Karmagator's page

Yes, the change has removed the range limitation and Aim doesn't have one in the first place. So theoretically you could Aim at a creature much further away and it would trigger Hair Trigger.

In practice I doubt it will come up very much, given that you really want to benefit from Aim on your turn.

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As for Hair Trigger being fixed now?

I really like that it has the appropriate theme now, which the whole "I can shoot everyone" thing very much didn't.

Mechanically, the substantial nerf got rid of the cases where the feat was actually too good, so it's fine now. Still doesn't have competition and is therefore still a basically mandatory pick, but you can't fix that without adding more feats.

The answer is a very clear "absolutely not".

Apart from a pretty cool super-ability that two subclasses get, the Solarian doesn't really have anything going for it that would allow it to hold up when you get into rougher encounters.

I guess the CC is pretty ok, but nothing exceptional that would excuse the subpar damage (or terrible even, if you aren't in photon mode) or general lack of good combat feats. Its durability isn't very good either.

The Solarian is currently straight-up outclassed by most PF2 martials. And certainly all of the good ones.

Grenades and missiles are consumables, so have a completely different place in the design than regular ammo.

Only speaking about basic ammo: It doesn't matter and it shouldn't either. It cannot matter. The game fundamentally only cares about your current clip and what it takes to change said clip. Ammo reserve is not a factor. Changing that requires deep cuts into the engine that cannot happen due to "100% compatibility" (and because this is not a survival game).

As for the individual solutions:

1) Increased bulk changes nothing, just like in PF2. Nullspace chambers exist.

2) Level-based ammo hurts the ranged meta by adding yet another penalty to using a ranged weapon and completely breaks the economy, so is a non-starter. Beyond the basic premise, the whole "found ammo economy" consequence only works in games where you have multiple equal weapons, which SF2 doesn't support. In practice, the GM would be forced to always give you enough ammo for your primary weapon at all times or you basically don't get to play, which defeats the whole thing you are going for.

Finally, regarding Recharge Weapon: it's of questionable worth even at level 1. It is never intended as a replacement for having ammo, it is purely there to essentially give the casters action to a martial. The only halfway decent use for it I see is to stand next to your sniper and maybe give them a second shot every other turn. In the cases moosher mentioned, using the cantrip is so extremely inefficient that fighting is suicide regardless.

It's good that Con does something else, but you could probably set the baseline for number of implants higher and also a general feat for "you can handle more implants" would be appropriate (like incredible investiture but for tech.)

That feat exists, it's called Augmented Body.

But having a higher minimum and leaving the rest for CON sounds pretty good to me. A minimum of 3 plus CON (if positive) would be good. Not being able to have that many of them allows the devs to make each more impactful.

More "for fun" augments should have the "don't count against your implant limit" addition in any case, like many of them already have. Some, e.g. Moodskin, are still missing that part.

Edit: as for the split in the book, I think it's fine. Flavor has its place and we still have three big tables to find stuff more quickly. Most people will go to AoN for a searchable list anyway, no matter how it is presented in the book. Especially once you get more books.

As stated by the others, the scaling is not really an issue. But I would still say the basic premise is otherwise correct. It should be better and more interesting and get moreso with level, given that that ability is a solid 50-90% of your combat impact.

But as Squiggit said, the AC penalty being circumstance remains far more impactful than the actual numbers. I would add the damage bonus being circumstance as an issue on top of that. Mostly for future-proofing given that such abilities are not common in SF2 yet.

Having a class that is made substantially worse by common choices from teammates is a recipie for disappointment and conflict. Especially a core class.

During the liveplays, the devs have always run it as applying to the initial attack as well, so we can assume that is the intent.

Yes, according to the rules you linked, area/automatic fire wouldn't take MAP.

The problem is that there isn't just one place for the MAP rules. There is a second.

And that second one says the complete opposite, it affects all attacks, no caveats about "your checks" and all that.

So in essence, we have no clue.

But yeah, it feels really weird. My guess is that they are going to go with "yes" to avoid shenanigans with "Strike first then auto-fire" and make it simpler.

I believe the phrase "you ignore up to greater cover that they would otherwise have against your attacks" (emphasis mine) means the mark loses even the reduced cover bonus (the +2 circumstance bonus to AC from Operative's Aim becomes +0 in the first range increment with Relentless Aim). "Ignore up to" vs. "reduce."

There is no reduced cover bonus left over. From level 17 onward, Aim reduces cover by -4, so even greater cover (+4) is completely nullified already.

Correct, the feat is useless. Probably a holdover from an earlier version where the Aim cover reduction didn't scale.

Oh yeah, absolutely. Those might be the rules, but if the rules are dumb... well...

No, MaxAstro is correct on the RAW. The "Treasure for new characters" section reads:

If you choose, you can allow the player to instead start with a lump sum of currency and buy whatever common items they want, with a maximum item level of 1 lower than the character’s level.

This is the CRB version (according to AoN), but I don't think that has changed in the Remaster.

Do ranged weapons come loaded with a magazine or battery (as was the case in SF1E) or does all ammo have to be bought separately (as in PF2E)? I'm guessing the latter, since that's the system default now.

(The only place I found it explicitly stated whether a weapon came with a battery or not was the Powered trait, but that's for melee weapons.)

Since it isn't stated, currently weapons come without ammo.

Karmagator wrote:

SF2's options are overwhelmingly ranged.

But there's a key distinction between SF2 being overwhelmingly ranged because the developers for some reason decided to make melee options secondary features for most classes, and SF2 being overwhelmingly ranged because ranged combat is a dominant top order strategy. That seems to be the difference SuperBidi is trying to highlight.

A lot of the discussion on the forums assumes the latter simply out of hand because of the former.

I know. But, as I said, those are two different discussions and mixing them serves only to muddy the waters. Even if they are related and people confuse them a lot.

Slamming the "ranged meta" as a misleading buzzword because ranged combat has balance issues is like saying "it rains because the sky is blue".

That is not what "meta" means or what the devs are saying. If we want them to listen, confusing our arguments only risks burying the good point.

A "meta" only describes what is commonly played, nothing more. And that is all that the devs are saying.

SF2's options are overwhelmingly ranged. Even the people who focus on melee will pretty much always have some kind of ranged options. Enemies are also often build to fight at range.

Ranged/melee balance is a related topic, but not the same thing.

I mean, if both PCs and NPCs are typically build to be good at range and you have easy access to vertical mobility... that very much sounds like a ranged meta to me.

"Ranged meta" doesn't mean "melee is s#**". Just like ranged martials in the melee meta of PF2 aren't bad.

That isn't to say that there are no issues, there definitely are. Map size and underperformance of ranged characters to name the major ones.

But the ranged meta isn't just a buzzword or nonexistent. It just need a little more pep.

Oh woops, I just completely read over the Soldier getting master in will all this time. Thanks XD

Tbf, Champion gets master in two saves and pretty early too (9 and 11), which is arguably more impactful than legendary in just Fort.

But let's not forget the suppressed condition. So even if you take away key CON, you still have:

- the second best armor progression across both systems and the best in SF2
- heavy armor
- a big health pool
- a +1 to AC for you and your entire party against any suppressed enemy

If that isn't tankiness incarnate, I don't know what is.

But to me the Soldier makes sense as a CON class, since the thing that selects for "who carries the Heavy Machine Gun" is not "who is the strongest" but "who's not going to get tired carrying the Heavy Machine Gun".

The mechanics certainly don't reflect that, but if we are going by pure flavour: if a character cannot carry or hold up the heavy machine gun or control its recoil, how much does it matter how not tired they get while they do it? Because all of that is STR, not CON.

And even without key CON, any Soldier would stack CON and have high Fort anyway. You end up with maybe 2 or 3 less, which still represents a very "enduring" character.

It's kind of striking how many of the martial melee weapons legitimately feel like they're missing traits.

Actually, just caught my eye since they're all right next to each other, the Phase Cutlass, Plasma Doshko, and Plasma Sword all feel like they're underbudgeted. It almost feels like someone thought Powered was a positive trait rather than a negative one.

I think it might be more that fire damage is seen as an upside, though I can't imagine why.

Thing is, I wouldn't want the Flare to be an automatic part of my character even if it was actually good. Not because of complexity, but because it is completely superfluous to what I want from the Solarian. Which is basically a dude with a lightsaber and cool sun powers. And therefore just a distraction.

So already, that's a lot of space freed up from the Soldier's core class features that could be used to let them actually do things, especially if those things happen to be new and interesting.

This, exactly.

Even looking beyond MADness, power and all that jazz, the side effects of CON being the key stat need so much space. Mostly on the page, but it also occupies some brain space for the reader. Granted, it's not much, but it is there. And Paizo care a lot about things like that, especially in the core.

And what those features do for quite a lot of words is just shuffle some stats around.

Anything would be more fun and interesting than that.

And you are entirely correct. I'll try it "for science" in my group once we have run enough vanilla SF2 for the actual playtest. At this point, my game will have some major modifications anyway, so what is one more XD ?

But for the second part, it seems that people generally don't give a damn. It always goes straight to talking about the Soldier every time, you being the exception ofc.

So I've stopped bothering. I'm gonna write my feedback that'd be cool if these - automatic ones especially - were more generally useable but stayed aoe weapons. Be it through changing the weapons or just by making it viable to have one as a backup. Then hope that the devs manage to do that.

And if they don't, if this is the PF2 reload weapon thing again, then that's that. I'll be mildly disappointed, but as long as the Soldier works then it won't be too big of a deal.

It would create a workable basis in anticipation of more reasonable aoe sizes on the actual weapons. Though Action Hero with a decent weapon is already functional as far as the latter is concerned, imo.

The higher base accuracy plus making suppressed on a success baseline would make the Soldier acceptable whenever they only catch one target in the AoE. Which will happen no matter how the Soldier is changed.

And the most common actual AoE scenario in my experience - 2 enemies in the AoE - would be at a good level, finally. This should still be the default scenario even with better aoe sizes.

All in all, while the class would still be a bit situational, it would be fine overall. The rest has to be done on the map and enemy design side.

Level 1 Feat I think would be a good approach. Least for the ability to exclude your allies from your AoE.

But then it just becomes another feat tax, because all Soldiers will have that problem.

And it would conflict with several feats integral to certain builds already there, such as Ready Reload.

Bombard can probably stress the use of explosives from grenades (as well as bombs), and missiles.

That and other area weapons, I assume? Because it would be weird to exclude most of them.

Class feature for all of it, definitely. The first part in particular is also just too integral to make the Soldier useful against truly dangerous enemies (your level or higher) to be optional. The second part makes it so the Soldier is not a no-go in many party combinations or common combat scenarios, as you said.

Neither of these should be a problem any class has to deal with, much less a core class.

There would be another way to make the Soldier in particular work without changing aoe weapons at all, though it sounds a little insane. But in effect it would do largely the same thing as my initial proposal:

- initial proficiency in class DC is expert
- Master at 7
- Legendary at 15

This would mean that at level 1 (DC 19), a level 1 creature would usually have a chance of 60% (moderate Reflex) - 45% (high Reflex) to fail your save. A rough look at other levels shows a very similar picture, typically +/- 5%.

I think that feels acceptable.

I haven't looked through the feats in a while, but has the soldier got any feat that increases the radius or width of their AoE and auto-fire attacks? If not that could be another lever to pull on. If your enemies refuse to clump inside of your killbox, build a bigger killbox to hold more clumps.

IIRC it's only Widen Area, a 4th level feat. Basically Widen spell, including the action cost.

As far as I can find, MAP gives penalty to checks. A DC is not a check.

According to this, yes. This has no such limitation.

In-game is not completely able to be white room mathed. Having played many spellcasters in PF2, the complaints about saves are mathematically correct, sure, but in game my spellcasters do very well. Thus, going against the mathematical analysis.

It is not going against the mathematical analysis at all. Casters are designed around dealing with this problem, after all. They can avoid the enemies' strength. And spells are the most individually powerful abilities in the entire game as well.

By level 5 at the very least, aoe weapons are vastly weaker - the rift growing with every spell rank - and the two activities have exactly zero avoidance options. It's reflex save or nothing.

Let's leave aside mechanical specifics for a moment. This is a pure "vibes" post.

This might be the eternal melee martial player in me talking, I can't help but feel that this Solarian, the Solar Knight, the sole (sort of) melee class in the game currently, is really not "melee" enough.

I would love it if I had only my weapon and maybe the armor-ish thingy. And then my class would be specifically allow me to turbo-melee some fools.

I mean what utter buffoon brings a gun to a lightsaber sword fight?

Yes, that would be an exception to the ranged meta part of "everybody has a gun". But I think having one exception that proves the rule would be ok?

I got the same impression that the QF is supposed to be a zone control tool. Sometimes by buffing allies, but mostly by denying space to enemies in some way.

To me, the goal here shouldn't just be that the player wants this to be up at all times. It should be up at all times through some means that ideally weave in with whatever else you want to do anyway.

The thing that I would want my player to actually think about is where to put the field and what effects would be best at that moment. You know, the fun stuff.

That way they have an engaging tool that constantly influences the battle. They and their team constantly feel their actual class. Which is something casters in particular can often struggle with.

Firstly, I was incorrect about MAP and area actions, they do have the attack trait. Though as was stated above, if you strke first, the area action is not affected by MAP.

Secondly, I remain unconvinced by the points against vanilla area attacks as they are now. The only issue I see is how they interact with weapon proficiency and class DCs.

Thirdly, I had not even looked at soldier before 10 minutes before posting this. I found out, very quickly and easily, that the different subclasses of soldier have different ways of suppressing. What is this ridiculousness about the bombard way should be the default!? Have you read the other subclasses? Heck, erudite warrior just auto suppresses one target with an action.

1) We don't know that. The two instances of the MAP rules in PC1 are contradictory.

2) That is what playtesting is for, but the math is clear.

3) Yes, they have a chance of maybe suppressing one target. Only the EW's thing is guaranteed, but that isn't actually a suppression tool, but a soft taunt.

And ofc all but Action Hero and Bombard can easily conflict with your main thing, as they require additional actions on top of the two that are reserved for area/auto-fire every turn.

None of that helps with the main problem either. Their shared core class feature - Suppressing Fire - has a very high chance of just not working. It is clearly supposed to be the main source of suppression to spice up your aoe attacks. And it practice, it just isn't.

1) A current Soldier that is build to use a ranged weapon, especially a machinegun, doesn't have the stats or feats for a melee weapon. And melee Soldier is very poorly supported.

2) In this scenario I would have asked if I could play that. You have allowed the stuff with the rare trait, but only in a way that makes them unuseable. Rather than be straight with me and just say "no, this doesn't fit into the setting".

That kind of thinking would have made me lose faith and driven me from your table.

But this is getting a little far from the point and a little too personal, sry.

"They are getting it in the first place" is a terrible argument. Either you give it to them or you don't. Giving your players something and then punishing them for wanting to use it? How is that in any way a good idea?

Your idea would make the Soldier literally unplayable until level 2 or 3 at least, just because he cannot afford to even buy his weapon. Then the insane ammo cost will pile on top of that. What player would accept that?

In fact, something like this sounds like a really easy way to lose a player.

And comparing games with a completely different economy has absolutely no value. Those numbers are completely arbitrary, they have absolutely no relation.

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Maybe our groups are very different. But what I can tell you is that if I were the player you told this to? I would straight-up leave that table. And I can't help but be confident that this would be a common reaction.

Yeah, so is the 1 sp per bullet cost in SF2. That doesn't make it a good idea. It's still a bad idea. It's just a worse idea in SF2, because automatic weapons eat trough ammo like nothing.

The early game economy doesn't support it in either case and all it does is annoy the player.

There is no upside to doing this.

Both ideas are something you really don't want to do. What this definitely accomplishes is making your players feel bad and for what?

Especially since the issue of weapon cost completely vanishes at level 2.

If you are already importing the Soldier, it only makes sense to take its weapons as well.

If Numeria isn't a good enough justification to have one of these weapons, then reflavouring is always a thing. Repeating weapons definitely exist in the setting, as do weird magic guns. Combine the two or maybe throw in some alchemy.

Just because no PF2 book has given us the stats for them doesn't mean someone can't have a prototype or ancient relic lying around.

1 splash damage per damage die means that your splash damage is always proportionate to your weapon damage. As listed elsewhere already, 1 splash damage on a 1d8 weapon against three 30 HP enemies is proportionately the same as 4 splash damage on a 4d8 weapon against three 120 HP enemies.

HP scales far more aggressively than damage. When you do 1 splash damage at low level, enemies have maybe 20-40 HP. 1 damage matters quite often. When you start doing 3 splash damage at level 12-ish, enemies start rocking 200 HP and more. 1,5% or less of an enemies' HP is a near meaningless amount. It will slightly reduce the number of enemies that just survive at single digit HP, nothing more.

Unless you're proposing to give these weapons d20 damage dice or something equally ridiculous, you are unlikely to ever get these AoE weapons to work to a satisfactory degree, and if you do somehow get there, that is likely a very bad sign. No matter which way you slice it, dealing AoE damage through guns means that damage is going to have to be diluted in some form: the benefit of the scatter trait is that it still lets you deal competent single-target damage, whereas Area Fire and Auto-Fire take up most of your turn and will pretty much always make you deal less single-target damage than just Striking twice. If encounters were full of lots of low-HP enemies that clumped up together all the time, perhaps that wouldn't be so bad, but the reality is that enemies rarely if ever do that in ranged-centric combat, to the point where you'll be lucky to catch more than one enemy with your AoE in an encounter even once. That is why so many playtesters, myself included, have rated the Soldier so low, because the class who's forced to use these weapons rarely if ever makes use of their strengths, but is always saddled with the downsides.

I'm confident the devs will find a good way. I proposed a viable solution in this exact thread. If I can do that, they can certainly do even better. Also, people seem to forget the Kineticist is a thing.

And if they don't have a good solution, I'd rather they scrap the idea entirely than give us anything like splash damage. Everything else is just selling the player a lie.

I think the attack vs. Reflex DC is actually a nice solution since I'm pretty sure math wise the attacker has an slight advantage over the one that defends, though unlike spell attacks these would scale with bonuses to attack too, right? This technically means any martial would end up with the equivalent to legendary +1 to their attacks with these weapons, and operatives would be legendary +3.

Another thing why that doesn't work: the math would be the same at many levels. As an extreme case, for the Soldier it would only make a difference at levels 14 and 15. Targeting already provides the same bonus to attacks and DC. The statistical .5 "roller's advantage" is not significant enough to change the outcome.

This whole issue exists because saves are always higher than the equivalent "difficulty" of AC. Moderate is usually +1 above the equivalent AC, while high saves are typically +2 or +3. And high reflex saves are a whole lot more common than high AC, especially in the current Starfinder monster design.

I think in general the Area Fire action is just trying to reinvent what Scatter does already [...]

And the short reply to not re-tread too much ground: splash damage is not a viable solution for actual aoe damage. It becomes mechanically almost worthless by midgame due to enemy HP scaling and it simply doesn't fulfill the fantasy.

Just because aoe weapons don't work properly right now doesn't mean we should just abandon the entire concept. Which your idea is.

WanderingVoidWolf wrote:

My big issue with the Soldier class so far is that it is too specialized as a base class. Pretty much every Soldier made will be an artillery piece on the battlefield, with a secondary with two-handed melee weapons. Not a single one of the base class abilities will work with, say, a standard laser rifle or dual-wielding boom pistols. Even the various specializations released in the playtest are all about aoe weapons.

I'd like to second this. My main concern with the playtest soldier is that it's a one trick pony, and discussion of how good that trick is comes in second off of that.

As VampByDay said, the Soldier being quite specialized isn't anything new or unusual for classes. The Soldier only uses big aoe guns (and in some cases melee weapons) just like a Gunslinger only uses guns and crossbows.

It's just that this specific specialization has never really been done before and is therefore more visible. And the specialization here is very cool and far less limited than you make it out to be.

My problem isn't with the class being somewhat of a one-trick pony. I really like that trick. It's purely that that one trick isn't strong or reliable enough.

Tracking adds to class DC, so even someone who has master class DC max is more accurate than a legendary spellcaster; the soldier blows them out of the water (and has con as a KAS to boot).

That is only part of the full picture.

In practice, the caster can also target at least one of the two other saves and will reliably catch more targets in their aoes. So unless Reflex is already the low save, a spellcaster will typically be more accurate.

Then there is the fact that spells are massively more impactful than aoe weapon activities. Quickly, their more limited nature stops mattering (and becomes far less limited). That's because you can realistically expect at least double the impact per spell without even using your highest spell slots. Quite quickly as well, 4th rank/level 7 at the latest. As high as 4 rounds of effort with a single spell is very achievable.

My biggest issue with it honestly is that casters don't actually improve class DC and are thus hard locked from using Area weapons at all after a certain point; which I feel is a big deal since the elemental mystic's first focus spell is "summon gun" and the flamethrower or singing coil to shoot a big blast of element feel like cooler picks than a regular ol gun if your thing is channeling elements.

Yeah, it's weird that the WW is the only one.

And why not give the option of using spell DC instead? Tracking only applies to class DC, but could easily affect spell DC when using those weapons as well. Aoe damage is traditional caster territory, so it would only be appropriate.

Not that I expect many takers over just a laser pistol even in this case, but the restriction just feels unnecessary.

Have you actually played a few playtest rounds ? Area weapons are great. They ignore concealment entirely (because they don't target), they don't care for MAP (but increase it), so you can use a normal attack and then follow up with an area attack and they still deal damage when you "fail") because they use a basic reflex save.

And Soldier is an absolute Monster. Using an Area Attack with a soldier allows you to hurt multiple enemies and then you attack your primary target again without any penalty. This is basically Power Attack++.

The only bad thing about Area attack is its limited range and lack of range increments. And while it makes sense to keep grenades simple and not have them use range increments it feels really bad to use a machine gun with a tiny range.

I've technically played, yes, but nothing related to this feedback directly. It is also not necessary in this case because we've dealt with a similar problem and the related math for half a decade at this point: save spells.

That's why I can say with confidence: they are anything but great. They are the same problem, but without the workaround, worse starting conditions (less reason for enemies to cluster up + more enemies with good a reflex save) or lacking the individual effectiveness that make save spells work regardless. That's before you get even into the range and aoe size problems.

That's exactly why, when presented with aoe weapons, my players all gave them and the Soldier a hard pass. Why should they use weapons that are in no way supported by your character options (for classes other than Soldier)? And hence I have no direct SF2 playtest data for these weapons.

Most importantly, the Soldier and aoe weapons are not the same thing. This thread is about aoe weapons, not the class.

In PF2 reload weapons and specifically firearms we have a prime example of what happens when you design weapons in a way that only a single class can use them well and others need heavy feat support to even bother with them. So we should at least try to not make the same mistake again.

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As a note, "area weapons" are only weapons with the area trait. The collective term for area and automatic weapons together seems to be "area of effect weapons".

And it is in no way certain that the save isn't affected by MAP, because the existing rules on the matter directly contradict eachother.

To be honest, if you have two targets in your area and they both pass, I typically wouldn't call that turn a waste. Especially if a soldier adds any riders or debuffs or additional attacks to that turn.

Not even the Soldier (outside of the Bombard) adds any riders on a success, though. Which is made even worse by the fact that many of your feats interact with suppression. So when you can't reliably suppress people, those feats don't work either.

If the "suppressed on success" thing from Bombard was actually baseline and you'd still have Primary Target, then for the Soldier it becomes pretty ok-ish. Not good, but ok-ish.

But literally nobody else gets anything at all.

The problem is how often at least one of those targets crit passes.

So, the question is, with saves what they are, how often are non boss enemies crit passing their saves? And also, given the pitiful ranges of current area attack weapons, how often do you fail to get two enemies in one area of effect?

In my experience, catching two enemies in an aoe is pretty reliable. Well, if you are an Action Hero Soldier with certain automatic weapons or a Bombard Soldier with a stellar cannon anyway. I wouldn't bet on anyone or anything else. Especially all those 15ft cone area/automatic weapons are completely unusable.

As for how common crit successes will be?

For the Soldier, it's actually not that bad. You are typically looking at around 20% tops for non-boss enemies (that's high reflex and at your level). That's still not great, especially for how common high reflex enemies are, but it could be worse. Most enemies you will face should be your level -1 or -2. It's really the success chance not the crit success chance that hurts you the most.

Speaking of being worse, pretty much everyone else. Without the better class DC progression of the Soldier, there are a lot of levels where you dip into the 30%+ crit success chances. And no class besides the Soldier has any reason whatsoever to deal with that.

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There is also something to be said about the performance against boss monsters or even minibosses. Sure they are not common, but they are extremely important, both mechanically and story-wise. Currently, even the Soldier (except the Bombard) is basically impotent against them. And I have a big problem with a class failing you and your party when you need it most. This inevitably leads to strong negative feelings for everyone, I've seen it too often for it to not ring all the alarm bells.

That said, I disagree with the other points.

I think the perception of failure is a problem of perception on the side of the player, not the system. This is because the 'failure' still involves doing damage. Other players that purely rely upon attack rolls often experience turns of zero damage. But Jay is totally reasonable to view dealing less damage as 'failure' right after Alex just whiffed on all his attacks. Woe is Jay...

No, this is very much not just a problem of perception. If anything, "they still do damage on a success" is the illusion in this case.

Two enemies being caught in your aoe and succeeding their save - which should be the most common situation you will face - has the same effect as 1 basic Strike made by a baseline martial. But for the cost of 2 actions, rather than 1. You need at least 3 pretty mooky enemies (or fewer with a low Reflex save) to even get ahead of people succeeding at a single, basic Strike. Much less compete with the stuff that elevates them above the baseline. And you are just not going to get that with any kind of reliability.

Meanwhile, regular martials are expected to and balanced around succeeding at at least one attack every round. This, on the other hand, is very reliable.

To add to this, aoe weapon attacks do not increase MAP. Machine guns for the win.

Both Auto-fire and area fire have the attack trait, so they absolutely increase MAP. Only the Soldier's Primary Target Strike doesn't.

I've been running a Soldier with a group of 2 kineticists and a sorcerer in a PBP game since the field test came out and they have consistently held their own. Granted, I've been a bit generous with the AoE weapons so they have options for what they can use. Regardless, the suppressed condition has been huge whenever the enemy has needed to close the distance or was bottlenecked by a frontliner and they were able to tank some very gnarly hits thanks to being a 10Hp con focused class.

What weapon are they using and how are they build, if I may ask?

And concerning the "attack three times thing":

Most of the time, people won't be attacking three times. Not even the Soldier will. I wouldn't assume that players will spend their third action on a regular Strike when Striding might be necessary and Take Cover is on the table. And area weapons can't in the first place.

A regular aoe weapon user using either activity is in effect a single action Strike for two actions. Usually. That is assuming you catch two targets in your aoe, which is a reasonable assumption. As is both enemies succeeding, especially given that most people don't have a very good class DC.

The Soldier also gets Suppressive Fire (if you are lucky and/or a Bombard) and Primary Target. The latter is the only reason the Soldier isn't in exactly the same boat, but it still isn't impressive.

Just so we are clear, you are saying that blaster casters are completely useless (impotent) against 69% of all enemies in the game? Because Fireball/lighting bolt/cone of cold (etc) also goes against reflex saves and doesn't get the bonuses of targeting module to DCs? Good to know. Dunno how my two primal casters who spam fireball in the season of ghosts game I am currently running are doing so well then. Man, doing 1/2 damage to the entire enemy party unless they beat the DC+10 must mean no damage at all.

What I actually said was that you are impotent against 1/3, not 69%. You are just not going to perform very well against the second third, but you are not useless. It is also much, much worse for aoe weapons, since they do only a fraction of what a spell does.

But to certain extent, yeah that is how it is. Unless you are constantly lucky, rolling against high and moderate saves all the time is extremely inefficient and makes everything far, far harder than it has to be. I haven't played Season of Ghosts so I have no idea what the save distribution looks like. So they might be doing alright (and roll pretty well it looks like), but if they would target the weaker save then they would be vastly more effective.

And if they face an actually difficult encounter or stop rolling well, that's how you lose your margin of error.

You are likely doing less than half of what you should be doing, so that is hardly a hot take.

Couple of things. Yes, soldiers are weak against one strong enemy. I agree there could be more there. But also, when fighting say, 5 lower level enemies, they clean up. That's where they are good. Where, I might add, a fighter does poorly because they have to move in between each one and attack them one at a time.

The problems already start at level -1 enemies and, if they have a high Reflex save, easily extend to level -2 or even -3. You can only put so many of even those in an encounter before everything becomes a severe encounter.

And what you are talking about is the Soldier, a class that is fully designed around these weapons, not the weapons themselves. PF2 firearms are pretty bad, but the Gunslinger makes them kinda work. That doesn't make firearms good, though.

Also, and I just got done talking to someone else about this you seem to be falling into the trap of saying 'my character has to be 100% effective 100% of the time, or they are useless." If my swashbuckler (I have one) finds themselves in a situation where they aren't as useful, they do other things. Provide flanking. Demoralize. Make attacks even though my damage is reduced by 4. Use Leading dance to get enemies away from the squishy casters.

There are always situations for any character where they aren't prepared for this situation. That is fine if it happens occasionally, but not all the damn time. Give 1/3 of your enemies extreme AC and 1/3 high AC and maybe turn attack rolls into basic attack rolls. Then ask your martials how they like that. I can guarantee you that Swashbuckler will change his mind immediately.

As long as they dont critical susceed doing half damage on a group of opponents is not bad depending on the number of oppnenets. I normally try to save area attacks for when there are least having 3 opponents in the area of effect. Also taking advantage of area fire depends a lot on encounter desgine too. Area fire is kind of a waste against a single Boss monster and best against a lot of mooks. At least for grenades in SF1e you would add your dex bonous to the save DC

You need a lot of enemies to make that work, though. And they need to be clustered pretty tightly and at a relatively short distance so you can actually catch them in the aoe. As you say upwards of 3 opponents it gets pretty ok, but that is in no way something you can count on to happen regularly. If these are supposed to be at all viable "normal" weapons and the Soldier has to deal with them, then the degree to which they can depend on encounter design has to be limited.

Plus, if five years of PF2 has taught us anything, it is even spellcasters struggle mightily with this problem and constant failure is bad for player enjoyment, even if you still do something. And their spells quickly do more when an enemy succeeds at their save than when an enemy fails against an aoe weapon. A lot more. They can also circumvent the problem (mostly). If that is as big and lasting of an issue as it is, imagine the constant complaints about this!

What would be the problem with making an attack roll that targets Reflex DC instead of targeting AC?

It wouldn't solve the problem. Rolling against a DC and the target making a save instead has basically the same odds.

Which reminds me, I forgot a big part of my solution.... it is supposed to be a basic attack roll with your DC -10.

Why does this post exist?

One, Auto-fire and area weapons are currently an exercise in frustration. Every single player I've personally talked to so far has disliked them, because all you ever seem to do is fail. My own group has even refused to even try the Soldier, because that was immediately obvious to them. Why is that?

Saves roughly correspond to the next highest category of AC. So if a moderate save was AC, it would be high AC. And high save means extreme AC.

High AC is the highest innate AC a typical monster will have and martials are supposed to find those challenging. To go beyond that - into extreme territory - it has to be thematically extremely tough, an NPC that is supposed to be a Soldier for example. But those monsters are both rare and typically are weaker in other areas to compensate. Those monsters require a lot of effort and teamwork to even scratch. Reducing their AC by any means necessary or circumventing it is a pure necessity. And AC is a whole lot easier to bring down than saves.

That is right, a moderate save is the equivalent of a "normal" martial having to struggle and a high save is "find other ways or you will accomplish nothing" territory. Gods help you if you are level 11 or higher, where extreme saves start to appear occasionally.

Even in an ideal world, where "only" one third of monsters has a high Reflex, the second third has a moderate one and the last a low one, the math is against you. For an aoe weapon user, a full third of all monsters you could possibly face would effectively be a no-go zone (think Rogue/Operative vs oozes or ghosts). In the best scenario. Another third are "only" hard to deal with, but you will find at least mixed success. Only the last third is where you will actually find a good chance to succeed, but there you will thrive.

Second, on a more personal note: if I'm playing a character, I'd much prefer to actually roll the dice that decide if I do anything.

(The third reason is that the current system has no interaction with proficiency, making simple and martial aoe weapons pointless, as anyone can just jump straight to advanced. Well, in a world where we get a good advanced weapon ;). But unfortunately I don't have a good answer to that..)

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The Solution

If saves are the problem, then the solution is not to work with saves, but AC instead. But we can't just use regular attack rolls like any other weapon, because that would make characters that are great at single-target damage (such as the Operative) automatically great at multi-target damage. And I think we can agree that whatever you might think about the Operative otherwise, "it needs a massive buff" is a little out there.

But the solution to this problem already exists, to an extent. If you come from PF2, you already know it. The Kineticist basically attacks with its class DC already and caster spell attack rolls exist as well.

So instead of forcing enemies to make a save, I propose that aoe weapons should make single attack roll with your class DC -10. This then gets applied to all enemies that would now make a save. That's it.