It appears to be confirmed that one of the new feats coming in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything will be "Gunner." This does a few things: it grants you +1 to Dexterity, proficiency in firearms, removes disadvantage for having an enemy within 5 feet of you, and allows you to ignore the loading property (which would normally cost a bonus action to load your weapon after firing it.) In a lot of ways, this is similar to the Crossbow Expert feat, but in lieu of getting to shoot a hand crossbow with your off-hand, it explicitly empowers you to use firearms.
Guns in D&D 5E are only found in the Dungeon Master's Guide and in specific adventure NPCs. Many people read "fantasy" to be explicitly set in a pre-industrial world, and as such feel that the existence of firearms would break the immersion in the standard fantasy timeframe, which is classically the realm of knights on horseback fighting dragons and such.
As a huge Dark Tower fan, though, and who generally likes mixing up genres (I also came to it only with the Remake from last year, but FFVII's general aesthetic is absolutely up my alley) I'm eager to allow these more modern weapons to be used in my setting.
So let's talk about those firearms. The DMG has a list of them in the Dungeon Master's Workshop chapter, separating them into Renaissance, Modern, and Futuristic.
Renaissance weapons are what I'd say fit well in a swashbuckling pirate adventure, or possibly a classic gothic monster-hunting adventure (Ravenloft springs to mind). These are also the only ones with a listed cost in gold, and the fact that they use a single die puts them in line with most existing D&D weapons.
Pistols do 1d10 damage, and have the loading property, requiring a reload after every shot (making that feat very attractive, especially if you're playing any class that gets multiple attacks). They have a range of 30/90, which means you'll need to get in pretty close range unless you get the Sharpshooter feat. Pistols cost 250 g, which is far more than any of the base PHB weapons.
Muskets do 1d12 damage, also have the loading property, and a range of 40/120, and are two-handed weapons. At the cost of a shield (if your class can even use those,) you get a bit more damage and range, which is probably worth it. Muskets are 500 g, which is certainly the most expensive a nonmagic weapon can get (though the more advanced ones are effectively priceless.)
Already, the renaissance firearms are on par with melee weapons, with the one-handed pistol doing just as much as a heavy crossbow. These do seem to come at the cost of range, though - the Heavy Crossbow's range is 100/300 - so to use these, you do have to get close to the monsters.
Modern firearms are, I think, meant to represent anything from the second half of the 20th century to actually now. These start to do multiple dice of damage, which really causes it climb high.
Automatic Pistols do 2d6 damage, have a range of 50/150, and have the reload 15 property, which means you only need to reload the thing after 15 shots, which becomes far less of a burden (it's very unlikely you'll fire over 15 shots in a single combat.) Again, the range could make bows and crossbows more attractive, but you're getting a lot of bang out of a one-handed weapon here.
Automatic Rifles do 2d8 damage, have a range of 80/240, reload 30, are two handed, and have the special burst-fire property. At this point, the range is far enough to probably be fine in almost any combat situation, the damage is huge, and unless you use the special property a ton, you're almost certainly not going to have to reload in combat. Burst fire lets you target a 10-ft cube within the normal range (so within 80 feet) and have every creature there make a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw, taking your normal weapon damage on a failure. This burns up 10 bullets, but it lets martial classes do some AoE, which is pretty cool. This does seem to take up an action, not just an attack, but if you can get three or more in the range, you can do some nice splash damage.
Hunting Rifles do 2d10 damage, have a range of 80/240, and reload 5, and are two-handed. While one would think the range would be a little higher than the Automatic Rifle, this is going to do a bit more damage at the cost of all those bells and whistles, and with the relatively small clip, you're much more likely to need to reload.
Shotguns do 2d8 damage, have a range of 30/90, reload 2, and are two-handed. They're definitely a step down from the Automatic Rifle
Finally, we have the futuristic firearms. These are full-on sci-fi, and have the advantage of doing non-piercing damage, so even if it's not magical, you should be able to damage most monsters.
Laser Pistols do 3d6 radiant damage, have a range of 30/120, and reload 50. This is just plain nasty, and with a reload of 50, you'll basically never have to reload in combat (the published adventure these appear in limits them by never letting you reload them - you get your shots and then the thing is useless.) It's short range, but still pretty darn good.
Laser Rifles do 3d8 radiant damage, with a range of 100/300, two-handed, and reload 50. This is just insane.
Antimatter Rifles, though, are the pinnacle, doing a whopping 6d8 necrotic damage, with a range of 120/360, two-handed, and a reload of 2. While yes, you'll have to reload this far more frequently, doing 3/4 of a fireball's worth of damage on every hit is just ludicrous (and if you get an artificer to give it Repeating Shot, dear lord.)
So, as we can see, firearms throw a lot of the balance of weapon types into total disarray.
Of the PHB weapons, there's a clear skew toward melee, which makes sense, as melee characters put themselves in greater danger (it's also probably more realistic. If an arrow hits you in the leg, you could probably survive if it doesn't hit any major blood vessels. If a greatsword takes you in the leg, that leg's probably going to just come off).
That being said, in the long run, in a magic-item-heavy campaign, ranged builds get the advantage of magical ammunition along with magical weapons. While it'll be limited by the availability of +X arrows or bolts, you'll still get to kind of double-dip.
If we look at two 17th-or-higher level characters with their weapon stat maxed and +3 weapons and ammo, I suspect the ranged character overtakes the melee in damage potential.
Let's look at a Strength-based Fighter and a Dexterity-based Fighter. If the Strength one goes with Great Weapon Fighting as their fighting style, and uses a Maul or Greatsword (the base weapons with the highest average damage,) they're going to be rolling an average damage roll of 8 1/3. Now, we assume they have +5 Strength at this point and a +3 weapon, so each hit is going to do an average of 16 1/3 damage. Also, their attacks have a +14 to hit.
Let's say that the Dex fighter has taken the Archery fighting style. If they use a Longbow, their average damage roll is going to be 4.5, but with a +3 bow and +3 arrows, and +5 Dex, their arrows are going to hit 15.5, which is just a little under the Strength guy. That being said, their attacks have a +19 to hit, which means they need to roll 5 or lower to miss the highest-AC monsters in 5E. If they've gone Crossbow Expert, using a Heavy Crossbow, the damage jumps to 16.5, thus edging out the strength fighter. Granted, this does all ignore a couple things: first, that +3 ammo isn't just lying around everywhere, and also that there are a lot more legendary melee weapons that do more than just base weapon damage on a hit (especially when you get artifact-level weapons.) But if we're looking at the basic stuff, that's what you get.
Now, if we throw firearms into the mix, things get skewed a lot more toward Dexterity-based classes. In the renaissance era, the average damage of a musket is 6.5, already putting it in line with the Greataxe.
By the modern era, the weakest type of firearm already has the same damage dice as the most powerful melee weapons. If we repeat that scenario above, the Dex fighter with an automatic rifle is getting 9 as their average damage roll, which then becomes 20 average damage if they get a +3 automatic rifle and +3 bullets.
Of course, in D&D, you can always ask whether balance is really that crucially important. And again, I think that you could place limits on how easy it is to get magical ammo (the automatic rifle will still out-damage a maul, but only by a little bit.)
My best suggestion on how to balance things - making sure that, absent of magical ammo, ranged characters get a slight damage penalty to account for how much less they put themselves at risk - is to make magical firearms harder to come by. My general ruling is that a +1 firearm should be about as easy to find as a +2 weapon - not impossible, but probably not showing up until at least the mid levels.
I do also think that using some limitations on proficiency can make it a little trickier. While I think it makes sense for Artificers to automatically have proficiency in firearms, I think making other classes take a feat to use them does mean they've got to really commit.
Now, on futuristic weapons, particularly the antimatter rifle, I think that you can be very careful about whether you use those in your campaign. In my original campaign, the Rogue found a laser pistol, and is the only ranged-weapon user in the party. Given that the extra 2d6 over his shortbow pretty much just meant a little bonus to his sneak-attack, it was never terribly disruptive, and the player thought it was freaking awesome.
Even if it might create balance anxiety on the part of the DM, I really think these can be fun additions to the game if you want to break out of the standard fantasy medievalism. I'm very eager to start a new campaign with a freeway chase involving a group of bad guys shooting automatic rifles at the players' car as they try to stop them from getting away with some MacGuffin.
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