Reload
Folks like to handwave certain aspects of play. Whether it’s spell components or encumbrance or prerequisites for multiclassing, it’s often easier to sweep those inconvenient rules under the rug. But today we’ve got a trickier beast in our crosshairs, and Ima be honest with you guys: I’m not sure what “a better way” might look like.
The problem with ammo is that it’s an obvious counterbalance for ranged characters. You certainly can stand in the back and plunk away. But the minute you run out of arrows you’re just an underpowered fighter. I think we can all agree that’s an uncomfortable situation for a ranged PC. But even if you do have a bandolier of infinite ammo, you’ve got to figure out how to get Bullet A into Gun B. That generally requires free hands; provokes attacks; interrupts your action economy; uses special equipment; etc. etc. From a game designer’s perspective, overcoming these restrictions is the cost of putting a lot of lead in the air.
Over in Pathfinder I’ve seen players respond to this challenge in a number of creative ways. I’m talking about tieflings reloading with prehensile tails, racoons trained as artillery familiars, and mutated alchemists straight out of Afro Samurai tossing cartridges around with a third arm. The 5e version seems to be an endless procession of dudes asking 1) whether the Repeating Shot infusion interacts with Matt Mercer’s Gunslinger firearms, and 2) if crossbow expert lets you dual-wield hand crossbows. (No doubt today’s comments will light up with folks eager to tell the world the one true way it’s supposed to work.) Even my favorite minis game has reload issues, with folks house ruling that you can just count your spent pistol as a club so that you don’t have to switch between weapons.
From all of the above, I deduce that gamers like blasting away with two guns. They just want clear rules explaining how they can achieve that. And so, for today’s discussion, I ask you mechanically-inclined folk this question: What are you favorite reloading rules? Do you like a clearly-defined “you can fire X times per round,” or do you relish the challenge of finding builds that can squeeze off multiple shots? Let’s hear all about your own gunslinging exploits down in the comments!
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We have been handling this in an… odd… fashion for our two gunslingers in our current campaign. One took a few feats to reload her dual pistols as a free action, but frankly hasn’t actually fired enough shots in most combats lately to even need to reload due to her focus on tanking and spending lots of actions on self healing. Her brother, the other gun slinger is a sniper type build, and he needs to pay careful attention to his shots, early on he could fire four shots before reloading, but he was only able to reload a few times per day, since he couldn’t actually carry enough batteries to reload his laser rifle more often. in the mid levels he got things to reduce from needing a full round to reload to just a move action, and now even that action was negated. But since he got a giant mech, refuling that has become the new reload question for him. Takes him a full round to restart it if it runs out of fuel, but the fuel costs count against his WBL for the session, since we use WBL as a limit on how much magical equipment you can use, and he has a magitek mecha. So he has to be careful about his giant mech use, and know when he needs to refuel it between combats, and when he needs to shut it down, shrink it, and store it again.
WHAT GAME EVEN IS THIS ID ON’T
…
Ahem. I think that there’s this weird tension between “guns are supposed to be powerful” and “we have to limit them somehow.” And since guns require IRL explanations like “ammo” (or fuel in the case of your gun-equivalent mech), logistics replace the easy handwave answer of “Vancian magic just works that way.” That allows players to devise clever strategies. For example, I bet you mech pilot could come up with some kind of “mid-combat refueling drone.”
Well, last campaign was a mythic pathfinder game, and the main enemy was supposed to be the demon lord of SCIENCE! and then we got an alchemist super genius who spent in game years (decades by the end) advancing technology for the common people (really humans, they were a human supremacist, in that they wanted to make humans the ultimate species by uplifting them rather than direct genocide)
However instead of actually fighting the demon lord of SCIENCE!, they tried to starve him out by depriving a good million people or so in addition to him of mana, which as per our cosmology would have resulted in soul collapse and death, but uhh, instead they got apocalypsed after interfering with the known plans of a group of primordial deities.
Their surviving children rebuilt their empire from the ashes, and continued technological advancement, so now their armies are a mostly made up of half-giants with rocket launchers or laser rifles.
It got crazy, and second campaign is nearly over as they instead decided to ALLY with the demon lord of SCIENCE! to break down the barriers keeping the god of change out, which will result in us shifting to a new system for next campaign, and starting as level 0 apprentices (1d4 hp, 1 partial class feature from the class they want to be.)
Worth noting that mech pilot has a mid-combat refuling drone (or rather, can refuel as a free action), but they have a limited fuel supply they can power per day without giving up other gear, hence why it becomes a decision. They dont want to run the mecha when they dont need it, but they also dont want to be without their defenses, because they are extremely squishy without the mech.
Also worth noting I think I missed my adhd meds today and am rambling.
Campaign sounds pretty epic, ADHD or no. 🙂
What’s the new system?
Also I think I would really like your campaigns.
Reloading is the worst part of the action economy. In Pathfinder it’s a bit too crunchy considering that we all just want to shoot things. Further… you can shoot a BOW as many times as you have attacks in a round, but the second you use a crossbow (which is inferior from a crunch perspective in every way), you get hosed. And just pack up the Fun Meter if you’re playing a GS rules as written. Double so if it’s for Pathfinder Society.
So I can’t speak for other games, but I can speak for mine. If you’re playing a GUNSLINGER, I want you to be SLINGING SOME GUNS just about all the time. You are in theory supposed to be good at that. Mind, I’ve taken some stabs at this before, and at this stage… I think Feat Taxing for Rapid Reload and throwing out literally all other associated BS is the way to go here. I’m considering nerfing guns to target normal AC and you have to use Grit to hit touch-I think that’d be fair.
Because otherwise… your a subpar fighter without your gun. And you’re actually a subpar fighter WITH your gun until about level 15. And I said it before-if your build isn’t starting to do its thing by about level 6, that’s too damn long to wait.
The only archetype I ever built was something called a “goblin pistolero” that allowed you to carry a gun collection. The idea was that you could swap enhancement bonuses and enchants between weapons each morning, allowing you to go full Boondock Saints by dropping pisotls and grabbing more:
https://ultimateactionmovies.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Boondock-1999-scaled.jpg
Honestly can’t remember if it ever saw publication anywhere, but I quite liked the concept.
I like how every one of these replies is essentially one more case of ‘the official rules suck’ pretty much regardless of what system. There’s an exception in there.
Some people have found some RP opportunities with these rules. That’s cool and certainly something to be encouraged, but ultimately, I find 5e’s goal of streamlining to be the most admirable thing about that incarnation of DnD, and honestly, if the rules were streamlined, there’s nothing stopping you from having your awesome gun reloading raccoon anyways.
A fun reload technique is to just swap to a new gun when you run out, and have a shitload of guns, like people used to do with Flintlocks
Or have a second set of arms, so you can reload one gun while shooting another and swap as needed
I can’t think of that strat and not think of the pistol dude from that pirate animation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3RRc44IVrE
There was a spell back in the old 3.0 Iron Kingdoms RPG often used by the ‘Gunmage’ class that was similar to Pathfinders “Reloading Hands”, it became common practice in our games for people to have braces of pistols attached to lanyards which combined with the spell meant that they could continue a cycle of drawing and firing. Others accomplished something similar with guns with multiple barrels.
I remember in the end of a two year IK Pirates campaign we all won enough money while gambling that I equipped most of the firearms based characters weapons with “runeplates” (magitech scrolls effectively) of said spell. It was all quite fun.
Oh man… Hard flashback to the weapon cords:
https://aonprd.com/EquipmentMiscDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Weapon%20cord
I believe they got nerfed to hell to prevent exactly this sort of tactic.
In 5e, I’m honestly not too fond of Matt Mercer’s Gunslinger’s firearms. Mainly because it’s a relatively direct conversion of Pathfinder’s firearms, which were MUCH more powerful thanks to their hitting touch AC and therefore needed balancing factors. In 5e, having a chance to misfire with what is otherwise a relatively normal ranged weapon is way too steep of a cost.
I’d rather use the DMG firearms. The single shot ones have the Loading property (can only make one attack per turn with it), those with magazines have the Reload property (you can make X shots with the weapon, and then you have to spend an action or a bonus action to reload). And all of them have the Ammunition property (need a free hand to reload).
So no, technically you probably couldn’t dual wield guns with that system. Or you could, but you could only fire once with each, and then you’d have to drop the second one to be able to load the first. I would allow an equivalent feat to Crossbow Expert to be able to ignore the Loading property, but not the Ammunition property. However, a properly enchanted weapon (and the Repeating Shot infusion would work here as the DMG classify those as martial ranged weapons, so they qualify) would work.
But yeah, overall that dual wielding gunslinger fantasy isn’t well supported by the system, I agree.
Tasha’s Cauldron includes the Gunner feat, which is similar to Crossbow Expert… negates the loading requirement, and the disadvantage at close range. Arguably it’s better than Crossbow Expert, since it’s a half-feat… instead of granting a bonus offhand attack with a hand crossbows (useless to anyone preferring larger weapons), it grants a useful +1 Dex.
Question for ya: Suppose a player wanted the dual wielding gunslinger fantasy in 5e. If you were inclined to allow it for the aesthetic, how would you go about supporting it via homebrew?
I personally like the Complete Gunslinger from Mage Hand Press, which is a complete base class. It might be a bit on the strong side – I’ve never gotten the chance to play it much myself – but it has a subclass that allows you to reload a one-handed firearm for free every turn. So that definitely allows for gunslinging.
Right now, without putting much thought into it : let them do it as-is (by which I mean just let them reload both guns as if it was a single one, despite not having a free hand), with the understanding that we will probably have to come up with acceptable nerfs to the mechanics together if it turns out to be too strong.
I rarely homebrew, not because I don’t like it, but because balancing is a hard and time consuming process and I don’t wanna do it upfront, so letting players come to me with ideas and making minimal changes (as long as nothing obviously broken jumps at me) before going “okay but it might change if it’s too much (or too little)” is usually my approach.
As for thinking of an actual solution, simplest I can think of is giving them access to guns that can shoot multiple times before needing to reload (like the modern guns in the DMG). This makes having to spend an action or bonus action on reloading more palatable, and someone spending a full round reloading both guns (one with a normal action, the other with a bonus action) before resuming shooting doesn’t hurt versimilitude as much as a guy just reloading every shot with both guns for me – and if the magazines are big enough, it can become a non-issue considering most fights are usually fairly short. And at higher levels, just magic it up and let them pew pew as much as they want, it’s no big deal. (As I said : the repeating shot infusion is valid here if they want to go that route, and that also suggest you could find more permanent, non artificer-dependant enchantments of that nature).
And to skirt the “dual wielding is awkward in 5e” part, I’d simply remind them of an often forgotten rule : the attack action doesn’t specify which weapon you use if you are wielding several ones. If you have the extra attack feature, you can use your right-hand weapon for the first attack, and your left-hand weapon for the second one. That’s RAW. As for the BA attack, the only stipulation is “attacking with a different weapon” (that you used for the attack action), but since you just used both weapon you can use either for the BA too (well, it also technically only works for melee weapons but that’s kinda dumb so I’m ignoring that part). So you can go right-left-right, and for the next turn round it up with left-right-left. And there you go, you’re pew-pew-ing with both hands.
Reloading doesn’t take an action (or even a free item interaction)… the ability to load as part of the attack is standard for any weapon requiring ammunition. The only catch is the Loading quality, which restricts you to one shot per action.
So if you’re duel-wielding hand crossbows, the Crossbow Expert does most of what you need… you get to ignore the Loading restriction (allowing you to take advantage of Extra Attack) for at least two shots per turn (depending on which version of Extra Attack you have), and you also get to attack with a hand crossbow as a bonus action if you’re already attacked with a one-handed weapon (such as another hand crossbow) as your action.
Firearm rules are a little more complicated, but if you’re using single-shot pistols, the Gunner feat does the same as above, but without the bonus action attack (fair enough, since pistols do 1d10 damage vs hand crossbow 1d6).
Reloading DOES take an action (or a bonus action, your choice) when we are talking about the DMG firearms with the Reloading property. Which is what I was doing.
As for dual wielding hand crossbows/single shot pistols, the Ammunition property, which the Crossbow Expert/Gunner feats don’t ignore, is the one that requires you to have a free hand to reload. So you could fire both weapons but you couldn’t reload them without dropping one, feat or no feat. Not without the help of magic at least.
True, I’m overlooking the “free hand” requirement, which would indeed be an impediment to dual-wielding. I’ve been reading these rules a lot lately, but not with dual-wielding in mind. Hmm… are there any official stats for four-armed creatures like Thri-Kreen in 5e?
Regarding “Reload”, that’s an interesting case, since it applies only to weapons which can fire multiple shots without reloading – so with a 6-shot revolver, you need to spend a bonus action every few turns on reloading it. But single shot weapons use the same “Loading” property as the crossbows… the one “Gunner” allows you to ignore. So with that feat, you can actually sustain a higher rate of fire with a single-shot weapon than an automatic… you never need to spend an action to load it. That’s a bit weird…
Oh my goodness, a Gunslinger comic not about how horrifically lonely he is.
As for Reloading, for most weapons with them they need something to justify the reload themselves compared to Bows, like better damage or hitting a targets touch AC. As for Duel wielding Pistols or Revolvers, I really just think there should be a feat to allow you to reload with your hands occupied if your not holding a 2 handed weapon. I am interested in seeing how Pathfinder 2e handles the gunslinger, since reloading likely will be less of an issue since they have their whole 3 actions and decreasing hit rates for every extra attack you make, so if there is a feat to reload two guns at once you can shoot both guns then reload in the same turn.
My bad. Won’t happy again.
If my proficiency in Knowledge (anime bullshit) is to be believed, that feat comes with gender prerequisites:
https://imgur.com/r/animegifs/QogQ4
Pathfinder gunslingers already defy physical boundaries with how fast they can reload with a bunch of feats.
If you have a 2-hander firearm, your only real option is to be a Musket Master, grab a Musket, get Rapid Reload feat, and use alchemical paper cartridge ammo, allowing you a free action reload. You this get free action reloads (requiref for multi attacks) at the cost of misfire chance increasing. One-handed pistol users do the same thing but aren’t reliant on being the Musket Master archetype.
Mechanically, this works. From realism perspective, the gunslinger who shoots three times a turn with a musket is somehow able to, in the span of six seconds, reload a gunpowder musket (which involves putting in gunpowder, jamming it in with a ramrod, adding the bullets), aim and fire, thrice in a row.
Unfortunately, this also means the gunslinger provokes up to three attacks in those 6 six seconds.
Other options include having multiple barrels (no need to reload immediately, but eventually you will), or simply using ‘advanced guns’ which border the line of OP due to their better reload time, range, damage, reduced or absent misfire chance and barrel count.
Recently, magic users (or multiclassing a caster) with arcane strike can grab magic bullet feats, getting force bullets that bypass thr reload/gunpowder gimmicks. It works well for Spellslinger wizards or bards.
If you are absolutely rich, however, just buy an Infinite Sky Pistol and enjoy your infinite-ammo +5 magic bullets with no reloading issues or misfire (barring antimagic zones).
That was Laurel’s build in our Dragoneers game. Poor sharpshooting peasant never got the respect he deserved.
You would not believe the arguments that this has prompted among my group.
“But it’s one full attack.”
“No, it’s multiple attacks.”
“It’s a single action.”
“IT’S MULTIPLE ATTACKS!”
“I’m pretty sure you’re wrong. Let’s pause for ten minutes to consult the rulebook.”
Something is wrong with this comic, Gunslinger isn’t being patronized or humiliated. Is that portal about to suck him into a hellscape? When will the other shoe drop?
Nah, he just found out his moment of glory was tainted by the fact he ignored reloading rules, and hence the entire encounter has to be redone. You’re not cool, Gunslinger, you just ignored all the rules that say why you suck.
^ this guy gets it
I use the Spell Cartridges feat in Pathfinder and make sure I’m a class with a caster level. Get that and never worry about ammo again.
I know it’s a good feat, but I always hear Spell Cartridges and want caster shells:
https://outlawstar.fandom.com/wiki/Caster_shells
I liked one of the novels with a gunslinger, just hired a henchdwarf to reload for her and had a couple guns. Mainly a bounty hunter so didn’t hit too many enclosed spaces. Surprisingly mundane as a character build, as it were.
More classes should come with a caddy.
Bahhhh! You kids and your fancy rapid reload schticks. In Warhammer 4e, a would-be gunslinger better have a bandolier of pistols ready to fire. Or be prepared to roll every round just to see if he can reload his gun!
I see that you too have pistol-whipped skaven in the mean streets of Mordheim.
Not me. I’m to busy directing the winds of magic all the while praying I don’t screw up and get sucked into the warp. It’s my dwarven ally who tempts fate with his black powder rifle.
It’s a wonder neither of us are dead yet. 😉
I actually kinda like the Deadlands method, which is just leaning into the whole thing. Reloading is a full on skill, with multiple variants depending on the type of gun. Optimizing that is… well not half, but call it a third of being a gunslinger, with quick-loaders, one rifle reloaded with the Reloading (Pistol) skill to save on points, carrying multiple guns so you can just lean into the Quick-Draw skill instead, and I’m sure there’s a Hex-Slinger spell for reloading magically as well.
That works well for a crunchy, relatively grounded system like Deadlands Classic, but for the D&D extended family you’d probably want something more fluid.
I’ve only ever done Savage Worlds Deadlands. Still worth going back to give the system a shot?
TBH, our campaign never got past the character building phase. That did still see me skimming most of the books and reading several of them all the way through to fulfil my customary role of Librarian, knower of things and helper of character-builders, so I did get at least a look at most of the mechanics, and what I saw I liked.
I especially liked the way the system handles flaws. In character creation, they function as in Shadowrun, where each flaw is worth some number of points that you can then spend on perks and improved abilities/skills. In play, roleplaying those flaws gives you Fate Chips that can be spent during the session to manipulate rolls and power some magics or after the session for permanent upgrades, but you can only have a certain number of them at a time. The end result is that you’re encouraged to be constantly roleplaying to earn Fate Chips, and then regularly use them to make the game more interesting because you can’t really hoard them.
My character was going to be a former bandit who reformed after surviving her execution. She’d be mute from the botched hanging, communicating by signs and body language, and a Shaman of the Bear (always heal others, avoid doing harm) who put her old gunslinging skills to use to shoot guns out of opponents hands, relying on being able to protect and heal herself with magic rather than being the fastest on the draw (and the loophole that many gunslingers wait for their opponent to go for their gun before trying to outdraw them, because that way they won’t be charged for murder; Ash wouldn’t have that problem and could freely draw first).
So yeah, while I’ve never played the Savage Worlds version, Deadlands Classic did impress me with its mechanics. Definitely a system I want to return to.
My favourite reloading rules are the savage world rules.
– You can load a bow or sling practically as part of the shooting action (albeit only one ammo per action)
– You can reload a crossbow or other guns that need ammo as an action (or as several actions, if the weapon has the Reloading X property)
– in SW you can take up to three actions per turn, but you get severe penalties for ALL of your rolls in the round if you take more than one
– they don’t specify the need of an empty hand; they presume the GM handles that part sensibly (thus allowing flexibility for creative solutions and/or creatures with more than two prehensile limbs)
The thing with the DnD5e rules is that they are so excrutiatingly explicit to avoid misunderstandings that it’s hard to just take a glimpse and make an easy ruling; and since they are so explicit, rules lawyers have a field day trying to prove that if it’s not explicitly forbidden, it must be allowed…
…and for the hand crossbow question, yes and no.
– Yes, you can wield two hand crossbows. You can even shoot both in the same round. What you cannot do is reload either of them as long as you are holding both… The Crossbow Expert removes the Loading property, and although that suggests the item doesn’t need reloading, in fact the Loading property only means “it’s slow to load so you are limited how many attacks you can make per action”; and it’s the Ammunition property that specifies that you need to reload the weapon and you need an extra free hand to do that… Overly explicit phrasing + unfortunate / misleading names = easy to misunderstand rules…
Doing the gods’ work out here. 🙂
It was a great little system for Firefly. My group really dug its metacurrency aspect. So much so that we switched to FATE for the sequel campaign. Too bad though. I’d actually liked the crunch/narrative mix a little better in Savage Worlds. Felt right for space western.
I have stronger preferences for my reloading rules to fit with the system in question than I do for how exactly it works. though even there I’m not a big fan of the “roll a die to see if your gun ran out of ammo each time you shoot”, it just feels too weird when someone gets unlucky and their fresh clip/magizine turned out to only have one bullet in it.
In pathfinder this boils down to always wanting to get reloading down to a free action at least for serious crossbow users, since iterative attacks is so important. It’s different for a low-level character that just want an easy to use back-up ranged weapon.
Best version I’ve heard for that is buying “dice” of ammunition. Roll a d12 for a fresh quiver. If you roll a 1 you downgrade to a d10. Repeath all the way down to d4. When you roll a 1 on the d4, you’re out of ammo. This provides the possibility of a dramatic “damn, last shot” moment without the weirdness of instantly losing your entire bullet stash.
I’m sure that works for some people, and it’s certainly less extreme in the variance, but it’d still bother me not knowing whether I just bought/brought hundreds of arrows, or 5.
Overall I think 5E’s “Reload” weapon-property is a fine limiting-mechanic for firearms.
And then Tasha’s came out with the Gunner feat that lets you ignore it, turning guns into “Crossbows, but better”. The feat is literally just a search/replace of Crossbow Expert and I hate it. It would have been great if it was instead the ability to switch between laded firearms for multiple attacks, which was a thing people did with medieval guns.
Honestly my main sticking-point with D&D firearms is that it always skips straight to Renaissance-era flintlocks. Medieval guns were a thing! Where’s my breach-fired hand-cannon?!
Does it just cast lightning bolt?
I’ve actually been thinking aboot this. It would deal 3d12 damage at 50/200 range, requires a hand to hold, and a hand to fire. It has disadvantage on attacks unless you’re either steadying it on a surface, or have someone else to insert the match while you operate two-handed.^1 It takes a minute to reload.^2 Roll the damage with the attack, if you roll two 1s on the damage dice it has a misfire and nothing happens. You also cannot fire while wet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_cannon
^1 I guess Loxodon could fire it accurately on their own
^2 So one shot per cannon per-combat, but it’s great for an opening shot.
Medieval firearms had a ton of drawbacks: Low range, unwieldy, needed to be kept dry, prone to malfunction, and expensive. People still used them because they hit really hard, and didn’t take much training to use. The DMG Renaissance-firearms are just “Crossbows but better” and I find that lazy.
The blunderbuss in Mordheim springs to mind. It’s a once per battle template weapon that fires in a 1″ wide line.
As far as im concerned, this whole problem finds its source even deeper in that a lot of systems with guns in a fantasy settings are often implemented clumsily from the get go and is then further amplified by bad encounter design. Sure guns in pathfinder go off touch AC…within their initial range. farther than that it’s normal but if you only make encounters within that range, youre playing it’s strenght. It’s like complaining about Paladins and Clerics being OP in a campaign that only features undead.
And then guns kinda got this reputation of being OP so people advocate for kneecapping them somehow and you end up forced to make outlandish build just so you can get a whiff of that sick hot lead spewing character you wanted to make
My trained reloading raccoon familiar Rad Black Eyes resents that remark!
Was it really the career path that he wanted however. Who knows what wonder he could have done of his immense motor skills had the powers from beyond designed reality differently
Looks, not everyone can be Rocket Raccoon’s stunt double. This was a safe fallback career.
This whole hassle sort of makes up part of the reason I’m experimenting with SF rules and cutting down on component necessities, instead establishing a sort of MP system in the vein of resolve which you can use to cast spells in lieu of components.
(On a slight digression, I also put in alternate spell effects for spells so players can do things like your homebrew aura sight. Basically a more formal method for that stuff.)
Would love to see those homebrew spell rules. Just ran book 5 of dead suns last night, and there’s a general feeling of “I don’t have enough options” pervading the campaign.
Thanks for your interest! I will send a link on a comic when I’ve gotten it mostly reviewed and edited.
I’m just glad Gunslinger is getting some respect. ^_^
As for reloading… Rapid Reload and clips instead of loose bullets. Eject spent clip, jab butt of gun at new clip sticking out of special pouch, continue firing. 😉
And that’s like… What? Five actions? 😛
Nah; swift action to ‘drop’ spent cartridge, move action to jab pistol at fresh clip provided by special pouch, standard to take another shot. 😉
Well, the solution, clearly, is to bypass all these issues by becoming a mystical warrior and taking an archetype magic to fuel your gunslinger fantasies.
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/alternative-rule-systems/path-of-war/classes/mystic/archetypes/gunsmoke-mystic/
Or cobble together 73,300 gp:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/magic-weapons/specific-magic-weapons/pistol-of-the-infinite-sky/
Ah, reloading, the thorn in the side of half my characters’ ranged weapons. Hand crossbows are the worst – what’s the point of them being “one-handed” if they still take both hands to fire more than once?
Personally, I prefer to avoid having to spend extra actions on single attacks, so the 5e implementation of “one shot per round” works for me. For characters who don’t get extra attacks, there’s no downside, and for those who do, nothing says you can’t still attack in ways other than shooting (e.g. unarmed attacks, dropping the weapon and drawing another, or even just bashing with the weapon rather than firing it). If you’re stuck spending actions to reload, non-reloading weapons get a big edge, whether through sheer damage output from firing faster or through letting you do useful things like moving and using items between shots. I want crossbows and such to be a viable alternative to bows, not a poor man’s substitute.
Man can only dream.
Remember that one gold cloak crossbowman cut down on the road to the Wall in season 2? Dude just couldn’t reload fast enough!
for Gunslinger this problem is why I like some air rifles so much:
up to 20 bullets in a tube.
Using a crossbow sucks a bit, but with practice a light one can be shot more than once per 6 seconds.
and of cause you can dual wield hand crossbows, but you definitely can’t dual re-load them.
Or with engineering!
https://berserk.fandom.com/wiki/Repeater_Crossbow
Or you can just do like in Warframe and stack multi-shot mods, reloading speed and fire rate over each other to unleash a storm of bullets with each shot 🙂
At some point, you just become a shotgun.
Xaku’s second kinda does that already with enough ability strength 🙂
It’s already been said, but spell cartridges and eldritch archer magus. A swift action each turn and never have to worry about having to reload. With rapid shot and ranged spell strike/spell combat, I can be shooting three times a round by 5th level and 5 times at 8th (assuming having Haste or an equivalent up). It’s tempting to take the spellslinger wizard archetype to avoid having to spend a couple feats to make it work, but it’s just such a godawful archetype as written that my inner munchkin/powergamer would strangle me for it.
Doesn’t your swift action get a bit clogged up though?
Absolutely! So it definitely impedes your ability to use your arcane pool (unless you’ve got the Enduring Blade magus arcana so you can buff before the fight), quickened spells, some magic item activations, or spell recall in combat, but I think it’s probably worth it. The one other major downside is that you’ll have a much smaller crit range compared to a melee magus, but you’re basically guaranteed to confirm your crits in comparison.
Still, the scaling force damage from spell cartridges, that you’re hitting against touch AC, the increased freedom to use cantrips with spell combat/spell strike, that you’re no longer having to get in melee range to be effective… It’s a hell of a deal.
Whelp. Chucking in the “build idea” folder. Cheers!
Minor correction I’ll need to make to my build. I didn’t take into account getting the gunsmithing feat, so to have the basics (arcane strike, spell cartridges, point blank shot, rapid shot, and gunsmithing feat) as well as proficiency with firearms (which I account for using a half-elf and their alternate racial trait Ancestral Arms), so functional by level 5, but really takes off at level 7.
Gunslinger has his first fan! …and knowing his luck, he’ll never realize it.
I was going to bring up Spell Cartridges, but just my luck, it’s already been mentioned. This topic is one I’ve run into once or twice, one time sticking out in memory because I had seen a piece of art of a character with what is clearly a tower shield and a rifle as their weapons and tried quite a bit to make the combo work (subbing in swordcane for the rifle because trying to get a 2-handed gun to work here wasn’t happening).
Eldritch Guardian is another way to get a familiar who can reload for you, and is the way I went about it in the end. Tl;dr it’s a Fighter Archetype that trades its first two bonus feats; the first in exchange for a familiar, the second in exchange for that familiar getting all of your combat feats. Take Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Firearms), Amateur Gunslinger for Quick Clear, and the remaining bonus feats helps take the edge off of the considerable feat tax for both being a ranged character and making a Tower Shield work. If your DM will let you (it was originally made for Rasputin Must Die!) you can stack this archetype with Trench Fighter for the highly sought-after Dex to damage. Improved Familiar for a Fey-touched familiar to make them humanoid so they can even provide cover with their own tower shields (or double the gun for double the fun) is on the table!
Funny enough, with Spell Cartridges, a Bard could work for this build. Bards can cast with shields without incurring Arcane Spell Failure chance, and does not omit Tower Shields from that. Be a human to get the proficiency and quick clear right out the gate (and/or dip gunslinger or fighter or whatnot), and you have the bonus benefit of being able to fluff yourself as a sort of commander at arms with Perform (Oratory) and Inspire Courage.
Elf princess is so pure and noble-hearted… She loves everybody! Except probably Inquisitor:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/hostage-crisis
I looked long and hard at Trench Fighter when I was trying to figure out how to make the picaroon swashbuckler work with a dagger pistol. I still don’t have that code cracked. :/
I have a Gun Chemist. It’s an alchemist archetype that trades away the bombs for a gun. It gains Rapid Reload as a bonus feat at level 6. Or gets a different combat feat if you already have it. At first I had to reload every other round, but as soon as I got him a Pepperbox, I didn’t have to worry about it. Pepperboxes hold 6 rounds so I could focus on firing rather than reloading.
This particular character is a Pathfinder version of DC Comics Captain Cold. Took Frost Bullet as my first discovery for plenty of icy damage.
Hell yeah pepperbox! I’ve always had a soft spot for the less conventional firearms. I still want to find a way to make the dragon pistol halfway decent.
Kinda interesting seeing this given that Guns & Gears is in the wings for Pathfinder Second Edition, and reloading was one of the biggest recurring issues for people in the playtest. Though from the sounds of things it seems like Paizo has learned and is working on ways to make reloading as painless as possible while still being something to work around.
Myself I’m somewhat curious about how Gunslinger will work out in PF2e, but also the idea of Inventor, firearms being available to all classes, and a buttload of other things we’re getting. Recalling how aggressively Elf Wizard reacted to a vehicle, how would she take matters such as functional prostheses, multiple vehicles (including an alchemy-powered sand-burrower), and even the upcoming Inventor class that’s entirely focused on tech and gadgetry. I can’t help but imagine the meltdown that would ensue. Never mind the also-included ancestry Automaton, which yes is basically Paizo’s answer to Warforged.
Hell, you could probably make a series of comics about the struggle of transitioning between editions and the many changes that come with them.
I’m unfamiliar. What was the implementation like?
Trying to balance this comic between the 5e, Pathfinder, and Everything Else camps pretty much IS this. :/
Basically, guns had relatively short ranges and required an action to reload, using PF2e’s three-action economy. They had lower than average damage die, but pretty much all of them had “fatal”. “Fatal” is a weapon trait that means on a crit, you increase your damage die by one step and add an extra. So say you crit with your 1d4 pistol? It now becomes 2d6 damage.
Thing is in PF2e, touch AC isn’t a thing anymore. Between that and the economy struggle on reloading and firing all while positioning and doing other things, while also having to heavily rely on crits to really pump out damage, made firearms feel swingy and sometimes subpar. But, that was during the playtest. From what’s been revealed since then, there will be a lot of options to minimize the reloading pain. Multi-shot firearms, feats for dual-wield reload, bandoliers that can copy runes to a bunch of firearms, then teleport said firearms back once you drop them; etc etc.
Also I didn’t mean to be rude if I was with that mention of comic ideas. I was just remembering that comic regarding Fighter and Cleric playing a semi-modern gangster tabletop and being confused by the rules. PF2e is an almost completely different game from PF1e, so the thought of the characters just going “WTF is all this!?” seems amusing. Apologies if I came off as rude or disrespectful.
Oh, not at all. I was just trying [and apparently failing] to be funny. Also kind of a theme with this comic. 😛
For real though, I like getting ideas from folks for comics. After 600+ pages, I worry about repeating myself. This particular idea runs into shades of Thaumaturge…
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/cessation-of-hostilities
…As well as the old “weapon shrinkage” rules in GitP:
https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0001.html
I’d have to think up a way to spin it a bit. Clearly it’s a good idea though!
Well first of all, Ranger is actually playable in PF2e. That might be good to start with 😛
Fighter is the only class able to get legendary proficiency with weapons (TLDR that means 8+lvl+STR/DEX to hit), with the closest runner-up ironically being Gunslinger who gets legendary proficiency with firearms and crossbows only.
Don’t even get me started on the changes regarding class feats, multiclassing, and archetypes….
Honestly, in any game where I have firearms and pressing need to keep firing them, I fall back on simple redundancy. Big magazines and/or a multitude of sidearms are hallmarks of my typical gunslingers, and I’ll often have a cheap semi-auto handgun available with niche ammunition already loaded to save the trouble of getting it into a larger weapon if it’s needed. The downside to this, of course, is the long trail of empty guns my characters leave behind, and the high (monetary) cost of running away if a fight goes bad.
Oh man… I’ve always worried about the action economy of dropping a spent pistol and maybe needing it again a few rounds later. The cost of retreat didn’t even occur to me. Big yikes right there.
It’s been a while since I did guns akimbo. Back in PF1 was the last time, I think, and not towards the end of PF1’s run. More like in the middle of it. Quite a while ago.
Typically I didn’t concern myself with reloading, not because it was skipped entirely, just because it was too much hassle to bother with. I’d start with two loaded guns, but one of them would go back into its holster after firing, and would get reloaded between battles.
Much easier to just load one gun.
Primary gun and a bunch of disposable “off hand” guns could be an interesting way to play it.
I made my own 5e Gunslinger and I just took a hard pass on reloading and ‘misfires’. They aren’t fun and don’t balance it as well as you’d think.
This way, you can be dual-wielding pistols and not worry about it. You can reload a modern firearm surprisingly fast when trained, so I didn’t want it to bog down the class. Fun first and all that.
The base class is finished and in the midst of beta testing, and the subclasses are all based on stereotypical gunmen, like the sniper marksman or cowboy trick shooter. Here’s a link if people want to take a gander:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/159b415upU92XTMvCSVp8XwL882tgvXYC?usp=sharing
Misfires were a fine attempt at balancing touch attacks in Pathfinder. There’s no such thing as Touch AC in 5e. Cutting that element is smart.
One (very) small note: I’d change the name of “bullet time.” It’s clever, but it takes me out of the fantasy and into The Matrix.
I have seen people wanting to dual-wield pistols in Call of Cthulhu. It can give a serious increase in DPS in the Pulp variant if one takes the associated talent. However, realistically, there should probably be an additional penalty if one tries to fire at multiple targets. Some research suggests it more effective to dual-wield when both firearms are used against the same target:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp_UsNNlZ3g
Research? What are you doing!? This is wild conjecture and unwarranted expertise based on Steven Seagal movies territory!
Reloading is just tedious micromanagement, give me belt-fed ammo for everything instead. Sling, bow, crossbow, pistol, shotgun, ballista, trebuchet — belt-fed, every-single-one !
I’m having difficulty conceptualizing a belt-fed sword.
In Paranoia XP reloading isn’t required but you get a mechanical bonus if you do it anyway
Heh. Nice. Cool to see obnoxious micromanagement transformed into an additional tactical option.
What exactly is the bonus?
1-2 “Perversity Points” which are a mechanic that doubles as both action points and experience points
I saw your comment in isolation on the back end. Thought for a second that “perversity points” was some kind of Handbook of Erotic Fantasy reference.
Crossbow expert is really very simple:
You only need one Hand crossbow in order to get the 2nd shot, (crossbow expert also ignores reloading qualities) therefor you can STFU and let flavor do the work if the player with that feat decides to plunk 75GP down on a 2nd hand crossbow that provides no mechanical benefits.
I’m certain that the many threads on this topic could all do with a rousing STFU.
I wouldn’t normally go that far.
There’s a delicate balance between Rule of Cool and That Completely Destroys the Balance of the Game, but this is one of those rare cases where the cool thing provides absolutely no mechanical benefit, so it baffles me that there are still arguments around it.
Get a gun-bearer and a few guns. They reload while you’re firing and hand you the loaded weapon when you need it.