Editing Gunslinger (section)

== [[Dungeons and Dragons]]==
[[File:Pistoleer 3e Ravenloft.jpg|left|150px|thumb|The Pistoleer]]
[[File:Artillerist.jpg|right|150px|thumb|The Artillerist, or as I like to call him, Matt Meowcer]]
Because of [[Medieval Stasis|the usual problem]], for years the closest thing the ''D&D'' family had to a playable Gunslinger class were the gunfighting Paladins of [[Murlynd]] who resembled sheriffs from these Westerns, and whose holy text was basically a pulp novel of his exploits. In [[Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition|3rd Edition]], this amounted to a single feat buried in an issue of ''[[Dragon Magazine]]'' (321, if it matters).

A gun-toting prestige class, the ''Pistoleer'', appeared in the 3rd edition update of the [[Ravenloft]] setting, where it was one of several prestige classes in the splatbook ''Van Richten's Arsenal, Volume 1''.

[[Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition|5th Edition]] first sought to resolve this lengthy injustice by introducing Gunslingers as a sub-class of the [[Artificer]] called the Gunsmith. This first version was a quarter-caster, like the Fighter and Rogue spellcasting archetypes, that got a semi-magical "thunder-cannon" that only they could use, and which took an action to fire and a bonus action to reload. While this obviously restricted them to one shot per round, the base shot had the damage-progression of the Rogue's sneak attack, and they learned to fire other shots with various effects (blast, cone, etc.) as they leveled up. They also had the tools needed to recreate their weapon if it was destroyed, and a wonky ammunition bag that didn't ''technically'' give them as many bullets as they wanted in theory, but definitely did in practice since they were almost certainly not going to fire more shots than they can produce in a given long rest.

Unfortunately, the Gunsmith and the thunder cannon were removed with the March 2019 Unearthed Arcana, but in its place a new Artificer sub-class (now renamed Artillerist) had the means to create a walking turret buddy by sacrificing spell slots (as well as one free one each day). This turret, while incapable of scaling in damage, could either be a flamethrower, a force-damage ballista, or a healing station. You could also create wands with this subclass, though it was only usable by you and it let you add your Intelligence Modifier to the damage of one cantrip.

The official published version of the Artificer in ''Eberron: Rising from the Last War'' kept most of the above Artillerist features, adding the option to make the turret legless, tiny and hand-held (i.e. a GUN). Combined with the ability to fashion arcane focii into firearms, dual-wielding gunslingers had finally arrived in D&D.

There's also a complete 5e Gunslinger class of semi-official canonicity, created by Matthew Mercer of [[Critical Role]] fame and subsequently launched on [[DM's Guild]], which mimics the ''Pathfinder'' model. Matt had made this after switching his campaign 1 of critical role from Pathfinder to 5e. One of the players, Taliesin had played a iconic gunslinger so they decided to homebrew one for in order to keep him around.