Find out all about the class that brings a gun to a sword-and-sorcery fight, the gunslinger!
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Show Notes
Book: Ultimate Combat
Concept: A steel-toting, rough-riding, quick-drawing son of a gun. (Lirianne)
Context:
- Westerns:
- The Batman Test
- Our gunslingers: None. Ever.
Mechanics:
- Full BAB / D10 HD;
- 4 + Int skill points, Acrobatics (Dex), Bluff (Cha), Climb (Str), Craft (Int), Handle Animal (Cha), Heal (Wis), Intimidate (Cha), Knowledge (engineering) (Int), Knowledge (local) (Int), Perception (Wis), Profession (Wis), Ride (Dex), Sleight of Hand (Dex), Survival (Wis), and Swim (Str).
- simple, martial weapons, all firearms, light armor;
- Class features:
- 1st Gunsmith: Free blunderbuss, musket or pistol that you can’t jam, Gunsmithing feat.
- 1st Deeds: Gain deeds of your level or lower, spend grit to do something amazing.
o 1st, 3rd, and every fourth level thereafter.
- 1st Grit: Replenishing pointes-based resource equal to the gunslinger’s Wisdom mod. Regained by confirming a critical hit or dropping a target with a gun.
- 2nd Nimble: +1 dodge AC wearing light or no armor. +1 every four levels beyond 2nd.
- 4th Bonus combat or grit feat every fourth level.
- 5th Gun Training: Pick a type of gun. Add Dex mod on damage rolls with that type of gun. Every four levels thereafter pick another type of firearm.
- 20th True Grit: Two grit-spending deeds costs 1 less grit point.
Deeds:
- Deadeye (1st): Target touch AC, spend 1 grit per range increment beyond first.
- Gunslinger’s Dodge (1st): When trageted with a ranged attack, spend 1 grit to move 5 feet as an immediate action +2 bonus to AC
- Quick Clear (1st): As a standard action, fix a broken firearm, spend 1 grit to quick clear as a move action.
- Gunslinger Initiative (3rd): +2 initiative, can draw a firearm as part of the initiative check if she has the Quick Draw feat.
- Pistol-Whip (3rd): Spend 1 grit to melee attack with firearm as a standard action.
- Utility Shot (3rd): Replace an attack with one of the following:
- Blast Lock: Disable lock by shooting it;
- Scoot Unattended Object: Move object with bullets;
- Stop Bleeding: Cauterize wound.
- Dead Shot (7th) Full-round action to fire all shots at a target, dealing additional damage. Good for overcoming DR.
- Startling Shot (7th): Turn a hit into a miss to render target flatfooted.
- Targeting (7th) Full-round action to target body parts.
- Bleeding Wound (11th): Spend 1 grit to cause bleed, or 2 grit to cause ability score bleed.
- Expert Loading (11th): Misfiring a broken gun doesn’t blow it up.
- Lightning Reload (11th) Reload a single barrel of a one-handed or two-handed firearm as a swift action.
- Evasive (15th): Evasion, uncanny dodge, and improved uncanny dodge.
- Menacing Shot (15th) Spend 1 grit point to target an area of effect.
- Slinger’s Luck (15th): Spend grit to reroll a saving throw or a skill check.
- Cheat Death (19th): Spend all remaining grit to be reduced to 1 hp instead of 0 or below.
- Death’s Shot (19th): Spend 1 grit to turn a crit into a save or die.
- Stunning Shot (19th): Spend 2 grit points to stun a hit creature for 1 round.
Ability Scores: Dex, Wis.
Best Race: Human, dwarf, elf, half-elf, half-orc, halfling.
Roles: Ranged damage.
Archetypes: Gun Scavenger (shoots scrap), Gun Tank (heavily armoured), Gunner Squire (supports a knight), Musket Master (obvious), Mysterious Stranger (swap Cha for Wis), Pistolero (pistle specialist), Siege Gunner (cannons specialist), Wyrm Sniper (dragon hunter)
Roleplaying Keywords: Cowboy
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A couple of points.
The gunslinger’s touch attack is still not actually a touch attack, but is an attack vs touch ac.
You are missing a major potential feel for the gunslinger. Sure the American/Italian western is one route to go with a gunslinger, but there is another iconic gun character (which actually fits better with the actual guns in Pathfinder. The american western is set in a time with the second tier of firearms advancement from the book.) the musketeer, or other gun toting adventuring guardsman.
A gunslinger isn’t immune to misfires and blowing up their weapon. I’ve seen players chose to risk that second misfire because extra damage was immediately important to them.
There are a lot of reasons not to stick with your starting gun. The three starting guns are kind of weak compared to the more expensive weapons off the early firearms charts.
Oh also, early batman? Back when he was still a pretty direct Shadow clone? Totally used guns and killed people.
Agreed on basically all accounts. The gunslinger is so heavily Western genre flavoured that we overlooked the potential for pulp and early American comic influences like The Shadow.
I think the name Gunslinger was a poor choice for the class, because it immediately connotes images of Clint Eastwood. However, when reading the class and firearm descriptions, it becomes clear that the class is far closer to the musketeers of Dumas.
Also, Cathy would hate the Gunslinger I play in PFS: Tuco is Gunslinger 1 / Bard 2 / Saurial Druid 4. He’s working toward his Triceratops mount. He’s got his guitar, pistols, and dinosaur and is ready for adventure.
Good news, Will! I found the perfect mini for your character!
http://www.ohgizmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/Triceratops%20%28Custom%29.gif
That is simply amazing!
First I want to say that I enjoyed this episode, as always. The Chimera ad made me laugh each time I listened.
So, on to some nitpicks and comments. Michael beat me to at least some so I won’t repeat those.
Deeds: I think they made them a single category so that they did not need to repeat the basics.
Utility shot: I’m going to disagree that this should have been three separate items. All of them are fairly unimpressive, I like the ability I just think that as 3 separate abilities it would have seemed underwhelming.
Scoot Unattended Object: This one is taken from so many westerns, and frankly any other media where the characters have guns. Honestly to worry about the item not being damaged, when the rogue can be at the center of a Fireball’s blast radius and take no damage, seems silly to me. This one is about style.
Stop Bleeding: This is another one taken from so many westerns and is another one about style not about real world physics. Though in theory it should work. We use heat to cauterize wounds in modern hospitals to my understanding. As a side note, this is a “shot” because you have to have taken a shot with the firearm in question, to use this ability.
True Grit: I have to agree that this ability is underwhelming for being a Capstone.
Alkenstar: To me Alkenstar is more Steampunk than Wild West. Maybe Steampunk Western, or Wild Wild West… 🙂
Any way had fun listening. Looking forward to the next episode.
I had just listened to this episode and wanted to make note of a few things, although I’ve been beaten to the punch.
If a gunslinger was unable to jam/misfire/give the broken condition to his starting weapon, that would give them quite an advantage at low levels, especially archetypes that make use of things that have the side effect of increasing the misfire chance. I was wondering the whole episode where you’d have gotten that impression.
The scrap metal from the starting firearm is indeed only 4d10gp.
The last thing I can think of offhand to note is that non-gunslingers can indeed use a gunslinger’s even starting firearm, they just receive penalties as if it had the broken condition in addition to proficiency penalties if any.
Love the show, thanks for putting it on.
I know that this was already pointed out, but Batman has used guns in the past. A blog post detailing this can be found at http://sacomics.blogspot.com/2005/08/batman-and-guns.html
Oh, and Ryan, PLEASE never attempt a southern accent again. As someone from Texas, I was cringing.
Then mission accomplished!
My choices were “bad southern drawl” or “no accent whatsoever, just muscle through a tonne of cowboy terminology in my regular accent”. Went with the prior.
I enjoyed listening to the Gunslinger episode. One thought I had was that you seemed to be stuck on the “cowboy” for role-playing. I have a Musket Master in Pathfinder Society who is Taldor, with a British Colonial Big-Game-Hunter style. There are lots of other ways to RP a Gunslinger besides “Wild-West”.
I found this episode to be extremely hard to listen to, and it actually made me angry. I have listened to a few of the other class focused podcasts (my neighbor recommended them to me last week). I am about to start playing a Gunslinger and was hoping for advice on what makes them tick. Instead, neither host had ever played a gunslinger, both were adamantly against allowing them in the first place, and it felt like neither had read the class at all.
You should re-record this episode with someone who actually finds the topic interesting and has some experience with it. Imagine tuning into the Wizard episode only to have two people talk about how “Magic isn’t real, its not appropriate to Pathfinder” for 10 minutes…. and then got basic mechanics wrong.