But, I get the point that for the most part deadly aim isn't as good mathematically as the old power attack/deadly aim from Pathfinder. But I can see uses even for high lvl melee builds, +43 damage vrs +33 (max Str etc soldier) for a -2 to hit when you need your swift and/or move action. Not a bad deal (still not comparable to a full attack at -5 for *3 damage).
Its not that Deadly Aim is not as good mathematically as power attack was in Pathfinder, but that it actively causes you to do less damage in a lot of situations (on average) when using it than when not using it. These situations include both full attacking and single attacking in melee with soldiers.
The situation you suggest for example: level 20, melee, +10 damage for -2 to hit, making a single attack.
A soldier wielding a dimensional slice longsword deals 96 damage per hit on average (14d8+33) with a 75% accuracy on single attacks against AC36. Using a version of tlotig's formula above, modified to show DPR:
(N-0.05)*(D+B) vs (N+1)*D
(0.75-0.05)*(96+10) vs (0.75+0.05)*96
DPR: 74.2 when deadly aiming vs 76.8 when not deadly aiming.
Its not that you're only better off full attacking (that part is obvious), but that if you're going to single attack, you should NOT deadly aim.
It seems pretty useful for builds that are highly mobile and normally only use 1 attack
Its not even useful here unless your accuracy/damage ratios pan out. For example, Soldiers making single attacks in melee do not gain effective damage from deadly aim unless:
And even if one of the three above scenarios are true, the gain in damage is low, only a couple of points of DPR.
Sword and pistol soldiers. It's a nice damage boost to the pistol compensated by the soldier's to-hit.
Basically I see two extremes where Deadly Aim is useful.
1) When you're much higher level than your target and your hit chance is capped or nearly capped. This is an extremely unlikely situation.
2) When your chance to hit is such that you only hit on a 19 or 20, it could be worth it to get the extra points of damage, because your chance of hitting is already so low, lowering it further doesn't really mean much. This should hopefully be an extremely unlikely situation.
For anywhere more in the middle (where you're hopefully at) it's a bad idea.
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The real Deadly Aim was inside our choice of projectile weapons and targeting KAC all along.
The real Deadly Aim was inside our choice of projectile weapons and targeting KAC all along.
By this I'm taking it that you're referring to KAC being higher on average and therefore rendering projectile weapons not as useful?
I'd heard about this, but hadn't investigated closely.
If you only hit on a 19 or 20, then using Deadly Aim will prevent you from doing critical damage to your target on a 20. I don't think that's worth it.
The real Deadly Aim was inside our choice of projectile weapons and targeting KAC all along.By this I'm taking it that you're referring to KAC being higher on average and therefore rendering projectile weapons not as useful?
I'd heard about this, but hadn't investigated closely.
I'm saying a projectile weapon suffers a 1-2 penalty to hit vs. an energy weapon, the same or better than the Deadly Aim penalty, but does more damage to compensate, the same as the DA benefit, but without costing a feat. The level 20 laser rifle does 38.5 average damage, the level 20 rifle does 54. Better range and crit effect on the laser, but generally if you want to trade accuracy for damage projectile weapons do that more effectively than DA and don't cost a feat.
Proyectiles also have less inmunities,to face. Way more fire inmune creatures than piercing inmunes
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The only situation where I think Deadly Aim is good, is with an operative quad attack, because you add the bonus damage x4,
No.
If Deadly Aim drops your average damages then attacking 4 times just means 4 times the reduction in damage.Deadly Aim is useful if you are hitting easily, if the envoy is giving +4 to hit maybe it is worth it.
Also note that if Damaged is being reduced DA becomes more useful.
I wonder if the feat represents a shift from Pathfinder to Starfinder. Power Attack was a gimme feat for anyone that qualified, and Starfinder seems to have just baked the bonuses in to the main damage classes. If you need Deadly Aim to compete in damage, it should have been included in the class, since everyone will just take it anyways.
I think it might go along with Automatic weapons, useful in certain situations, but you won't use it every round. We also haven't seen the exact stats for NPCs, if the ACs are easy enough to hit, then stacking a few bonuses might be enough to tip the numbers in its favor.
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I wonder if the feat represents a shift from Pathfinder to Starfinder. Power Attack was a gimme feat for anyone that qualified, and Starfinder seems to have just baked the bonuses in to the main damage classes. If you need Deadly Aim to compete in damage, it should have been included in the class, since everyone will just take it anyways.
I think it might go along with Automatic weapons, useful in certain situations, but you won't use it every round. We also haven't seen the exact stats for NPCs, if the ACs are easy enough to hit, then stacking a few bonuses might be enough to tip the numbers in its favor.
We've seen some. Their AC is low enough that fairly optimal PCs of their level only need 5-9+ to hit them on single attacks (depending on Class and stuff)...but that's still high enough for Deadly Aim to be almost universally a bad idea.
Skip the formulas and just eyeball it. It's not like our characters stand in combat with calculators and slide rules figuring this out.Not with THAT attitude they're not.
Because you know your deadly aim bonus and average damage ahead of time you can reduce the formula to "If i hit on X i should deadly aim"
So after the first round or so you start DAing if you hit easily
Pathfinder has characters hitting on 2+ at relatively low levels. If you're hitting at 2+ deadly aim would be a good feat. Pathfinder base weapon damage barely scaled. If in starfinder you don't take advantage of the scaling weapon damage, (ie you use a level 1 or 2 weapon at level 8+) then deadly aim looks mathematically feasible.I wonder if the feat represents a shift from Pathfinder to Starfinder. Power Attack was a gimme feat for anyone that qualified, and Starfinder seems to have just baked the bonuses in to the main damage classes. If you need Deadly Aim to compete in damage, it should have been included in the class, since everyone will just take it anyways.
If that's the case, then it might at least be useful when you need to pull out your low level backup weapon to get around heavy energy resistance or DR that you can't get around with your main weapon.
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Keep in mind that monsters are built differently than PCs. They generally have lower AC compared to their CR. At this point, with only a single book out and relatively low feat options, deadly aim is a reasonable choice and would be most often used when you need to get into position and attack, i.e. when you're not making a full attack.
TL;DR - Deadly Aim is useful when:
- You moved and only have 1 attack anyway
- Your BAB is at least 6 for a -2/+3 ratio
- No other feats are screaming at you, "TAKE ME! TAKE ME!"
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Even then it's seldom worth the Feat expenditure. Attack bonus for PCs never gets to the point where you're auto-hitting, and damage goes up enough that the bonus is rarely worth it.
Let's look at a 6th level Exocortex Mechanic vs. an Orocoran, for a first example.
His accuracy assuming maxed stats is around +13 for 2d6+6 vs. an EAC of 18. Which averages 11.05, which goes to 12 with Deadly Aim.
Then let's look at a 13th level Exocortex Mechanic vs. a Necrovite, for another example.
His accuracy is +22 assuming Dex 26 and Weapon Focus, plus his Exocortex being in use. That hits the Necrovite's EAC of 26 for 5d6+13, which averages 27.45 damage. This goes to 29.2 if he uses Deadly Aim.
I don't think less than 2 points of average damage under very specific circumstances is worth a Feat...and that's close to ideal conditions for Deadly Aim.
Well. Exocortex mechanic... Throw in miracle worker, and I think the damage is probably worth it... But that's one minute a day at level 7, three minutes by level 17, if I remember correctly.
Miracle Worker plus deadly aim and overcharge tricks would make it worth it... For 1-3 minutes a day. But that's a very specific, "I wanna kill any one guy, once or twice a day" build. I think it's the highest damage on a single standard attack in the game, if you get advanced melee and use a swoop hammer.
But again, highly specific build.
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Well. Exocortex mechanic... Throw in miracle worker, and I think the damage is probably worth it... But that's one minute a day at level 7, three minutes by level 17, if I remember correctly.
Miracle Worker plus deadly aim and overcharge tricks would make it worth it... For 1-3 minutes a day. But that's a very specific, "I wanna kill any one guy, once or twice a day" build. I think it's the highest damage on a single standard attack in the game, if you get advanced melee and use a swoop hammer.
But again, highly specific build.
Actually, the more you up damage the less Deadly Aim is worth it, since you're reducing the odds of existing damage to add a small bonus. Miracle Worker alone might make Deadly Aim look better under some circumstances, since accuracy enhancers actually do make it better, but even there the damage is usually gonna mean it's not much better than going without it is. And Overcharge, as a pure damage boost, definitely won't be making it look any better at all.
In fact, I'll demonstrate:
At 7th level, vs. a Bloodbrother, a Mechanic's accuracy goes up by one as compared to 6th level, it's AC goes up by one as compared to the Orcoran, and damage remain the same as above, and he thus averages the same damage I listed vs. the Orcoran.
Miracle Worker makes it 14.25, 15.3 with Deadly Aim.
Overcharge as well makes it 17.575, 18.275 with Deadly Aim.
Overcharge alone makes it 14.025, 14.625 with Deadly Aim.
Now, looking at 13th level:
Miracle Worker makes his damage 32.5 or 34.65 with Deadly Aim.
Overcharge as well makes it 36, 37.8 with Deadly Aim.
However, Overcharge alone 30.6, 32 with Deadly Aim.
So, examining those, Overcharge universally makes Deadly Aim make less of a difference and Miracle Worker makes it make more of one...but Deadly Aim never makes more than a 2.15 damage increase (or so) and does that much only under extremely specific circumstances on the Class best suited to take advantage of it.
It's not worth a Feat.
So then, it seems really the only people who benefit from deadly aim are Operatives using Trick Attack, but even then without having a Full BAB, taking a -2 is a bit of a risk
As it stands, it seems that if deadly aim gave more damage in return it would be more worth it.
Personally I would make it a bonus equal to half Character Level. Basically let Small Arms and Operative Weapon users take a -2 to equal the damage bonus larger weapons get from Specialization. It also helps Unwieldy weapons stay viable, though I haven't done the math on that.
Hmm how much of a bonus do you think it would have to give to make it worth it? would double what it gives now be enough?
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People are also getting too het up about DPR calculations to see whether it is worth it. I cannot count the number of times in an RPG where the difference of life and death comes down to killing something THIS turn. Those butt clenching moments where you need all the damage you can get.
Uh...this is the situation where DPR matters most. How much damage you deal is the only thing that matters in this instance.
The only way Deadly Aim would make sense is if you know exactly what HP the foe has, and somehow know that the +3-+10 damage from Deadly Aim would very specifically make the difference.
Also out of vague interest, I get the gist that DA is generally speaking not worth it if you have a full attack available, but what about when you don't? Non-Blitz soldiers and Solarians are stuck swinging once on the charge and there's several standard action special attacks other classes get. I get keep it off when full attacking, but that isn't necessarily an automatic assumption, especially for CC characters.
It's rarely worth it even on single attacks (look at the above analysis for the ideal situation for Deadly Aim...it still adds too little damage to be worth buying), especially melee attacks. See, melee attacks do more damage, and the more damage an attack deals the less good Deadly Aim is.
A 13th level Solarian vs. a Necrovite for example will have a Str 24 or so and Weapon Focus for a +21 to hit vs. KAC 27 dealing 7d6+29 damage for an average DPR of 42.8.
Adding Deadly Aim actually drops that to 41.65, for over a full point of damage lost.
A Soldier build won't have as much melee damage, and may have a point more accuracy, but still won't do better than break even.
DMW! how much damage do you think one would have to buff it to to make it a viable option but not OP?
What is with people wanting to argue against DPR all the time. yes we are aware its not perfect for every situation. yes we know it doesn't cover every possible nuanced situation.
Its a statistical tool. That is what we are using it for. Take a statics class and get back to us.
I have no further desire to have to explain this to someone else.
Let the math people do their math stuff.
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@Vidmaster: Geez, I dunno. I'd have to do lots of math with lots of sample builds to figure this out and even then I'm not sure it's a good idea. I mean, if Deadly Aim actually adds meaningfully to DPR, then it becomes a must-have, which is not what Starfinder seems to be aiming to do with its Feats.
@MrTsFloatinghead: The conceptual problem with the situation you present is twofold:
#1: Situations like you describe, where the small amount of damage in question will make all the difference are quite rare. Taking a Feat for the very rare times this happens is weird.
#2: You have absolutely no idea precisely what HP enemies have. And indeed, unless you're cheating, you have very limited options to figure this out. You can sometimes figure this out when facing large numbers of the same kind of opponent...but that drops the times you can do this even further.
There's also a bit of a math problem in your example, in that you assume you'll only hit a reasonable foe on a 10. That's not how to-hit vs. AC numbers go in Starfinder. Hitting them on something like a 7 is much more likely, and if you hit them on a 7, you're odds of hitting them twice on a full attack double to 25%.
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Though looking at some numbers I have found one additional situation Deadly Aim is worth it in, though it's super specific:
When you're attacking things with a CR 4 lower than your level, it's worth it. Still only nets you two points of DPR or thereabouts, though.
@Vidmaster: Geez, I dunno. I'd have to do lots of math with lots of sample builds to figure this out and even then I'm not sure it's a good idea. I mean, if Deadly Aim actually adds meaningfully to DPR, then it becomes a must-have, which is not what Starfinder seems to be aiming to do with its Feats.
@MrTsFloatinghead: The conceptual problem with the situation you present is twofold:
#1: Situations like you describe, where the small amount of damage in question will make all the difference are quite rare. Taking a Feat for the very rare times this happens is weird.
#2: You have absolutely no idea precisely what HP enemies have. And indeed, unless you're cheating, you have very limited options to figure this out. You can sometimes figure this out when facing large numbers of the same kind of opponent...but that drops the times you can do this even further.
There's also a bit of a math problem in your example, in that you assume you'll only hit a reasonable foe on a 10. That's not how to-hit vs. AC numbers go in Starfinder. Hitting them on something like a 7 is much more likely, and if you hit them on a 7, you're odds of hitting them twice on a full attack double to 25%.
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Though looking at some numbers I have found one additional situation Deadly Aim is worth it in, though it's super specific:When you're attacking things with a CR 4 lower than your level, it's worth it. Still only nets you two points of DPR or thereabouts, though.
Ah so I guess its hard to say. I kind of wonder if their was a sweet spot somewhere where it was ok but not to good. I see what you mean however it would take a lot of number crunching.
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I have taken stats classes, and I understand the underlying math (I suspect, in fact, that I understand it better than you do). What part of "DPR is the wrong math tool to use to answer this question", exactly, do you disagree with? I laid out quite clearly what it was good for - it is a reasonable model for a situation where you have one large enemy with a lot of hp that you are trying to grind down. I also pointed out that DPR results in distorted numbers in other situations, because it overlooks the inefficiencies in over-killing a low HP enemy. Using DPR as a measure in situations where it doesn't really work is likely worse than having no measure at all, not least of which because it creates this tiresome situation where people assume they know something because of "math" without ever bothering to understand what the math really tells them.
'Low HP Enemies' sorta don't exist in Starfinder, which makes DPR a better measure in the context of Starfinder. Using my above example, an average hit from a level 6 character does not kill the CR 1 space pirate. Two hits do, but an average hit with Deadly Aim does not. And that's lower CR than you're almost ever gonna be fighting.
I get that the scenario I laid out doesn't happen every fight - I think I was pretty clear about that in my post. What I'm saying is that if you actually want to try to answer the question of the value of Deadly Aim, you can't simply calculate DPR and be done with it, because DPR really, really doesn't actually model the game very well. Indeed - the questions we need to ask are:
1) How rare is it, actually, that the extra damage from Deadly Aim would kill an enemy who otherwise would have required an additional attack to kill?
2) How often does that situation have to come up for the feat to be "worth it"? Is that even something that we can quantify?
I feel like a third question 'How will I know to do this?' is also very valid. But yes, those are good questions to ask.
As for the math "problem" in my example - your correction doesn't actually change anything meaningful about it - do you not see that? The to-hit roll isn't actually very important except insofar as the resulting numbers are that the odds of hitting twice on a full attack are lower than the odds of hitting at least once.
To wit: If you normally hit on 7, then on a full attack you hit on an 11, and the odds of hitting twice are, as you say, 25% - but if you add Deadly Aim, and it adds enough damage so that you only need to hit once, then the odds of hitting at least once out of two shots (hitting on a 13 now) is 64% - so still over twice as likely to result in a kill than a situation where you have to hit twice on the full attack.
In fact, even if you were hitting on a 2 normally, that means it's basically a wash between the two (technically Deadly Aim still has a slight advantage, 57.something% chance of a kill versus 56.something% chance for regular full attack)
I was mostly noting the problem because people in general (rather than you in particular) seem to be having some trouble adjusting to the different math expectations of Starfinder. It's useful to remind people of that.
The chance of succeeding without Deadly Aim being higher is also relevant because the higher a chance you have sans Deadly Aim, the less useful and necessary the Feat is to take even if it raises your chances in that specific situation.
So, again, the key factor here is NOT the to-hit roll - it's the hp remaining on the enemy, and the odds of that number being in the sweet spot where the slight extra damage from Deadly Aim makes the difference.
That's gonna be really rare throughout the life of the character. I'll go into why in a second.
Now, I realize that a player likely wouldn't know the exact hp remaining of the enemy - that's not really relevant, though. Realistically, the question we are asking is "Are the odds that Deadly Aim is going to make the difference high enough that it's worth using it as a finisher?". That question really only presupposes that you know that an enemy is in a range of hp such that you could potentially kill it with one turn - and frankly I don't know of many GMs that wouldn't signal that descriptively to the player (like "he's looking a little rough" or "The robot is starting to spark and twitch"). Further - uh... multiple relatively weak enemies is like exactly the situation where Deadly Aim is more likely to be useful, and DPR analysis is more likely to be misleading, right? I'm not sure how you are arriving at the conclusion that it limits the number of times you can use Deadly Aim as a finisher?
Let's examine how likely this is, shall we?
At 6th level, fighting a CR 4 minion, we'll use the Security Robot as an example, your enemy has around 52 HP. You do 13 points of damage, average, when you hit.
The robot needs to be at precisely 14 to 16 HP in order for the +3 from Deadly Aim to make the difference, on average. That is a three HP range, and at more than a quarter of it's life points. Most GMs, in my experience, do not tell you an enemy is injured in nearly precise enough terms for you to diagnose a three point buffer. Less than half? Sure. Under 10 HP? Sure. A precise 3 HP range? No.
And that range remains similarly small in comparison to enemy HP throughout your adventuring career.
If Deadly Aim gave a -4 penalty to hit but added your full BAB to damage, it would probably be worse for DPR but you'd be right that it's often useful in this specific situation, since a 6-20 HP range you might actually be able to diagnose. A 3-10 HP range? Not so much. You can probably manage it coccasionally, but not nearly often enough to justify Deadly Aim's purchase.
Now, all that assumes average damage, but assuming non-average damage makes Deadly Aim look quite a bit worse, actually, since if you roll high it wasn't needed and if you roll low it dodn't actually finish the foe off. You need to roll right around average for this usage to even work (which luckily will happen most of the time, but still).
And I acknowledged that vs. targets 4 CR lower than you, Deadly Aim appears to be worth it. That's just lower than even minions almost ever are. Minions tend to be 2 CR lower or so, IME. Maybe 3 if there are a lot of them.
Again, I'm not saying that Deadly Aim is a "good feat" - it may very well still be a poor choice. I'm saying that you are trying to answer the question based on "doing damage", but that's misleading since you should really be looking at the odds of knocking enemies out of the fight (which is really the goal of damage anyway). While it is easy to presume that damage is a good analog for getting kills, it's honestly a bit like using the nationwide popular vote to predict who wins the US Presidency - it's not completely unreasonable, but it's definitely not as good as actually looking at electoral college votes, since we know there are situations where the two are significantly different.
I don't entirely disagree with you (though most other of damage-Feat usefulness measures are difficult to do the math on), but Starfinder is a game intentionally filled with very high HP foes, whose HP the PCs are not aware of, making DPR a much more relevant marker of whether Deadly Aim is good than it would be in a game where those basic assumptions are not true.
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But basically I think we're having slightly different discussions here. You're saying 'Here's where Deadly Aim could be useful.'
I'm not actually disputing that, I'm saying 'Sure. But that doesn't come up nearly often enough to be worth the Feat expenditure.'
The rest is details.
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the questions we need to ask are:
1) How rare is it, actually, that the extra damage from Deadly Aim would kill an enemy who otherwise would have required an additional attack to kill?
2) How often does that situation have to come up for the feat to be "worth it"? Is that even something that we can quantify?
In the situations where Deadly Aim makes a one-hit kill more likely, it won't normally guarantee a one-hit kill, since there are random dice involved. So all you're doing is increasing the chance of your attack killing if it hits, but also reducing the chance of your attack hitting.
There are also situations where the extra damage from Deadly Aim would be useless (eg, enemy on 1 HP) and unless you have some way of knowing this, you're going to make the wrong call some of the time if you use Deadly Aim at all.
DPR isn't perfect, but it seems a more reliable measure than any other.
In fact, DPR calculations tend to overvalue heavy hits, since heavy hits cause more overkill than light hits. So Deadly Aim is probably marginally worse than the DPR analysis suggests.
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As someone that actually has a degree in mathematics I can say that MrTsFloatinghead actually has some very good points. Another thing to consider is the distribution of values in damage. Average DPR is great when each damage value is equally likely, but with the way damage is generated in SF you really should take the variance into account. For example 10d4 has a mean value of 25 and a Stdv of ~3.5. 4d12 has a mean value of 26 but a Stdv of ~6.9. You are much more likely to get the average value with d4's than d12's. The d12 will be far swingier with many more attacks at lower and higher values. With larger standard deviations of damage you will see more value out of static modifiers as they will bring that swinginess down.
Blast and line weapons cannot benefit from any ability that increases damage if a single attack... Which I believe in clues deadly aim
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I meant to include explode in that, sorry. I don't think it benefits either
Guys, I think I've found it. I think I've found when Deadly Aim is beneficial.
Solarian 7/Operative 13
You have Flashing Strikes from Solarian 7 and the Multi-Weapon Fighting feat, which together make the attack penalty from full-attacking with two Operative melee weapons just -2.
You have Quad Attack from Operative 13, giving you 4 attacks with your full-attack.
Deadly Aim means you have an additional -2 attack penalty and +9 damage bonus on 4 attacks.
You can even start doing this at Solarian 7/Operative 8 with Triple Attack (which is 2 levels later than Solarian's Onslaught would give a pure Solarian 3 attacks, but the attack penalty is smaller), though obviously you have 1 fewer attack and the damage from Deadly Aim would only be +6 at that point.
Both Solarian 7/Operative 8 and Solarian 7/Operative 13 have high enough BAB to get Penetrating Attack, so there's less of a downside to having multiple weaker attacks.
You're also pretty nice at skills and have Evasion, Uncanny Agility, additional move speed, Trick Attack/Debilitating Trick, Operative Exploits, and your Specialization Power. Unfortunately, you're 1 Operative level short of getting the Multiattack Mastery Exploit.
*Disclaimer: Probably doesn't make the fact that it comes online at 15th level less terrible.
There are absolutely, unequivocally situations where Deadly Aim is advantageous. The occur when there is an enemy whose current HP is significantly higher than the minimum damage you'll do with a non-DA attack, but not so high that you cannot kill them with a DA attack, and the enemy is going soon in initiative order. Consider the simplest scenario, where the enemy is going right after you.
* In scenarios where the enemy's HP is higher than your normal attacks can do, DA is advantageous because it has a chance to kill the enemy before it can act again.
* Even if the enemy's HP is not higher than your normal attacks can do, if it's highish in the range of what your normal attacks can do, DA might have a better chance at killing it.
The problem isn't that these situations are even rare - the problem is that it's almost impossible to tell when you're in one of them. If Starfinder was a game where players knew what enemy HP was at all times and you were willing to do the math, Deadly Aim would be a pretty decent feat at least for Soldiers, who have a kjillion combat feats to spend on not a ton of great options. The problem is that it's usually impossible to tell when DA is actually going to have a better chance at KO'ing an enemy, which sharply curtails its utility.
Another factor is that, even if the information to make calls like that were available, the vast majority of players simply would not. The math gets gnarly and occasionally not completely objective once you move out of the simplest case, as well.
In short, while DA is basically always a DPR loss, it can be a rounds-to-kill benefit - but only if you have normally obscured information.
Deadly aim would be useful of your target has significant DR or resistances. DR 5, for example, makes a level 7 reaction cannon deal about as much damage as a level 1 cannon. The effect would be larger for more plinky weapons like pistols.