I am preparing for a game Sunday, in the Iron Gods adventure path. The players will battle an enhanced arachnid robot. This robot has the Deadly Aim feat. However, its only ranged weapon is its plasma beam, an advanced version of the typical arachnid robot’s plasma torch. It is an integrated (bult-in) manufactured weapon that makes a ranged touch attack, half fire damage and half electricity damage, with a range increment of 50 feet.
Deadly Aim does not work with touch attacks.
Deadly Aim (Combat)
You can make exceptionally deadly ranged attacks by pinpointing a foe's weak spot, at the expense of making the attack less likely to succeed.Prerequisites: Dex 13, base attack bonus +1.
Benefit: You can choose to take a –1 penalty on all ranged attack rolls to gain a +2 bonus on all ranged damage rolls. When your base attack bonus reaches +4, and every +4 thereafter, the penalty increases by –1 and the bonus to damage increases by +2. You must choose to use this feat before making an attack roll and its effects last until your next turn. The bonus damage does not apply to touch attacks or effects that do not deal hit point damage.
Therefore, the robot cannot use its Deadly Aim feat with its plasma beam. Maybe the module writer expected the robot to pick up a bow. :-) Or did I overlook an exception?
Firearms have a special exception that their touch attack is not really a touch attack in this sense, so Deadly Aim does work with firearms. The plasma beam is never called a firearm, so that does not matter for my first question. Nevertheless, I wondered whether Deadly Aim would work with a technological firearm, such as an Arc Pistol, that makes a ranged touch attack?
ARC PISTOL
Price 10,000 gp; Type one-handed ranged; Proficiency exotic (firearms); Dmg (M) 1d8 elec.; Dmg (s) 1d6 elec.; Critical ×2; Range 50 ft.; Capacity 0; Usage 1 charge; Special semi-automatic, touch; Weight 2 lbs.
An arc pistol emits bolts of ionized particles that it then electrifies, creating a crackling beam of electricity between it and its target. Arc pistols gain a +2 circumstance bonus on attack rolls against targets that are metal or are wearing medium or heavy metal armor.
I checked the firearm rules in Ultimate Combat and discovered that the firearm touch attack rules apply only to early and advanced firearms, not technological firearms. I am impressed that the Paizo designers thought ahead.
Early Firearms: When firing an early firearm, the attack resolves against the target's touch AC when the target is within the first range increment of the weapon, but this type of attack is not considered a touch attack for the purposes of feats and abilities such as Deadly Aim. At higher range increments, the attack resolves normally, including taking the normal cumulative –2 penalty for each full range increment. Unlike other projectile weapons, early firearms have a maximum range of five range increments.
Advanced Firearms: Advanced firearms resolve their attacks against touch AC when the target is within the first five range increments, but this type of attack is not considered a touch attack for the purposes of feats such as Deadly Aim. At higher range increments, the attack resolves normally, including taking the normal cumulative –2 penalty for each full-range increment. Advanced firearms have a maximum range of 10 range increments.
Anyone willing to check my reasoning?
The intent certainly seems to be that since these are Firearm attacks, that they should be able to benefit from Deady Aim. You are correct that the Technology Guide never specifically called that out, and that the entry on most robots don't state that these attacks can benefit from Deadly Aim, but it's very clear that they're intended to.
This won't be the last time you see Deadly Aim on a robot with a blaster in this Adventure Path...
I'd just go ahead and use it. As a player currently in Book 4, I can say that the fight you're preparing to run has been one of the best fights of the campaign, and its deadliness contributed a lot to that. One of those, "Holy crap, is this going to be a TPK?" moments.
Look at Meyanda character sheet from Iron Gods Book 1
She uses Deadly aim with a laser pistol.
It still uses the same language, establishing a difference between a "touch attack" and "resolve as touch attacks". Something like Scorching Ray is an "actual" Touch attack and is treated, in all ways, as a "touch attack". Early and Advanced Firearms are not Touch attacks, and are treated in all ways not as Touch attacks, with the singular exception that within a certain number of range increments, they resolve against Touch AC, despite not being touch attacks nor counting as such for other purposes. It is a specific and narrow exception. In the case of technological firearms, their "resolve against Touch AC" clause is always in effect, not limited by range increments, but otherwise is the same kind of specific and narrow exception, only applying AC factors, but not affecting other rules elements such as Deadly Aim.
I don't know what "It" refers to in your first sentence, "It still uses the same language,..." The language for technological firearms in the Technology Guide defines the "touch" property of technological firearms as, "Touch: Attacks with the weapon resolve as touch attacks." The Technology Guide never says, "resolves against touch AC."
Look at Meyanda character sheet from Iron Gods Book 1
She uses Deadly aim with a laser pistol.
She uses an inferno pistol rather than an laser pistol, but the difference is moot because they are both touch-attack technological firearms. However, with Meyanda I could argue that maybe she learned Deadly Aim before she teamed up with the Lords of Rust and acquired her inferno pistol.
Likewise, the enhanced arachnid robot has an aggression memory facet that gives it +2 to attack and damage rolls, Power Attack, and Deadly Aim. Maybe the Deadly Aim merely came along with the other useful traits and is useless for this robot.
However, my true argument is that module writers thinking that a feat works with a weapon is not proof that the feat works with the weapon. Module writers are not necessarily rules experts.
My primary concern is that I want to follow the rules. My secondary concern is that if I allow Meyanda and robots to combine Deadly Aim with touch-attack technological firearms, then I will allow the PCs to do the same. Ihe party has a hundred charged silverdisk batteries to keep those firearms charged. Since touch AC is easy to hit, the -2 penalty from Deadly Aim barely matters while the +4 damage almost doubles the damage, at a greater range and greater rate of fire than early firearms.
We have an actual gunslinger in our party, and the technological weapons hardly get used.
I understand what you're getting at, and RAW, they forgot to write in the necessary exceptions in the Technology Guide. It's extremely clear that they didn't remember they needed to explicitly spell this out and thought it was covered under general firearm rules.
But if this is a home game, why don't you try running it as it's clearly intended? You don't need to be a slave to a legalistic reading of the rules in your own campaign.
Heavy weapons are notably not firearms, though, and I wouldn't allow it to function with them, however.
But yes, you win. They forgot.
We have an actual gunslinger in our party, and the technological weapons hardly get used.
I understand what you're getting at, and RAW, they forgot to write in the necessary exceptions in the Technology Guide. It's extremely clear that they didn't remember they needed to explicitly spell this out and thought it was covered under general firearm rules.
But if this is a home game, why don't you try running it as it's clearly intended? You don't need to be a slave to a legalistic reading of the rules in your own campaign.
Heavy weapons are notably not firearms, though, and I wouldn't allow it to function with them, however.
But yes, you win. They forgot.
Good point. I remember reading somewhere that the Deadly Aim not working with early firearms came up in the playtest of the firearm rules, not with the developers. It is too easy to sort everything into mental categories that don't match the rules categories: touch attacks meant spells so Deadly Aim does not work with spells, and firearms are not spells so Deadly Aim should work with firearms, and oops, firearm shots can be touch attacks. Okay, change the wording on firearms. The Technology Guide might have been written independently and missed that case.
Thus, the literal wording of the rules might not be what the developers of the technological firearms wanted, and the module writers could reflect the true intent.
After time to consider my options, and with my game session only 3 hours away, I decided to compromise. It is a home game, so I can change the rules.
My considerations:
1) Deadly Aim was meant to work with projectile and thrown weapons. It was not meant to work with splash weapons nor spells that do not conjure weapons.
2) The sentence, "The bonus damage does not apply to touch attacks or effects that do not deal hit point damage," fit the requirement for both Deadly Aim and Power Attack since spells and splash weapons make touch attacks.
3) Firearms are projectile weapons that should qualify for Deadly Aim despite the armor-piercing quality of bullets being represented as touch attacks.
4) Technological firearms are science-fiction ray guns. They will act a lot like real firearms, but not exactly. Pathfinder uses mechanics associated with spells--touch attacks and energy damage--to describe them, but they are not spells.
5) Deadly Aim is overpowered when applied to touch attacks. The disadvantages of early firearms limit the effectiveness of this power. The technological firearms have a lot fewer limits. Technological firearms should not have the full effect of Deadly Aim.
6) Power Attack has a mechanism for off-hand and secondary weapons, that limits effectiveness. I can borrow that.
7) Some people have asked in this forum whether Deadly Aim's bonus damage is precision damage. The fluff text should no longer imply precision damage.
Hence, I rewrote Deadly Aim for my home game.
Deadly Aim, Technologically Rebuilt (Combat)
By deliberately aiming for a solid shot instead of any clear shot, you deal more damage.
Prerequisites: Dex 13, base attack bonus +1.
Benefit: You can choose to take a –1 penalty on all ranged attack rolls to gain a +2 bonus on all ranged damage rolls. When your base attack bonus reaches +4, and every +4 thereafter, the penalty increases by –1 and the bonus to damage increases by +2. You must choose to use this feat before making an attack roll and its effects last until your next turn. This bonus to damage is halved (–50%) for a touch attack that deals energy damage, and does not apply to splash damage or effects that do not deal hit point damage.
Given Pathfinder Design Team's new ruling on Weapon Attacks and Special Abilities, found in the rules forum at Do feats and abilities that apply to "Ranged Weapons" also apply to spells? (FAQ request) and in the FAQ, I have changed my mind and now agree with Gulthor.
Ironically, the actual ruling is that spells like Scorching Ray are just like laser rifles for feats like Point-Blank Shot, so I ought to explain why I now think that laser rifles are the opposite of Scorching Ray for Deadly Aim. The FAQ's list of exceptions and frequent use of the phrase "almost never" demonstrates that the rules often imply special cases that they do not mention explicitly. Instead, simple consistency is a better guiding principle. This evidence strongly supports Gulthor's argument, "It's extremely clear that they didn't remember they needed to explicitly spell this out and thought it was covered under general firearm rules."
Thus, I am dropping my Technologically Rebuilt variant of Deadly Aim, and simply declaring that Deadly Aim works with technological firearms, too, despite Pathfinder never expicitly stating the exception.
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The linked Robot in the OP doesn't have Deadly Aim by default. I did check the others out via a search for "robots" in archives of nethys. Most of the don't have that feat. The Anhililator does, but it has the "chain guns" which could use deadly aim outside their first range incriment. The Juggernaught also has Deadly aim, but lacks non-touch attacks. I'm unclear as to the intention.