It's Pathfinder. With muskets.

[Private Sanders]

I'm creating a set of rules (Sloops and Sabers) for playing Pathfinder in the 17th/18th/early 19th century. One issue I came across is guns:

Muskets take forever to load. I'd say three full round actions (two for someone with the Rapid Reload feat) is about appropriate. Pistols aren't as but, but still take a while. That'll either suck pretty much all the fun out of the game or force people to carry a bunch of guns (as was common in real life among some pirates) or only use guns at the start of the battle.

Yet this is D&D. There is lots of magic. I can't see why a wizard couldn't magically seal the breach of a musket against the firing pressure, allowing the safe construction of breech loading muskets without the problems real life ones had. The same applies to gunpowder. I'm sure an alchemical substance with the power of black powder but without the smokiness could be created. If it could be enchanted to clump up so it can be made in premeasured solid charges, even better. Add in a magical percussion cap embedded in the charge (real life flintlocks misfired about 15% of the time, and most players won't want to tolerate that), and it'll actually fire. To deal with the inherent accuracy issues, add octagonal rifling, which'll be more practical for a breech loader than for a muzzle loader. To load, all you have to do is open a hatch at the rear of the barrel, insert a musket ball and a charge, shut the hatch, c**k the hammer, and fire. It could be done as a move action, or as free action if you have the Rapid Reload feat.

These weapons would fire much more quickly, solving the long reload issue. The rifling would solve some of the accuracy issues (Period octagonal rifles could shoot a ball 100-300 yards with a fair level of accuracy, and remained deadly far beyond that range.), but this would still be a relatively close range weapon. This is precisely what I want. I don't want these weapons to be too accurate, which is part of why they still fire spherical rounds. I want to maintain the feel of close range weapons firing spherical rounds, with melee combat still being relevant, especially at sea or in urban combat (not so much so in larger land battles), but I don't want players to have to deal with the inherent issues of muzzle loading matchlocks, wheellocks, and flintlocks. For those who would complain that this isn't really true to the time period, D&D is about as medieval as Monty Python on the holy grail: all heme, no realism. The D&D 3.5 Dungeon Master's Guide 2 outright says D&D shouldn't be too true to the real medieval period. This is no different.

This rule set will include rules for non-magical muzzle loading matchlocks, wheellocks, and flintlocks, as well as non-magical breechloaders for those who want to be authentic, but I will probably be using these magical muskets.

I went through the Pathfinder core classes from the Core Rulebook and Advanced Players Guide, and all of them except the fighter and cavalier should work fine with guns. The fighter will work fine with a bit of tweaking (getting rid of armor mastery), and the cavalier needs a lot of tweaking, though I personally think an 18th century style cavalier could be awesome if done correctly. Surprisingly, the barbarian, where I suspected the most problems with guns, should work just fine do to my ruling that magical breechloading muskets can be loaded during a rage (A muzzleloader cannot, however. Too complicated.), and any handheld firearm may be fired during a rage. Furthermore, anyone proficient with a firearm is also considered proficient when swinging it like a club (which I could so see a barbarian doing in the middle of a rage). Armor will be replaced with the defense bonus system from 3.5's Unearthed Arcana, tweaked as necessary.

The one issue I have is what spells and caster level these magical muskets should need to be constructed. It should be able to be done by somebody of low level (say CR 1-3), as I plan for these weapons to be standard issue in the military, but how low? I'm creating an NPC class that is great at cheaply creating magic items (A world in which most commoners can afford to have a few minor magic items would be awesome), but I still need to know what spells would be necessary to create such a weapon.

Also, I am aware that reliable breechloaders will pretty much kill 18th century land combat tactics. Marching in even lines while wearing brightly colored uniforms against rapid fire rifles is just asking for a massacre. I taking this into account in creating the typical land warfare tactics of this world. I'll probably have to tweak naval combat, too (This being the "Age of Sail", and me loving naval combat and history, this rule set will have the best naval combat and sailing systems I can come up with).

I have read that Ultimate Combat has firearms, but I do not have access to that book and have never read it, so I have no idea how my weapons compare to those in Ultimate Combat. Can anyone tell me?

Oh, and in my system most pistols do 1d8 damage while most muskets do 1d12. Range increment varies from 20 to 100 feet depending on the weapon.  

[Mongooseh]

Pathfinder is free to download pdf so you can just download it all books.  

[Private Sanders]

Mongooseh

Pathfinder is free to download pdf so you can just download it all books.

Thanks. I just found the official Pathfinder firearm rules off the SRD. They seem rather simplistic. I'll review them, but I'll be creating my own set of rules since firearms are so important in this campaign.  

[Private Sanders]

I found a solution to the issue of full attacking with firearms:

I would essentially keep the full attack system intact, but suppose that it adds the damage from the successful extra attack rolls to the first attack instead of having a character make multiple attacks. The damage potential remains exactly the same, but only one attack is made per round (or two if dual wielding), which makes muskets seem more feasible, especially since the magic ones can be reloaded as a free action, allowing full attack damage every round while only firing one shot a round. This system would apply to all attacks, melee and ranged, except some monster full attack actions that make more sense as separate attacks.  

[Arc Vembris]

d20 Past had rules for firearms of this type. They took two full-round actions to reload, and you could full attack only if you had quick draw and a brace of loaded pistols.  

[Private Sanders]

Arc Vembris

d20 Past had rules for firearms of this type. They took two full-round actions to reload, and you could full attack only if you had quick draw and a brace of loaded pistols.

I have a copy of D20 Past. I'd rather play Pathfinder, though. I want a magic heavy world, and I want to use Pathfinder classes.

That's why I came up with the magical breech loaders and the full attack system explained in the post above. It allows someone with a musket to make a full attack every round while only firing one shot per round (If you have Rapid Reload a breech loading musket loads as a free action, which lets you full attack every round).  

[Arc Vembris]

Private Sanders

Arc Vembris

d20 Past had rules for firearms of this type. They took two full-round actions to reload, and you could full attack only if you had quick draw and a brace of loaded pistols.

I have a copy of D20 Past. I'd rather play Pathfinder, though. I want a magic heavy world, and I want to use Pathfinder classes.

That's why I came up with the magical breech loaders and the full attack system explained in the post above. It allows someone with a musket to make a full attack every round while only firing one shot per round (If you have Rapid Reload a breech loading musket loads as a free action, which lets you full attack every round).

I've only passing familiarity, but isn't this something the gunslinger class can do?

edit: ah right, you don't have Ultimate Combat, well here's a link
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateCombat/combat/firearms.html#firearms  

[Private Sanders]

Arc Vembris

Private Sanders

Arc Vembris

d20 Past had rules for firearms of this type. They took two full-round actions to reload, and you could full attack only if you had quick draw and a brace of loaded pistols.

I have a copy of D20 Past. I'd rather play Pathfinder, though. I want a magic heavy world, and I want to use Pathfinder classes.

That's why I came up with the magical breech loaders and the full attack system explained in the post above. It allows someone with a musket to make a full attack every round while only firing one shot per round (If you have Rapid Reload a breech loading musket loads as a free action, which lets you full attack every round).

I've only passing familiarity, but isn't this something the gunslinger class can do?

I have no idea. I didn't read it's abilities closely, as I wasn't impressed with the stats for the musket itself under the official rules.  

[Private Sanders]

Private Sanders

Arc Vembris

Private Sanders

Arc Vembris

d20 Past had rules for firearms of this type. They took two full-round actions to reload, and you could full attack only if you had quick draw and a brace of loaded pistols.

I have a copy of D20 Past. I'd rather play Pathfinder, though. I want a magic heavy world, and I want to use Pathfinder classes.

That's why I came up with the magical breech loaders and the full attack system explained in the post above. It allows someone with a musket to make a full attack every round while only firing one shot per round (If you have Rapid Reload a breech loading musket loads as a free action, which lets you full attack every round).

I've only passing familiarity, but isn't this something the gunslinger class can do?

I have no idea. I didn't read it's abilities closely, as I wasn't impressed with the stats for the musket itself under the official rules.

I checked. It can, but it has to spend some sort of ability point to do it and only adds modifiers once, and can't use it with shotgun-type weapons.

My version automatically applies to all full attacks and adds modifiers to each damage roll separately.