replaced by a new character and was consistently one of the best damage-dealers in the party (adding dex to his damage as still quite the boost). Just saying...
Basically the whole point of the Bolt Ace.

[Anlashok]

Gunslingers make all other noncasters obsolete with their extreme damage dealing and accuracy

With the caveat that it's heavily reliant on the DM being lenient or cooperative (especially on free action usage) and "make all other noncasters obsolete" really means that you're competitive with other DPR dominant builds while having virtually no out of combat efficacy (I mean I guess being a mysterious stranger gets you social skills, so there's that).

[grarrrg]

Mysterious stranger loses out on gun training

They still get Gun Training, but not until level 9. Still one of the most dip-friendly Gunslinger archetypes.