So I've been playing the Dead Suns AP and we are a good ways into Chapter 2, and I found myself wondering how on earth I as an envoy/3 am expected to contribute meaningfully in fights.
I made a lashunta envoy/3 (phrenic adept) with skill synergy and extended telepathy because I thought it would be cool. I rapidly discovered an inability to do meaningful damage in combat, but I thought that's OK, envoy's have a more supporting role in fights, but I don't see my ability to grant Stamina as very effective when I get hit 6 to 9 times in a single fight and other PC's barely feel it. I guess I chose poorly. Whatever right. Well even on my non-combat skills the operative does them all better thanks his nice +2 bonus to skills and high stats. Again I guess I failed to optimize properly.
OK all that aside, what happens when an enovoy must fight alone, what do they do? While I wasn't exacly alone in our groups last fight, we were attacked by 13 of those flying scorpion monkey things. We have 6 characters (2 soldiers (1 melee and 1 ranged), 1 mystic (xenodruid), 1 envoy (me), 1 mechanic (stealth drone), and 1 operative (a detective)). I barely survived their poison as I failed 4 saves in a row, but at 1 point I was up against 2 of them. I thought to myself how am I supposed to kill them (even one of them) with a level 2 pistol? 2 of them has almost as many HP/stamina as me and they sure hit more often with their +9 to hit against my 16 (lowered to 12 thanks to several failed poison saves). What am I doing wrong?
The answer should not be take longarms and versatile specialization. If that is the case, then the game is a failure as a system as the game involves combat heavily and all classes must able to excel with what they are given to fight effectively in combat. If that is requirement for doing meaningful damage that is a huge oversight. I certainly don't feel like any of my abilities would have let my party members kill the 13 monkeys any faster and while we didn't get them all at once we certainly were not killing more than 1 or 2 of them in a round.