| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The wording on Ready Reload changed to be more confusing and I'm no longer sure what the feat is doing. I want to clarify that my goal is to write my confusion as clearly as possible, which is a difficult task, but I am generally happy with the playtest and trying to be helpful here rather than pedantic.
Where the Field Test 1 wording and the playtest rulebook wording agree are the requirements, action cost, and flavor text:
- Must be a 2h ranged weapon
- Must have a reload of 2+
- Your last action must have been an attack that used ammo
- Takes 1 action to do this activity
The Field Test is very clear:
- "You Interact and can reload your weapon twice."
The Playtest Rulebook is very unclear:
- "You Interact to reload your weapon, reducing its reload cost by 1."
- "Unlike most Interact actions, you don't need a free hand to reload your ranged weapon this way."
Now, there's a couple ways to interpret the Playtest Rulebook's version.
1. You Interact to reload your weapon, and "reducing its reload cost by 1" is a clarifying clause to remind what reloading is. This is certainly what the grammar suggests to me, but it means the feat does not let you reload twice, which renders it fairly pointless.
2. You Interact to reload your weapon, "[and reduce] its reload cost by 1" as a separate thing you do. This grammatical change would make it two separate things: a reload and a reload cost reduction. How long the reload cost stays reduced by 1 is very unclear in this interpretation. It presumably would not stack, and maybe presumably would not last after another firing or after the combat ends?
That compounds with confusion over the next line.
"Unlike most Interact actions, you don't need a free hand to reload your ranged weapon this way."
A: While that is true, a 2 handed ranged weapon, which you are definitionally required to be holding in order to Ready Reload, always allows you to remove a hand, reload, and replace your grip as normal. So in the vast majority of cases, this doesn't do anything a basic Interact to reload couldn't do.
B: Was there a design intent to no longer allow that part of reload? I don't think so, honestly.
C: Okay, so maybe it's meant to work with Damoritosh's Grip (18th level feat), which lets you wield a 2-handed melee weapon in one hand and a 2-handed ranged weapon in another hand. Okay, but then how does one reload a Reload 3 weapon with Damoritosh's Grip or a Reload 2 weapon when you're slowed and unable to use Ready Reload? How do you reload a Reload 1 weapon when Reload 2 is a requirement of Ready Reload? Is the only way you're expected to reload while using Damoritosh's Grip through Ready Reload or through dropping your 2 handed melee weapon?
D: Okay, so maybe it was reworded to prevent Operative from taking the Soldier archetype for two free Steps/Strides because Mobile Reload is a passive benefit that always works when you Interact to reload a ranged weapon. But it was already originally one Interact to reload twice, not two Interacts to reload once each. If that seemed a little confusing, are there better ways of phrasing it to make the singular Interact more explicit?
E: Do they no longer want to allow you to Reload twice like the original Field Test, but didn't have a clear vision for what the feat would do anymore? That seems like it would make the most sense to me honestly.
Anyway, if you're like me and trying to read it without the context of Field Test's Ready Reload, it's extremely confusing. My interpretation of the RAW is 1ACD, which unfortunately makes it nearly indistinguishable from a regular Interact to Reload until you reach level 18 and take a specific feat.
I genuinely do not know what the RAI is anymore because the language went from so clear to so confusing.