Anyone can share his opinion on the hand cannon weapon? Shooting once at the start of battle is nice, especially against unarmored opponents. After that, there is rarely an occasion to attack several enemies at once so what's the point? Maybe i miss something How to make those guns viable? What build one should use it and how to position them?
Fearsome is obviously the way to go, you just stay behind the front line, just like a pikeman.
Obviously, you can't hit 6 targets during the whole fight.
I find it way more useful with a small party, or perhaps it you have a lot of shieldbros.
If you have a legion of 2H bros, on the other hand, they'll have one shot to fire and then, it's over.
About overwhelm, i don't think it works, on turn one, it'll be useless and on turn 2, depending on your party, the fight is over.
Thinking about it, a fast gunner with overwhelm + fearsome could be useful against lindwurms, orcs and noble armies.
Not chosen because if you have enough targets on close combat to make it useful, you're probably fucked.
As for switching weapons, sure, the obvious way is to give him a crossbow for some fights where the gun would be useless and i don't use throwing weapons, never found a good named one so that's probably why.
Sometimes you can continue to gun from the back line all the way throughout the fight - this can be useful, say, in Noble War battles where it's their backline polearmers that can devastate you and it's hard to get to them quickly with armoured dudes in front. That said, I've tended to use handgonners a bit like crossbowmen, with quick hands switch to their own polearms as needed.
Very good archers or crossbowmen annihilate pikemen, this and a very good fencer (front-line and southern position, on turn 2 with lunge, you can hit (OS) one or two already...