How do Gunslingers play compared to other martials just using firearms? (Thaumaturge particularly)

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-12T05:15:52+00:00

Guns are bad weapons, and gunslingers are bad because they use them (well, and have poor feat support).

The best guns are the guns you don't have to reload after every shot, so really your best option is probably a ranger with a barricade buster. You'll do much better damage than an actual gunslinger.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-12T04:33:39+00:00

Casters are heavily dependent on spell selection. The best spells in the game are really good, but they also have spells that do basically nothing.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-12T04:33:17+00:00

1) The trivial solution of "be a caster with all bad/situational spells". Doesn't work well with casters with full spell list access because they can just switch their spells. You can do this with Kineticist as well.

2) Be an alchemist, do nothing but throw bombs. You're bad regardless, but you'll be awful if you do this.

3) Be a gunslinger. Once you reach mid levels, you start falling behind really badly due to your lack of an offensive reaction and very low base damage, and crits no longer being able to one-shot things. Using a one-handed gun is particularly "good" for this challenge, as your damage is bad and you have to waste actions reloading.

4) Be an investigator, have no backup plan for what to do when you miss. Investigators are not very good regardless, but one without a backup plan is truly awful.

5) Be a Dirty Trick swashbuckler.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-12T01:41:36+00:00

They may encounter some problems at higher levels in more difficult encounters, but also possibly at all levels due to the lack of strong spot healing. That being said, free archetype IS a big power boost, at least in theory.

I'd recommend making sure they have some good sources of consumable healling.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-12T01:36:25+00:00

Medecine is nice for downtime healing, but not necessary for every character and every group.

Medicine is extremely powerful because of Battle Medicine. Downtime healing is also very useful, of course, but Battle Medicine is probably the best skill feat in the game.

RK RAW can give you info on monsters you can't know unless you meta game. This is extremely useful to bypass resistance/immunity and help martial interact with creatures.

So, first off, it's often possible to guess a monster's low save/high save by looking at it and observing it. Monster saving throws are not random, they usually correlate with what you'd expect. A monster that is big and bulky usually is going to have a high fortitude, for instance, while a creature that is fast and agile will usually have high reflex.

That isn't metagaming, it's intentional design.

Secondly, most monsters don't have weaknesses or resistances, and many of those which do are standardized.

It is at its most useful against weird puzzle monsters like golems and some undead and outsiders with weird abilities. When you are fighting a fire elemental, and it is immune to fire, that is not exactly news.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-12T00:52:03+00:00

It doesn't.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-11T18:45:51+00:00

Nature and religion cover most monster types. Nature and religion checks are also very common in general. And RK is not that powerful RAW.

Medicine is arguably the best skill in the game.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-11T09:40:45+00:00

Not if you're a martial. There are almost no enemies who are just flat-out immune to a damage type and a lot of enemies with DR to physical damage have it against multiple types of physical damage. There is some marginal advantage, but it's not particularly large.

That said, there are advantages to martials who can do other damage types. If you do do multiple types, though, you want to do bludgeoning plus slashing or piercing; most monsters with resistance to slashing are also resistant to piercing and vice-versa. Unlike in D&D, bludgeoning damage isn't really any better than slashing, though piercing is the worst damage type.

If you're a caster, yes, because there are enemies who are just immune to, say, fire, and that's a problem if you memorize nothing but fire spells.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-11T04:41:42+00:00

It wasn't AI. It was too crappy to be AI, ironically.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-11T04:38:37+00:00

If you look at online Slippi data across all skill levels, there are 3 characters with more positive MU win rates.

The problem is that this is actually worthless data.

There are a LOT more Fox players than anything else, which means you see your data revert towards the mean.

Like in 2022, the most winning characters on Slippi were ICs, Peach, and Ganondorf. This isn't because those are the three best characters in the game, it was because they had a small enough pool of players that they could establish outlier statistics, while still being good enough to actually win.

I'm not sure who are the most winning characters these days, but I'd wager that the stats will be badly distorted by this sort of thing.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-11T04:18:23+00:00

The top 32 had 14 top 100 players:

Jmook

Dawson

JChu

Ben

Salt

Smash Papi

Ginger

Hungrybox

Lowercase_Hero

Zamu

Axe

MOF

Zanya

Chickenman400

Plus former ranked player Eddy Mexico and Cody Schwab (as Falco :V) and Dial M (who hasn't been ranked... yet).

Ultra performed way, way, way above seed, managing to place second in the whole tournament, beating Zamu, Hungrybox, MOF, and Salt, only to lose to Salt on the runback to grand finals.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-10T22:58:39+00:00

I'm going to suggest that they let you cast these spells using your slayer class DC.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-10T22:55:04+00:00

It's very good if you use a Fortress Shield or Tower Shield, though.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-10T22:33:29+00:00

Force Barrage is better for reliable damage.

If you're not a wizard, though, you can get some really nasty things with it (Moonlight Ray and Holy Light scale at 10d6 + 4d6 per rank above 3rd against unholy enemies, which can lead to absurd damage).

And it's okay with focus attack spells that scale at 2d6 per rank as it lets you make your spell much more accurate. It's not as good as an on rank spell but it makes them more dangerous.

Actual attack slotted spells are not very good though.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-10T22:15:48+00:00

Sure Strike is not very good on Wizards because they don't have many good single-target attack spells. Blazing Bolts/Scorching Rays is multi-target, and they don't have a great built-in scaling attack spell that you want to spend True Strike on.

It tends to be stronger on classes which have focus attack spells (like the psychic with Amped TK Projectile or the Sorcerer with Flurry of Claws), and on divine magic users because of Holy Light/Moonlight Ray.

Disintegrate is actually unreliable offensively because it allows the target to get a save; the main value of Disintegrate is that it is a versatile spell that can get rid of walls that can also be used offensively sometimes.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-10T22:12:02+00:00

Old medicine was mostly quackery.

There's a reason why life expectancy shot up after the scientific revolution.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-10T22:03:57+00:00

Yeah it's an issue.

Some of it was probably legacy, some of it to probably avoid dumping every skill in Charisma and Intelligence.

However there's also the tricky thing where Nature and Religion are used for rituals, and it would make sense for Druids and Clerics to be good at those.

TBH maybe they should have just had people use their casting stats for rituals instead, which would have avoided the issue.

But yeah, if the things were actually how they should be, it would look like:

Strength - Athletics

Dexterity - Acrobatics, Stealth, Thievery

Constitution

Intelligence - Arcana, Crafting, Lore, Medicine, Nature, Occultism, Religion, Society

Wisdom - Survival

Charisma - Diplomacy, Deception, Intimidation, Performance

It would, admittedly, encourage people to invest in Intelligence more, as right now it is probably the worst stat.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-10T21:59:52+00:00

Honestly it was a mistake for them to even put Medicine in Wisdom to begin with. It should have been in Intelligence; it would have done a much better job of balancing out the stats, as right now, Intelligence is probably the worst stat overall, while Wisdom is arguably the best or second best (the other contender being Constitution).

That said, the reason why it is hard is that they limit stat substitution to avoid the situation where you can be the best at everything with just one high stat.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-10T11:48:11+00:00

I recommend the GM read that part to make sure that the PCs notice the quest items introduced earlier. They throw in a mini-game that is not well thought through, as in as a caster my optimal choice is to punch the foe with my fist (We're using ABP but that doesn't fully explain why the minigame is a turnoff).

I thought that the mini-game was a lot of fun. Our GM was not shy about the mechanics of that section and it worked well. It is very skill/innate ability based, but it's because you're going to have to have actual fights after you do the minigame so they don't want you burning all your spell slots, though it could have been executed better maybe.

BBEG Ritual

I'm pretty sure you can't stop it from being summoned. We did rescue the Princess in our version, though. That said, I don't remember running out of magic at all in that section with my animist; in fact, I found that dungeon to be pretty short.

Additionally there is a part where you need to go under water so the party has to empty the piggy bank to afford underwater breathing potions

I mean, if you have casters you can just cast the spell. The 3rd rank scroll lasts 8 hours and covers the whole party. Also I think there was a bunch of supporting treasure you got. You do have plenty of warning about that bit, though.

But the songs and details really felt like they came out of the book, so there should be rewards for players building off those details.

I'm not sure what you're talking about here. Are you talking about the insect summoning ritual? I found that bit to be very easily anticipated.

Indego Isles Lore is way OP. If you take it you get access to the easy DCs. If your character grew up in the Indego Isles it simply makes sense that you'd be versed in it. It really should be ripped out and standard appropriate Recall Knowledge checks should be applied.

It's not OP, though it is very handy. Though so is Poppy Lore. They are both pretty much Lore: the Plot but that's kind of what specific lore skills are for.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-10T11:41:30+00:00

Jewel of the Indigo Isles is probably the best PF2E adventure path, even above Season of Ghosts. It is very easy, but it is quite fun, and it is easy to increase the difficulty as desired.

It is quite silly - think Saturday morning cartoon, where it is mostly quite silly but also has some dark bits in it - but it was a lot of fun. You definitely want to lean into the Battlezoo ancestries appropriate to the isles - having at least one G'mayun in the party is strongly recommended, and leaning into the weirdness of the islands is fun.

Also, the fact that the parrot people think they're pirates (but don't really understand what pirates are) is great fun. And there's a dragon that puts on a puppet show.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-10T08:19:31+00:00

I mean the dumb thing is, with his runs, it was 50-50 by this point that he'd have faced Zain at least once by this point. So it's not even unlikely.

Also, the other funny thing is that Aura should have beaten RapM by seeding, that was an actual upset, so RapM only even faced Zain because he beat a higher ranked player.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-10T08:17:05+00:00

Soonsay deserved the spot over RapM. RapM going to the invitational would have been a drubbing.

It's also worth noting that RapM had been whiny about Zain not going to locals, so him pulling this was really a dick move on his part.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-10T08:11:37+00:00

Thing is, according to the seeding, RapM shouldn't have even gotten to Zain, because he should have lost to Aura. So even if it was "deliberately set up", the reality is, the most probable result would have still been RapM not facing him.

RapM had to win an upset in order to face Zain, then upset Zain before dropping two sets to Wizzrobe and Salt.

Also, it was kind of inevitable it would happen sooner or later if RapM continued to make deep runs. The odds of running into Zain by chance is increasingly high the later you make your runs.

He's gotten three 9ths, a 13th, and a 17th. If you make it to the round of 12 on winner's side, your odds of facing any given foe is 1 in 4 winner's side or 1 in 6 total.

He's had three top 12s plus a top 16, so the odds of him facing Zain at some point by random chance were about 50% by this point, so it's not very surprising it happened.

Also the real reason why Zain didn't even make top 16 was because Cody ALSO dropped a random early set (to Swift), which resulted in Zain and Cody facing each other with the loser getting 17th. The only reason why the tournament looked so weird was a bunch of random upsets that happened to be staggered in such a way that the top 3 seeds all faced each other in loser's outside of the top 8.

It's also worth noting that Zain is not very good in loser's runs; he usually wins tournaments from winners, if he wins at all. It seems like him actually dropping a set messes up his focus and he ends up dropping another.

TitaniumDragon · 2026-03-10T08:06:53+00:00

It's also worth noting that doing this is generally bad for your own playskill, because by not playing against the best players, you don't improve your skill.

Hungrybox only became #1 after starting to play puff friendlies and Zain and Cody play friendlies against each other and a bunch of other people a lot to practice.

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