I know Action Hero and Bombard have been getting most of the attention but I felt the Close Quarters fighting style had something interesting to offer. I got a chance to play one the other day in the level 5 adventure It Came From The Vast.
Character: Littlehorn Minotaur with Electrician background who notionally started with 3/3/3 physical scores, 1 Int, -1 Cha, boosted to 4/4/4/2/0/-1 at level 5. Took the Stretching Reach ancestry feat at level 5 and had Whirling Swipe, Shot On The Run, and Stock Striker as class feats. For weaponry he had an advanced stellar cannon. He also had a tactical fangblade but that was irrelevant to the adventure. He couldn't afford to have a second Advanced grade weapon and missing that damage die meant that he did more damage with Stock Striker for the time being. Other adventurers in the party included Iseph the Operative, Dae the Solarian, and a healing connection mystic.
Summary of an encounter from It Came From The Vast:
The fight inside the ship played out exactly the same as if I had picked bombard. It ended too soon to engage in melee.
The boss fight outside the ship was another story. My soldier and Dae both had mag boots. The party was split up one to a cannon despite knowing this was tactically inadvisable. Sample 62 initially attacked the Mystic, and Blossoming Interference also spread some damage around. Mystic ran and healed, Iseph fired the Advanced laser rifle, Dae used Stellar Rush and failed his attack, I used Shot On The Run with my stellar cannon and dealt an otherwise respectable 2d10 damage twice that Sample 62 happened to be resistant to. Due to the distance of engagement I would not have been able to draw a melee weapon, get to melee range, and strike in that turn. Round 2, Sample 62 focused on Iseph due to his use of fire damage and downed him with two crits in a row. Mystic healed Iseph. Dae used Stellar Rush again, this time in Graviton mode. Sample 62 passed its saving throws and Dae missed his photon shot, though this did get Sample 62's attention. I moved to melee distance and used Whirling Swipe with Stock Striker, doing 2d6+4 bludgeoning damage twice. Iseph picked up his rifle and fired two shots without aiming, judging that it was more important to get that second shot of fire damage than to get the aim bonus. Round 3, Sample 62 tried to move out of melee range of me, eating my Punitive Strike and Iseph's Hair Trigger. End combat.
Conclusion: I think I did reasonably well. I was consistently dealing 2d10 twice a round with my area fire and primary target. That's not far behind Iseph's two strike routine, though I think Iseph would do more damage than me even before considering the enemy's resistance and weakness situation. More to the point, I started doing my character's actual job on the second turn, getting in Sample 62's face and punishing its attempt to engage the ranged damage dealers.
Over all I did as the book suggested and mostly played it straight as a ranged soldier. Without a melee-compatible gap closer this guy is always going to end up shooting more often than slashing. The features that come from Close Quarters won't come up in every fight but when they do they're potentially crucial. As it happened I had no problem avoiding hitting my allies with my Stellar Cannon so I wasn't really missing much by not taking Bombard. Close Quarters did come in handy in one fight in which I used Punitive Strike to good effect. Seriously, it's better than Reactive Strike. The only thing holding it back is being attached to the Soldier class. There are also imaginable scenarios in which melee does more damage than ranged, though at this particular point in this character's career he had allowed his melee damage to lag a bit. Stock Striker isn't great damage but at least it allowed me to get in there and do what I had to do without burning an action switching weapons. If I had been stuck in melee for a longer period of time and had an on-level melee weapon I think I would have switched for the second round in melee. Prior to stock striker I think what I would have to do to initiate melee would be switch weapons, stride, strike. Stock Striker enables Stride, Whirling Swipe, Primary Target, or even Stride, Stride, Strike. Without a proper gap closer I'm either using Close Quarters to intercept melee combatants or perhaps kind of slowly maneuver to make an enemy's shooting position untenable.
A spinoff from a thread in the Operative subforum. Obviously the Soldier has some issues when removed from Starfinder's material culture, what with a lot of the class's kit revolving around weapons that don't exist in the Lost Omens campaign setting. So, how would we go about this if we had to?
Right off the bat we can narrow the top two fighting styles down to Armor Storm or Close Quarters, though Bombard has its uses. Action Hero has nothing to recommend it in a setting without automatic weapons.
Armor Storm gets us a kind of interesting Athletics tank. You can do athletics maneuvers hands-free while whirling a greatsword around, plus suppressed enemies do less damage to you.
Close Quarters is a Punitive Strike tank. You can also poach some of what Armor Storm does with the right choice of weapon. A Gnoll soldier with Chomp and a war flail can grapple, trip, and disarm while losing only one die size of damage compared to greatsword, and if you want trip and reach we all know about the guisarme.
Finally Bombard's features actually work with Whirling Swipe. It basically lets you use reach weapons without a care about hitting your allies and applies the suppression debuff more reliably.
Feats: Beyond the obvious Whirling Swipe at level 1, melee soldier is really lacking feat support. Most soldier class feats assume you're using a gun. You're probably going to be taking an archetype. Wrestler is a strong choice, particularly for Armor Storm.
In particular I'm thinking about destroying cover. Depending on the circumstances, blowing up someone's cover could be less bothersome than trying to shoot past it round after round and it could possibly even happen incidentally if you're using area attacks. I know exactly how to determine an object's armor class and saving throw bonus in SF1 (page 409) but I don't know the corresponding rule for PF2. I found the table for object hardness and HP but couldn't find the rules for object armor class or saving throws. The Creative Cover operative feat gives you an object providing cover that has its own AC so that seems to be a thing at least in principle. The feature doesn't say anything about the cover's saving throws, and that's actually the part that I'm most interested in.
Whirling Swipe allows soldiers to use two-handed melee weapons as area weapons. You gain a two action activity that gives the two-handed melee weapon you are wielding the area and unwieldy traits until the end of your turn, and then as part of the same activity you make an Area Fire attack. Since quite a lot of what soldiers do involves area attacks, it's important to see how this interacts with other features involving area attacks and examine whether this is intended.
Suppressing Fire: Yes. There is nothing preventing Suppressing Fire from working in melee and this appears to be functioning as intended.
Primary Target: No, or yes in a really weird way that doesn't look intentional. Primary Target grants a ranged strike, not a melee one. While it isn't fundamentally impossible to make ranged strikes with melee weapons, that looks inelegant at best here. Suggestion, drop the word "ranged".
Bombard fighting style: Yes. This feature works just fine in melee.
Pin Down feat: Yes. Whirling Swipe is an Area Fire attack and your weapon retains the area trait until the end of your turn.
Warning Spray feat: No. Your weapon doesn't gain the area trait until after you've used Whirling Swipe on your turn, which happens after you've rolled initiative. I don't see any great harm in allowing these feats to work together.
Shot on the Run feat: No. Your weapon doesn't gain the area trait until after you've used Whirling Swipe. These are also two separate two-action activities, so you can't do both in the same turn. It would be really nice to be able to use Shot On Run with Whirling Swipe considering how important movement is for melee users, but the rules don't line up.
Punishing Salvo feat: Same as Primary Target, Punishing Salvo specifically grants a ranged strike.
Shoving Shot feat: No, for the same reasons as Shot On The Run. Shoving Shot also assumes your weapon has a range increment.
Stock Striker feat: Special. This allows you to use firearms as melee weapons. For our purposes, this means that as long as we're willing to settle for this not very good melee weapon we can satisfy the requirement of wielding an area weapon without having to attack with Whirling Swipe first. While this doesn't affect the action economy conflicts with most of these feats, it does open up a few.
Widen Area feat: Mostly no. Your weapon doesn't have the area trait until after using Whirling Swipe unless you're also using Stock Striker. There is a subtle difference in wording between Widen Area and Brutal Barrage that appears to make Widen Area usable with Whirling Swipe once you find a way to satisfy the wielding a weapon requirement. Brutal Barrage specifically requires either Area Attack or Auto Attack while Widen Area simply requires an action to make an attack with a weapon that has an area.
Covering Fire feat: No. The one-action usage requires a ranged strike, while the two-action usage requires a weapon with a range increment.
Fog of War feat: No, for the same reasons as Shot On The Run.
Concentrated Shot Feat: No. Same as for Shot On The Run, plus assumes a ranged weapon. Since your melee weapons can already make strikes without using area effects, the benefit of doing this if the rules allowed it would be the ability to make a strike with a bonus to damage at the cost of an extra action.
Deflect Missile Feat: Mostly no. Your weapon loses the area trait at the end of your turn so this could only work if someone shoots a missile right next to you during your turn. Deflect Missile also assumes your weapon is a firearm.
Overwatch: No. Requires a ranged weapon. Overwatch is form of ranged reactive strike. Curiously, reactive strikes at range are a soldier feat while the melee version is limited to the Close Quarters fighting style.
Run Hot feat: No, same as Shot On The Run.
Brutal Barrage: No. Requires the next action to be an area fire or auto fire. Whirling Swipe isn't one of those actions.
Shell Shower feat: Yes. Descriptive text aside, all the feat requires is for you to make an Area Fire or Auto Fire attack. Maybe you're smashing up the ground with your melee weapon to generate that difficult terrain.
Rocket Jump feat: No, same as Shot On The Run. I could see reasons to want to rocket jump with a melee weapon, though it is also reasonable not to allow it.
Fanning The Hammer feat: Yes. Your weapon retains the area trait until the end of your turn and Fanning The Hammer only costs one action.
Run, Cowards! feat: Yes. Works just fine with no complications.
Scattering Fire feat: No, same as Shot On The Run. Shame, this looks like it would be useful and fun in melee if worked.
Special Delivery feat: No, same as Shot On The Run plus it assumes a range increment.
Terror-Forming feat: No, same as Shot On The Run. Since we're talking about melee range anyway you should just use Shell Shower which somehow does work with Whirling Swipe.
Excavating Bombardment feat: No, same as Shot On The Run.
Light 'Em Up feat: No, same as Shot On The Run.
Overkill: Yes, except for the parts involving Concentrated Shot and Primary Target. Though this has nothing to do with Whirling Swipe, I note in passing that this feat will cause weapons that deal fire damage to inflict persistent bleed damage. Propose to change the persistent damage to the type matching the weapon's damage type, bleed for physical.
Coordinated Fire feat: No, same as Shot On The Run.
Damoritosh's Grip feat: Special. This allows you to wield a two-handed gun at the same time as a two-handed melee weapon. This unlocks the same options as Stock Striker while letting you use a much better melee weapon.
Spread The Love feat: No, same as Shot On The Run, plus Spread The Love's effect pertains to Primary Target.
Hybrid Technique feat: Yes, in a weird convoluted way. Combine with Stock Striker or Damoritosh's Grip to satisfy the requirement of wielding an appropriate weapon. Now you can use Whirling Swipe and combine it with one other soldier feat of the sort that take two actions and require a weapon with certain traits.
Living Typhoon feat: I don't think so. My reading is that this only affects the regular area fire and auto fire actions, not any of the special area attacks granted by soldier feats.
Two conclusions:
First, Whirling Swipe doesn't interact with Primary Target as written and I think it should.
Secondly, a matter of Whirling Swipe's place in the soldier's repertoire. The soldier's feat selection includes a lot of feats that take two actions and require you to wield a weapon with the area or auto fire trait, granting a special area attack. As currently written Whirling Swipe is one of those feats, making it impossible to combine with any of the others. This makes it frustrating to build on. Trying to make a melee soldier locks you out of a lot of options not because those feats shouldn't work in melee, but because unlocking the ability to do soldier stuff in melee takes up the space for doing any of those other options. If it worked like a stance or something it'd be easier to build around.
I got a bit of sticker shock from how much grenades cost and I've seen someone else mention it too. Prices tend to line up so that the cost of a handful of grenades will buy a weapon of the same tier, and that would tend to discourage people from buying them. Is that an actual problem, and if so what cost would make people use them more?
