This week my Tuesday group finished up the 2nd adventure in the Varakt’s Halo trilogy, and I’ve only got a sheaf of notes for the third module so we’re headed into different playtesting territory for a little bit: into BSP.

Following on some ideas the ever-brilliant Sean K. Reynolds dropped on his blog the other week, I’ve got some global magic item rules  in play, and for my own efforts, a means to curb the power disparity with the otherwise wonderfully written psionics rules from Dreamscarred Press.

That’s not what I’m posting today—instead, I’m going after firearms.

As a player, I am so totally about gunslingers and firearms in Pathfinder. They are a fun set of rules and definitely breathe even more life into the game.

As a GM though, I am utterly terrified of firearms. I never seem to be stingy enough with rewards and downtime to effectively force resource investment into ammunition, and they always end up creating a gap between the effectiveness of PCs of equal level.

Of the three continents on [BSP], the party willingly and happily chose the most difficult realm of them all and, what more, decided to start on the losing side of a very, very long conflict. So they’re at lower resources, but even then, I’m wary of Tito playing a gunslinger.

However,  Tito just keeps on dying. In the 5 or 6 months he’s been in my Tuesday group, I have killed his PC—entirely as a matter of coincidence, I swear—three times now! Technically, in the last game, Nick took care of that, though arguably I’m at fault (like it’s my problem that people failed their Will saves).

Unable to tell him no, I had to consent to a gunslinger, but I know right off the bat that I’m way too anxious with the firearm rules as presented. For BSP, since I’m already implementing some other global rule modifications, it felt like nerfing guns a little bit couldn’t hurt too much.

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[redacted – BSP is coming soon :D]