Re: Recruiting players for Wed Night 3.5 DnD
Firearms are an exotic, they also require a significant amount of money to maintain. The best quality firearms are "Magelock", the smallest of Magelock Pistols costs a minimum of 650gp, actual price is up to the GM it seems. I'm still going through the materials to see if I can find an "actual" price. The book presents them as" only issued to military to highly experienced Gun Mages ...
an auction house in Five Fingers is rumored to have one or two ... expect bidding for the smallest magelock pistol to START at 650gp, while bidding for a military magelock would easily start at over 800"
If I were running the game, to get the benifits of a mage lock, I'd say something along the lines of weapon cost + masterwork + quenched sericsteel cost.
((Serricsteel is an alchemical process used on steel to make it harder and stronger.))
The cheapest one shot firearm that I can find in the book starts is a pinlock pistol:
Item: Pinlock Pistol
Cost: 150gp
Damage (Medium) 2d3)
Crit: 20/x2
Range: 30ft
Weight: 5lbs
Type: Piercing
The most expensive is a Serricsteel Military Rifle
Item: Serricsteel Military Rifle
Cost: 900gp
Damage (Medium): 2d8
Crit: 18-20/x2
Range: 200ft
Weight: 12lbs
Type: Piercing
Ammunition:
Military Rifle: 10-12gp/shot
Pinlock Pistol: 5-6gp/shot
Reloading:
Pinlock pistol
Takes a full standard action and a successful Craft (Small Arms) check DC 8
Military Rifle
Takes two full standard actions and a successful Craft (Small Arms) check DC 12
If you are wanting to use firearms as a significant portion of your combat damage, I
strongly recommend taking the Gun Mage class. It's the only way I've seen to make spending that much money on a single attack approach reasonable.
Zalun's games tend to be combat light. Those combats tend to be short. I wouldn't expect more than three full rounds of combat per combat encounter. This means that you will get off, at most 3 shots in a combat round, assuming you have three weapons. Assuming 20 combats to differ the cost over, and the cheapest weapon of standard quality possible, that is 60 bullets at 5.5 gp each for 330gp in ammunition, plus 450gp in weapons costs. (and that is assuming that you never roll a critical failure, which is statistically unlikely, statisticaly, after firing 60 shots, you would have crit failed at least once meaning a 4th firearm should be figured into these costs)
That math equates to roughly 780gp, for a net average of 13gp per attack, regardless of success, for an average damage of 4 per successful attack.
The Gun Mage has abilities that drastically reduce this cost as well as significantly increase damage output, as they can fire spells through their guns and create special bullets that do more damage as well.
Comparatively, a fighter using a normal Falchion will do more average damage at an almost infinitesimal cost. 75gp across 60 attacks is 1.25gp per attack for an average damage of (5+Str_Mod) usually +4 or +5 at first level in Za's games for a melee fighter.
Don't get me wrong. Guns in a fantasy game are cool. Hell, Sampomrys (my character) is going to be churning out firearms at later levels, some even larger than cannons. Since my classes primary function is to create items for the party to use, I already have to pick up Craft: gunsmithing, small arms, clockworks, black smithing, weapon smithing, armor smithing, mechanika, alchemy, and Steam Engine. And, I've already found a way to do it all and have a doubled maximum skill rank. (Yes, my skill rank for craft skills is 8 at first level, and I've found a way to get all of those + Craft: Sculpture... might as well make everything look good right?... at rank 8 at first level, using only published WotC D&D 3.5 rules)
Oh, and, as always, if anyone wants any help figuring out how to do what they want with esoteric rules, just ask.