FAQ Request: How does the Overcharge mechanic trick interact with powered melee weapons?

[Cyrad]

The overcharge mechanic trick allows you to empower a ranged energy weapon or a melee weapon with the powered property and make an empowered attack at the cost of tripling the charge usage for attacking with the weapon. However, powered melee weapons expend charges per minute of usage rather than expend charges for each attack. How does this work?

There's two ways you can interpret this:

A. Overcharge simply triples the cost of powering the melee weapon, allowing the weapon to benefit from the mechanic trick for 1 minute per usage.

B. Overcharge expends an amount of charges equal to triple the cost of usage but it only benefits a single attack.

Overcharge:

Overcharge (Ex)
D As a standard action, you can use your custom rig to
overcharge and attack with a ranged energy weapon or
a melee weapon with the powered special property (see
page 181) that you’re holding. If you hit, you deal 1d6
additional damage of the same type the weapon normally
deals. This attack uses three times as many charges from
the battery or power cell as normal and can’t be used if
the weapon doesn’t have enough charges. This trick has
no effect on a weapon without a battery or power cell. You
can instead use this ability as a move action on a touched
powered weapon that is unattended or attended by an ally to
grant the same effect to that weapon’s next attack before the
beginning of your next turn.

[Maezer]

I would kind of go with a mix of the two. You only get the damage benefit of overage charge to one attack per one overcharge usage.

But you could overcharge a melee weapon multiple times per minute and still only use 3x the standard power usage.

Thus the rules lawyer in me predicts, the answer will be that overcharge consumes 2 extra characters per use. And your melee weapon wont last a minute of continuous overcharge use.

[Voss]

It says 'this attack,' singular.

Obviously B.

[Rysky the Dark Solarion]

I'd say A.

[Voss]

A makes for a ridiculously more powerful spell, by several spell levels. It also isn't supported by the text.

[Rysky the Dark Solarion]

???

Spells aren't involved at all. And it's not "ridiculously more powerful", it's just a flat 1d6.

[Goddity]

I think Voss is confusing it with the Supercharge weapon spell, which is something else entirely. I think I would say one attack, and it loses two rounds before you next have to consume power (so it uses 3/10s of a battery per round instead of 1/10).

[Rysky the Dark Solarion]

Goddity wrote:

I think Voss is confusing it with the Supercharge weapon spell, which is something else entirely. I think I would say one attack, and it loses two rounds before you next have to consume power (so it uses 3/10s of a battery per round instead of 1/10).

That's a good solution.

[Voss]

Right, right. Not a spell. But still obviously B. It's a standard action and single attack, and specifies 'this attack'

For it to last the duration of a charge, it gets pretty crazy fast- +1d6 to more than one attack means full attacking for every turn but the activation turn, so potentially +19d6 damage over the duration. That seems way beyond what is intended.

[Rysky the Dark Solarion]

Potentially +19d6 over 10 rounds of combat is not that much, really.

But while you think that is bad the option B (3 minutes of charge for a single +1d6) is even worse.

[Cyrad]

I feel like the ability was written with the assumption that all powered weapons consume charges per attack.

Plus, spending triple the amount of charges for a 1d6 is an awful trade for a melee weapon because even high level advanced melee weapons tend to only have about 10 uses.

[Maezer]

Goddity wrote:

I think Voss is confusing it with the Supercharge weapon spell, which is something else entirely. I think I would say one attack, and it loses two rounds before you next have to consume power (so it uses 3/10s of a battery per round instead of 1/10).

Probably the best solution.

[HammerJack]

Since 2017, I have seen this interaction read by a number of players as definitely consuming extra charges for every overecharge attack. It would be nice if we could get some official clarification on the cost of overcharging a powered melee weapon.

Does it consume:

A: 3x the normal expenditure, by using 3 rounds worth of operation.

B: 3 times the weapon's Usage stat, which makes overcharge use discrete charges, but means 30x the normal rate, instead of 3x.

[Nefreet]

If it's B, you pretty much get just three swings in before you have to switch out your battery.

A is how I've always run it.

[Dracomicron]

I have always assumed A as well. The "useage" of a Powered Weapon is 1/10 of the charges listed per round, so Overcharge increasing the amount to 3/10 of the listed charges makes sense.

Normally you would only use one usage charge on a melee weapon per combat, but if you're overcharging every round, you very well could use two.

[Starfinder Casper]

Its only meant for one attack, it says right there in the text this attack . you don't get the extra damage for an entire minute. but since the minimum charge cant be broken down to less than a minute (even if you only attack once the entire fight you still lose the entire 1 charge) you yes, lose 3 charges from that one attack.

[Nimor Starseeker]

I would say that for power weapons you pay triple the cost and the weapon stays powered for 1 min and you gain the extra damage for 1 attack.

[Joe Pasini]

FAQ updated! Thanks for the question and the FAQ-button presses.

[HammerJack]

Woohoo! Answers! Thank you!