Creating a Gunslinger

[StevenC21]

One of my players desperately wants to play a Gunslinger. I know this is extremely suboptimal, but at the very least he will be playing a Rogue so he can get Sneak Attack damage.

However, I was wondering if there should be any feats or other character options I should recommend to him?

[Vizzerdrix]

3.5 or Pathfinder?

[StevenC21]

D&D 3.5, all official sources. Including Dragon Mag.

[Dalmosh]

If you are sticking hard to 3.5, I suggest the Shadowsword variant of Ranger (Champions of Valor, 49). Notably, at level 6 you get to put a magical bane on your weapon attacks against your favoured enemy, and at level 9 you can sense interdimensional portals and intuit their destination. You're now starting to get a character that can pull off some Roland deSchaine type stuff. Rangers are survivalists, specialist hunters, trackers and ranged weapon specialists, with an affinity to animals (hawks and billy bumblers?)
You might even incorporate some psionics into the build, in order to emulate "the touch".
You're probably now up for chasing the Man in Black through the desert.

You could nearly fit Diamond Mind counters in from Book of Nine Swords - generally the official content there is a bit lacklustre for ranged characters though.

Are third party supplements "official" in your game? Iron Kingdoms is where you want to look to start with, for better gun rules, and you might decide the Gun Mage class actually fits what you want better anyway. I didn't like it.

The gun rules in the DMG are a bit simple and limited, but just about work.

Checking out how this is handled in D20 modern and Pathfinder, is a helpful starting point too.

[Dalmosh]

Dipping a Diamond Mind trained Warblade level, gives you another useful class feature called Weapon Aptitude, which allows you to pick weapon feats you don't normally qualify for (useful in itself), and chop and change which weapon you apply these feats to every day.

Assuming guns are exotic weapons in your campaign... you are normally going to struggle to use them, as you will only be trained in one kind of gun. Weapon Aptitude, combined with the Exotic Weapon Proficiency you already needed to take, gives you the ability to pick up and use a range of different firearms as you gain access to them, without incurring the nonproficiency penalty that just about any other character would suffer from.

I personally like this, as it really makes gun use a specialised skill-set requiring a great deal of commitment, which helps integrate firearms into a fantasy world, and fits with the mechanical and alchemical constraints of using something higher tech in a low-tech world. It means gun use tends to be adopted by really specialised martial elites with some Warblade training, single gun-type focused fighters sinking an exotic weapon proficiency feat, and humans in general (as their extra feat lets them take exotic weapon proficiency with less investment than other less versatile races). This means that while you might meet pistoliers, musketeers etc reasonably commonly, only your really serious "gunslingers" are going to be able to use every kind of gun... which depending on your campaign, might help justify the elite knightly order nature of gunslingers as a group in the world.

[pabelfly]

He specifically wants to wield guns? Have you considered just reskinning bows as pistols?

Dragon Magazine 321 also has a article on guns, including pricing, accessories and detailing how they worked in a medieval context.

[Dalmosh]

That's a mint resource pabelfly. Notably, these rules introduce the feat Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Guns, which eliminates the problem above.