Coming to D&D from World of Warcraft, I approached the Fighter with a somewhat limited expectation. In WoW, the Warrior is the closest equivalent class - it's the no-frills martial expert, without any holy magic like a paladin or a dark necromancy like a death knight. You're just the one who wears heavy armor and overwhelms enemies with a combination of strength and skill. WoW's warrior also incorporates thematic elements of D&D's Barbarian, mostly in that its primary resource is Rage, and the Fury subclass implies a kind of berserker/barbarian vibe, even if you're still covered head to toe in thick steel.
It didn't even occur to me until long after I'd started running a D&D game that you could build a dexterity, ranged-weapon-based Fighter. I had thought of Rangers as covering that ground (similarly, WoW had conditioned me to think of Rogues as a melee class, so it took one of my players, a Wood Elf Rogue, favoring his longbow to make me reassess that one.)
When Critical Role began as a streamed show instead of a home game that Matt Mercer ran for his voice actor friends, they transitioned from Pathfinder's first edition to Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, and the success of that show is partially credited for 5th Edition's explosive popularity.
Taliesin Jaffe's character, Percy, was a Gunslinger in their Pathfinder game, a class built around the archetype of a wild west gunfighter. However, there was no such thing in 5th Edition, so Matt Mercer put together a Fighter subclass to best match the mechanics of the Pathfinder gunslinger.
Due to Percy's popularity as a character, I've played in two games in which people have played the Gunslinger subclass. But something has always bothered me: I think the Gunslinger might be just plain worse than a Battlemaster, one of the original Fighter subclasses in the Player's Handbook.
The big thing is that the Gunslinger introduces misfires - meaning that your gun can jam if you roll too low on an attack roll. You need to spend some of your action economy to try to clear the jam in the middle of combat, and if you fail, the gun becomes broken and needs to be repaired during a rest before it's used again. This, I believe, was a feature of firearms in earlier editions of D&D. Firearms have always been an optional rule so that groups need not introduce elements that break the sense of immersion in the medieval fantasy world they're exploring (of course, as I've made clear, I love anything that breaks the normal rules of fantastical medievalism, but that's me.)
Since 5th Edition has no inherent rules for misfires, it means that a subclass built around firing guns paradoxically is... kind of the worst at firing guns. A Wizard with no proficiency in firearms could pick up a musket and fire without fear of breaking it (even if they are less likely to hit something,) while someone whose entire fighting style is built around them risks a catastrophic failure with every pull of the trigger. That seems really odd.
But I thought I'd put the two subclasses up side-by-side and see how they compare. If you built a Battlemaster who specializes in the use of firearms, how similar would you be to a Gunslinger?
Both subclasses center around having alternate options that you can use with your attacks, expending a resource to add various effects or damage. I'm not going to get into every Battlemaster Maneuver, but I want to see, essentially, if you could more or less recreate the Gunslinger as a Battlemaster build.
To be clear, this is not a critique of Mercer's translation - he wasn't trying to build a new subclass, only trying to as accurately as possible translate an existing one built for a different game system. And Percy was a freaking beast in that campaign.
So, let's go through the subclass features.
Battlemasters:
Level 3:
First off, you get proficiency in artisan tools of your choice - nothing enormous, but nice.
Next, you learn 3 maneuvers, which you can use with your 4 superiority dice, which recharge on a short rest. The dice are d8s, but they go up in both die and number at certain levels.
There are a huge number of maneuvers, which we'll compare with Trick Shots when we finish listing the two subclass' features.
The key with these maneuvers is that the ones that work in combat allow you to choose to use them after you've rolled to hit. One
Level 7:
You just learn two new maneuvers and get 5th superiority die to spend.
You also get "Know Your Enemy," which lets you observe a creature for a minute, you get to compare whether they're superior or inferior to you in various statistics like hit points, strength score, armor class, etc.
Level 10:
Two more maneuvers (we're up to 7 now) and the dies become d10s.
Level 15:
Two more maneuvers (9 of them now) and you get a 6th die.
Also, if you roll initiative without any superiority dice left, you regain one.
Level 18:
Your superiority dice become d12s.
Gunslingers:
Level 3:
Obviously, you get Firearm proficiency. If your DM requires special proficiency for firearms, this could be a big help, though I'd probably allow players to use downtime to train with them.
You also get proficiency with tinker's tools. You get to craft ammunition at half the cost, repair damaged firearms, or even make your own new firearms (this one's pretty open-ended and DM-dependent.)
You then get trick shots, which you spend Grit Points on. You get Grit points equal to your Wisdom modifier, with a minimum of 1, which are regained on a short or long rest, or if you get a Natural 20 on an attack roll or deal a killing blow on a creature (of significant threat, DM's discretion.)
There are eight trick shots to choose from, and you learn two of them at level 3. These need to be declared before the attack is made, and you can only use one per attack.
Level 7:
You get to add your proficiency bonus to your initiative rolls, and you can stow a firearm and draw another as a single item interaction.
Level 10:
You can spend a grit point to attempt to repair a misfired (but not broken) firearm as a bonus action.
Level 15:
You can reload a firearm as a bonus action. This one's odd, as the rules in the DMG are that this is normally what reloading requires.
Level 18:
You crit on a 19 or 20, and you get a grit point back on a 19 or 20. Additionally, you get Hemorrhaging Critical, where if you score a crit, the target takes half the damage again from that hit at the end of its next turn.
Trick Shots Versus Maneuvers:
One of the huge advantages the Battle Master has over the Gunslinger is that they can wait to see if they hit before expending superiority dice. This means that a die is never wasted, and you can even wait for a critical hit to double up the damage. You also have no need for high Wisdom as a Battlemaster. Here are the Trick Shots you can learn, along with roughly equivalent maneuvers:
Bullying Shot: You can use the powerful blast and thundering sound to shake the resolve of a creature. When you make a Charisma (Intimidation) check, you can expend a grit to gain advantage.
The Commanding Presence maneuver (out of Tasha's) works similarly, allowing you to add a superiority die's roll to a Charisma (Intimidation), (Persuasion,) or (Deception) check. This will, on average, be a better bonus than advantage. (Which on average increases the roll's result by between 3 and 4, while a d8's average roll is 4.5).
Dazing Shot: When you make an attack, you can attempt to dizzy the opponent. If you hit, the creature takes normal damage and has to succeed on a Con save or suffer disadvantage on attacks until their next turn.
Not quite the same, but Goading Attack will add your Superiority die's damage to the attack and give the creature disadvantage on attacks against those other than you if they fail a wisdom save. If you're far enough away from a melee opponent, this could effectively be the same.
Deadeye Shot: You can expend a grit to get advantage on an attack.
Precision Attack is a bit similar, letting you add your superiority die's roll to the attack roll, which, as we saw with Commanding Presence, will likely be a better bonus.
Disarming Shot: You can expend a grit point with an attack to force the target to succeed on a Strength save or drop something in their hand, and push it up to 10 feet away from them.
Disarming Attack works almost precisely the same way, except you add the superiority die's roll to the damage, but the item also lands at their feet.
Forceful Shot: You can expend a grit point with an attack to force them to make a strength save or be pushed back 15 feet from you.
Pushing Attack: This is almost precisely the same, except you add the damage of the superiority die to the attack's damage. The one downside is that the creature must be Large or smaller, so no pushing Giants or Ancient Dragons.
Piercing Shot: When you make an attack you can spend a grit point to attempt to fire through multiple opponents. This adds +1 to the gun's misfire score for the initial attack. Then, if you hit, you make another attack roll with disadvantage to try to hit every creature in a line behind the initial target within your first range increment. (Only the initial attack roll can misfire.)
This one there's not really any equivalent to. The closest is Sweeping Strike, but that requires it be a melee attack.
Winging Shot: You can expend a grit point with an attack to force them to succeed on a Strength save or be knocked prone.
Very similar to Pushing Attack, Trip Attack works almost exactly the same except that you add the superiority die's roll to the damage and the target has to be Large or smaller.
Violent Shot: You can expend one or more grit points. Each point spent increases the gun's misfire score by 2, but also lets you roll an additional damage die.
There's no obvious equivalent here, but most Battlemaster maneuvers add damage anyway, making this one a bit redundant.
Overall, I think that the maneuvers are going to be better in general, and they're also safer to use, as you only have to declare them after you've hit.
So, how would I evaluate these?
Gunslingers certainly get a few extra bonuses that are more impressive than the Battlemaster's Know Your Enemy feature. Proficiency on Initiative is great (given how D&D combat tends to last only a couple rounds) and the level 18 bonuses - both the crits on 19s and the extra 50% damage on crits (which is magnified by the fact that the damage itself is a crit) are pretty awesome.
But I think the central feature, the Trick Shots, are just not as good overall as Maneuvers. And while the fact that you can earn back grit points in combat is very cool, I still think a Battlemaster is likely to overall have more of them per short rest, unless the Gunslinger has a lot of Wisdom to spare.
I also like that the Battlemaster's maneuvers improve as they level up.
The Gunslinger also introduces the idea of misfires to firearms, which is nowhere to be found in any 5th Edition rules. This, if you've ever watched Critical Role or played with a Gunslinger, is a huge downside. And no other martial class has anything like it (I played with making critical misses punishing in my first campaign until I realized that they overly penalized Fighters).
Naturally, I think that the misfire system is meant to balance the power of Firearms versus PHB-found ranged weapons like Crossbows or Bows. But I actually think that it punishes them too much, especially as the Gunslinger document comes with alternate stats for firearms that reduce most of the to single-die weapons - a 1d10 Pepperbox is only doing on average one more damage than a 1d8 Longbow, but you don't have to worry about rolling a nat 1 or a nat 2 on a longbow totally messing you up for the rest of the fight.
Granted, modern and futuristic weapons start to deal way more damage - a revolver does twice the damage of a longbow before adding Dexterity, and I've written several posts about how to balance that out (even if, in a co-op game like D&D, balance is not as important as you might think - as long as players are not super competitive over their damage output).
I don't write all this to poo-poo anyone who wants to play a Gunslinger Fighter. The class fantasy is incredibly fun, especially if you want to be the misfit who shoots six-guns in a world with swords and shields and dragons. But I do think you should look at the Battlemaster as an alternative.
The Battlemaster is clearly a very popular Fighter subclass, such that in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything they pushed the idea of expanding its concepts like Maneuvers to other subclasses and even other classes, and proposed several builds even as they were pitching two new subclasses.
I strongly suspect that we'll get some version of Maneuvers as a baseline feature to the 6th Edition Fighter, and could see it just becoming one of the defining features of the class (a class that is actually a bit lacking in defining features). But I'd definitely recommend trying out a Battlemaster Build that just happens to fight with guns if you want to play a Gunslinger. It'll probably work pretty well.
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