Rifle

Lisette Demonde carries a rifle across her shoulders.
See also Category:Images of rifles.

An excellent long-range firearm, the rifle fires small-caliber bullets at a high velocity through a grooved barrel (or "rifled" barrel, thus its name) that spins the bullet for greater accuracy. This makes it the firearm of choice for snipers. The length of the barrel requires two hands to aim properly.

Variants

The rifle is an evolution of the musket.

The double-length double hackbut is mounted to a lightweight carriage for highly accurate, stable firing from a fixed, but portable, position.

The pepperbox rifle has a rotatable set of four barrels for rapid firing.

A wand rifle, while not a firearm, borrows the rifle's form to more accurately aim magical wands.

On Golarion

The crest of Alkenstar.

Rifles are among Golarion's most advanced and expensive firearms, with base models costing between 3,000 and 5,000 gold pieces. Most weigh about 12 pounds and load ammunition via metal cartridges, though the cylinder rifle is loaded through a rotating eight-chambered horizontal disk. Rare rifles have barrels crafted from special materials, such as mithral.

To combat the threat of Spellscar fexts, gunsmiths in Alkenstar craft special glass bullets for rifles.

In culture

The crest of Alkenstar features two crossed rifles.

On distant worlds

A masked Russian wields an advanced rifle and grenade.

On the technologically advanced planet of Earth, more sophisticated rifles like the bolt-action M1891 are capable of even more devastating effects at longer ranges.

Several beam weapons and other technological rifles from Androffa—including the arc rifle, EMP rifle, gravity rifle, hypersonic rifle, nanite-firing id rifle, laser rifle, sonic rifle, and zero rifle—have a similar-enough shape and triggering method as rifles to be intuitively used by more primitive cultures—including people of Golarion who encounter remnants in Numeria. These weapons are sometimes also installed on or integrated into Androffan robots.

The shobhad of Akiton wield longrifles that take advantage of the world's relatively low gravity to fire with great accuracy from long range.

Radium rifles, and the larger variant Thark rifles, of Barsoom fire radium cartridges that explode upon impact, but only when exposed to sunlight.