Tipping the Scales of Warfare

One of Vathak's biggest departures from the standard Pathfinder Roleplaying Game formula (at least in my opinion) is the prevalence of firearms. When I explained this fact to my players they all sort of nodded their heads, agreed that this made sense, and picked up the usual bows and crossbows.

 A sampling of Rick's awesome art.

Except for the gunslinger. He heard that guns were common and there was a glint in his eye. “The cost how much?” Instead of starting the game with a single battered pistol (which he still did), he opened it with a quartet of pistols. Granted, most of them were just snaphaunce pistols about as likely to go off in his hands as they were to take out an enemy, but he had them.

Nothing was thought of this until he started, well, gunslinging. And it wasn't just him. Farmers with blunderbusses. City guards with pistols tucked into their belts. A marksman taking shots at them from a few range increments out and still punching holes in their touch AC with a d12 damage die. “They all have guns?”

“Not all,” I said. “And most of them only have a few shots worth of powder. But that's all you really need, isn't it?”

My players patched themselves up, plundered the bodies, and equipped even the least gun-inclined among them with at least some form of firearms. They didn't have a whole lot of bullets between them, but that was a problem for another time.

They learned the true power of firearms in holding off the Old Ones when they faced a hala demon. I rechristened it an aberration instead of a true demon, made it a servant of Yeghniths, the Air's Anger, and put it in the bleak, wind-battered foothills of the Gray Peaks. The air-demon wore them down with gale force winds, bursts of hail, and hit-and-run tactics. Their arrows could not pierce through its defensive winds and it never stood still long enough to slice in in twain with a good ol' greatsword.

 A nasty fellow, if you've only got arrows.

But firearms are the great equalizer. They overturned the cart they'd been using for travel and took cover, readying their weapons for a volley as it swooped back around to try and grab the weakest one of them and carry them away to death. Four bullets (and one musket critical) later, the abomination of Yeghniths lay crippled on the ground, bleeding into the ashen dirt of the foothills beneath the Gray Peaks.

“And that, my friends, is why Vathak has not yet been overrun by eldritch horrors.”

“Now it makes sense.”