D&D 5E (2014) Let's Talk About Guns in 5E

Mephista said:

Unlike crossbows, guns do not have a way to ignore the Ammunition property except a single magic item that is quickly out-classed by other options. The ammunition property prevents them from working nicely with Extra Attack unless you get, like, a ton of disposable ones you constantly grab and drop. Which is just silly and unrealistic in most games, especially ones that give out magic items - a single +1 bow is better than using a wagon of muskets for the majority of weapon-users.

Rogues can also use crossbows without issue, since they get one attack per turn by default, but, strangely enough, they don't have proficiency with guns, necessitating either using a general feat or having a multi-class character to have access to guns. Furthermore, a lot of people tend to think about the Rogue as the "sneaky class" and are best suited by having weapons that don't make a lot of noise like a gun when trying to snipe someone. You can shoot from further away with a crossbow as well. A lot of trouble to use a single weapon.

Clerics with martial weapon proficencies can use a gun and benefit from True Strike/Divine Strike, but as a full caster, they're likely to fall back on spell slots rather than cantrips for most of their game after the earliest levels; even those clerics that do take up martial proficiency tend to use melee weapons that are designed to work with Emanation spells while in melee. Nothing stops you from being a gun cleric, but its not exactly a supported playstyle either. Its just there.

Artificer is the sole class in the game designed with gun use in mind, and that's only true for the Artilerist subclass, and only by using True Strike; and even then, at level 11 Artificer playstyle shifts to spamming level 3+ spells and summons via items. You can even make the gun as an Enspelled Weapon that shoots fireballs or whatever, and benefits from subclass abilities. Sadly, its only one subclass, and we only have that one subclass because of massive player feedback.

The simple fact of the matter is we have an entire category of weapons with so little support in the game, they might as well not exist outside of very niche cases. Now, there might be homebrew or 3PP that help, but when it comes to official WotC rules? We're out of luck.

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CleverNickName said:

with a cutlass for close quarters

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Rocker26a said:

Heck, we haven't even broached the possibility of fixing bayonets on firearms. Might be some rules minutiae to tackle there, but. Could be cool?

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James Gasik said:

You should be able to put bayonets on crossbows too. I've seen depictions of bayonet blades on one handed weapons, though I'm dubious about the effect of putting that weight on the front end.

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James Gasik said:

You should be able to put bayonets on crossbows too.

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Laurefindel said:

So firearms in D&D either go the way of re-fluffed crossbows and hit a rate of fire unmatched until the 19th century, or go the way of "magical attacks" with single high-damage effects and become essentially non-weapons for the purpose of abilities, feats, etc. Expectations can be hard to reconcile with the rules and that turns some people off.

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W'rkncacnter said:

bayonets do mess with the ballistics of even full length rifles by screwing with how the barrel moves. also, i'm not really sure how you'd put a bayonet on a crossbow. ignoring the effects on the ballistics, there just...doesn't seem like there'd be room?

also, yeah, bayonets screw with your aim...but that hasn't stopped people before...View attachment 435380

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