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CINDERFALL FIELD MANUAL  ·  DOSSIER 06 / 10

Ironsight

Everybody's carrying scrap. You're the one still alive because you know exactly how much to trust it.

Key Ability
Dexterity
Hit Points
10 + Con / level
Base Class
Gunslinger (reskin)
Role
Firearms Specialist
Pillar
The Gear Economy

Every gun in the wasteland is a bet. Most of what's out there is scrap-forged, hand-fitted, and one bad trigger pull from turning on you. Ironsights are the ones who bet on guns for a living and kept winning long enough to get good at it — reading a weapon's temperament like a second language, knowing exactly which piece of junk to trust with a called shot and which one you fire and immediately duck behind cover from. And every one of them is, somewhere in the back of their head, still hunting for the gun that never lets them down.

The gear economy, quick reference: scrap guns are common, cheap, and carry the Jam trait — reliable enough for a bar fight, not for a firefight you can't afford to lose. Good Guns are pre-collapse or corporate-manufactured, functionally magic-item-tier, and the kind of find that can define a whole campaign arc (Setting Bible §5).

§1New Terms


The Jam
Scrap guns carry the Jam trait: misfire on a natural 1, requiring a Clear action before they'll fire again. Good Guns never have this trait.
Draw
Your fighting style and weapon philosophy, chosen at 1st level. Functions as your subclass.
Hot Load
Deliberately overloading a shot for a bigger effect right now. Risks Blowback.
Blowback
What happens when a Hot Load goes wrong. Roll on the Blowback Table (§4) — the wasteland's guns fail in specific, memorable ways.
The Last Round
Your Finisher — a single devastating action, built up to over the course of a fight and unlocked at 11th level.
Good Gun
A rare, precious, pre-collapse or corporate-manufactured firearm. Never Jams, and grows more capable the longer you carry it. Always found, never bought outright.

§2Choose Your Draw

Your subclass, chosen at 1st level. Grants a feature again at 7th; every Draw's mid-tier feats (§5, 12th level) become available to all four once unlocked.


Twin Iron

Dual Pistols

One gun in each hand and a rhythm to firing them that took years to stop dropping either one. Fast, aggressive, always one more shot than anyone expects.

SIGNATURE — take aim with both weapons in a single action; land a hit with one and the other follows easier.

Long Iron

Rifles

Patience as a weapon. You find the vantage, you wait, and by the time anyone notices you're there the shot's already landed.

SIGNATURE — a called shot that scales further the longer you've held a target in your sights without firing.

Close Iron

Shotguns

You want them close. Anyone who charges you regrets it immediately, and anyone who doesn't gets punished for hesitating.

SIGNATURE — a called shot that triggers the instant an enemy closes to melee range against you.

Trick Iron

Improvised & Scavenged

Whatever's in your hand right now works, because you've made it work before. Unpredictable, resourceful, never carrying quite what people expect.

SIGNATURE — free-action reload tricks that trigger off unpredictable moments — a crit, a Jam, an ally going down.

§3Hot Load & Blowback

Hot Load pushes a shot past what the gun — scrap or Good — was built to handle, for real damage right now. Good Guns take the strain better. Scrap guns take it personally.


d8Result
1Sticky Action — clearing this weapon costs two actions instead of one.
2Kickback — you're shoved 5 feet and off-guard until your next turn.
3Scorched Hand — minor fire damage to yourself from the overheated action.
4Wasted Round — you lose additional ammunition beyond what the shot cost.
5Cracked Barrel — this weapon takes a permanent −1 penalty until repaired at a proper workshop.
6Deafening Bang — you and adjacent creatures are deafened briefly.
7Total Jam — this weapon is unusable for the rest of the scene, not just until cleared.
8Blow Up — GM's call. The weapon is destroyed outright, or shrapnel catches everyone nearby, you included.

§4Progression, 1–20


LvClass Features
1Draw, Singular Expertise, starting Scrap Gun (Jam trait), initial proficiencies
2Skill feat, Ironsight feat
3General feat, skill increase, expert Class DC
4Ironsight feat
5Ability boosts, ancestry feat, skill increase, expert weapon proficiency
6Ironsight feat
7General feat, skill increase, master Reflex, Draw feature II, Hot Load Mastery
8Ironsight feat
9Ancestry feat, skill increase, Blowback Control (reroll one/day), expert Fortitude
10Ability boosts, Ironsight feat
11General feat, skill increase, master weapon proficiency, The Last Round unlocked
12Ironsight feat
13Ancestry feat, skill increase, master Will
14Ironsight feat
15Ability boosts, skill increase, Draw capstone, master Fortitude, Good Gun Bond unlocked
16Ironsight feat
17General feat, skill increase, legendary weapon proficiency
18Ironsight feat
19Skill increase, Dead Man's Hand
20Ability boosts, Ironsight feat, One Bullet, One Legend

§5Feats by Level

A representative loadout, not an exhaustive list. Brass bar = general access. Rust bar = Draw-flavored but open to all once unlocked.


2nd level
Fan the Hammer
A rapid-fire flourish trading accuracy for extra shots.
Quickdraw
Draw a weapon as part of another action, no extra cost.
Scrap Sense
Size up any firearm's reliability and quirks at a glance.
4th level
Called Shot
A precision shot that weakens a target's defenses briefly.
Ammo Scrounger
Recover spent ammunition and scrap after a fight ends.
Covering Fire
Suppress an area, imposing a penalty on enemies who move through it.
6th level
Hot Load
Unlocks the Hot Load option itself — overload a shot for a bigger hit, at Blowback risk.
Trick Reload
Reload as a free action once per turn.
Long Iron Discipline
Reduce or ignore range penalties on your shots.
8th level
Twin Strike Draw
Fire two weapons in a single, efficient action.
Jury-Rig Repair
Quickly field-fix a Cracked Barrel or clear a stubborn Jam.
Suppressing Volley
An area-denial burst of gunfire that keeps enemies from advancing.
10th level
Good Gun's Whisper
A sense for locating and identifying Good Guns hidden in the wild.
Blowback Mastery
One additional Hot Load per day.
Iron Discipline
Resist fear and mental effects while a weapon's in your hand.
12th level
Twin Iron Ascendant
Twin Iron-flavored, open to all — both weapons can Hot Load in the same action.
Long Iron Ascendant
Long Iron-flavored, open to all — called shots ignore cover entirely.
Close Iron Ascendant
Close Iron-flavored, open to all — reactive shots no longer provoke retaliation.
Trick Iron Ascendant
Trick Iron-flavored, open to all — any Jam you suffer immediately grants a free reload trick instead.
14th level
Never Miss Twice
Reroll a missed attack against the same target once per encounter.
Legendary Reload
Reload folded into another action at no extra cost.
Scrap Into Gold
Given significant downtime, permanently strip the Jam trait from a scrap gun.
16th level
The Gun Remembers
Your bonded Good Gun banks a memory of a great shot, storing a bonus you can trigger later.
Iron Curtain
Lay down a zone of suppressive fire allies can use as effective cover.
Quickdraw Mastery
Automatically act first in a surprise round while armed.
18th level
Dead Center
Once per day, automatically succeed at a called shot.
Blowback Sovereign
A successful Hot Load no longer risks Blowback — only a failed one still does.
19th Level Capstone

Dead Man's Hand

Choose one, permanently: your bonded weapon always has one more round when it truly matters, ammunition be damned — or the Jam trait simply stops applying to any scrap gun you personally wield.

20th Level Capstone

One Bullet, One Legend

Once per day, fire a single shot that is an automatic critical hit against any one target you can see, at any range. If it's fired from a Good Gun, the shot becomes local legend — told wrong, and better, in three different bars within a month.

§6The Good Guns, Named

New to Cinderfall: specific, named Good Guns any GM can drop into a campaign as a quest reward, a rumor to chase, or a rival's prize possession.


Last Testament
Pre-Collapse Revolver · Never Jams

A priest kept firing it after his church burned down around him, and kept firing it for three days after that, by every account that survived to tell the story. Nobody's found the priest. The gun turned up decades later, and it still shoots like something's aiming it besides you — called shots seem to land exactly where you meant them, as if the gun already remembers where the bullet goes.

Widow's Toll
Salt-Corroded Rifle · Drowned Coast Recovery

Pulled from a flooded ruin along the Drowned Coast, pitted with rust that should have ruined it and somehow didn't touch the mechanism at all. Every confirmed kill leaves a faint, almost musical chime nobody else can hear. Local rumor says it's counting toward something, and nobody's found anyone willing to find out what happens at the total.

A third path exists for a Scrapwright-adjacent quest: guild shrines to the Foreman (Dossier 01, §7) are known to bless a sidearm for a Scrapwright and an Ironsight who complete a job together — the resulting weapon is common in construction but never Jams again. A clean crossover hook between the two dossiers, free for any table that wants it.