D&D 3.5 Ptolus firearms

[rel]

The Ptolus campaign setting for 3.5 has firearms with a lot of drawbacks but massive damage dice. For example the Hand cannon is a medium weapon that deals 3D6 damage.

Can anyone think of a way to exploit a ranged weapon with an unusually high damage code like this one. making the weapon larger is an obvious option but all the methods of doing that I know of are melee only.

[noob]

For exploiting weapons that deals huge base damage try to use telekinesis on the weapons?
Since it deals the damage of the weapon regardless of how it is supposed to be used(so for example throw a rocket launcher and it will deal as much damage as the explosion of a rocket).
The advantage is that you do not go through all the drawbacks and that you deal the full damage of multiple weapons at once(for possibly up to 15 of them)
Imagine being bludgeoned by 15 pathfinder rocket launchers?
It would deal 180d6 damage.
15 hand cannons would deal only 45d6.
But you can get hand cannons of two more size categories and throw them all.
Or three more size categories if you make them out of mithril.

[rel]

My thinking so far is as follows:
I build a large hand cannon, wield it with strongarm bracers and enlarge myself.
My weapon is now huge and deals 6D6 damage per shot.

One of the rules of firearms is double loading; you add extra powder to the gun and it does damage as a weapon one size category larger than normal but explodes if you roll a 1 to hit. If I can find a reliable way to avoid rolling ones then I can add that for 8D6 per shot.

I might be able to add giant stance from tome of battle or heavy weapons from magic of faerun for further damage increases. The fluff doesn't really line up for either effect although they are both arguably mechanically fine.

At this point I can reliably get a lot of weapon damage dice.
Can anyone think of something to do with that?

aura of chaos from the tome of battle makes the dice explode but it is quite a high level stance.

[Rebel7284]

If we're abusing size categories, I think the easiest way to do that is Psychic Warrior/Ardent with Expansion. If you're medium and augment expansion, you're huge. Strongarm Bracers for gargantuan. Half Minotaur will make you large to start with for only +1 LA and bring the total to colossal without having to add any more gunpowder.

Really, the only issue becomes fighting in small, confined spaces that don't easily accommodate a gargantuan creature.

[Jormengand]

For exploiting weapons that deals huge base damage try to use telekinesis on the weapons?
Since it deals the damage of the weapon regardless of how it is supposed to be used(so for example throw a rocket launcher and it will deal as much damage as the explosion of a rocket).
The advantage is that you do not go through all the drawbacks and that you deal the full damage of multiple weapons at once(for possibly up to 15 of them)

Somewhat unrelated, but this reminds me of Diablo II and the Hammer Assassin - the skills Blade Sentinel, Blade Fury and Blade Shield key off your mainhand weapon's damage but ignore its attack speed, making them far stronger with a warhammer or maul (depending on whether you prefer one-handed weapon and shield or two-handed weapon) than with the assassin's ordinary two-weapon fighting with fast attack speed weapons.

On topic, though, I think there's a couple of Tome of Magic: Swords Edition Tome of Battle manuevers which key off your weapon's damage but ignore its rate of fire, but the only one I can think of is lightning throw which requires a melee weapon. That said, it seems to allow you to throw a weapon you can't wield, so that's something you can abuse even if it doesn't work with the firearms. The Scything Blade boost lets you make a free attack of any type alongside your melee attack, but that's probably not helpful. There's probably something, though.

[noob]

Somewhat unrelated, but this reminds me of Diablo II and the Hammer Assassin - the skills Blade Sentinel, Blade Fury and Blade Shield key off your mainhand weapon's damage but ignore its attack speed, making them far stronger with a warhammer or maul (depending on whether you prefer one-handed weapon and shield or two-handed weapon) than with the assassin's ordinary two-weapon fighting with fast attack speed weapons.

On topic, though, I think there's a couple of Tome of Magic: Swords Edition Tome of Battle manuevers which key off your weapon's damage but ignore its rate of fire, but the only one I can think of is lightning throw which requires a melee weapon. That said, it seems to allow you to throw a weapon you can't wield, so that's something you can abuse even if it doesn't work with the firearms. The Scything Blade boost lets you make a free attack of any type alongside your melee attack, but that's probably not helpful. There's probably something, though.

Since those assassin skills basically halved damage when you used a two handed weapon the highest damage was reached with one handed weapons.(and yes the fact it halve damage with two handed weapons is not displayed in the ui)

[Jormengand]

Since those assassin skills basically halved damage when you used a two handed weapon the highest damage was reached with one handed weapons.(and yes the fact it halve damage with two handed weapons is not displayed in the ui)

True, though for a start Blade Shield's damage isn't halved and second the weapon can still end up dealing more damage just because the base damage is higher - still, I do love how Blizzard actually predicted that people would try Hammer Assassin so they had to nerf it. I also love how it's still actually viable.

Back on topic, I think there's an item or spell somewhere which reloads weapons for you automatically? You might be able to use that to make full attacks without having to go through the complicated reload process.

[noob]

Sadly blade shield is not a very reliable source of dps.(in fact even less than the two other weapon damage based skills who does not depends on weapon speed) in the end the assassins are usually better off using other skills.(Diablo 2 is not exactly a balanced game: there is tons of skills which are a waste of time) Still putting one point in blade shield is not a bad idea since it is nearly a passive.
If you can get your gm to allow reserve of strength to uncap telekinesis completely(if he is a blind automaton of raw) then you might try an UR priest wizard spellthief theurge that gets high caster level and ninth level divine spells(and telekinesis on the arcane side).
Then you get min(CL,number of mithril guns)*8d6 damage per casting of telekinesis(And your cl might or might not be infinite if that matters to you(due to master spellthief which makes your cl in each class be the sum of the cls in all the classes and the ur priest power of having a cl equal to the caster level of ur priest + half of your caster level in the arcane classes))