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Looking over the weapons and mulling over character concepts earlier today it sort of occurred to me that SF has a lot of really niche weapons that are sometimes useful but hard to build a whole character around.
Stuff like Shock Casters and Shirren Eye snipers and plasma rifles all feel like they'd be really fun weapons to have sometimes, but you're losing so much over a more 'traditional' weapon choice that it makes it hard to be your primary weapon, but they're expensive enough that it's also hard to really have more than one or two of them without cutting into other parts of your character.
I think Starfinder might have been better off with generally cheaper weaponry so doing something like throwing a few of these more esoteric options into the armory for emergencies was more viable.
Oh also level 20 frag grenades seem really expensive too.
I was thinking (though I'm looking at it from a GM's side right now) that these were the sort of options I might invest in as a primary weapon if I was a less "fighty" class that had picked up proficiency with advanced weapons, but didn't full attack all that often because of the lower BAB. I'm actually really intrigued by the idea of the technomancer sniper. I mean they obviously won't be doing sharpshot damage, but I think that with some of their attack buffs, they could achieve very respectable per-shot damage. I think it also might be cool to see a drone mechanic that gives his drone a line weapon while grabbing one himself and creating line crossfire situations.
But yeah, the grenades are stupidly expensive. I'm taking care to have them show up as loot often enough that the party always has a couple handy between them. They've been using them too, but so are the baddies.
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Since weapons sell for 10% of their price, instead of 50% of their price, this opens up a lot more room for GMs to hand out better weapons, more often, but restricts people from always being able to buy the exact piece of gear they desire, all the time.
I don't see this as a bad thing, personally: it leaves room for loot to provide interesting avenues of play that you might not otherwise entertain, without breaking the economy every time the GM gives you something cool. With that said, if you're playing a custom game, it can be worth having some level of communication with GM/other players as to loot you might be specifically interested in.
With the +2 cap on purchasing and the fact you can't exactly use a heap of guns all at once like you are drawn by Liefeld, I think they could have gone a LOT cheaper on weapons. Especially pistols, as pistols are heavily overpriced for what is a backup weapon at best for most characters (Half spec, lower damage scaling and range. Pistols don't have much going for them other than the fact everyone can use one.)
Right now, actually buying a pistol for 'They won't let me take my rifle' is a lot, LOT more expensive than buying the fusion to just let you smuggle your rifle past any sensors without trouble.
Oh it's fine and even mirrors real life somewhat. You can get a standard pistol or rifle in any gun shop for a few hundred dollars. However, if you tried to get a military grade item, it will cost you thousands of dollars at a minimum, assuming you could get it at all.
Now imagine a scifi setting where the divide is even larger. You can still get pistols and rifles equivalent in wuality and firepower to those available to civilians today, but the high-end military models are far and away more powerful and expensive than the military models of today.
Considering that wider range, I think the prices are about right, if you assume the trend kept expanding into the far future.
Oh also level 20 frag grenades seem really expensive too.
Yeah but think how much you can sell that thing for if you find one. Or even better if you find a case of grenades!
Assuming it's a Frag Grenade, the more expensive option among level 20 grenades, you can sell it for 21,600cr, a bit less than 1/33 of the price of an equal level pistol, or a bit less than 1.2x the cost of a pistol at half the level. On the other hand, if you actually want to use grenades, for the same cost as a Blue Star Plasma Cannon, the most expensive Heavy Weapon on the market, which comes with 10 shots, you can buy a bit more than 8 and a half of that same grenade. Of course, the Plasma Cannon runs off batteries, so chances are it'll be cheap if not free to recharge, while you're basically paying the full price of the most expensive gun for every 8 grenades you use.
Since weapons sell for 10% of their price, instead of 50% of their price, this opens up a lot more room for GMs to hand out better weapons, more often, but restricts people from always being able to buy the exact piece of gear they desire, all the time.
I don't see this as a bad thing, personally: it leaves room for loot to provide interesting avenues of play that you might not otherwise entertain, without breaking the economy every time the GM gives you something cool. With that said, if you're playing a custom game, it can be worth having some level of communication with GM/other players as to loot you might be specifically interested in.
It is a very bad thing is your GM runs pure random loot (which I honestly do in all other games) or purely by module like Society games, because you may not get what you want and now it takes a lot longer before you can trade that in for what you do want.
Considering that wider range, I think the prices are about right, if you assume the trend kept expanding into the far future.
I don't think real life is a very compelling comparison point. Especially since the fundamental structure of weaponry in starfinder is already not very realistic to begin with.
Besides, the issue isn't logic, it's playability. My concern is that a number of weapons are too specialized for a player to really justify dedicating themselves to to but the current pricing model doesn't really make it benefician for someone to be buying up weapons like that just in case. The archetype of the weapon master with a different piece of gear for every occasion isn't exactly a rare one in fiction and it's pretty hard to work in Starfinder given the way the numbers play out.
Obbu has a good point though that as a GM I can toss extra weird stuff at my players without it threatening to break the game's economy, which is pretty nice and lets me work around this a bit.
I realize this isn't the Real world, but how many weapons does a solider carry? 3 or 4? Rifle, grenades, knife. Maybe Pistol.
Another point is, you decide what to buy. If you want a diverse array of weapons then you can't get the top tech for each. The best way to deal with this is to have 1 specialty weapon on each PC in the party to cover contingencies.
Another point is, if you decrease the cost of weapons, the WBL needs to go down to account for it for judging CR.
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Another point is, if you decrease the cost of weapons, the WBL needs to go down to account for it for judging CR.
I'm not honestly sure that's true. WBL was important in pathfinder because you could buy any item with enough dosh. In Starfinder, you can only get level +2 at most so unlimited money wouldn't help there too much.
Yes, I know Starfinder is a different system. That's why I'm not sure WBL is required any more and it may be rather vestigial.
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It is a very bad thing is your GM runs pure random loot (which I honestly do in all other games) or purely by module like Society games, because you may not get what you want and now it takes a lot longer before you can trade that in for what you do want.
The CRB specifies that loot that is likely to be sold only counts against WBL at 10% anyway, so you're intended to hand out more loot to compensate.
If you want to fix the problem without making the decision on every item:
If you are following WBL, compare the WBL value to the characters wealth after they have sold some of the items.
Then, either hand out additional credits (pad existing loot with extra credits) and call it a day, or multiply your WBL going forward (and hand out more loot) by a % that will close the gap.
You can even make it more fun and increase loot by only part/none of that value, but have a 'secret stash' of loot that characters can find if they come up with exceptionally fun/clever ideas of ways to handle in-game tasks. This can serve to make players feel like they still get rewarded for good play, and not feel like they'll still get the same reward regardless of diligence. It also can serve to curtail tables where the party always tries to get more than they should, while still making them feel like they're winning that battle ;)
Guns are less personal styles and more just ... guns.
You shoot with everything that is is dropped on the floor.
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A system where your damage capability increased per YOUR level instead of the weapons could have partially solved this.
Imagine you lvl, feat etc determined the damage of your pistol and not the lvl of the actual pistol. Imagine then that you still bought a pistols but these had different properties such as plasma, Fire, line arc etc etc. That way you could buy different guns for the properties (of course some properties would result in slightly less/more damage) but essentially the damage of guns are the same.
The general idea is that you should be able to carry the same semi-auto throughout all your carrier and become more deadly with it as you lvl. You shouldn't need to buy a new version because your damage capability is dependent on YOUR lvl.
This system would result in cheaper weapons since YOUR lvl dictates the damage not the weapons itself, no reason for expensice weapons, they won't matter if your lvl 1. For instance imagine a simple gun in the hands of a lvl 20 soldier compared to lvl 10 Soldier with the exakt same simply gun. The lvl 20 Soldier would be VASTLY more dangerous than the lvl 10 soldier. Because weapon damage scaled with character lvl, Thats the system I would love to see.
Hope I make some sense.
That's Star Wars Saga. One of the Starfinder devs worked on it!
But yeah, 4e's X[W] Notation would have done wonders. So a 1d10 weapon becomes 4d10 when you hit 4W due to level.
A system where your damage capability increased per YOUR level instead of the weapons could have partially solved this.
Imagine you lvl, feat etc determined the damage of your pistol and not the lvl of the actual pistol. Imagine then that you still bought a pistols but these had different properties such as plasma, Fire, line arc etc etc. That way you could buy different guns for the properties (of course some properties would result in slightly less/more damage) but essentially the damage of guns are the same.
The general idea is that you should be able to carry the same semi-auto throughout all your carrier and become more deadly with it as you lvl. You shouldn't need to buy a new version because your damage capability is dependent on YOUR lvl.
This system would result in cheaper weapons since YOUR lvl dictates the damage not the weapons itself, no reason for expensice weapons, they won't matter if your lvl 1. For instance imagine a simple gun in the hands of a lvl 20 soldier compared to lvl 10 Soldier with the exakt same simply gun. The lvl 20 Soldier would be VASTLY more dangerous than the lvl 10 soldier. Because weapon damage scaled with character lvl, Thats the system I would love to see.
Hope I make some sense.
Actually the game is almost made that way.
If you take good look you can see through the numerous options that there are weapon archtypes.
Laser pistol, Semi-auto, Plasma-pistol etc.
So its there. Just use the price of the lowest level entry.
It becomes far more difficult with armor though.
Considering that wider range, I think the prices are about right, if you assume the trend kept expanding into the far future....the issue [is] playability. My concern is that a number of weapons are too specialized for a player to really justify dedicating themselves to to but the current pricing model doesn't really make it benefician for someone to be buying up weapons like that just in case. The archetype of the weapon master with a different piece of gear for every occasion isn't exactly a rare one in fiction and it's pretty hard to work in Starfinder given the way the numbers play out.
Obbu has a good point though that as a GM I can toss extra weird stuff at my players without it threatening to break the game's economy, which is pretty nice and lets me work around this a bit.
On this, I think we can agree.
Considering that wider range, I think the prices are about right, if you assume the trend kept expanding into the far future.I don't think real life is a very compelling comparison point. Especially since the fundamental structure of weaponry in starfinder is already not very realistic to begin with.
Besides, the issue isn't logic, it's playability. My concern is that a number of weapons are too specialized for a player to really justify dedicating themselves to to but the current pricing model doesn't really make it benefician for someone to be buying up weapons like that just in case. The archetype of the weapon master with a different piece of gear for every occasion isn't exactly a rare one in fiction and it's pretty hard to work in Starfinder given the way the numbers play out.
Obbu has a good point though that as a GM I can toss extra weird stuff at my players without it threatening to break the game's economy, which is pretty nice and lets me work around this a bit.
Weapon prices scale very heavily with level. If you want to be a weapon master, you can do that- you'll just be dealing a little less damage in exchange for almost always being able to get past resistances. You can also keep all the old guns you've collected off bodies. Starfinder makes it much easier to specialize in a weapon category now, so you're not tied down to just one weapon.
A system where your damage capability increased per YOUR level instead of the weapons could have partially solved this.
Imagine you lvl, feat etc determined the damage of your pistol and not the lvl of the actual pistol. Imagine then that you still bought a pistols but these had different properties such as plasma, Fire, line arc etc etc. That way you could buy different guns for the properties (of course some properties would result in slightly less/more damage) but essentially the damage of guns are the same.
The general idea is that you should be able to carry the same semi-auto throughout all your carrier and become more deadly with it as you lvl. You shouldn't need to buy a new version because your damage capability is dependent on YOUR lvl.
This system would result in cheaper weapons since YOUR lvl dictates the damage not the weapons itself, no reason for expensice weapons, they won't matter if your lvl 1. For instance imagine a simple gun in the hands of a lvl 20 soldier compared to lvl 10 Soldier with the exakt same simply gun. The lvl 20 Soldier would be VASTLY more dangerous than the lvl 10 soldier. Because weapon damage scaled with character lvl, Thats the system I would love to see.
Hope I make some sense.
In Starfinder weapon damage does scale with character level. A level 20 character has a higher BAB so he will hit more, plus his Weapon Specialization damage is much higher.
In Starfinder weapon damage does scale with character level. A level 20 character has a higher BAB so he will hit more, plus his Weapon Specialization damage is much higher.
The WEAPON damage scales with level, not the character's. The core problem being discussed, the difficulty that can be experienced getting the weapon you want at that level, is directly caused by the damage primarily being generated by the WEAPON not the CHARACTER.
Yes it is primarily the weapon, but weapon specialization is based on character level. A 20th level soldier with an azimuth laser pistol will deal 22 damage, a first level one will deal 2.
I do wish that rather than weapon levels they had simply made an "upgrade" system that each character could produce to increase the damage their weapons did. It could have worked out mechanically very similar to what we have now, but rather than it being an item level dependency it would have been a character level dependency.