The Paizo team sent me a copy of the Pathfinder Guns and Gears Remastered book so I could give my honest review of it. As always, these books don’t disappoint from an artistic or organized standpoint. The team at Pathfinder really do make it easy for you to find the information you are looking for without flipping back and forth through the book a billion times.
Quick Overview
If you’re thinking about adding a bit of steampunk or black powder to your game, this is the book for you. Guns and Gears provides two additional classes to the world of Golarion: the inventor and the gunslinger. In addition to new classes, a plethora of archetypes, backgrounds, vehicles, siege engines, gadgets, and the remastered automaton ancestry are all ready to expand your game with options for battlefields large and small.
Most of the changes from 2nd edition to Remaster are minor. Most of the changes are going to be little tweaks to take out OGL wording and bringing it into ORC wording or to clarify rules questions. There were a couple of bigger tweaks to a few classes and archetypes. This is not a complete list of everything that changed, just some of the ones that stood out to me.
Inventor
The Inventor is the character who is always dreaming up the next unique contraption, always ready with an idea to overcome just about any challenge. They are the ones who send their inventions into combat to really push them to the limit and see what needs improving. Pay no attention to the smoke coming from the invention.
The Inventor’s Overdrive has been given a Failure effect that it previously didn’t have. “Your gizmos whine concerningly and begin to smoke. Your strikes deal 1 additional fire damage.” Innovation armor AC bonuses have gone up by one. Weapon Innovations give you more options, making them more useful by adding additional traits.
Gunslinger
The gunslinger is always ready to draw a bead on their enemy, striking before they can pose a true threat. Their knowledge of guns and complex weaponry is rivaled by none.
Slinger’s Precision takes the place of Singular Expertise. This has taken away the limits on training non-ranged weapons as well as giving higher damage bonuses with non-repeating ranged weapons. When using a combination weapon, you use your proficiency with firearms and crossbows for attacks made with the melee configuration. Way of the Drifter’s Reloading Strike has added that this reload does not trigger reactions. Munitions Crafter allows you to make bombs and alchemical ammunition every day equal to four plus half your level. There is also a clarification that you cannot use this to make horns or kegs of black powder.
Spellshot
Spellshot is a gunslinger archetype that combines magical power with technology, blending the two together. This allows them to imbue their weapon with energy and conjure bullets from thin air.
Recall Ammunition no longer triggers with only 0 level ammunition, but allows for all ammunition types to be recalled on a missed shot. If the ammunition was a piece of magical or alchemical ammunition that requires actions to activate it, you must re-activate it before firing it again.
Spell-Woven Shot is a new feat that allows you to combine your magic with that of your magical crossbow or firearm. This feat is also useful if you use the Beast Gunner Archetype, allowing you a to load and activate a piece of magical ammunition as a free action once per 10 minutes.
Bullet Dancer
Monks with guns? Yes please. The bullet dancer combines the fluid motions of the monastic orders with explosive attacks.
You now have access to Qi spells at level 4. Fixed the wording in the Bullet Dancer Dedication to clear up what weapons are included. These include martial firearms and martial combination weapons.
Dongun Dwarf Ancestry Feats
Dungun Hold has been caught between the warring armies of Geb and Nex for over a millennium. When the surface world because unlivable, they retreated below-ground, destroying the entrance along the way. This allowed them to discover a strange black powder that changed the course of their lives.
Explosive Savant now says that you treat bombs and martial weapons as simple weapons and advanced firearms as martial weapons due to spending your lifetime wielding guns and explosives. Having built up a tolerance to your own explosions, Explosive Expert now makes you immune to your own splash damage.
Mobility Devices
In the theme of invention and innovation, basic assistive devices also have gotten a bit of an upgrade. Magical wheelchairs use technology and magic to create incredible effects for those who use them.
Basic Chair is now called Wheelchair. All of the Activations for magical wheelchairs have names. So if you want to use your Frog Chair’s tongue to grab something, you just need to Grrrabbit!
Storm Chair gained a new ability called Ride the Lightning. Once per day, you can release the majority of the stored energy in the chair to cast chain lightning with a DC of 31.
Final Thoughts
Obviously, there are plenty of other cool items, vehicles, and changes from Second Edition to the Remaster, but I can’t give everything away. That being said, my character needs a speedster (steam-powered horse) and a clockwork castle to live.
Let’s all be clear: I have a soft spot for inventors and tinkerers in fantasy settings. I think it brings an interesting flavor of innovation in a world where magical innovation is the norm. Plus, who doesn’t want to ride on a mechanical horse?
I love that this book is set up with the division of Guns and Gears. If you only want Gunslinger Backgrounds and Feats, you don’t have to slog through Inventor things. You can just stick to what you are interested in or play with it all.
As always, I love that the design team takes the time to make sure the book is well laid out (and pretty) with ease of the end user in mind.
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