Just had some fun building this today, and thought I'd put it out there for the world...s.

The headline: Flurries with Double-Barreled-Pistols for a maximum of 5880 damage per round, attacking vs touch AC at +39 for 10 attacks, +34 for 4, +29 for 4, and +24 for two.

For this we're using a Goblin, who is a Gunslinger (Pistolero) 7, Fighter (Weapon Master) 5, and Monk (Sohei / Qinggong) 8.

Starting Stats: Point Buy 20.

9 Str (11-2 Goblin)

22 Dex (18+4 Goblin)

14 Con

7 Int

14 Wis

5 Cha (7-2 Goblin)

Lv20 Stats: All ability points go into Dex. Online at level 12.

223 HP, 48 AC (36T/32FF/52CMD/37FCMD)

9 Str

40 Dex

20 Con

7 Int

20 Wis

5 Cha

Equipment: (roughly 800,000 gp)

+6 Wis Headband

Boots of Speed

Wings of Flying

Otherworldly Kimono

+6 Belt of Physical Might (Dex/Con)

+5 Manual of Quickness of Action

+2 Dex Ioun Stone (Deep Red Sphere)

Gloves of Dueling

+8 Bracers of Armor

Goggles of Truesight

Endless Bandolier (Intelligent, Greater Named Bullet at-will, detect special purpose foes)

+5 Double Barreled Pistol

Jingasa of the Fortunate Soldier

Ring of Spell Turning

Ring of Freedom of Movement

Feats / Abilities By Level: (I will * critical parts for later explanation)

1: Gunslinger - Get your Firearm proficiency, *Point Blank Shot, Up Close and Deadly and Gunsmithing

2: Fighter - *Precise Shot (bonus)

3: Fighter - Rapid Shot

4: Fighter - Deadly Aim (bonus), and *Weapon Training: Firearms

5: Fighter - Weapon Focus: Pistols

6: Fighter - Weapon Specialization: Pistols (bonus) & Reliable Strike

7: Monk - Clustered Shots & Combat Reflexes (bonus), as well as flurry (but not with Pistols... YET!)

8: Monk - Dodge & Evasion (bonus)

9: Monk - *Hammer the Gap

10: Monk - *Ki Pool

11: Monk - *Rapid Reload and Barkskin

12: Monk - ***Sohei Weapon Training (any)

13: Monk - *Imp. Precise Shot

14: Monk - *Improved Flurry & Restoration

15: Gunslinger - *Greater Two-Weapon Fighting

16: Gunslinger

17: Gunslinger - Snap Shot & *Goblin Gunslinger

18: Gunslinger

19: Gunslinger - Improved Snap Shot

20: Gunslinger - DeadEye

Critical Build Elements: Precise and Point-Blank shot are prereqs so should be grabbed early. This is also why we take Gunslinger at level 1 - so our Fighter bonus feats can be spent on Weapon Focus which requires proficiency. We get Weapon Training: Firearms at Fighter level 3. This will allow us to flurry with Firearms when we pick up the Weapon Training class feature from our Sohei levels. Also gives a nice boost if you're leveling using this build, which is possible but will suffer at some points.

Hammer the Gap is responsible for a full 210 damage per round (if everything hits vs. Touch AC) on it's own, and is critiplied so contributes a total of 840 damage to our 5880 figure. It's not the biggest contributor, but it's significant.

We're spending a swift action to gain an extra attack from Ki every round we feel we aren't doing enough damage (lol) so ensuring we have enough Ki is crucial. To this end, we take four vows for +16 Ki at level 20: Celibacy, Cleanliness, Fasting and Truth. I highly recommend role playing these (or others of your choice) for added flavor and fun.

Sohei Weapon Training comes online at clvl 12, which is where things get fun. Now you can flurry with your double-barreled pistol. If you can't get an abundant ammunition enchantment right away, you want to consider taking Rapid Reload around this time. You need paper cartridges and the Rapid Reload feat to reduce reloading your pistol to a free action, allowing you to take all 10 shots (x2, 1 per barrel.)

Improved Precise shot is another prereq. At Monk level 8 (clvl 14) we get improved flurry, simulating improved 2WF for free. This is where we exit the monk class for good. Staying to 15 to get greater flurry isn't worth it when we can match it with the feat, which we do next level.

This is somewhat controversial. Flurry of Blows is explained as attacking "as though using" two weapon fighting feats. It doesn't actually grant those feats. It is also not directly tied to Monk level for acquisition. Depending on the GM, you may get greater flurry at clvl 15 regardless of whether or not you progress there as a monk. Most abilities tied to class level specify that they require levels in that class, and some do not require you to level with that class. So, like I said, it's controversial.

If they won't give it to you free at clvl 15 after exiting monk, some GMs may allow you to take the Greater TWF feat as though you already had Basic and Imp. 2WF (since you're pseudo-granted them from Monk's Flurry description,) with the caveat that it only applies to your flurry. If they won't give it to you at all, you're going to be down 1 shot (2 attacks, 1 per barrel), which costs you 660 off your maximum damage. It's a chunk, but you can live without it, so no need to argue the point very hard. Plus you gain a feat slot for whatever you want.

Goblin Gunslinger is interesting. It negates the penalty for a Goblin using Medium sized firearms as a Small creature. This allows you to be a goblin - with all the AC and to-hit benefits that entails - and not lower your damage dice (1d8 instead of 1d6 with double-barreled pistols.) It's not really necessary. The average you lose is 1 damage per shot, and the maximum you lose is 2 damage per shot, but this build largely operates abusing flat damage bonuses and crits, and every little bit adds up. We take it late, but it's a good feat for us (+160 max damage.)

A sidenote about Snap Spot and Imp. Snap Shot: These are luxury feats. Together, they allow you to threaten AoOs out to 10' with your pistols, without provoking when you shoot at melee range. This is good, and it's even better when you realize one of the only half-decent bonus feats we got from our Monk levels is Combat Reflexes. This means that with your huge Dex, you're hitting up to 16 times *when it is not your turn* for 1d8+52+1+2d6 vs touch AC, and multiplying most of it x4 on a crit. It's unlikely anything survives your first volley, but having that 10' threat for AoOs really helps if anything does manage to close with you. Use (or don't) as you prefer, we choose them late so we can safely ignore them if we're playing at lower levels.

The Mechanics: Here's where things get interesting. How do we do what we do? First, our attacks:

Monks get to use their class level as their BAB during flurrying, and Fighters and Gunslingers are both full BAB classes, so we're starting at a nice 4 attacks. Flurry, Imp. Flurry and Greater Flurry give us one each, for 7. Then we have Haste (from boots or party cast), Ki, and Rapid Shot for 3 more, totaling 10. Each barrel in a double-barreled pistol fires twice per shot/attack, doubling that figure. 20 attacks per round. With Rapid Reload & alchemical paper cartridges, you can safely fire all of those (though there is a misfire chance, more on that later.) Without Rapid Reload & alchemical cartridges, your option is an abundant ammunition enchantment. Abundant ammunition would be a +1 equivalent if allowed by a GM. Some may not want to allow you to reload 10 times per round. It is worth pointing out that you have spent a feat, purchased special ammunition and have class features all dedicated to allowing you to do this. If they won't let you reload, the build is sunk. That you can get it to a free action enabling 10 reloads per round is something which makes it mechanically, RAW legal, but GMs are allowed to limit free actions. YMMV.

Second, attack modifiers: we're coming in at +39 to attack rolls. How? Easy. BAB & Dex is a whopping +35. Weapon Focus and Point Blank Shot are +2. Weapon Training (from Weapon Master archetype) is +5 at level 20, and we get another +2 from our Gloves of Dueling. Our pistol is enhanced for another +5, and we could make this a lot cheaper in terms of gp if we were willing to lose the extra ki attack, by using our Sohei ability to make it +5. We're small, for +1, and hasted a few rounds per day for another +1 when it counts. Deadly Aim is costing us -6, our double-barrel shots are costing us -4, flurrying is another -2, and totaled up we hit a nice round +39 on full BAB.

There are some controversies in the above. The way Weapon Training reads, it is tied to level, not necessarily class level. This will vary by GM, and if they rule it only advances during levels you take in that class, you will still get 13 levels worth (5 Fighter, 8 Sohei monk which *should* count). Your loss in that case would be -2.

Third, damage modifiers: we get Dex to damage thanks to Pistol Training from the Pistolero class, so we start with a neat +15. Another +2 comes from Weapon Specialization. We get the same +7 from Weapon Training that applies to attack, may have to subtract two depending on rules interpretations. +5 from your weapon enhancement, +12 from Deadly Aim. Now +8 from Greater Named Bullet - I'll come back to this. +3 from Pistol Training - same as Weapon Training, it scales to level, not class level, but rules nazis may make you lose it for the same reasons as the two from Weapon Training. We're at +52.

We get another 2d6 per hit (up to grit limit) thanks to the Up Close and Personal Deed from the Gunslinger class. Note that grit is returned on successful crits or kills, so if we crit enough we may be able to use more than our limit per round - more on this later too. Then we add a cumulative +1 for each shot that hits from Hammer the Gap. That's +1 on the first hit, +2 on the second hit, +3 on the third, etc...

At 1d8 + 52 + x(1, 2, 3, etc...) + 2d6 per shot, and 20 shots per round, we reach the total: 20d8 + 1040 + 210 + 40d6. All but the 40d6 is multiplied on crits, for our max damage figure of 5880 damage per round.

Given that we're shooting at touch AC with an enormous bonus, there's a high chance we're hitting everything in range. If not, we can spend grit to expand our touch AC range thanks to the Deadeye deed, but we have to suffer -2 to our attack roll for every range increment we extend due to our pistol's limit of 20' range. Either way, very few things have a high enough touch AC to not be auto hits. We're firing 20 shots, which means another 210 damage which IS multiplied on crits.

Before we can sum up our total damage we need to look at Greater Named Bullet in more detail. Remember that thing I kept saying I'd come back to? This is it. Greater Named Bullet is a 4th level spell on the ranger's class list (among others.) We can get it at 6th level by using other classes, which benefits us with scaling damage, but this becomes prohibitively expensive. The reason we *want* the spell is because, if applied intelligently, it makes every hit a critical threat (as well as adding a flat damage bonus.) Since we're almost guaranteed to hit everything we shoot, and we have a 4x multiplier, this is very powerful for us, because if we can guarantee a hit vs touch AC we can guarantee a confirmation roll as well. As an example, the Tarrasque has a touch AC of 5. It's like they're begging us to gib him. The other major advantage of Named Bullet is that it completely nullifies misfire chance. Because all hits are crit threats, assuming we confirm with our massive bonuses against touch AC we're regaining grit every shot we hit with Named Bullets, allowing us to continually apply that +2d6 from Up Close and Deadly for *every shot of every round* without losing grit unless we miss a confirm for some reason. Which we can re-roll (I'll get to that, too.)

The issue with Greater Named Bullet is it only applies to one piece of ammunition per shot. Some past threads have talked about how it interacts with a quiver of Abundant Ammunitionn, and that's certainly one way to go, but I don't like it... because it requires you to recast it every time you face a new foe (that's how it works. You name a creature type and gain the bonuses against just that type.) So we have a couple options. We could ask our friendly party caster to follow us around and recast it every time we meet something, but who wants to do that? Which brings us to the solution... intelligent items.

Intelligent items are rare, and accordingly expensive. But they have one benefit, which is they gain certain powers which are otherwise difficult to obtain. In this case, we're looking at the ability to cast a 4th level spell at-will as well as, "detect any special purpose foes within 60 feet," for the appropriate cost. This suits our needs nicely, enabling our intelligent pistol to cast Greater Named Bullet at caster level 4 on all our ammunition every round, specific to whichever enemy we want to shoot that round. "But wait!" you say? "Greater Named Bullet only affects one bullet at a time!" Right, but remember, abundant ammunition, +1 enchant equivalent (level 1 spell and comparable costing on other items) says, "If, after casting this spell, you cast a spell that enhances projectiles, such as align weapon or greater magic weapon, on the same container, all projectiles this spell conjures are affected by that spell." In other words, for a rather hefty sum of cash, you get a +5 intelligent weapon which can sense the enemy you're fighting, Name your bullets to automatically crit threat vs. them and do +8 damage, and replenish your ammo. One convenient side effect is that once you've purchased this incredibly expensive (and useful) weapon, it eliminates your reloading needs.

On the other hand, if your GM gets hung up on the "one container touched" target requirement for Abundant Ammunition (for some reason, some people don't see "chamber" as a "container." Geez, right?), you simply apply the enchantments (and intelligence) to your Endless Bandolier instead. It's a whole lot cheaper than adding them to your weapon anyway, at least in terms of gp. On the flip side, you are still required to manually reload.

An alternative which works occasionally is to take a look at the Pistol of the Infinite Sky, which is essentially everything you want in a +5 pistol except it is not double-barreled. Ask your GM if you can get that strapped onto a double-barreled pistol body and you're half-way home. If he'll let you make it intelligent too, you've got your Named Bullets and next stop is gravy town. One significant bonus is that Pistol of the Infinite Sky is a CL 15th item, meaning your Named Bullets will overcome a higher level of SR (SR negates the auto-crit effect,) giving you a wider range of creatures you can deal max damage against. Significantly, Pistol of the Infinite Sky also nullifies misfire chance without using Named Bullet, so even though you lose almost 3/4 of your damage by not guaranteeing every hit is a crit, you really don't need that 3/4 of your damage. I'd take the double-barreled Pistol of the Infinite Sky 10/10 times over a free, constant Greater Named Bullet if it was a choice between the two. (Though I'd consider taking Imp. Critical feat in that case.) Cheaper, too.

Variables/Options:

You can take an 8th Gunslinger level instead of the 5th fighter level, since your archetype gains Weapon Training early, and you end up with the same number of feats. The upside to doing that is 2 skill points. The downside is the Weapon Adept gains a few perks at level 5, which also follow the same rule of Weapon Training and Pistol Training, that is: they appear to scale to character level, not class level. Even if they don't, at level 5 the Weapon Adept gets to reroll a crit confirmation, attack roll, damage roll or miss chance once per day. At 20, it's 4x/day. This allows you to smooth out the very few speed-bumps you might run into in combat.

One other major option with this build is to go with a composite longbow for high fantasy settings, instead of firearms. This benefits from not encountering the complaints about doubling your attacks per round that you may otherwise receive, and has some distinct advantages, in being able to use both str and dex for damage, in not needing to multiclass so heavily (you don't need Gunslinger at all) and having more feats that are tailored for you, because bows have been in pathfinder (and fantasy RPGs) a lot longer than firearms. Downsides are you're slightly more str-dependent, you're *much* more dependent on getting a source of Greater Named Bullet (because it allows arrows to hit touch AC, like bullets already do,) and you're at half the attacks per round. Either way, it's very workable and still well over 2500 dpr.

This is a statted out sheet for those who are curious.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Stories inspired by this build? I'd love to hear them.