Triple the ammo charges to deal a non-scaling 1d6 extra damage?
Was this designed to be unimpressive or am I missing something?
I suppose you're right, but investing 6 outta 10 mechanics tricks into only Overcharge isn't the kind of scaling I was referring to. =P
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Also, remember that it's a standard to overcharge your own weapon and fire it, and also a move action to overcharge an ally's weapon. So you can do both in the same round, every round. So you can stay adjacent to your drone while you both fire energy weapons. Or if you've got an exocortex, just stay near your allies in a firefight.
I wouldn't invest 6 tricks in maxing this out, but it might be worth 2 or 3 of your tricks for some mechanic builds.
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Dont forget you can also use it as a Standard Action for yourself and a Move Action for an adjacent Ally. Adding an extra 1d6 to yourself and 1d6 to your Soldier or Drone friend at level 2 is nice. In addition up until level 10, weapons are also only increasing by 1 dice, so even if you only use 1 trick on it, it's basically improving your weapon by one tier.
Most mechanic tricks don't scale, so it's par for the course. Battery-powered longarms don't hit 2d6 until 6th item level, so your exocortex mechanic increase their average longarm damage by 75% at 2nd level (falls to 25% at 6th level). Improved overcharge is less helpful at 8th level than Overcharge at 2nd level - about 40% damage increase per shot.
Most battery-powered longarms and smallarms have respectable capacity/usage ratios, so you won't be burning through ammo too fast.
Its honestly one of the most interesting and versatile abilities in the game, as far as increasing damage goes. I've made ranged mechanics, mechanics with explosive weapons, switch hitter mechanics... Drone mechanics, Exocortex mechanics...
At level 8, when you get 2d6 damage, your Soldier friend is going to want to stand next to you 24/7.
Overcharge is really nice as long as you have free recharging, if you have to pay for every charge, it can get pretty expensive at lower levels.
Or pick up batteries from the corpses of your fallen enemies. Or whatever.
At least most scenarios I have seen batteries seem to be the most common dropped ammo from NPC so probably not a huge issue. Keep a spare in case you are running low though.
Until you are fighting a bunch of creatures instead of NPCs...
Also, remember that it's a standard to overcharge your own weapon and fire it, and also a move action to overcharge an ally's weapon. So you can do both in the same round, every round.
Or use 2 move actions to overcharge 2 friends weapons.
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If you want it to be an improvement over full attacking, onslaught or quad attack, it's going to come up lacking.
However, in turns where you don't want to full attack, it's actually quite nice. If you consider rounds spent not full attacking to be wasted, then this actually lessens the blow of that.
ie turns like:
- I move my mechanic into cover close to the terminal and hack it with my exocortex via wireless hack, then overcharge my rifle and fire, and drop prone
- I aim my sniper rifle then overcharge it and fire
- I overcharge my friend, then overcharge myself and fire
- I activate combat tracking, then use overcharge and fire
- I overcharge my friend, then activate energy shield
etc.
There's some nice action economy things you can pull off with the combined action, provided you aren't fixated on full attacks.
The move action to use on a friend also allows you to contribute offensively even when you're spending your standard actions defensively or to achieve something else.
- overload
- energy shield
- holographic projector
The standard action to use it and attack allows you to use your move action abilities more liberally inside combat by lessening the damage drop off.
- Miracle worker
- Overload weapon
- control scoutbot
- invisibility hampering projector
- saboteur (sabotage/disable device)
- ultraclocking
- master control
- combat tracking/twin tracking/quad tracking
Also bear in mind that you are effectively gaining a bonus to hit (or removing the penalty) when you don't full attack, so the gap closes further, when combined with combat tracking, you can actually be better at single attacks than a soldier in some respects (just as accurate, with extra damage), while simultaneously freeing up extra actions.
In the case of sniper rifles, you can even remove ranged increments from the equation, for the most part, making that one attack very accurate, if you wanted.
I was getting things together to run the SFS scenario "Claim to Salvation" which uses 4th level iconic pregens, when I noticed that Quig, the level 4 mechanic, has overcharge, but neither he nor his drone use energy weapons.
Really, Quig?
I've made a successful mechanic that uses switch hitting. A maze core Dragonglaive/Laser Rifle. (Been thinking about switching to an explosive heavy weapon).
In any case, a reach weapon with Overcharge is great. Attack once. Make an AoO as they move in. Next round, attack with Overcharge, and take a guarded five foot step back. They take an AoO, and waste their move action, and therefore are also unable to full attack. Since you are ALWAYS doing more damage with Overcharge, you will eventually win with a matched foe. If not, use a Jet Pack or Force Pack, soak an AoO, and move way back and shoot from afar.
Its been a very interesting, tactical, build. Though the game isn't really designed for it, my friends and I have run PvP encounters. My switch hitter Mechanic crushed his switch hitter Soldier. Combat took 6-7 rounds, a couple of which neither of us hit. Once I actually got into melee, I was able to down him in three rounds or so.