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Pathfinder RPG: The Expanded Gun-Slinger

The Expanded Gun-Slinger

Subtitled 'Grit and Gunsmoke' (worth mentioning because that's how the book self-refers, a bit confusing if you haven't noticed!) this work adds new traits, feats and archetypes aimed at enabling characters of any class to use firearms, assuming that they exist in your game. Not everyone feels that firearms fit in a fantasy game: if you don't, put this down and look at something else. However, if you are comfortable about including firearms in your game, this has some good additions to the material concerning black powder firearms that you might wish to incorporate.

We start with some Firearm Traits, which can be used to explain how come a character is familiar with firearms even if they are not normally associated with his class - perhaps he was a hunter as a young lad - or in some way was involved for better or worse with them. One's quite delightful, 'Gun Shy' which makes a character quite unhappy around firearms, with negative modifiers to shoot and the shakes after he's done so... but a massive luck bonus for resolving criticals should he ever manage them!

Next come some Firearm Feats. Some rely on the Grit class feature (or at least, you need to have it to take them) and others are firearms-related Combat feats. There are even some - the Thundering God series - that bring firearms and martial arts together, enabling you to build a gun-toting style.

Finally, and this is the main part of the book, we have an array of archetypes. These provide many routes for the aspiring gun-slinger and indeed for characters of other classes who wish to add in firearms. Some are downright strange, like the Black Hat who brings bad luck to his opponents. Or maybe you prefer the barbarian approach with the Black Powder Reaver, who doesn't really understand guns but boy, does he enjoy the noise and the havoc that they cause! Then we have the Coilgunner who uses an alchemical weapon called a coilgun, a strange thing that uses alchemy to generate magnetic fields to spit out iron bullets. OK so you need iron bullets rather than lead ones and alchemical fluids rather than gunpowder, but the end result is the same. Or perhaps the Futurist appeals, a witch who senses glimmerings of technical advances that haven't been made yet... and we could go on. The Gunfighter (a fighter who specialises in firearms) is quite obvious, then there's a Hellfire Preacher (a cleric archetype who prefers a firearm over his deity's favoured weapon), and finally the Noble Shootist, a confident fellow with leadership skills.

If you want to make use of firearm technology within your game, here are some novel ideas to help you do so.

Return to The Expanded Gun-Slinger page.

Reviewed: 26 February 2016