War has always been a part of society. It started millions of years ago with punches and kicks and took it’s first huge leap when we created tools. Swords and bows have been the most efficient weapons for thousands of years until the discovery of magic. Now a new revolution comes on the horizon. With a mixture of chemistry and engineering, the future smells of gunpowder.
In the faraway land of Exandria, some warriors like tiefling names and inventors have created firearms able to harness the explosive powers of gunpowder in order to hurl small, fast and deadly projectiles to their enemies.
With this invention, a whole new style of fighting has developed in order to properly harness the potential of these weapons. The art of the Gunslinger. Firearms are easier to use than other weapons, you just have to point it and pull a trigger. But Gunslingers are professionals proficient in both their proper use and their maintenance.
You see, firearms are complex contraptions constructed from an amalgam of tiny pieces and small springs that make it function. Keeping everywhere where it should be is an important and hard task since firearms function in a way no other ranged or projectile weapons do.
While a bow or a crossbow can only shoot one projectile before needing to be reloaded, the small size of the firearms ammunition allows them to be stored in small compartments inside the body of the weapon.
This way a Gunslinger is able to fire as much as 6 times just like nightborne names, depending obviously on the type of firearm they use, before needing to reload, maximizing their damage input in battle. But this comes at a price.
The fine nature of this ammunition makes them really rare and difficult to find, so most Gunlingers resort to fabricating it themselves. In a similar fashion, a Gunslinger is able to manufacture their own firearms if they have the necessary tools.
They can make small pistols the size of a pocket watch or big and powerful blunderbusses. The most daring and inventive even put their life on the line by creating their own experimental variations in an effort to push the boundaries of the firearms race in their favor.
Long distance rifles, mortars or even hand cannons are some of the crazy contraptions that have been seen in the battlefield. Not everyone is brave enough to work with gunpowder, less create a device that could easily kill them on a miscalculation but Gunslingers, in their thirst for creativity and inventiveness, have learned the knowledge and craft for this.
DnD’s official list of firearms is very reduced, almost non-existent. If you want to play a Gunslinger, I recommend you checking out the list of firearms available in DnD Beyond on the Gunslinger page created by our favorite Dungeon Master, Matthew Mercer.
If you still want more variety you can work with your DM in order to repurpose some of the firearms from Pathfinder, the original game where the Gunslinger comes from. Or you can grab anything from homebrew creators like Bonus Action or The Gryffon’s Saddlebag on instagram.
Pathfinder is more similar to D&D 3.5 rather than 5e so it would need a bit of work in order to adapt it to your game and some homebrew items may be a bit unbalanced, so always ask your DM beforehand. I’ll be leaving you all the links in the description below.
While you’re down there, tell me in the comments: Do you have any favorite firearms or maybe would you like to see any adapted to 5th edition? For example, in one of my campaigns I’ve reworked some of the stats of the blunderbuss in order to give one of my players a repeating rifle.
Because i like the feel of Ash’s rifle from Overwatch. Ok, now back to the article. Firearms, as powerful as they are, are also delicate weapons. A poorly cared for firearm may jam during combat, leaving a Gunslinger defenseless to the enemy or even worse, misfire on its user turning the encapsulated death back to their master, killing them in an instant.
But the Gunslinger isn’t limited to the quality of their weapon. By the use of tactics and good reflexes, an expert Gunslinger is able to use their shots for more than just causing damage.
Some Gunslingers like gaining the tactical upper hand during combat so they use their firearms as tools of intimidation, exploiting the frightening bang of gunpowder and the powerful vibrations such high speed projectiles generate, being able to topple a target to their knee with a shot.
Some Gunslingers, more akin to deadly accuracy, prefer honing their aiming and control over their firearms in order to disarm opponents with precise shots, fire between bone and tendon in order for bullets to go through multiple targets at once or even forcing the endurance of their weapons to dangerous limits in order to maximize the lethality of every shot.
So, if you ever need a skilled huntsman able to in still fear into their enemies with the fearful precision of their shot or maybe if you need an inventful engineer in the constant search for advancing war and weaponry technology, then the Gunslinger is the one for the job. Before ending the article, I want to talk to you about a very serious issue.
For those of you who don’t know, I’m from Perú, a country in South America. Right now we are in the middle of a sanitary crisis due to Covid-19 and at the same time in a big political crisis.
Just last week the congress made a coup and placed Manuel Merino, an incapable and corrupt politician with a huge history of judicial processes, as president. With the help of the peruvian people and huge protests all around the country, we were able to force his resignation bringing down a dictatorship before it had time to establish itself.
But we still cannot celebrate. The government made use of police forces to oppress the protesters with excessive force, illegal weaponry and kidnappings. There were countless violations of human rights and even two protesters died because of this, Jack Bryan Pintado and Jordan Inti Sotelo. Both the police forces and the congressmen are denying any responsibility for these acts so the protests are not gonna end anytime soon.
As you would expect, we cannot trust traditional media to be impartial so we need the help of social media to inform what is really happening to the world. I know this goes a long way off the topic of this channel and neither do I or this channel are big enough to make a huge impact but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try.
What I ask of you is to help me and my country keep this topic alive and important to the whole world. Please, whenever you can go on Twitter or Instagram and search for the hashtag #peruvianlivesmatter.
Keep in touch with a topic and share the information with people you know. Make it well known amongst the whole world that things are just starting and that protesting does make a change. Perú is a proof of it and we’re gonna keep protesting until we have the government we as people deserve.