ZEITGEIST Gunslingers in Zeitgeist (4e)

[iSax]

I'm going to be running Zeitgeist soon using 4e.

One of my players wants to play a ranger with the gunslinger theme. He wants to take Ammunition Clip at level 5, and Alchemical Launcher at level 10. Using the At-Will power Rapid Shot he can attack each creature in or adjacent to a square. If he does this with grenades, he can fire up to 3 grenades and each attacks every target in a burst 1, with misses doing half damage. So opponents are guaranteed to be attacked by at least 2 and probably 3 grenades.

This seems somewhat excessive to me, especially for an at-will power. And while level 10 is a long way off, I'd like to give him some kind of ruling now, rather than pulling the rug from under his feet down the line.

Does anyone have experience of running Zeitgeist with these kind of powers, or any thoughts on how grenades should interact with this kind of power? Even the Twin Strike power that attacks two opponents feels like it gets a major boost from grenades.

 

[RangerWickett]

It's been a while. What determines how many grenades they get?

 

[iSax]

Ammunition clip gives them three alchemical items or grenades, and reloading is a free action with Speed Loader.

 

[hirou]

Ahahaha, I remember exactly the same problem when we were starting an unholy number of years ago! You don't even need Alchemical Launcher/Ammunition Clip, Battle harness armor allows drawing an unlimited number of grenades per turn, then you just throw them by hand (and 4e economy ensures that 10 gp cost becomes nothing by mid-heroic levels). Gunsmith rules are, honestly, quite broken in 4e when studied in details. In addition to grenades there was an exploit with cover-piercing bullets - IIRC if you take Expertise feat which allows to ignore half-cover, you suddenly deal more damage to targets in cover than to targets in the open. Scatter as written completely breaks math of to-hit in 4e. Theme power and sniper scope are, on the other hand, underpowered.

Unfortunately, I do not have a blanket solution for all the problems; our gunsmith left the campaign around adv.5 due to unrelated reasons (with guest appearances in later modules). As far as I can see in my notes regarding the grenades in particular, I added a homerule: each target of attack can be damaged no more than once by grenades used in this attack. I think we also changed "grenade makes an attack roll against each target in Burst 1" to "grenade damages target square and deals half damage in Burst 1", because in the worst case scenario that single Rapid Shot attack would require 81 attack rolls. Try to read gunsmith rules again, discuss them with players, then rewrite them completely, that's my advice. If you want to pace some upgrades in addition to the ones listed in the theme, Weapons Fair in adventure 3 and Tinker appearance in adv.6 give some pretext for technology advances (i.e. allow crafting pepperbox guns).

Edit: you really opened a memory box. I remember discussing this particular interaction with players, we decided that grenades as described in player's guide (which our ranger|rogue used in the first adventures) are wartime Danor-made models from his personal stash, which were banned by Yerasol convention after the last war. After his reserve finally run dry he had to switch to more humane Risur-made version with new rules =)

 

[hirou]

Alternative Firearms rules? [4e] yay, here's my thread from back in the day discussing firearms in detail. There are some ideas there, but still no concrete solutions.

Other problem I ran into is that grenades as written are, honestly, broken. 4ed has many powers/feats combos which activate on a hit/miss of initial attack. I.e. Careful attack+True arrow style feat allows to make a ranged basic attack if the initial attack misses, in exchange for granting combat advantage on attacker for a turn. Now imagine that initial grenade missed, say, 3 targets in burst 1... suddenly there're 3 more grenades incoming. Somehow. Turning any ranged attack into burst 1 which also deals half damage on miss basically means that every encounter ranged power is almost as powerful as a daily, all for measly 10 gp.

I tried a system when individual grenades should be "fine-tuned" for specific powers (with a help of technologist), so, say, Twin Strike attack with a grenade may only involve specifically prepared grenade with double warhead, with price of "tuning" dependent on the level of the power used (one fifth of the equivalent magic item price for daily powers, one tenth for encounter powers). This leads to some balanced math, but it's incredibly frustrating to keep count of each and every grenade, so now I'm trying much easier scheme: each grenade attack adds secondary attack, burst 1 centered on primary target/square, deal the same damage on hit, half on miss with no additional effects. This still increases the damage output a lot, but at least breaks some of the more ridiculous-looking combos my players discovered.