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Aramilian wrote:

Personally, the way that I see it is that Operatives should have the ability to do full dmg with a trick attack through a sniper rifle for one reason; It fulfills the role of the sniper.

I looked through all of this, and while it makes sense why Paizo was trying to keep Snipers from becoming too strong I simply see no reason to ever pull one out. Yes the Snipers don't have bad damage, but the later the level you reach the weaker they get, to the point where, if you slap them in at lv 13, the numbers as is are this:

Small arms: Utilizing the Paragon semi-auto pistol you deal 14+6+31=51 [4d6 gun + WS + TA].
Sniper: Utilizing the Elite Shirren-eye rifle you deal 22+13=35 [4d10 + WS]

At this point, at lv 13 where being able to do massive damage from long distance becomes much less of a one shot kill, the sniper ends up having 750ft range...and getting just more than three quarters the damage. At this point literally the only reason you would ever use a sniper is for long range, otherwise it becomes inferior to the other weapons in practically every way [requires two hands, does less damage, and can only be shot once from said range]

I would never use a Sniper weapon as the rules show them, I would rather slap out anything else and take a few penalties and shoot my pistol from further than one range increment while moving up. As it is now, the trick is just that, a trick to lure people with dreams of being Saito into taking it.

Yes, the reason to take a sniper rifle is for the range. Seems fine to me. Otherwise you end up with the operative dealing their usual damage from off the map, while everyone else needs to worry about getting hit back.

This weapon would only be useful in two layouts then, either you atop of a tower looking down on sloped land all around, or flat plains as far as the eye could see. If there is just a simple rock, if they have any speed that allows them to burrow or to find different points to hide behind, if they happen to just throw up some barricades then this doesn't work. Readied actions now go after someone else, so you can't just shoot someone from hopping out from behind cover either, especially as you need to use a move action to snipe first. The entirety of the problem is that a sniper rifle isn't meant to attack multiple times, it's assassination, you want one shot and if you fail it can mean death, literally the opposite of how the weapon is made here.

Simple fix I can think of to make it much more viable would be to either have it do 1.5x or 2x damage while scoped, suddenly makes the move action much more worth it rather than just moving up and hitting the enemy with a halfway decent weapon that can do more than fire once if the enemy doesn't have any cover to mess you up.

Personally, the way that I see it is that Operatives should have the ability to do full dmg with a trick attack through a sniper rifle for one reason; It fulfills the role of the sniper.

I looked through all of this, and while it makes sense why Paizo was trying to keep Snipers from becoming too strong I simply see no reason to ever pull one out. Yes the Snipers don't have bad damage, but the later the level you reach the weaker they get, to the point where, if you slap them in at lv 13, the numbers as is are this:

Small arms: Utilizing the Paragon semi-auto pistol you deal 14+6+31=51 [4d6 gun + WS + TA].
Sniper: Utilizing the Elite Shirren-eye rifle you deal 22+13=35 [4d10 + WS]

At this point, at lv 13 where being able to do massive damage from long distance becomes much less of a one shot kill, the sniper ends up having 750ft range...and getting just more than three quarters the damage. At this point literally the only reason you would ever use a sniper is for long range, otherwise it becomes inferior to the other weapons in practically every way [requires two hands, does less damage, and can only be shot once from said range]

I would never use a Sniper weapon as the rules show them, I would rather slap out anything else and take a few penalties and shoot my pistol from further than one range increment while moving up. As it is now, the trick is just that, a trick to lure people with dreams of being Saito into taking it.

I noticed that Drones happen to have a FORT stat on the Mechanic pregen, as well as them using a Summoner like table to measure their stats. My question is how does one measure the stat that increases a Constructs Fortitude? I couldn't find anything in the core book that explained it and if they have no CON, then do they have a penalty, is it treated as +0, do they use another stat like Undead, or could they even be poisoned as things like creature immunities aren't out yet?

At the moment I'm actually trying to take the Mechanic class and revamp it's AI feature to make an actual PA version. It's a lot of thinking and rework, but a friend of mine loves to play Power Armour characters, and wanted something different to the Exosuits that are in the book already, looking more for something like the Lancer from EDF. So far it's basically been a struggle on how to make it a decent class feature yet either not break upon flicking it or else make it kill everything by walking into the room...yaaaay for balancing =3=

Do lasers pass through armor mod force fields? The laser section says they're blocked by "Barriers of energy" which sounds like a force field to me, but int the section on force fields it says that they don't block laser beams. And if they do, does the force field still take damage as they pass through like they do to "transparent physical barriers"?

** spoiler omitted ** ** spoiler omitted **

And the big question is if lasers do bypass force shields, would then starship lasers pass through (and possibly still damage) a starships shields?

Thoughts?

Well, reading as a pure RAW it would seem like laser weapons are basically the kryptonite of shield users, something I honestly would be more than okay with, but the ship question is actually rather interesting. I think the question comes in with what the shield is supposed to do, for if the ship shield is built to basically act as a way to encapsulate what it's protecting while the ship itself creates the air it might be a case of no, but then would it cause light itself to be blocked since that's what a laser is?

I'm wondering if the plan is to introduce more augmentations which provide bonuses to various skills. For example, on pages 210-212 there are a number of skill enhancing augmentations.

Retinal reflectors provide +1 to visual perception at level 3.
An upgrade to the same eye slot, the Wide-Spectrum Occular implant, can give you an untyped +2 bonus to Perception at level 5 (plus some other nice sight bonuses).

The tympanal cluster provides +2 to hearing-based perception checks at level 4.

Skin of the Chameleon provides a +3 circumstance bonus to Stealth checks at level 6.

Climbing Suckers can indirectly give you a +8 to climb checks and let you take 10 all the time by giving you a climb speed for a mere 1,200 credits at level 3.

These are all relatively low level compared to when various checks start to become very hard, at which point you easily afford all of them for less than the price of a single appropriate level consumable. If more of these bonuses are introduced and at higher levels, the 1.5 scaling starts to seem quite reasonable. The above upgrades are providing roughly +1 per 2 levels required, and when combined with ranks per level seem to be about right.

Sadly that basically makes the problem exactly what people are saying high up in the thread; the game was built to be filled with skill increasing items, yet they were stripped too thin so that now it makes late game impossible unless you are a specialist. So basically it means we need to get a few splatbooks before going too far in, which I can deal with, but won't necessarily enjoy.

Umm, I can see one way. Don't ready to shoot them when they cast the spell, but after their first word. It's oddly specific, but by the logic of the game, their word would finish, and then the shot would go off. Now it would be highly inaccurate and a GM who knew what you did would have the enemies say a sentence, get faceblasted, and then cast, but it still could possibly work.

Do heavy crossbows and repeating heavy crossbows count as the same type of weapon?

I mean, I would assume no because of the difference in proficiency requirements, but a composite longbow isn't a longbow, yet I tend to see them being lumped together when it comes to Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization, so how is this viewed? Is it just another reason why people tend to steer clear of crossbows in the first place?