Knaughts's page

trip does not automatically reduce your ranged hit chance, but prone condition allows to take an action to get greater cover.

Absolutely correct, my bad.

Roleplaying games are teamwork games, some people like to set up, and flatfooted more or less always cost an action so I don't get your complaint.

Right, I have no problem with Flat-Footed usually costing an action. But there's a reason you don't see many ranged rogues: flanking is the easiest way to get your target Flat-Footed.

Regardless, I think you've mostly convinced me. I think Vital Shot is intended to be used at the start of the fight, and opportunistically when an ally makes an enemy Flat-Footed. Gunslingers are too busy reloading to do that sort of thing, but their allies often have an action to spare.

Make a Distraction sets it up, but requires CHA investment.

Yep, good callout, but it doesn't really improve the situation. Like Hide, Make a Distraction costs an action per turn, so the Gunslinger still can't use Vital Shot very often.

Smoke Screen gives you concealment, and running reload can be used with the sneak action.

Smoke Screen grants Concealment, but Concealment doesn't grant Hidden, nor does it make enemies Flat-Footed. That means you can't use Vital Shot, and you can't Sneak (Sneak does nothing unless you first have Hidden).

Or you know, have allies to set you up if you dislike hide action that much. They can trip, cast spells, use some other class features (swordcrit, aggressive block, unbalancing finisher as example).

That's true, but it feels bad to rely on teammates to pick up specific Feats (or crit) to enable one of your core class features. Especially since the easiest way to apply Flat-Footed, Trip, gives a penalty to ranged attacks.

You can snipe with a pistol and use pistol twirl to feint

This still takes an action, so we can't use Vital Shot consistently. Using a pistol also goes strongly outside the intended theme of this Way.

Starting hidden/undetected is not too hard

True, it's relatively easy to start the combat with a Vital Shot. Do you think the intent behind Vital Shot is for it to be used only once or twice per combat? That wasn't my impression, but if that was the designer's intent, this all makes a lot more sense.

I like the feel of Way of the Sniper, but given how hard it is for ranged combatants to make enemies flat-footed, I'm not sure how often Vital Shot will be practical. The Sniper is already spending an action every turn to reload; if they also need an action to Hide, and two actions for Vital Shot, they don't really have time to use it with any regularity.

Am I missing some other way to make distant enemies flat-footed? Or is Vital Shot intended to be situational?

Xenocrat wrote:

It's mostly just a problem if you have two fights that aren't separated by 10 minutes of sitting around.

Sure, but having that option available precisely once is not a huge improvement in many ways.

It wouldn't be a HUGE improvement, but that just means that for those who want it (for long fights, or consecutive fights), it shouldn't be that hard to get. Three class feats is an absurdly high cost.

I can think of a few solutions:

1. A new General Feat, like so:
Extra Focus
Prerequisites: at least 1 Focus point
You gain an extra Focus point. Note that your Focus Pool cannot have more than 3 points.

2. Simplify Focus Point rules by merging them with Focus Powers. Something like "You have a number of Focus Points equal to your number of Focus Powers." This would make FP slightly easier to get for some classes, but since we can still only Refocus for 1 FP, I don't think it's a big deal.

3. Treat Wild Shape like Rage instead of making it a Focus power. Give it a 1 minute cooldown, and give us feats (like "Second Wind") to get flexibility, and maybe features (like "Quick Rage") that eventually shorten the cooldown.