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So. Guns akimbo. Practically every NPC's gonna have a gun. So, is it really required to have a tank anymore?
To give context, I'm part of a fledgling campaign, and we're deciding on the party. Even though I technically chose first, wanting to play an Envoy, we wound up with a ranged Soldier, a Mystic, an Operative, and a Technomancer/Mechanic. I could be willing to play a Solarian, but Envoy really gets me excited. But is it really necessary to have a front-line melee fighter in this game?
As long as you can keep foes away, no, but eventually there will be an enemy in your face.
I anticipate that there will be plenty of non-humanoid enemies that will happily come munch on your faces.
I think you can get by without a melee specialist, but having some people who can do melee in a pinch is still pretty important. Given I'm still pretty new to the rules, but that's my feeling thus far.
When you fire while in melee, you provoke an attack of opportunity, so it's a good idea to at least have a simple weapon on you in case you can't move or get grappled.
That, and combat distances are usually pretty easy to close, so melee may be more common than you think (especially seeing as there are some pretty nice bonuses available to melee-centric folks).
Not as often, but yes. Just like in modern warfare (bayonets, combat knives, etc.), there will be situations where using guns will not be the best choice.
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Plus, unless society has really broken down, you can't just always shoot a dude.
A Vesk would be better as he has a better natural fist than a normal person can punch. At 3rd level, he gets 1.5 x his level as a bonus damage.
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Some things I'm pondering:
- Battle maps themselves are not very large, making melee viable just as a nature of the business
- Narrow corridors and confined rooms, common in sci fi, are likely design features in most space ships and stations
- Cover is going to make ranged combats frustrating for both sides, so having a shock trooper move in and force ranged soldiers into uncomfortable situations will be a useful strategy
- In response to shock troopers and cover, I could see readying actions to fire when enemies leave cover to be a common tactical action
- Magic will be more useful to close distances
- Melee with space weapons still has that cool factor
- Guarded steps are not going to save a ranged fighter that's flanked on either side.
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Depending on campaign, you could also have situations come up where the environment itself (fragile ship, lab, crowded apartment building) would make stray shots from high-powered energy weapons a very bad thing.
Obviously every game will not include or worry about that, but for those that do, melee options may be more important.
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My experience here at GenCon is that a melee soldier can end fights VERY quickly. At least at low levels ranged attacks take awhile to eliminate targets. Maybe higher level weapons can do it better and faster, and maybe the pregens have a disparity in such gear/class features that is coloring my view. Hard to say.
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I think you can get by without a melee specialist, but having some people who can do melee in a pinch is still pretty important. Given I'm still pretty new to the rules, but that's my feeling thus far.
This has been my experience. We've got an all-ranged party, but it was still really nice to have a vesk soldier capable of decent melee (even though she wasn't specialized in it) among us. Someone who could occupy the enemy's big scary solarian pirate captain when he broke out the doshko made of pure darkness and tried to charge our squishy little halfling envoy.
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So. Guns akimbo. Practically every NPC's gonna have a gun. So, is it really required to have a tank anymore?
To give context, I'm part of a fledgling campaign, and we're deciding on the party. Even though I technically chose first, wanting to play an Envoy, we wound up with a ranged Soldier, a Mystic, an Operative, and a Technomancer/Mechanic. I could be willing to play a Solarian, but Envoy really gets me excited. But is it really necessary to have a front-line melee fighter in this game?
Well, in Pathfinder, did everyone give up melee because everyone had access to bows? Not hardly.
Having played through the quests yesterday, what I noticed was:
1. There are already sufficient threats that having at least 1 melee-capable person in the party is very helpful.
2. When you don't have choke points, the cover penalty is easy to avoid.
3. Getting surrounded with only ranged weapons available sucks.
That said, the ability to double Guarded Step out of reach, while costing your entire turn, is super handy.