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View Full Version : D&D 5e/Next Be a Better Gunslinger - Ongoing Project v0.5 with PDF [PEACH]



Wufflykins
2017-03-05, 03:43 PM
Continuing my work on this project (going on six months now), I've almost reached a point where it'll be 'done'.

A work in progress but I need the unbiased eye of you fine folks to help me fine tune it for wider use. This will be an ongoing project to produce a seamless and quality Gunslinger class that any DM should feel comfortable allowing at the table.

Most of the class has been refined in a clean PDF at the first link below; containing three of the four planned archetypes. The core design philosophy behind this is meant to align with 5e core principles; streamlined and (hopefully) exciting mechanics that minimize trivial bonuses, unnecessary rolling. Balance is a concern, but not my primary worry at this point (I think it's pretty close at this anyway). Right now I need help getting more of what YOU as players and DMs want to see into the class.

So drop a line here, tell me what you like and what you don't. Is there something here that shouldn't be, or is there something missing that should be here? Especially if you think a mechanic is wonky or out of place; if you want to comment on balance I urge you to also think of something to say about flavour, theme or mechanics from a non-balance perspective (as that's primarily what I'm focus on right now).

I'd also love some suggestions for Archetypes - I have one left to go:

Hexgun/Freikugel/Technomancer - A warlock flavoured spell 'slinger that mixes magic and gunslingers; tinkers and arcanists the lot of them.

UPDATE v0.6 - The Stalker has had a rework - gaining some flavour of it's own that lets it fall more into the 'Ranger/Rogue' idea I've had of it since it's inception!

Cheers!

-Wufflykins

Be a Better Gunslinger v0.5 DRAFT PDF MIRROR (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7daZTulvAxzaHBUOUZxdkVmQlU)


P.S. The old version in text with is below, I will try keep it updated.

Be a Better Gunslinger v0.1 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?482568-PEACH-5e-Gunslinger-Class-Ongoing-Project&p=20582034)

Nimlouth
2017-03-05, 08:07 PM
uhm... the links are broken m8 xD

Lonely Tylenol
2017-03-05, 08:46 PM
Seconded. The 0.2 link has error 429; your account has generated too much traffic and has been disabled. The 0.5 link has error 404.

Maybe consider a shareable link on a Google Doc?

Nimlouth
2017-03-05, 09:02 PM
Maybe consider a shareable link on a Google Doc?

This :smallsmile:

Wufflykins
2017-03-05, 09:24 PM
Right, my Dropbox got overloaded when I shared it on the 5e facebook group. Oops!

And the other link was broken by my sheer incompetence. The new link should work and I've taken down the other one for now until Dropbox stops having a hissy fit.

Lonely Tylenol
2017-03-06, 05:23 AM
Wow! The formatting and accompanying artwork is amazing! Did you use a program to make this, or do you have a specific method? Would you be willing to share?

I'm only going to comment on things that cause specific concerns for me:

Fighting Style:
RAW, Marksman and Archery stack for firearms. This creates concerns with the Fighter dip, as well as with a Ranger dip, as three levels out of Gunslinger gets you two fighting styles that net you a +3 bonus and other miscellaneous benefits, in addition to the +2 you get from Marksman after the fact. If you don't want to spend that type of level investment, a single Fighter dip for Archery still gets you Marksman and Archery, which is a +4 bonus to hit with firearms in the first two available levels. This is too much. There's no reason to have a unique Fighting Style entry for Marksman when Archery already exists, and the same for Gunslinger with Close Quarter Shooter (Light, Dark, Underdark!), especially since with the exception of "firearm" instead of "ranged weapon," they are identical.

I feel like Desperado and Avant Garde don't both need to exist, but I suppose they each fill specific enough niches to merit keeping. I feel like giving bonus action attacks on fighting styles is still a bit much, however.

Extra Attack:
Too strong. Full stop. You mean to tell me you have a class which utilizes ranged weapons more powerful than the default, your choice of fighting style that gains +2 to hit or bonus action shots, and utilizes Sharpshooter much better than the average ranged attacker, and it gets three weapon attacks in its attack action by fifth level? Four weapon attacks by eleventh level? The entire concept of the feature is advanced too quickly: Fighters get a fourth attack within their Attack action as a capstone, literally their only 20th-level feature and expected to be worth taking Fighter to the very end to get, and Gunslinger gets it for their signature weapon, which many of their core features work towards increasing the damage efficiency of, nine levels earlier. Using Grit, yes, but refreshing Grit more often as a consequence, thanks to more attacks equaling more crit opportunities. It doesn't even use your bonus action, either, so if you have a bonus action attack through a Fighting Style or some other option, you just get five attacks per round per use of a short rest recovery resource. On the class that makes the best use of ranged -5/+10 even without it.

You should probably scale it back significantly, to the point where you can't spend a grit point to gain a third attack until 11th level (the usual breakpoint), OR you have to spend your bonus action to gain the extra attacks via grit expenditure, which keeps it more in line, at least, with the Monk's Flurry of Blows, (except not really, because Monks don't get built-in +2 to hit and synergy with a -5/+10 feat). As is, though, it's problematic.

The rest of the core features are cherry. As for the archetypes...

Mysterious Stranger - Gun Tank:
Gunslinger doesn't have proficiency in heavy armor, and Mysterious Stranger doesn't give it, so it's counter-intuitive for the Gun Tank feature to specify that it works in heavy armor. Either the Mysterious Stranger should give heavy armor proficiency (and be balanced around this point a little more), or Gun Tank should only work with medium armor.

Mysterious Stranger - Wild Card:
RAW, Wild Card's reaction attack doesn't work, because you've spent your reaction to use Gunslinger Dodge. It also seems like there are just too many attacks being loaded into different abilities, so maybe this isn't a bad thing; you can just remove the second portion completely, and tie a ribbon on it instead.

Mysterious Stranger - Fast as Lightning:
You're telling me I can make four weapon attacks by level eleven... Before my first round of combat? And then make four more on the first round? That's ridiculous. Scrap the one-level Fighter dip; take two levels of revised Ranger, get Archery fighting style with the new Ranger's advantage on initiative rolls and advantage on all attack rolls on people who haven't acted yet, nova on your grit and get eight Sharpshooter attacks with advantage and +4 from fighting styles before your opponent acts (you have proficiency and advantage on initiative rolls, which use your primary attack stat). Absolutely bonkers.

I think too many features both give extra attacks, and use grit to give extra attacks. This seems like the sort of thing where it would be a lot more reasonable if you could spend 1 grit to get a single weapon attack with a firearm, but have advantage on the attack roll, or something like that. That way you aren't just getting the crazy nova I described up above.

Blackpowder Savant:
Nooooooope

There are too many pluses going on for 5e at this point. Dip Fighter 1 or Ranger 2 gives this archetype a net +5 to hit with Gunslinger, or +4 and a bonus action firearm attack with the other styles. As long as Archery and Marksman both exist, it's too much.

Diehard:
Should probably be a long rest recovery, given how clutch it is? At the same time, I also feel like it probably shouldn't be coming up every short rest at our games...

Stalker - Bonus Proficiencies/Natural Explorer:
OK, Ranger features and proficiencies and entry-level features... So if I want to dip Ranger for all its front-loaded goodness, don't go Stalker.

Rest of the features in Stalker are good; this is a decent, if heavily Ranger-y, subclass.

Peacemaker - Divine Armaments:
The Peacemaker class on the whole is really cool! I know these features are likely heavily inspired by the Pathfinder equivalents (Holy Gun, I believe?), but this gunslinger archetype evokes a lot of cool imagery from pop culture for me, particularly Nicholas D. Wolfwood (Trigun) and the MacManus brothers (Boondock Saints).

However, this feature is either lacking a critical word, or is simply too stacked with riders.

Is it supposed to be, "Whenever you choose to smite with a bonded weaopn, you can instead apply the benefits of one of your Divine Armaments to that shot?" Because as-written, you deal smite damage, and then in addition to that, you deal the rider damage and CC effect of the specific armament. This means you should absolutely be using the armament every time, instead of making strategic choices, like "do I want more damage, or do I want the slowing effect of my Chains of Penance?" It's also incongruous with the Paladin, which serves as inspiration for this, which can use a smiting spell (such as Branding Smite) alongside its Divine Smite feature, but can't do both using the same spell slot (it's gotta cast the spell and also expend a different spell slot for Divine Smite).

All in all, it looks like a fun and interesting class, and the formatting and design is impeccable. Bonus points for the credits page, since the presentation really carries it. But there are too many attacks and too many bonuses coming from too many places. I don't understand why this class gets four attacks per Attack action at level 11, plus possible bonus action attacks from multiple sources, plus possible reaction attacks, plus possible attacks (or attack actions) that aren't actually actions that happen on your initiative. On a class that benefits from Sharpshooter greatly, and can double up on +2 bonus Fighting Styles (thanks to its own manufactured, but otherwise identical to Archery, fighting style) for insane to-hit bonuses. With a nova resource that has a short rest recovery, 1+ability mod uses within that short rest, and recovers itself if your nova crits or kills, meaning using the nova gets you more novas. All the extra attacks that happen outside your Attack Action, which are either tied to your other bonus action/reaction options or just things that explode action economy too freely, really turn me off from the class, because I know if I allowed it in my game, I'd have to upscale encounters specifically so the Gunslinger (and specifically the Mysterious Stranger) doesn't just always go first, always nova in the first round, and always kill everything.

All that said, would you be willing to return critique my Expanded Inspiration Uses (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?517317-WIP-PEACH-Expanded-Inspiration-Uses&p=21773062)? :smallsmile:

Wufflykins
2017-03-06, 06:20 AM
Fighting Style:
Your point about Marksman and Archery is wrong - there's a little sentence in the text: 'Fighting styles from other classes that apply to ranged weapon attacks do not apply to firearms.' That's it. Munchkin dreams officially crushed at least from that angle.

Avante-Garde I feel is necessary to field the 'Sword and Pistol or Musket and Bayonet' trope - one I happen to be very fond of.

As for the layout? I'm a part time photographer with a decent command of Photoshop - I downloaded some .psd templates from Walrock Homebrew (Link in the credits) and used them to make this.

Extra Attack:
I've seen this point before - but with each attack your misfire chance increases as well - even with a Misfire 1 value with 5 attacks you've got a ~23% chance of losing an entire action (and thus your bonus action attack as well) or a grit point and a bonus action. With a Misfire 2 weapon (A pepperbox pistol for example which is the only weapon that'll let you get off 4+ rounds without reloading) over the course of 5 attacks accumulates a 40% chance to misfire!

Remembering that unless you've got a Pepperbox (Expensive and in many realms inaccessible - there's a point about that in the gear section). You're reloading your gun (using an attack or bonus action) after every shot or second shot (with double barrel), which burns holes in your action economy something fierce.

I made a very conscious design choice to limit the options that mitigate the action drain that comes with either needing to reload or dealing with misfires. The only two examples are 'Quick Clear' which drains your precious grit - crits don't come often and rarely when you hope and the Peacemaker's Divine Bond (Ignore up to 5 misfires per day - they however don't have quite the same number of attacks or punch that the other archetypes have).

I will conceed - if you have a session where you're rolling really well the Gunslinger will seem like a MONSTER.

But.

If you roll poorly god help you because those misfires will crush you (I've had this happen in the playtests). It's worth mentioning at this point that if you screw up the tinkering check in combat you CANT recover the weapon until your next short rest with another check, and if you screw up that tinkering check the weapon is broken until you spend a long rest and half the weapon's value on fixing it.

Mysterious Stranger - Gun Tank:
Thanks I'll remove it - I think this is a remnant from the early drafts.

Mysterious Stranger - Wild Card:
Right - this is meant to be as 'part of the reaction' - I'll fix the wording. Again though more attacks is more misfires and more reloads required. Misfires are great, they're a self-regulating mechanism.

Mysterious Stranger - Fast as Lightning:
You're going to need a lot of guns or a fancy pepperbox to pull off the the kind of nova you're hoping for, and again Archery doesn't stack with Marksman.

Blackpowder Savant:
Archery doesn't still doesn't stack with Marksman. Gunfighter does however - and yes that is +3. That being said Gunfighter is lifted almost verbatim from the UA which Wizards were happy to give to the Fighter. They set the precedent. That being said you're giving up a lot of utility from one of the other styles as well to focus on your to-hit.

Diehard:
The way I figure it is this: You're prone. You're still shooting. You're drawing attention to yourself. The existence of this ability is as much a danger to you as not having it. The earth elemental is vastly more likely to step on your head (with advantage because prone) to make you stop shooting. It's a gamble - like everything else in this class!

Stalker - Bonus Proficiencies/Natural Explorer:
This is meant to be the Frontiersman Rogue/Ranger with a gun - if it didn't come of as Ranger-y I'd be worried.

This might be a good time to point out - while I build my rules to clear and relatively abuse proof - I'm not going to keep myself up at night trying to Munchkin proof my creations. Those guys will ALWAYS find a way - it's what they do. Munchkin proofing only incites the challenge of trying to break the system. The kind of players I keep company with don't munchkin, not for lack of ability but for lack of interest.

Peacemaker - Divine Armaments:
Three for three with my inspirations, though there are more! This originally was named the holy gun (which was a dumpster fire by pathfinder standards) but I felt like the name was meh. So I made it the 'Peacemaker' - western imagery to boot.

It's damage and rider - many of the 'Shots' are lifted from the Arcane Archer UA (which I loved). The gateway is whether or not you hit and a resource that also provides your extra attacks and your survivability; forgoing the saving throw isn't going to break the game (I was careful about which conditions I let it apply so easily). 2dx is generally less than what your extra attacks would be pulling in for the same grit point cost - the riders serve to increase survivability for either you or your party.

The damage is very closely modeled on the Arcane Archer as well - I made sure that the smites weren't breaking the bank there. At 18th level the AA's Imbued Arrows are dealing 4d6 compared to the 2d12 here - giving a slight edge to the AA, but with mostly the same riders. You're not going to rival the paladin for smite output on any given attack because you can't Smite and Spell Smite on the same attack - but you do get some cool effects akin in power to some level 1 smites (Wrathful Smite and Entangling Shot).

Breakdown

Until you really read the misfire rules I can understand why the number of attacks may set off alarm bells, you're not the first person to be concerned by them. But I've covered the extra attacks and the fighting style stacking (or lack of) - I'm only a little worried that this class will slightly out perform the others once you factor misfires and reloads. If that turns out to be true I'll bump the misfire scores up a bit or the tinker check DC's. 'Till then I'm pretty content with the DPR - though am happy to be proven wrong and am ready to calibrate.

Have a look at the Scatter weapon property when you can, I'm really tinkering with something new there and I'm hoping it turns out more interesting and balanced (and easier to work with) than the typical '30-60ft cone vs. Dex' solution I've seen out there.

All that said, would you be willing to return critique my Expanded Inspiration Uses (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?517317-WIP-PEACH-Expanded-Inspiration-Uses&p=21773062)? :smallsmile:

I'll give it a look over tomorrow - it's 9pm here and my brain has achieved peak 'done'. You've got my word though (this community doesn't function without some kind of reciprocity)! :smallsmile:

Lonely Tylenol
2017-03-07, 02:45 AM
Fighting Style:
Your point about Marksman and Archery is wrong - there's a little sentence in the text: 'Fighting styles from other classes that apply to ranged weapon attacks do not apply to firearms.' That's it. Munchkin dreams officially crushed at least from that angle.

I must have missed that. Please disregard.


Avante-Garde I feel is necessary to field the 'Sword and Pistol or Musket and Bayonet' trope - one I happen to be very fond of.

Yes, but you probably don't need both Avante Garde and Desperado. There's too much overlap. You might even be able to make them one fighting style.


Extra Attack:
I've seen this point before - but with each attack your misfire chance increases as well - even with a Misfire 1 value with 5 attacks you've got a ~23% chance of losing an entire action (and thus your bonus action attack as well) or a grit point and a bonus action. With a Misfire 2 weapon (A pepperbox pistol for example which is the only weapon that'll let you get off 4+ rounds without reloading) over the course of 5 attacks accumulates a 40% chance to misfire!


Mysterious Stranger - Wild Card:
Right - this is meant to be as 'part of the reaction' - I'll fix the wording. Again though more attacks is more misfires and more reloads required. Misfires are great, they're a self-regulating mechanism.

...You are aware that, in all the printed material of 5e to this date, there are no Misfire rules in 5e, right? And that it's an awful mechanic, from a gamist perspective, that just makes an archetype not only unfun, but generally frustrating to play?

But let's assume that it did...

With advantage, on a misfire 1, you are 39 times as likely to critically strike rather than to misfire. On a 19-20 crit (built into the Deadshot feature by 5th level), you are 76 times as likely to critically strike. On an 18-20 crit (11th level), you are 111 times as likely. For misfire 2, you are roughly 10 times as likely to critically strike rather than misfire with a 20 critical range; on a 19-20, 19 times as likely; and on an 18-20, about 28 times as likely. If you don't have advantage, don't worry: Focus is a built-in class feature with no action cost. If you feel seedy about trying to gain advantage in some other way, which is a laughable proposition if you're fighting houseruled hamstrings for a gunslinger, and are stingy about your grit, get the Lucky feat, and you can at least roll to avoid misfires. Actually, just get Lucky anyway: with Advantage and Lucky, you are 1,140 times as likely to critically strike rather than misfire with 20 critical range; on a 19-20, 2,168 times as likely; and on an 18-20, 3,087 times as likely (divide those numbers by about 10 for misfire 2), and thanks to Crawford's bizarre Sage Advice ruling (http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/sageadvice_feats), you can turn your disadvantage into 3d20b1 using the Lucky feat as well.

I'm not sure you've put a lot of thought into how Misfires interact with advantage and reroll systems in general, in spite of all the effort placed elsewhere, if you legitimately think they're self-regulating, or really anything but a nuisance.


Remembering that unless you've got a Pepperbox (Expensive and in many realms inaccessible - there's a point about that in the gear section). You're reloading your gun (using an attack or bonus action) after every shot or second shot (with double barrel), which burns holes in your action economy something fierce.

If your homebrewed class requires additional homebrew and houserules created around it to make it balanced, it probably isn't all that balanced.

That said, if you are going to include additional homebrew and houserules created around the class, you should either include them in the PDF, make specific mention of the external source within the PDF, or make specific mention of the location of these rules in the original post, none of which you did. I had to reread the Firearms section several times (to make sure I'm not crazy), then reread your PDF (to make sure I didn't skip something inadvertently), then go actively fishing to find a Pepperbox that wasn't "Pathfinder". For anyone else reading: it's in the Version 0.1 link, but no mention is made of the firearms this class is balanced around being there. It's after the Credits page, where I'd stopped reading every time prior to this fifth or so full reading. Kill me.


I made a very conscious design choice to limit the options that mitigate the action drain that comes with either needing to reload or dealing with misfires. The only two examples are 'Quick Clear' which drains your precious grit - crits don't come often and rarely when you hope and the Peacemaker's Divine Bond (Ignore up to 5 misfires per day - they however don't have quite the same number of attacks or punch that the other archetypes have).

You made the conscious design choice to create the action drain in the first place. The Loading property in standard 5e doesn't take any actions (it just places an upper limit on your attacks per action with the weapon); only Reload does (and all weapons with Reload have a much larger capacity, except for the shotgun), and the Ammunition property implies through its mention of drawing that loading is also part of the action to attack. Similarly, misfire rules (and their commensurate action tax) don't exist in the standard game. Yeah, it's not very simulationist, but 5e, by design, was meant to cut out most of the problems of 3.x that made it so cumbersome and unapproachable to many people by simplifying rules and adding a level abstraction between player actions and reality. This hard ports Pathfinder problems to 5e, which is not only very against the nature of the system, but makes the firearms system so cumbersome that you needed to specifically design an overpowered class just to balance against it.


Diehard:
The way I figure it is this: You're prone. You're still shooting. You're drawing attention to yourself. The existence of this ability is as much a danger to you as not having it. The earth elemental is vastly more likely to step on your head (with advantage because prone) to make you stop shooting. It's a gamble - like everything else in this class!

That's fine - but I question how often any gunslinger should be falling to 0 hit points and prone in melee, especially as a Dex-based d10 Hit Dice class with medium armor proficiency (when it matters) and Gunslinger Dodge/Evasive/Slinger's Luck/Cheat Death all working to actively prevent it, in a pinch, the last of which by specifically avoiding dropping to 0 hit points in the first place.


Stalker - Bonus Proficiencies/Natural Explorer:
This is meant to be the Frontiersman Rogue/Ranger with a gun - if it didn't come of as Ranger-y I'd be worried.

This might be a good time to point out - while I build my rules to clear and relatively abuse proof - I'm not going to keep myself up at night trying to Munchkin proof my creations. Those guys will ALWAYS find a way - it's what they do. Munchkin proofing only incites the challenge of trying to break the system. The kind of players I keep company with don't munchkin, not for lack of ability but for lack of interest.

I figured it was meant to be Ranger-y. There's nothing wrong with that; it's straightforward and does what it does. It's not exactly going to shake up the world or anything, but, whatever; neither is Arcane Trickster, and it gets along fine.

That said, having broken components in a class is what makes it susceptible to Munchkins breaking it. It's a lot harder to break what isn't already broken.


Peacemaker - Divine Armaments:
Three for three with my inspirations, though there are more! This originally was named the holy gun (which was a dumpster fire by pathfinder standards) but I felt like the name was meh. So I made it the 'Peacemaker' - western imagery to boot.

It's damage and rider - many of the 'Shots' are lifted from the Arcane Archer UA (which I loved). The gateway is whether or not you hit and a resource that also provides your extra attacks and your survivability; forgoing the saving throw isn't going to break the game (I was careful about which conditions I let it apply so easily). 2dx is generally less than what your extra attacks would be pulling in for the same grit point cost - the riders serve to increase survivability for either you or your party.

The damage is very closely modeled on the Arcane Archer as well - I made sure that the smites weren't breaking the bank there. At 18th level the AA's Imbued Arrows are dealing 4d6 compared to the 2d12 here - giving a slight edge to the AA, but with mostly the same riders. You're not going to rival the paladin for smite output on any given attack because you can't Smite and Spell Smite on the same attack - but you do get some cool effects akin in power to some level 1 smites (Wrathful Smite and Entangling Shot).

Arcane Archer's Create Magic Arrow feature is also a lot more constrained: you get two uses per short rest, with no recovery method before 15th level, and its recovery method is "wait one whole minute, AKA until the encounter is functionally over, before you get another use." The Gunslinger who dutifully maxes Charisma at level 1 gets four potential uses per short rest (yes, it uses the same resource as a few other features, but its primary use for most of the game will be this one), and can gain more by increasing your Charisma, and has two recovery methods built into it: critically striking, which is laughably easy to do with advantage, and killing blows, which increases the chance of getting a grit refund if you just blow it all as often as possible. By the time you're level 11 or so, thanks to Deadshot, you *should* be getting between five and eight uses of Smiting Shot per short rest, or 15-24 in an adventuring day, compared to to the six Arcane Archer, and ten of the Paladin (who uses his long-rest recovery spells exclusively to Divine Smite, and never uses smiting spells, and has no recovery method). This is significantly more uses for a feature that includes rider effects that either provide additional damage or crowd control effects at no additional cost.

But there's more to those damage numbers as well: the Deadshot feature mentions that you double, and later triple, all weapon dice (including weapon enhancements). No mention of weapon enhancements in the game is ever mentioned until Peacemaker's Smiting Shot, which treats the bullet as a magic weapon which deals additional damage, so I'm assuming the 2d8 here is what is being multiplied. That means that each Smiting Shot you make actually deals 4d8 extra damage by level 5, and 6d10 damage by level 11, as long as you use Deadshot, which, let's be honest here, you are, as a Peacemaker. So now you are getting as many as 15-24 Smiting Shots at a higher value than the Paladin ever learns how to Smite for five times per day, regardless of which Smiting Shot rider you use (and two give bonus damage, while a third makes this 6d8 smite damage an AoE). This destroys the Arcane Archer's numbers: you are dealing an average of 20 more smite damage per shot until level 18 (at which point you're dealing only 13 more damage), and your Sacred Blast deals much more damage as well, because it deals "your smite damage" to everything within 10 feet, instead of a fixed value, as Arcane Archer's does at 2d6. By the time Arcane Archer does 4d6 damage with its arrows, Peacemaker Deadshots for 6d12, which is a difference of 25 bonus damage.

But there's even more to those damage numbers: as I'm sure you're aware, bonus dice added to an attack critically strike (yet another reason why the Peacemaker always Deadshots), which means that, by level 11, 15% of the time (or 27.75% of the time with advantage, or 38.59% of the time with advantage and Lucky), you aren't dealing 2d8/4d8/6d10 damage, but 4d8/6d8/12d10 damage, instead! For one grit point! Out of 1+Cha per short rest! Because Gunslinger is the only class/subclass combination in the game which provides both a widened critical threat range and rider damage (Champion and Arcane Archer are mutually exclusive)!

If you think Arcane Archer and Peacemaker are balanced against each other here in terms of damage, per round or per day, you are hilariously mistaken here.


Breakdown

Until you really read the misfire rules I can understand why the number of attacks may set off alarm bells, you're not the first person to be concerned by them. But I've covered the extra attacks and the fighting style stacking (or lack of) - I'm only a little worried that this class will slightly out perform the others once you factor misfires and reloads. If that turns out to be true I'll bump the misfire scores up a bit or the tinker check DC's. 'Till then I'm pretty content with the DPR - though am happy to be proven wrong and am ready to calibrate.

You might be better off scaling back the damage output and doing away with the complicated new rules entirely. You're trying to balance unprecedented DPR by manufacturing drawback mechanics that are just going to be frustrating and off-putting to most players, like all critical fumble mechanics are. It's kind of like creating a class with a Vorpal Sword mechanic, but on a natural 1, you impale yourself on it. Doing so divides your viewers into two camps: the people who try the Vorpal Sword, fall on it a bunch, feel miserable and decide this was never worth it, and the people who try the Vorpal Sword because they know they can make it worth the risk of impaling themselves, and optimize the hell out of Vorpal Swording people, because they know they have to squeeze every bit they can out of it to make it worth the drawback of impaling themselves. This is demonstrated by the fact that you evidently haven't considered how misfires interact with advantage specifically and Xd20b1 in general, which means that misfires aren't a meaningful and interactive drawback, so much as they are an incentive to squeeze advantage out of every attack roll at whatever cost (and optimize through Deadshot because of the stupidly high likelihood of critically striking relative to critically fumbling, and getting grit to mitigate the off-chance of a fumble, which punishes extra attackers disproportionately anyway), and your answer is to increase the misfire chance, which will disproportionately punish players who aren't trying to squeeze every last drop of use out of the overpowered portions of the class.

If you made Extra Attack stop at two per action, and have an upper limit of three per action with a grit expenditure only at level 11, it would scale comparably to Deadshot, which really needs a grit expenditure to reach its level 11 values, and doesn't need to double and then triple both the damage and the threat range. That's a reasonable enough damage window to scale into, makes the riders not too stupid, and eliminates the need for a lot of the extra drawback mechanics which just suck the fun out of things.

Wufflykins
2017-03-07, 06:23 AM
I'll try to address your points in the order they're written, sorry if I go off on tangents!:smallwink:

That'd probably add a little too much versatility to the one fighting style - it'd also be a pretty long paragraph.

Your givens are assuming a lot of ideal circumstances; I'm not sure about your table but advantage isn't always that easy to come by at mine.

But let's say you burn grit on every strike to do it; but first we'll give the givens.

20 Dex and 20 Charisma. Worst case scenario at level 11.
We're level 11 by the way because that's where the math caps out.
+4 Proficiency Bonus and +5 Dex; we'll throw marksman and desperado on there too because it'll be funny. +11 to hit.
Single target, let's say this is a boss fight. AC22. We're fighting a god damn ancient red dragon, because we're baller. (2x 1d10+5 Pepperbox Pistol).
For giggles and ****s we're with a Fighter (Battlemaster, Greatsword); he's level 11 and his stats are as baller as ours. (+9 to hit).

Our turn; we want to max our damage! Show the Ranger how a real marksman does it!
AC22 means we have a 50% chance to hit on a straight roll.
Do we use extra attack and burn grit to get advantage every attack? Hell yeah!
75% chance to hit on all attacks (0.75*(5d10+25)) with a 40% chance to crit at least once (0.4*(1d10)) and 5% to crit twice (0.05*(2d10))!
So our damage will be:

[0.75*(5d10+25) + 0.4*(1d10) + 0.05*(2d10)] = 42 Damage on average factoring crits.

No big deal for an Ancient Dragon, but still healthy. Cost us literally all of our grit to get here though, at least we've got a 40% shot of getting one back and we only had a 6% chance to misfire - so that's nice.

For what it's worth this part of the equation: (0.4*(1d10) + 0.05*(2d10))
Totals: 2.75 Damage.
Turns out crits do sweet bugger all for your average damage.
So what if we Deadshot with Advantage (Still 75% chance to crit (0.75*3d10) with 27.8% chance to crit (0.278*(3d10)):

0.75*(3d10+5) + 0.278*(3d10)
Totals: 20.71.

Twenty point seven one damage. Yeah. That dragon is pretty much screwed. But lets say you're a Peacemaker and you add some dice to it. 2d10 Radiant. (I'll mention at this point that Deadshot doesn't triple the dice of a smite - it's not a weapon enhancement; but I'll give it a shot for giggles as well).

0.75*(3d10+5) + 2d10 + 0.278*(3d10)
31.66

Yay. Wow. Let's try trippling that smite for a laugh. 3d10 trippled with +9d10 on a crit.

0.75*(9d10+5) + 0.278*(9d10)
50.88

Not bad for two grit points. Pity it's not how it works (though I may have to tweak the wording to make that clearer, I'll conceed). What really stings for Deadshot is not being able to add and multiply your modifier - that +5 damage stacked 5 times is huge.

Bearing in mind that these are the averages, the only stats that matter when building classes.

So 42 expected damage for our nova.

What're our mates doing in the meantime?

Fighter - not wanting to be outdone drops his action surge and all his dice. No advantage though, he's not OP like us. Rerolling 1s and 2s. 2d6 = 4.16 with GWF.

0.4*(12*4.16+30) + 0.27*(2*4.16) + 5d8 (possibly more with crit but it's only a small amount).
54.49

So our nova's are comparable - he might've landed a nasty effect with one of his superiority dice but I have regeneration mechanic and maybe have 1 grit back in the tank.
That's great! But what do we do with it? Our damage will be crippled next round if I spend it defensively. I might have to face tank that dragon breath or bite attack if I don't!

If we use it offensively for extra attacks (for arguments sake we don't need to reload because of the second pepperbox), we don't have our advantage so our misfire chance is 41% and our crit chance is 22.7%. Say we misfire (seems fair since we just assumed we got the grit point, both around 41% chance of occuring), we now have two mostly empty pepperboxes, likely no grit, no defensive abilities because no grit; plus one of our guns is on fire (not really ON FIRE but definitely broken). Now we need to use a whole action to try and fix it, or a grit point (that we don't have) to try as a bonus action and if we've only got 10 int (seems reasonable with a standard array) we've only got a +4 bonus to a DC10 check to get that gun working again. This is even assuming that this character SOMEHOW has two pepperboxes, this damage would be lower with low capacity guns.

See how this can spiral out of control? Or maybe we just deadshot without focus and hope for the best.

Sure MAYBE we took luck, maybe the fighter did too. I didn't make the lucky feat nor his silly ruling, you can hang that hot mess around Crawford's neck.

Mean while the Battlemaster still has his use of indomitable, his second wind and the extra feats his class has given him and his three attacks per round. He's simple, but he's reliable and even when he novas he's still got a lot in the tank.

Gunslingers are meant to be a gamble - when they roll well and everything goes their way (which is what you seem to be focusing on) they're terrifying, but inevitably those bad rolls will come a cropper and rain down hell upon you.

And if the Gunslinger didn't have this polarity to it. It wouldn't be worth playing, no matter how powerful.

If your homebrewed class requires additional homebrew...

I'll pretend I didn't see this! :smallwink:

That said, if you are going to include additional homebrew...

I did decided to create action drain, before I even built the class really I took at look at the systems out there and decided this was the most interesting way (to me and seemingly a lot of others) to do it.
It is the system and it's one of the few things about this class I won't compromise on, if I want a ranged gunslinger with no risk that's simple and needs no extra rules I'll reflavour a crossbow as a gun and play a battlemaster. You don't need a whole new class for that and you'll have a lot of the same abilities.
There's a reason I didn't use the ammunition property or the loading or reloading property; I needed distinct terminology.

When I ported misfires, I gutted the pathfinder system; like Deadshot and Gunslinger Dodge, the name is there, the spirit is there, but the mechanics are not. It's like a spiritual successor to pathfinder's grit and misfire systems. I cut out a lot of the fat to specifically leave behind those problems. Yes, now there are some extra 'rules' - I'm at a point now where as a player and DM I'm comfortable with some homebrew additions to accommodate for a kind of fantasy the PHB and DMG do not cater for and I am crafting homebrew for those in a similar circumstance. If you asked me 'Does this (or a) Gunslinger belong in the PHB?' I would say no.

Being conscious about reloading and misfires is part of the fun for me, misfiring creates a low in combat that stands as a stark contrast to the high of a crit. In some ways it revives combat for me.

That's fine - but I question how often any gunslinger...

Well... Maybe he was an idiot and dumped all his Grit in the first round? :)

I jest but realistically it's very easy to burn through your grit and Con may not be your best stat.
I imagine the typical gunslinger will go:

Dex > Cha > Con > Wis/Int > Strength

But I'll leave it up to the DM to figure out how to do that. A cheeky hold person, a finger of death or disintergrate? Who knows. Bear Totem Barbarians go down all the time.

I figured it was meant to be Ranger-y...

The stalker does need a little 'more' in there somewhere, but I've yet to figure it out.
Very true - I'm not just going to hand broken **** to them on a platter, I'll make them work for it. But I'm not going to loose sleep over it.

Arcane Archer's Create Magic Arrow feature is also a lot more constrained...

I do worry about this - however the Peacemaker is very much in an alpha stage - I need more playtest data and to do a little more math before I'm willing to commit to a defence of my choices here. This is after all still a 'Draft'. That being said I think the 'common resource' works well at reigning in this ability (this however is also the hardest part of the gunslinger to model with math, it needs to be 'felt out').

I'll try and make it more clear that only weapon enhancements (like say a magical gun that deals an extra 1d6 fire damage) get multiplied with deadshot.

Deadshot widens critical threat range, but only in the same way that extra attacks give you more chances to crit - because you're sacrificing opportunity cost of extra attacks for one attack it gives you back some of that chance to crit. Granted the crit is bigger; but overall it's not going to break the DPR charts. You're losing a lot of extra damage from only being able to add your modifiers once.

If you think Arcane Archer and Peacemaker are balanced against each other here in terms of damage, per round or per day, you are hilariously mistaken here.

This is starting to feel a little mean spirited, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Again this comes down to whether or not the common resource of grit slows usage of it and that's going to depend on the player and campaign. More data needed but you raise some good points, though I don't think the disparity (if there is one) is as hilarious as you might imagine. It certainly wasn't with your critique of the misfire and extra attacks system.

You might be better off scaling back the damage output and doing away with the complicated new rules entirely.
I refer you to my Battlemaster Crossbow idea; the new rules, like the class are there for those who like this kind of element to something they're playing. Like I do, and I feel like I'm not alone there. There is no real need for a gunslinger without misfire.

You're trying to balance unprecedented DPR by manufacturing drawback mechanics that are just going to be frustrating and off-putting to most players, like all critical fumble mechanics are.

Now you're getting it! Only difference is that you think it's a problem and I don't, guns should be and feel more powerful. When they work properly, it makes the weapon feel decided different and paints a different image for those at the table than a reskinned crossbow, when it doesn't work it's a source of entertainment and challenge. You might get salty when you roll low, but I don't.

I think most peoples problem with a critical fumble table is that you roll on it and something decidedly uncinematic happens, and it's random and it can completely **** you over. Also it's partly because most DM's I've seen use one won't let the players look at it, so it feels like an arbitrary '*******' by the DM. But we won't get into that any further. I hate Critical Fumble tables. I love misfires.

Misfires aren't arbitrary, they have a basis in written and cinematic fiction and they can be hilarious when they happen at the right moment. More importantly is that rules are layed out so you know what you're getting into before you play.

It's kind of like creating a class with a Vorpal Sword...

This is engaging in a strawman argument, and frankly is a little exasperating to read and I refuse to engage with it. I've considered the balance in my class very carefully - it's not perfect and likely never will be but it's not bad for my first attempt at such a large project.

This is demonstrated by the fact that you evidently haven't considered how misfires interact...

I think I've shown that Deadshot isn't nearly as broken as you think it is. You keep bringing up luck like it can be used on every roll ever; it's 3 times per day mate. Are you going to use it to mitigate misfires? Or gun for crit on dead shot? Or avoid disadvantage on something? Or try to recover from the skill check/saving throw you botched? Choose carefully.

Advantage mitigates misfires. Yes. When you have it. Your grit is still a limited resource that all of your abilities draw from, all your eggs are in one basket so when you throw them at every problem you're going to run out. So spamming focus is going to leave your ass hanging in the wind. You're also going to be at disadvantage sometimes too or dealing with cover possibly. As a gunslinger your only source of advantage is Focus, which while potent enough to be interest is a very inefficient use of grit if you're talking 'damage per grit or damage mitigated per grit'.

All in all most of your points hinge on what I call a 'White Room Scenario' or a 'Perfect Situation'. Which is rare in D&D, at least at every table I've played and the streams I've watched. The rest argue against the core mechanic of the class, from whence the class derives it's flavour.

With all that said, I really appreciate the time you put in to such a thoughtful reply. I do need people to get into the nuts and bolts and make sure everything is where it should be. It's all in the name of enjoying on this weird hobby of ours!

Lonely Tylenol
2017-03-07, 09:25 AM
I'll try to address your points in the order they're written, sorry if I go off on tangents!:smallwink:

It's okay; I go off on tangents all the time. Actually, I wanted to apologize for my tone: I wrote my last post with a migraine and nausea, mostly because I was unable to sleep and needed something to focus on, and I think that my crappy condition came out in my general demeanor and the tone of my arguments. Without getting into too much detail, since my last post, I've thrown up twice and slept it off, and feel much better. I'll try to manage my tone better going forward, and avoid confrontational language (even if it's done just to make a point).

I had a longer post, but mobile ate it (auto save failed to happen for several minutes of typing, and then once I went to check the PDF on another tag, it refreshed when I came back—in typing this paragraph, auto save has gone off three times now, just to taunt me), and I can't be arsed to type it up again, so enjoy this free bump as a placeholder, with the promise that I won't leave the discussion hanging indefinitely. Mostly just wanted to get the apology out ASAP. Good night!

Tent316
2017-03-08, 11:16 PM
Gotta say this class looks amazing! Can`t wait to try it out in my future game ill be joining. Going wildcard, mysterious stranger dueling pistols. Some people might not like the multiple action economy/gunplay, but I love it! Can`t wait to grind out upgrades and build better guns and accessories. This is everything I wanted in a gunslinger. Can`t wait to see your other archtype the hexgun!

Wufflykins
2017-03-09, 12:52 AM
Gotta say this class looks amazing! Can`t wait to try it out in my future game ill be joining. Going wildcard, mysterious stranger dueling pistols. Some people might not like the multiple action economy/gunplay, but I love it! Can`t wait to grind out upgrades and build better guns and accessories. This is everything I wanted in a gunslinger. Can`t wait to see your other archtype the hexgun!

Glad you like it mate! Deadshot has definitely copped a lot of scrutiny over the different places I've put this up for review, but the math says it's balanced! Have fun with it anyway!

And if you're going Mysterious Stranger/Wild-card with pistols, make sure you have a red poncho!

LeonBH
2017-03-09, 02:33 AM
Rather than offer a mechanical critique, I'd just like to say that with regards to the archetypes, Stalker steps on the toes of the Revised Ranger (deliberately, too). This seems like a problem just for the general reason that classes aren't supposed to step on each others' toes. Wizards don't get healing spells because that's what clerics do, and so on. Along the same lines, Peacemaker steps on the Paladin's toes.

As for Mysterious Stranger, it seems better than the Fighter class. It gets its 4th attack at 11th level, which is the Fighter's schtick. Yes you have to spend resources to get it, but Fighters have to wait for level 20 for that. And so, it seems to be stronger than the Fighter: Gunslinger. If this was allowed, it is not a toss up to choose between a Gunslinger class or a Fighter class with Gunslinger archetype -- the class is simply much better.

In my opinion, you should cap out the Extra Attack to 2 attacks like every other non-Fighter class. It's not a balance or damage-based argument, it's just that Fighters may feel cheated if the newer, shinier guy comes in and outperforms them on their own turf. But, this may be dependent on the group.

Great artwork and really clean PDF though. Keep it up :)

Wufflykins
2017-03-09, 07:50 AM
Rather than offer a mechanical critique, I'd just like to say that with regards to the archetypes, Stalker steps on the toes of the Revised Ranger (deliberately, too). This seems like a problem just for the general reason that classes aren't supposed to step on each others' toes. Wizards don't get healing spells because that's what clerics do, and so on. Along the same lines, Peacemaker steps on the Paladin's toes.

The Stalker unfortunately is far from where I want it to be - however you slice it though it's going to step on the Ranger's toes a little bit. Deliberately too I might add; the Stalker is what you might play if you wanted to play a Ranger with a gun. It's not ripping off the Ranger, it is a Ranger. Think about the kind of Gunslingers you might see in film and literature; there's your fast drawing gunslinger (your typical clint eastwood 'man with no name' types; that's the mysterious stranger. There's your frontiersmen and scouts, trackers and hunters like LaBoeuf (True Grit); they have a lot of a Ranger's skill set. And while it tends only to crop up moreso in anime than anywhere else the idea of a Paladin with a gun is nothing new; but rather than impose an archetype on each class it is far easier to have a modular class that can be flavoured with each of these things.


As for Mysterious Stranger, it seems better than the Fighter class. It gets its 4th attack at 11th level, which is the Fighter's schtick. Yes you have to spend resources to get it, but Fighters have to wait for level 20 for that. And so, it seems to be stronger than the Fighter: Gunslinger. If this was allowed, it is not a toss up to choose between a Gunslinger class or a Fighter class with Gunslinger archetype -- the class is simply much better.

In my opinion, you should cap out the Extra Attack to 2 attacks like every other non-Fighter class. It's not a balance or damage-based argument, it's just that Fighters may feel cheated if the newer, shinier guy comes in and outperforms them on their own turf. But, this may be dependent on the group.

Without context it would certainly seem powerful, but bear in mind that your attacks are also reloads for the gunslinger and that each ranged attack bears a misfire chance. Remove misfires and reloads and it would certainly shift the balance of power but as it stands it's within the realm of balanced. It also bears mention that the Ranger (Hunter) and the Barbarian (Berserker) also have 3 attacks each by level 5 (each with some small gateways but it's almost invariably on tap when they really need it).


Great artwork and really clean PDF though. Keep it up :)

Thanks I appreciate it (though I wish I could take credit for the art itself), and I certainly intend to keep working on this!

LeonBH
2017-03-09, 11:31 AM
The Stalker unfortunately is far from where I want it to be - however you slice it though it's going to step on the Ranger's toes a little bit. Deliberately too I might add; the Stalker is what you might play if you wanted to play a Ranger with a gun. It's not ripping off the Ranger, it is a Ranger. Think about the kind of Gunslingers you might see in film and literature; there's your fast drawing gunslinger (your typical clint eastwood 'man with no name' types; that's the mysterious stranger. There's your frontiersmen and scouts, trackers and hunters like LaBoeuf (True Grit); they have a lot of a Ranger's skill set. And while it tends only to crop up moreso in anime than anywhere else the idea of a Paladin with a gun is nothing new; but rather than impose an archetype on each class it is far easier to have a modular class that can be flavoured with each of these things.

Hmm, I don't know. This feels like not a nice solution to providing Rangers with guns, just because they will never actually be Rangers -- just Gunslingers with some of the Ranger tricks. For example, Rangers have spellcasting and Hunter's Mark, Gunslingers have their own bag of tricks.

I feel like the cleaner solution if you wanted a gun-toting Ranger is to simply multiclass a few levels in Gunslinger (or even just 1 level of it), and play Ranger the rest of the way.

The same ideas go for the Paladin. If they really wanted a Gun Smiting Paladin, let them multiclass at a few clean points away from Gunslinger. But don't let the Gunslinger take over an entire other class.

As another example, if Wizards were given an arcane tradition that gives them Action Surge and Extra Attack, the Fighters in the party will not feel great about having a better-than-them-at-combat-except-he-also-has-full-spellcasting-powers teammate, who can easily outshine them.


Without context it would certainly seem powerful, but bear in mind that your attacks are also reloads for the gunslinger and that each ranged attack bears a misfire chance. Remove misfires and reloads and it would certainly shift the balance of power but as it stands it's within the realm of balanced. It also bears mention that the Ranger (Hunter) and the Barbarian (Berserker) also have 3 attacks each by level 5 (each with some small gateways but it's almost invariably on tap when they really need it).

I trust that you were able to balance it mechanically. It took 6 months to come to this iteration, after all :)

However, I'm saying at level 11, the Gunslinger class gets 4 attacks. This is something the Fighters can only drool over. It may cost resources to use, and it may even be balanced. But the core of this class overshadows the abilities of the Fighter class. This is essentially a better Fighter class.

Also as a note, Misfires and Reloads should barely matter in terms of damage output. If we're talking about characters at high levels, a Gunslinger should have multiple guns at the ready for when any one of them breaks/runs out of ammo in combat, assuming they don't get attached to any particular weapon. If any one of them misfires, they can drop it and pull another one out without breaking pace. If he had 2 guns in his hand to start with, he can handle 3 misfires/reloads this way. After the battle, he can always pick them back up.

Wufflykins
2017-03-09, 06:01 PM
I suspect you're right about the Stalker, one of the reasons why I want to change it but haven't figured out where to go with it is because it's quite challenging to find a direction to take it. I don't think it's terrible to have one archetype give the impression of another class however (The Fighter:Scout, Rogue:Scout, Eldritch Knight, and Bladesinger are examples of Wizards doing just this themselves) - my solution for the stalker at least for the moment is inelegant and certainly needs to change. But I still feel the archetype once fixed will be warranted.

The Peacemaker is a much better example of heralding to another class than the Stalker; leaving aside for the moment that the Paladin can't smite with ranged weapons (and the Peacemaker can only smite with ranged firearm attacks) each has it's own niche; and there's only just enough paladin in the Peacemaker to give the impression of a Paladin. Most of the Paladin's best abilities (Channel Divinity and their Aura and Spells) are still limited to the Paladin.

Between the resource cost, misfires and reloads it's uncommon that a Gunslinger will actually get all of those attacks in a round. If it's balanced I don't see how it overshadows anyone, the fighter gets his three attacks every round at level 11 and it's never a gamble to use all three of those attacks and if he chooses he can action surge for six. At 11th level the gunslinger still only has two attacks, if he's using the standard array he's probably only got maybe 4 grit points to burn at the start of combat. If the DM isn't doing his job the Gunslinger might be comfortable just using those for extra attacks four rounds in a row; but in real fight he'll be using targeting to help his allies, gunslinger dodge to not die and focus to maybe offset disadvantage when it comes up. Fighters have a distinct advantage in that their abilities do not cost a common resource, and their extra attacks are reliable (and generally wont blow up in their face).

As for drawing weapons to fire, you can only draw one weapon in a round unless you're a desperado - in which case it's two and you have to draw them at the same time. Most guns you're liable to just find are only going to be single shot firearms, pepperboxes should be rare (level 10-11 is about when I expect you should find one).

A reasonable DM might at most let you carry six pistols on you, anything more than that would be starting to get silly (six is pretty silly in and of itself). But say you can draw all of them. Six shots in and you've got six pistols to reload, have fun with that; further it's liable that at level 11 you've got maybe one magic firearm and much of what you're fighting will soak damage from non-magical firearms with it's resistances. If you even have magical firearms, I suspect that in most realms because firearms are new you'll not likely to just 'find' enchanted firearms laying about.

But I don't explicitly state any of that in the PDF, but you putting the question to me makes me wonder if I should create a sidebar in the PDF covering the notion of magical firearms.

For what it's worth, part of me agrees that four attacks (while balanced) does poke at the fighter a little bit; but I want to keep the misfire and reload systems as I think they're integral to the iconic 'gunslinger' in pen and paper games; and that means either more attacks for offset reloads and misfires or they need to hit a lot harder. I think the extra attacks are an easier sell to be honest.

LeonBH
2017-03-09, 07:18 PM
Well, as far as I can see, if your DM let you have 6 pistols, and you run out of ammo on all 6 of them, you only really need to reload the one pistol to keep fighting. The other 5 have served their purpose and can be retrieved after the fight. Of course, you really only need 3 -- and you can use your free Object Interaction in a round to retrieve 1 gun after you dropped one of the 2 in your hands.

Nonetheless, I think that regardless of the type of gun you have, be it a single-shot Pistol or a Pepperbox, you should account for this tactic that players can drop a single-handed gun and retrieve a new one. When it's single-shot pistols, then it seems silly to even try. But when it's 3 Pepperboxes, they won't bear the difficulties of Misfires and Reloads until 18 shots in -- 9 rounds without spending Grit for extra attacks, or 4 rounds if they do. Most fights will be over by then.

With regard to the extra attack costing a common resource for the Gunslinger but not for the Fighter, this is really a matter of taste, so perhaps there's no right answer either way. I can imagine though, one such Gunslinger who has taken Hex or Hunter's Mark via Magic Initiate or a multiclass, perhaps even acquiring a +1 weapon and the Sharpshooter feat. At level 11, I believe their 4 attacks will overshadow the Fighter's 3 attacks for sure, even if they have to Grit every round to get it, because each of those buffs/abilities key off an attack roll.

To be fair, the Valor Bard can do the same (4 attacks/Sharpshooter) with Swift Quiver, but they have to use a 5th level spell slot, a bonus action, their concentration slot, and Magical Secrets. With a Fighter dip, they will also have the Archery Fighting style. Yes it is pricey, but it isn't a balance/damage concern. It just goes to show how unique getting 4 attacks at this level is. Even the Bard is stepping on the Ranger's toes while doing this as SQ is a Ranger spell.

With regards to the direction of the Stalker, perhaps take away the Ranger abilities, but give them spellcasting equivalent to a 1/3 caster, who can take spells from the Ranger list? Then grant them some abilities that synergize with that.

Wufflykins
2017-03-09, 08:35 PM
Three pepperboxes however should be a tall order in most campaigns, I think I might expand the gear section to cover pepperboxes of different sized (4-6 shots) and how each step up should be commensurate to an increase in rarity. You do have a point though, three pepperboxes may upset the class (and I need to proof this class against being broken by simple having more weapons - it doesn't work like that for the other classes); and simply saying they shouldn't have this many guns doesn't mean they wont.

When it's single-shot pistols, then it seems silly to even try. But when it's 3 Pepperboxes, they won't bear the difficulties of Misfires and Reloads until 18 shots in.

This is an ideal circumstance where you only misfire on the last shot of the pepperbox - it's equally likely that you misfire on the first shot denying you access to the following five shots until you fix the gun cutting your available shots by a third. That being said 3 pepperboxes is a little bit ridiculous and I'll update the gear section to reflect that, I'm also toying with increasing the base misfire chance of pistols by 1 (to two) which would increase the pepperbox's misfire to 3 which would offset some of what you're talking about.

Magic initiate would make a strong choice for a Gunslinger (as it does for a Fighter) however I'm not overly worried. That feat could've easily been a dex or charisma increase (remember that Gunslingers are inherently more MAD than a Fighter as I've layed them out). The Valour Bard I don't think is a fair comparison, being that they're full casters getting four attacks any way you slice it shouldn't come easily for them. The gunslinger on the other hand is a martial class (essentially it's a variant to the fighter which is why many of their abilities have some overlap).

All in all I'm not sure it's a deal breaker for the Gunslinger, it's a Fighter for a different age that has a different approach to combat with the same end goal. As long as the DPR is balanced and I don't step on the signature abilities (Action Surge, 7 Feats and an Innately high number of attacks) the gunslinger and the fighter won't be significantly different from having two fighters in the party (incidentally I'm playtesting my Gunslinger in a party with a Battlemaster Fighter, so far so good but it's early days); I'm waiting for more playtest data to see how the fighters feel about it.

I'm also going back and forth on the idea of making the extra 1/2 attacks consume a bonus action in the same vein as Swift Quiver, it would do a lot of damage to the gunslinger's action economy but it may offset the problem your having with the fighter feeling special. On the flip side it will make the Desperado and Avante-Garde fighting styles substantially less interesting.

Edit: The other way I may go is to remove spending grit for extra attacks and give the gunslinger three attacks as an action at level 11 (in line with a fighter of the same level but never getting access to that 4th attack) and finding some other way to compensate for misfires.

As far as the Stalker goes - I'm trying to limit this class to having one quarter caster archetype (originally the Peacemaker was a second but I scrapped it for the current system). But I'll keep it in mind.

I appreciate the time you've put into your responses, you've definitely given me a lot to think about. The responses above are my initial thoughts and reactions, but as I go away and think about it I may come around further on some points.

Wufflykins
2017-03-11, 01:44 AM
-- Changelog v0.6 --

Massive rework of the Stalker, granting it it's own flavourful abilities and keeping the Ranger/Rogue feel.
- Added 'Heartsight' - The Stalkers own brand of a mixed 'Hunter's Mark' and 'Sneak Attack' - deals less damage than either of them and has it's own limitations and costs.
- Hide in Plain Sight now has a grit-cost ability attacked, a 'Suppressed Shot' that lets you keep concealment when you fire.
- Bonus Proficiencies renamed to Frontier Survival - now gains one less proficiency.
- Stagger replaced with Bushwhacker ability (I have mixed feelings about the new name but the new mechanics feel pretty good).

Reformatted the Peacemaker to read a little bit easier.

Lonely Tylenol
2017-03-14, 07:12 AM
That'd probably add a little too much versatility to the one fighting style - it'd also be a pretty long paragraph.

RAW, Avante Garde already does this, if you once again accept Crawford's Sage Advice ruling for Crossbow Expert (same link), since a "one-handed firearm" is a "one-handed weapon." This means you'd just have one fighting style instead of two that do the same thing, and you need to add zero words to do it (and even get to remove a lot in the entire Desperado style). But yes, in general, both of these add too much for a fighting style, since fighting styles that give extra attack options are generally overpowered compared to the others (and yes, this includes the ones that always exist).


Your givens are assuming a lot of ideal circumstances; I'm not sure about your table but advantage isn't always that easy to come by at mine.

Faerie Fire is a first-level spell, as is Guiding Bolt in a pinch (for those Deadshotters). A number of conditions confer advantage to attacks, such as invisible (for the attacker), blinded, paralyzed, petrified, restrained, and stunned (for the target). Stalkers can Hide as a bonus action in the later stages, and gets advantage on its first round attacks against the right targets by level 3. Mysterious Stranger can have this benefit at level 7. In a pinch, you can use Grit. There are like three psionic disciplines that confer advantage to other people. The Mastermind can Help Deadshotters as a Bonus Action, as can pets, familiars, construct buddies, and the like. Advantage on the first round is a one-level Ranger dip, and permanent "invisibility" is a two-to-three-level Warlock dip, which also gives you a lot of neato boons if Hexblade is on the table. Advantage can occur reliably in a number of ways, and all of these things are best for Gunslinger, because it benefits more than every other class in the game from critical hits outside of the damage it deals (grit refund, all-or-nothing through Deadshot), and suffers the worst from critical failures (misfire on top of the miss); a lot of them are party-dependent, but if you can't collaborate with the party on this, you might as well not play a Gunslinger at all unless you can Meryl Stryfe it.


But let's say you burn grit on every strike to do it; but first we'll give the givens.

20 Dex and 20 Charisma. Worst case scenario at level 11.
We're level 11 by the way because that's where the math caps out.
+4 Proficiency Bonus and +5 Dex; we'll throw marksman and desperado on there too because it'll be funny. +11 to hit.
Single target, let's say this is a boss fight. AC22. We're fighting a god damn ancient red dragon, because we're baller. (2x 1d10+5 Pepperbox Pistol).
For giggles and ****s we're with a Fighter (Battlemaster, Greatsword); he's level 11 and his stats are as baller as ours. (+9 to hit).

Our turn; we want to max our damage! Show the Ranger how a real marksman does it!
AC22 means we have a 50% chance to hit on a straight roll.
Do we use extra attack and burn grit to get advantage every attack? Hell yeah!
75% chance to hit on all attacks (0.75*(5d10+25)) with a 40% chance to crit at least once (0.4*(1d10)) and 5% to crit twice (0.05*(2d10))!
So our damage will be:

[0.75*(5d10+25) + 0.4*(1d10) + 0.05*(2d10)] = 42 Damage on average factoring crits.

No big deal for an Ancient Dragon, but still healthy. Cost us literally all of our grit to get here though, at least we've got a 40% shot of getting one back and we only had a 6% chance to misfire - so that's nice.

For what it's worth this part of the equation: (0.4*(1d10) + 0.05*(2d10))
Totals: 2.75 Damage.
Turns out crits do sweet bugger all for your average damage.
So what if we Deadshot with Advantage (Still 75% chance to crit (0.75*3d10) with 27.8% chance to crit (0.278*(3d10)):

0.75*(3d10+5) + 0.278*(3d10)
Totals: 20.71.

Twenty point seven one damage. Yeah. That dragon is pretty much screwed. But lets say you're a Peacemaker and you add some dice to it. 2d10 Radiant. (I'll mention at this point that Deadshot doesn't triple the dice of a smite - it's not a weapon enhancement; but I'll give it a shot for giggles as well).

0.75*(3d10+5) + 2d10 + 0.278*(3d10)
31.66

Yay. Wow. Let's try trippling that smite for a laugh. 3d10 trippled with +9d10 on a crit.

0.75*(9d10+5) + 0.278*(9d10)
50.88

Not bad for two grit points. Pity it's not how it works (though I may have to tweak the wording to make that clearer, I'll conceed). What really stings for Deadshot is not being able to add and multiply your modifier - that +5 damage stacked 5 times is huge.

Bearing in mind that these are the averages, the only stats that matter when building classes.

So 42 expected damage for our nova.

What're our mates doing in the meantime?

Fighter - not wanting to be outdone drops his action surge and all his dice. No advantage though, he's not OP like us. Rerolling 1s and 2s. 2d6 = 4.16 with GWF.

0.4*(12*4.16+30) + 0.27*(2*4.16) + 5d8 (possibly more with crit but it's only a small amount).
54.49

You make a lot of weird assumptions here, as well. Like, first of all, why is the level 11 party fighting an Ancient Red Dragon?! That's a CR 24 creature, with an XP threshold of 36,500 - it's meant to be a Deadly encounter for ten such level 11 PCs; a Hard encounter for 15; and a Normal encounter for 20. That isn't a D&D game; that's a classical WoW raid!

Significantly, at Challenge 11, a monster's AC will be about 5 less than that, which means that the same hit chances would apply to these guys, with 10 more damage on each hit, if they both took Sharpshooter/Great Weapon Master, and both would. Creatures you might reasonably fight in singles or pairs, as a normal-ass party of four, include:

CR 10: Aboleth (AC 17), Deva (AC 17), Yochlol (AC 15), Young Red Dragon (AC 18), Young Gold Dragon (AC 18), Stone Golem (AC 17), Guardian Naga (AC 18), Death Slaad (AC 18), Death Kiss (AC 16), Froghemoth (AC 14), Stone Giant Dreamwalker (AC 18), Alhoon (AC 15), average AC = 16.75

CR 11: Behir (AC 17), Horned Devil (AC 18), Dao (AC 18), Djinni (AC 17), Efreeti (AC 17), Marid (AC 17), Remorhaz (AC 17), Roc (AC 15), Gynosphinx (AC 17), Cloud Giant Smiling One (AC 15), Morkoth (AC 17), average AC = 16.81

CR 12: Erinyes (AC 18), Arcanaloth (AC 17), Archmage (AC 15), Frost Giant Everlasting One (AC 15), Ki-Rin (AC 20), Yuan-Ti Anathema (AC 16), Archdruid (AC 16), Warlord (AC 18), average AC = 16.88

CR 13: Beholder (AC 18), Nalfeshnee (AC 18), Adult White Dragon (AC 18), Adult Brass Dragon (AC 18), Storm Giant (AC 16), Rakshasha (AC 16), Vampire (AC 16), Ultroloth (AC 19), Devourer (AC 16), Neothelid (AC 16), average AC = 17.1

Anything below this is fought in hordes, and are easy pickings for grit. Anything above this is a Deadly encounter by default - and most will still adhere to the same AC range, with small bumps around 13-15, towards the 18 range, around when you'd get the proficiency bump.

You also add the damage riders to the Battlemaster and Holy Gun incorrectly; the bonus dice from smite and superiority don't apply to every eventuality, only the ones that hit; roll them up with the main to-hit calculations to determine their effect over an average number of hits, which is 2.4, since the Battlemaster could only use 2.4 dice per round if hitting 40% of the time, not 5 dice per round. (This hurts both, but the Battlemaster more.) I'm avoiding Precision Strike just for simplicity, and to avoid headaches. Also, the dice should be d10s. The upside to this is that, on these misses, you don't spend all those dice. I'll recalculate those for you.

So, yeah! Sharpshooter is on the table, and it's basically a default assumption for this purpose. We can assume the average AC we're hitting for "monsters we'd actually fight at a table" is 17, so you can use the same to-hit numbers, but with +10 to damage on each strike. Those numbers look like this:

Mysterious Stranger (Marksman and Avante Garde/Desperado, Pepperbox Pistols, Extra Attack, with -5/+10): [0.75*(5d10+75) + 0.4*(1d10) + 0.05*(2d10)] = 79.625 damage

Mysterious Stranger (Marksman and Gunfighter, Pepperbox Pistol, Extra Attack, with -5/+10): [0.7975*(4d10+60) + 0.4*(1d10) + 0.05*(2d10)] = 68.145 damage, with one less grit spent and your bonus action free

Stalker (Marksman, Extra Attack, Pepperbox Pistol, with -5/+10): [0.75*(4d10+60) + 0.4*(1d10) + 0.05*(2d10)] = 64.25 damage, with an in-built advantage mechanic

Holy Gun (Marksman, Deadshot with Chains of Penance, Pepperbox Pistol, with -5/+10): [0.75*(5d10+2d6+15) + 0.278*(3d10)] = 41.712, plus rider CC; 48.837 with Fire of Judgment; 36.462 with no damage rider

Holy Gun (Marksman, Deadshot with Chains of Penance, Pepperbox Pistol, without -5/+10): [0.9375*(5d10+2d6+5) + 0.278*(3d10)] = 41.61825, plus rider CC; 50.5245 with Fire of Judgment; 35.05575 with no damage rider

Holy Gun with Smite Bullet Multiplied (Marksman, Deadshot with Chains of Penance, without -5/+10, the with isn't worth looking at by comparison): [0.9375*(9d10+2d6+5) + 0.278*(9d10)] = 73.41725, plus rider CC; 80.3235 with Fire of Judgment; 64.85475 with no damage rider

By the way, there is no reason to ever believe the smite damage wouldn't be doubled and tripled through Deadshot. The only precedent for this type of doubling is the Assassin, which takes your damage total after all dice rolls and then doubles it, meaning your damage calculation would instead be (x*[3d10+5] + y*[3d10])*3. But you double weapon dice (avoiding the doubling of modifiers), and then include a bullet which is "a magic weapon that deals an additional 2d8 radiant damage on a hit." The dichotomy is thus: Either ammunition confers its bonus damage to the weapon attack, especially when described as a magic weapon, and thus it multiplies like I described, or it doesn't, and the bullet (and magical +1/+2/+3 ammunition from the DMG) only confer their bonuses when you strike people with them as melee weapons. Which one makes more sense, as written? This isn't a misunderstanding of the text; it's an ability interaction that's in drastic need of revising.

Anyway, the Fighter damage for comparison:

Your corrected Fighter vs. Ancient Red, from above, without GWM, for comparison against the damage numbers above: [0.4*(12*4.16+5d10+30) + 0.27*(2*4.16+1d10)] = 46.6994

Fighter vs. normal monsters, with GWM and no advantage: [0.4*(12*4.16+5d10+90) + 0.27*(2*4.16+1d10)] = 70.6994

Fighter vs. normal monsters, with GWM and no advantage, but all superiority dice are used for Precision Attack (you got an extra one from the feat, nbd, I don't feel like recalculating and it way more than offsets my lazy crit chance): [0.475*(12*4.16+90) + 0.27*(2*4.16)] = 68.7084

Fighter vs. normal monsters, with GWM and advantage: [0.64*(12*4.16+5d10+90) + 0.27*(2*4.16+1d10)] = 107.1488

Fighter vs. normal monsters, with GWM and advantage, but all superiority dice are used for Precision Attack (you got an extra one from the feat, nbd, I don't feel like recalculating and it way more than offsets my lazy crit chance): [0.8738*(12*4.16+90) + 0.27*(2*4.16)] = 150.022996

Fighter vs. normal monsters, no nova or advantage: [0.65*(6*4.16+15) + 0.13*(2*4.16)] = 27.0556

Fighter vs. normal monsters, no nova, but with advantage and GWM: [0.64*(6*4.16+45) + 0.13*(2*4.16)] = 45.856


So our nova's are comparable - he might've landed a nasty effect with one of his superiority dice but I have regeneration mechanic and maybe have 1 grit back in the tank.
That's great! But what do we do with it? Our damage will be crippled next round if I spend it defensively. I might have to face tank that dragon breath or bite attack if I don't!

If we use it offensively for extra attacks (for arguments sake we don't need to reload because of the second pepperbox), we don't have our advantage so our misfire chance is 41% and our crit chance is 22.7%. Say we misfire (seems fair since we just assumed we got the grit point, both around 41% chance of occuring), we now have two mostly empty pepperboxes, likely no grit, no defensive abilities because no grit; plus one of our guns is on fire (not really ON FIRE but definitely broken). Now we need to use a whole action to try and fix it, or a grit point (that we don't have) to try as a bonus action and if we've only got 10 int (seems reasonable with a standard array) we've only got a +4 bonus to a DC10 check to get that gun working again. This is even assuming that this character SOMEHOW has two pepperboxes, this damage would be lower with low capacity guns.

See how this can spiral out of control? Or maybe we just deadshot without focus and hope for the best.

The novas are indeed comparable, with a Mysterious Stranger leading the charge with Marksman and basically any second fighting style (though Avante Garde/Desperado are the obvious leading choice). Indeed, it compared a lot more favorably than described with the original number set as well, once you got rid of that egregious Fighter miscalculation. This is all, of course, provided you have advantage with the Gunslinger and not the Fighter, since only one has an in-built advantage mechanic... When both have advantage (thanks to, say, Faerie Fire on the target), and the Fighter does nothing but spam Precision Attack, the Fighter destroys all other classes in nova damage, as expected.

But when both have advantage from outside of the class (thanks to, say, Faerie Fire on the target, or Greater Invisibility, or a condition on the target), the Fighter has still spent all their precision dice and their one nova tool, and will do less than half their normal damage, while the Gunslinger will have spent one sixth of their "nova tool," with a more than 40% chance of recovery! On average, this buys you about 8 rounds of "nova" when the Fighter has only one. Assuming you don't kill anything, that is. By round 4, the Mysterious Stranger is already out-DPSing the Fighter when both have persistent advantage, and the gap only widens from there. If the combat ends early, but a short rest is not available (due to concurrent combat scenarios or something of the sort), the Fighter is out of gas, but the Gunslinger can rinse and repeat next combat, probably fully refreshed thanks to nova damage returning kill grit.

As for all that silly stuff about taking an action to reload or grit to put out your flaming guns in combat... What? I'm Meryl Stryfe (http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/trigun/images/2/2b/DerringerMeryl.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20120113173424). Dropping a gun and drawing a new one is free. I'll have actions to reload and fix all my broken, empty guns after combat, and I'll spend all my money on more guns for that privilege. Wasting two full turn's worth of actions reloading my guns is the single least fun thing I can think to do with my character in combat - at least purposefully drowning myself incurs some element of risk.


Gunslingers are meant to be a gamble - when they roll well and everything goes their way (which is what you seem to be focusing on) they're terrifying, but inevitably those bad rolls will come a cropper and rain down hell upon you.

And if the Gunslinger didn't have this polarity to it. It wouldn't be worth playing, no matter how powerful.

The problem is it's only worth playing because regardless of whether it's internally balanced in a vacuum, it isn't balanced against external forces within the system, which smash all semblance of balance the class has unless you purposefully grind the Gunslinger to dust...


I did decided to create action drain, before I even built the class really I took at look at the systems out there and decided this was the most interesting way (to me and seemingly a lot of others) to do it.
It is the system and it's one of the few things about this class I won't compromise on, if I want a ranged gunslinger with no risk that's simple and needs no extra rules I'll reflavour a crossbow as a gun and play a battlemaster. You don't need a whole new class for that and you'll have a lot of the same abilities.

There's a reason I didn't use the ammunition property or the loading or reloading property; I needed distinct terminology.

When I ported misfires, I gutted the pathfinder system; like Deadshot and Gunslinger Dodge, the name is there, the spirit is there, but the mechanics are not. It's like a spiritual successor to pathfinder's grit and misfire systems. I cut out a lot of the fat to specifically leave behind those problems. Yes, now there are some extra 'rules' - I'm at a point now where as a player and DM I'm comfortable with some homebrew additions to accommodate for a kind of fantasy the PHB and DMG do not cater for and I am crafting homebrew for those in a similar circumstance. If you asked me 'Does this (or a) Gunslinger belong in the PHB?' I would say no.

Being conscious about reloading and misfires is part of the fun for me, misfiring creates a low in combat that stands as a stark contrast to the high of a crit. In some ways it revives combat for me.

I bolded the common trend here...

I don't even feel like I'm being untoward in saying it anymore: if you feel like you are building a class that adds the type of verisimilitude that you are particularly keen on, with mechanics that you personally want to see, that's fine. As long as you're being honest here: you aren't doing it to "fix" the Gunslinger, or to right an unsatisfactory wrong in the system; you're doing it for you. This class and subsystem fall away drastically at basically every optimization break point except yours.


Well... Maybe he was an idiot and dumped all his Grit in the first round? :)

External advantage breaks this assumption about the Gunslinger and you couldn't avoid this truth if you tried.


I'll try and make it more clear that only weapon enhancements (like say a magical gun that deals an extra 1d6 fire damage) get multiplied with deadshot.

Ammunition bonuses are conferred to their ranged weapons' attacks. Otherwise, +1/+2/+3 ammunition would only be useful if you struck someone with it in melee. This is an "always" truth about ammunition; turning it into a "magical bullet that deals X extra damage" functionally confers that benefit to its weapon on attack.


Deadshot widens critical threat range, but only in the same way that extra attacks give you more chances to crit - because you're sacrificing opportunity cost of extra attacks for one attack it gives you back some of that chance to crit. Granted the crit is bigger; but overall it's not going to break the DPR charts. You're losing a lot of extra damage from only being able to add your modifiers once.

True if bonus damage (Sneak Attack, Smite, Smiting Shot) aren't multiplied on the base, and only then, but RAW, right now at least Smiting Shot is.


Now you're getting it! Only difference is that you think it's a problem and I don't, guns should be and feel more powerful. When they work properly, it makes the weapon feel decided different and paints a different image for those at the table than a reskinned crossbow, when it doesn't work it's a source of entertainment and challenge. You might get salty when you roll low, but I don't.

I think most peoples problem with a critical fumble table is that you roll on it and something decidedly uncinematic happens, and it's random and it can completely **** you over. Also it's partly because most DM's I've seen use one won't let the players look at it, so it feels like an arbitrary '*******' by the DM. But we won't get into that any further. I hate Critical Fumble tables. I love misfires.

Misfires aren't arbitrary, they have a basis in written and cinematic fiction and they can be hilarious when they happen at the right moment. More importantly is that rules are layed out so you know what you're getting into before you play.

A critical fumble table could be clearly laid out and with rules to mitigate it, and I wouldn't be any more inclined to play with them. Misfires and long reloads aren't historically arbitrary, but they are at the table; if your entire turn can be described as "I reload," or "I fix my gun," and you waited fifteen minutes for this, you probably aren't doing a lot of (or any, really) fun things at the table. Even worse if you can't get more guns or gun upgrades easily, because then, it's every other round. I am willing to go to unnecessary lengths to ensure I am not spending fully half my combat rounds saying "I reload" while I twiddle my thumbs and hope to be useful on my next turn, and if that means buying as many guns as bullets, then so be it. This game is far too slow-paced for that, even with a focused table.

Wufflykins
2017-03-14, 01:59 PM
This is case where either you're reading an old version of the PDF or you're misinterpreting it, but these two fighting styles are explicit in that they operate based on melee or ranged attacks. Avante-Garde lets you fire off a shot in melee as a bonus action, desperado lets you volley fire. As far as dual wielding goes it's probably OP at early levels but quickly falls behind the others as PC's get more bonus actions, that is the nature of the beast as created by Wizards. My mechanics do nothing to change that and I'm determined to operate within the confines of the system they've created, so I'm keeping my fingerprints off of that particular train wreck.

Faerie fire and things of that ilk are a rising tide that floats all ships, frankly it is simultaneously under used and OP in the play that I've seen. I'm not sure what you're getting at; listing off the ways to get advantage and multiclassing cheese, it's nothing other classes can't do. In this thread you've argued that the gunslinger simultaneously outshines other players and yet needs other players to be effective, so I'm not sure what you're digging at here.

It's only arbitrary in that I picked an AC that provided a 50% chance to hit and then attached a monster name to it for flavour. It doesn't really matter what the monster is, 50% just makes for easy math and demonstrates averages. Some monsters will be easier to hit through your career some will be harder.

I'm not worried about sharpshooter because of reloading and misfires the gunslinger in the typical scenario will have roughly the same number of attacks at any given level as a bow wielding battle master and no real way to get more to-hit than a battle master (Grit for Focus or Precision for Battlemaster; Focus is more spammable but precision is vastly superior at all levels it is available).

Anything fought in hordes might be easy pickings for grit, but it's also where the Gunslinger is weakest without any substantial AoE (outside of very certain and limited Peacemaker choices). Additionally hordes are easy pickings for Fireballs, more than likely the gunslinger will just be cleaning up what's left, being well outshined by the mage in this scenario (as it should be).

Battlemaster has half a dozen Maneuvers that can be added on hit, and the peacemakers must be spent as a bonus action before rolling. The two aren't strictly comparable in that regard. Deadshot in the last few revisions excludes damage from class features - I pulled the wording on some parts from Divine Smite directly for Smiting Shot. I agree it could be clearer so I'll put some thought into changing that for clarity.

Sorry about my forum-spam napkin math, I'll try to do better; that said your math covers it nicely once you factor that Smiting Shot is not Smite and can only be used once per round and must be declared before rolling. Looking at the math though the gap isn't as wide as I worried that it might be (having changed much since I last sat down and worked it out properly). Your point about 8 rounds of nova is valid (mostly), it's still off-set largely by reloads and misfires.

On that note all of the math so far assumes a pepperbox, but with none of the factoring of misfires or reloads. You can't simply Meryl it up (though I love the reference) as you can only draw one weapon a round, and two with Desperado (it's not free, it's an object interaction and you only get one of those pg.190 if you're curious). So unless you're drawing and dropping pepperboxes like singles at a strip club, you can't simply side-step the problems of misfires and reloads.

It's absolutely about the feel of the class (and ostensibly my perception of the class) - if I wanted it to be easy to math with no flavour I'd strip the misfire and bonuses the class gets and essentially just have it play out like a Battlemaster with a Crossbow. But again this isn't for those that don't want - it's for those that do. However, adding in misfire and reloads (while it's not for everyone) do merit some consideration in balancing a class based primarily around interacting with those rules. Have I nailed the balance? Honestly? No. Not yet. It seems like you're not a fan of misfires and I respect that, but there's been overwhelmingly support for Mercer's Gunslinger that says I'm not alone. However these misfire rules are here to stay, and I am as well until I figure out either how to balance against them or find a more flavourful mechanic to replace them.

Remember too that the PHB is not designed by robots, it's designed by people adhering to their own perceptions and the traditions of what each class should be. I am doing this for other people, not just myself I might refer to myself a lot in this but I'm also using my best understand of what other players like to see in firearms (I'm not immune to my own biases and I understand this). They are after all a very different weapon, and changing the die size isn't enough to make it feel different. If this homebrew weren't for other people I wouldn't go to the lengths I have to make it as clear as it is (I know it's not DONE, but it's come a long way), and I just would've played it and changed it over time until it was exactly what I wanted and I would've only made the archetypes that interest me.

If I argue back it's not because I don't respect or understand your point (though the latter may sometimes be true), but rather that I can't simply make every change that everyone argues for without ending up with a mess. It is equally necessary that I both defend my work against criticism and accept the same criticism, changes must be made slowly with careful consideration.

External advantage breaks this assumption about the Gunslinger and you couldn't avoid this truth if you tried.

Again, external advantage rises all ships. He's not MEANT to be dumping all his grit in one round though (though I respect that my job here is to make sure that he's not overly rewarded or punished for doing or not doing this). But at this point we've gone round and round on the advantage issue, what can be done about the discrepancy?

If I limit the gunslinger to three attacks (either by simply giving them 3 attacks by 11 with no grit cost or only ever giving them 1 bonus attack), then they run a (significant) risk of falling behind in damage. That's definitely no fun. If I remove the base firearm mechanics I run a (significant) risk of destroying the flavour I'm working hard to create.

I agree with your assessment of critical fumbles however - I refuse to play with them but I see misfires as different (yes that's me but I'm not alone here either). As for spending your turn doing nothing: This is specifically why I've designed the Gunslinger to be reasonably effective in melee and why I also don't agree with Matt Mercer's decision to not include a Bonus Action 'Quick Clear' and a Bonus Action Reload (At a level lower than like 15(?)) on his iteration of the gunslinger. A way to interact with the system without undermining it.

All said - I agree with many of your concerns though some aren't well founded (what I'm going to affectionately call Stryfing from here on out) - but the extra attacks are a concern (not world shattering but enough for me to start considering alternatives). I'm thinking on capping the attacks at 3 at 11 with no possibility of expending grit for further shots, however I will examine each archetype to find places where I can make up the difference in output if it is lacking by comparison. Mysterious Strangers have the potential for an extra 'turn', Stalkers now get Heartsight and Peacemaker's get Smiting Shot; if I remove the bonus attacks and tweak these abilities perhaps that'd be more appropriate.

Edit: And if I haven't said it already mate, I appreciate the enormous amount of time and consideration you've put into your critiques - they've been very worthwhile. Thanks!

Lonely Tylenol
2017-03-14, 05:56 PM
On that note all of the math so far assumes a pepperbox, but with none of the factoring of misfires or reloads. You can't simply Meryl it up (though I love the reference) as you can only draw one weapon a round, and two with Desperado (it's not free, it's an object interaction and you only get one of those pg.190 if you're curious). So unless you're drawing and dropping pepperboxes like singles at a strip club, you can't simply side-step the problems of misfires and reloads.

You absolutely can, and you only need one Object Interaction to do it (though Desperado makes it easier), as long as you have Pepperboxes. And yes, it absolutely involves dropping your peppers on the ground like Bizarro Salt Bae.

Here are a few examples of how, at various break points, with and without the double draw and bonus attack from Desperado:

Method 1: Draw 1 Pepperbox at a time
Round 1: 4 shots from Gun 1 (Attack action), 1 shot from Gun 2 (bonus action shot). Shots in chambers: 2 in Gun 1, 5 in Gun 2. (Use Gun 1 for reaction shots or your bonus draw shot if the opportunity arises).
Round 2: 4 shots from Gun 2 (Attack action), 1 shot from Gun 1 (bonus action shot). Drop Gun 1 (no cost), draw Gun 3 (your one free Object Interaction). Shots in chambers: 1 in Gun 2, 6 in Gun 3. (Use Gun 3 for reaction shots.)
Round 3: 4 shots from Gun 3 (Attack action), 1 shot from Gun 2 (bonus action shot). Drop Gun 2 (no cost), draw Gun 4 (your one free Object Interaction). Shots in chambers: 2 in Gun 3, 6 in Gun 4. (Use either gun for reaction shots.)
Round 3+n: Repeat Round 3, but add n to each Gun #.

Method 2: Draw two Pepperboxes at once
Round 1: 4 shots from Gun 1 (Attack action), 1 shot from Gun 2 (bonus action shot). Shots in chambers: 2 in Gun 1, 5 in Gun 2. (Use Gun 1 for reaction shots or your bonus draw shot if the opportunity arises).
Round 2: 4 shots from Gun 2 (Attack action), 1 shot from Gun 1 (bonus action shot). Drop Gun 1 and 2 (no cost), draw Gun 3 and 4 together (your one free Object Interaction). Shots in chambers: 6 in Gun 3, 6 in Gun 4. (Use Gun 3 for reaction shots.)
Round 2+n: Repeat Rounds 1-2, adding n to each Gun #.

Method 3: Draw 1 Pepperbox at a time (no Desperado, so no double draw or bonus action attack)
Round 1: 4 shots from Gun 1 (Attack action). Shots in chambers: 2 in Gun 1, 6 in Gun 2.
Round 2: 2 shots from Gun 1, 2 shots from Gun 2 (Attack action). Drop Gun 1 (no cost), draw Gun 3 (your one free Object Interaction). Shots in chambers: 4 in Gun 2, 6 in Gun 3.
Round 3:

Method 4: Draw a Pepperbox and Double-Barreled Pistol together (useful from levels 5-10, and whenever you're too poor to have Pepperboxes because you had to get poverty Double-Barrels early on)
Round 1-2: 3 shots from Pepperbox (Attack) and 1 shot from Double-Barrel (bonus action). Drop Guns 1 and 2 after Round 2 (no cost), draw replacements for each. Rinse and repeat.

Method 5: Draw two Double-Barreled Pistols (useful from levels 5-10, after which the main benefit is mitigating the cost of buying Pepperboxes; the Reaper Special)
Round n: 2 shots from Gun 2n-1 (Attack action) and 2 shots from Gun 2n (1 Attack action, 1 bonus action attack). Drop Guns 2n-1 and 2n (no cost), draw Guns 2n+1 and 2n+2. Rinse and repeat.

And so on.

These are in descending order of both cost and effectiveness. With the later ones, you essentially forego your opportunity attacks (though you don't have many options for them outside of repeated uses of a Mysterious Stranger's Gunslinger's Dodge, if he opts out of Gun Tank), though if you take the reaction, it won't affect you at all if you're a Desperado; you just need to take your Object Interaction before the bonus attack (or accept that a loss of a single attack for an opportunity attack is a lateral damage move).

I wasn't joking when I said I was Meryl Stryfe: she discarded her guns, too.

I'll respond to the rest later. These posts take a lot of time, especially on mobile (I'm bored at work, don't judge).

Remember to return rate!

Wufflykins
2017-03-15, 04:59 AM
And yes, it absolutely involves dropping your peppers on the ground like Bizarro Salt Bae.

I just lost it.

But that's a solid analysis; and pretty convincing overall. I'm definitely coming around that this class would be fine with just three attacks. Scaling at the same rate as a fighter, minus the capstone. And probably tweaking each archetype to have it's bonus damages be both more reliable, but without scaling off the number of attacks.

Remember to return rate!

I had a quick look at your Inspiration mechanics - University just started up for the term so I'm a little pressed for time but I'll try to add my thoughts to it soon.

LeonBH
2017-03-16, 02:58 AM
Here's an idea: dropping a gun takes an Object Interaction. This is part of all gun's properties, detailed as a Special property. Now there is no way anyone can Meryl it up.

I also got the idea that maybe, instead of the 4th attack, make it so the Gunslinger's 17th level ability is instead an immunity to misfires. They have spent so much time around guns at this point, they just know when it's about to give and they make sure it never does when they do gun maintenance over a long rest.

Wufflykins
2017-03-16, 03:25 AM
Here's an idea: dropping a gun takes an Object Interaction. This is part of all gun's properties, detailed as a Special property. Now there is no way anyone can Meryl it up.

While this would solve the problem, it's very kludgy because every other object can be dropped freely and it seems almost nonsensical because you SHOULD be able to just drop your guns. It's creating a rule to patch a hole in the rules I created, it is far better to create a set of rules that does not reward 'Stryfing' in the first place.


I also got the idea that maybe, instead of the 4th attack, make it so the Gunslinger's 17th level ability is instead an immunity to misfires. They have spent so much time around guns at this point, they just know when it's about to give and they make sure it never does when they do gun maintenance over a long rest.

I'm determined to keep misfires as part of the class and firearm mechanics, more for flavour than balance; between Lonely_Tylenol's solid arguments and some other stuff I've worked out myself I think this class would manage well with just three attacks and a few tweaks to the archetype.

tenfoldGambit
2017-08-29, 04:14 PM
Are you still working on this? I realise that this is an old thread but I absolutely adore your take on gunslingers. I think this may be the best thought-out and executed gunslinger homebrew I've seen. Many others are simply taking the pathfinder class and porting numbers and terms to 5e.

If you're still working on it, I would really like to see what you've come up with for the Hexgun.

Awesome job on presentation and formatting. Keep up your fantastic work.

Cheers, tenfold