Sarcesian Sniper - Trick Attack?

[jozh]

Can the Sarcesian Sniper (Alien Archive, p. 98) use Trick Attack? Its listed gear is a tactical dueling sword (analog) and advanced Diasporan rifle (Sniper 500 ft., unwieldy). In the absence of a melee weapon with the operative special property or with any small arm, it seems like it could not. I see nothing under the Class Graft guidelines to suggest it can ignore these restrictions.

[quindraco]

No - it's a level 5 operative, and while I don't know what its L2 and L4 exploits were, Debilitating Sniper is an L6 exploit.

[Saashaa]

According to the rules no. However, as a GM, you could just give it the Debilitating Sniper exploit. It's not as if it is a significant upgrade or anything. Basically it'd just give it the ability to fire at the PCs AC-2 occasionally.

[Claxon]

Yeah, since it doesn't increase the damage all it would let you do is use the sniper rifle to do a trick attack which would reduce the effective AC of the target. It's thematically appropriate and would only make the battle slightly more difficult.

[Ravingdork]

What does the stat block say? NPCs in Starfinder aren't necessarily beholden to the same rules as PCs.