If an operative never used trick attack, instead relying on big guns or melee beatsticks like everyone else, exactly how much mechanical combat power do they lose? How would they then stack up against the other classes in combat?
Many of my friends are convinced that it would be a death sentence, but I'm of a different mind. If built around the idea of not being reliant on the extra bonus damage dice, I think they wouldn't be much worse off than any other class. It would certainly be playable and, dare I say, would even carry their own weight rather well.
What do you think?
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We could pretty easily do a basic damage comparison between using a long arm with weapon spec and attacking twice vs trick attacking with a small arms.
At level 10 it seems like the semi-auto pistol, elite is your best choice with 3d6 damage + 5 damage from weapon specialization + 5d8. This gives you about 38 average damage with trick attack.
Longarms gives you 3d8 with a rifle + 10 from weapon specialization for 23.5 damage. If you hit twice successfully you deal 47 average damage.
However this doesn't account for likelihood to hit, and locks you into a full attack instead of being able to move. So without trick attack you're not hobbled, but you are locked into a full attack routine.
As a note: For a specific character, the difference in a trick attack succeeding vs a full attack routine will be -6 to attack by comparison ( 2 from flat-footed and 4 from the penalty to full attacks). That's a 30% reduction in likelihood to hit, which is pretty huge.
Soldiers and Solarians have full BAB and various accuracy boosters. Mechanics have the exocortex accuracy boost or can make two attacks via the drone without taking the penalties for full attacking. Envoys have various abilities that boost the accuracy of both themselves and everyone around them. Longarm Mystics and Technomancers will have similar (or slightly worse) accuracy to the longarm operative, but they mostly use guns as a fallback option when they don't feel the need to burn a spell slot.
An operative who doesn't use Trick Attack is a medium BAB class with no inherent accuracy booster. I'd expect him to be roughly similar to a spellcaster who doesn't pick combat spells - not exactly crippled, but definitely underwhelming in battle.
Claxon, why would an operative be stuck making a full attacks? If anything, I would think not having to spend a full action to trick attack would free up an operative to do more with the round.
It seems to me that if all the characters are doing is full attacking all the time, then the GM isn't making the encounters nearly interesting enough.
In all of the Starfinder games I've played in, full attacks are relatively rare. We're constantly moving from cover to cover, toggling switches, flipping tables, climbing to higher ground, switching weapons, etc.
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My experience has been vastly different.
Ranged characters get themselves behind cover and then fire away. Melee characters move into position, and then cleave away until moving to the next enemy to repeat.
In any event, my point was that to stay damage competitive with Trick attack (which allows you to move and attack) you would need to full attack with a long arm.
You're comparing longarms though. What do the numbers look like if the character is wielding heavy weapons? As you recall, I specifically said we're building for damage without trick attack, and that generally means using bigger guns and beatsticks. Why base the numbers off a middling firearm?
The character might not be able to take advantage of a few class abilities with heavy weapons, but that can be made up for with weapon abilities that are not normally available on small arms or operative weapons.
We could pretty easily do a basic damage comparison between using a long arm with weapon spec and attacking twice vs trick attacking with a small arms.
At level 10 it seems like the semi-auto pistol, elite is your best choice with 3d6 damage + 5 damage from weapon specialization + 5d8. This gives you about 38 average damage with trick attack.
Longarms gives you 3d8 with a rifle + 10 from weapon specialization for 23.5 damage. If you hit twice successfully you deal 47 average damage.
However this doesn't account for likelihood to hit, and locks you into a full attack instead of being able to move. So without trick attack you're not hobbled, but you are locked into a full attack routine.
As a note: For a specific character, the difference in a trick attack succeeding vs a full attack routine will be -6 to attack by comparison ( 2 from flat-footed and 4 from the penalty to full attacks). That's a 30% reduction in likelihood to hit, which is pretty huge.
Building off your numbers, an Operative that trick attacks vs. a creature with CR=his level has about a 75% chance to hit with the attack, including the bonus from making his foe flatfooted.
So DPR for trick attack is (0.75*38+0.05*38)= 30.4 DPR.
Full attack with a longarm has a 45% chance to hit with each attack, and doesn't make a foe flatfooted.
So DPR for a longarm full is (0.45*23.5+0.05*23.5)*2 = 23.5 DPR, a pretty big decrease. Not to mention you're no longer making enemies flatfooted for your team when you land your attack, resulting in what is about a 20% loss in DPR per team member that's a full BAB class and is full attacking.
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With heavy weapons, little changes... Hvy Rxn Cannon at 10th level deals 26.5 on a successful hit. So its DPR is (0.45*26.5+0.05*26.5)*2 = 26.5 DPR. Still a significant shortfall, and you had to invest multiple feats, extra strength, and a bunch of money into it.
We could pretty easily do a basic damage comparison between using a long arm with weapon spec and attacking twice vs trick attacking with a small arms.
At level 10 it seems like the semi-auto pistol, elite is your best choice with 3d6 damage + 5 damage from weapon specialization + 5d8. This gives you about 38 average damage with trick attack.
Longarms gives you 3d8 with a rifle + 10 from weapon specialization for 23.5 damage. If you hit twice successfully you deal 47 average damage.
However this doesn't account for likelihood to hit, and locks you into a full attack instead of being able to move. So without trick attack you're not hobbled, but you are locked into a full attack routine.
As a note: For a specific character, the difference in a trick attack succeeding vs a full attack routine will be -6 to attack by comparison ( 2 from flat-footed and 4 from the penalty to full attacks). That's a 30% reduction in likelihood to hit, which is pretty huge.
Building off your numbers, an Operative that trick attacks vs. a creature with CR=his level has about a 75% chance to hit with the attack, including the bonus from making his foe flatfooted.
So DPR for trick attack is (0.75*38+0.05*38)= 30.4 DPR.
Full attack with a longarm has a 45% chance to hit with each attack, and doesn't make a foe flatfooted.
So DPR for a longarm full is (0.45*23.5+0.05*23.5)*2 = 23.5 DPR, a pretty big decrease. Not to mention you're no longer making enemies flatfooted for your team when you land your attack, resulting in what is about a 20% loss in DPR per team member that's a full BAB class and is full attacking.
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With heavy weapons, little changes... Hvy Rxn Cannon at 10th level deals 26.5 on a successful hit. So its DPR is (0.45*26.5+0.05*26.5)*2 = 26.5 DPR. Still a significant shortfall, and you had to invest multiple feats, extra strength, and a bunch of money into it.
A quick note - until you get a 6th level exploit to do so, flat-footed condition for operatives is only for that operative for each specific trick attack made. Envoy can do so for everyone early on, but operative cannot.
Sorry, I misspoke. Operatives get the ability at 4th level with Debilitating Trick.
@Kalderaan: Not sure what you mean. Operatives can make opponents flatfooted when they succeed at a trick attack (and not just with respect to themselves) from 4th level, and they don't need an exploit to do so.
DEBILITATING TRICK (EX) 4th Level
When you hit an enemy with a trick attack, you can make the creature flat-footed or off-target until the beginning of your next turn. You might learn exploits that grant you additional options for your debilitating trick, but you can select only one option each time you hit with a trick attack.
@Kalderaan: Not sure what you mean. Operatives can make opponents flatfooted when they succeed at a trick attack (and not just with respect to themselves) from 4th level, and they don't need an exploit to do so.
DEBILITATING TRICK (EX) 4th Level
When you hit an enemy with a trick attack, you can make the creature flat-footed or off-target until the beginning of your next turn. You might learn exploits that grant you additional options for your debilitating trick, but you can select only one option each time you hit with a trick attack.
@Cellion - Until you hit 4th level and get Debilitating Trick, the flat-footed condition only applies for that single attack. It does not last the entire round and does not benefit anyone other than the operative for that specific attack. When you do hit 4th level, trick attack elevates to extend until your next turn, thus allowing other members of your party to benefit.
You're comparing longarms though. What do the numbers look like if the character is wielding heavy weapons? As you recall, I specifically said we're building for damage without trick attack, and that generally means using bigger guns and beatsticks. Why base the numbers off a middling firearm?
Because it's impractical. Operatives are sneaky spies that has no use for heavy weapons. I think it's really generous for Claxon to do the math for you. If you want math for something that probably wouldn't happen in a game I'm sure you can come up with those.
Thank you for your advice and input, everyone. Though I maintain that a heavy weapons operative could get by without trick attack, it seems abundantly clear that it is not without great cost.
I guess such a character trope was never meant to be. Sigh.
Thank you for your advice and input, everyone. Though I maintain that a heavy weapons operative could get by without trick attack, it seems abundantly clear that it is not without great cost.
I guess such a character trope was never meant to be. Sigh.
Operatives are unquestionably built from the ground up to use small arms and operative weapons (which means basic melee only, so far). The only use I've found for a heavy weapon on an operative so far is a backup grenade launcher full of smoke grenades, which the operative doesn't even need to invest in proficiency for, as even with a -6 to hit from low STR and nonproficiency, you should still usually get your smoke where you want it.
Meanwhile, every other class in the game wants heavy weapons and has no use at all for a small arm if it can afford to avoid it. Small arms seem to exist for the sole purpose of operatives, so it makes sense they do worse with anything else.
Small arms seem to exist for the sole purpose of operatives, so it makes sense they do worse with anything else.
I'm kind of sad about this, but it's true.
It would be nice if other classes had some archetype or specialization to make small arms competitive. It's a pity that every Envoy has to use laser rifles, for example. A gunslinger pistolero for soldier would be cool too. And so on.Maybe with new classes and updates it happens somewhere in the future, but right now, small arms are for operatives, and vice-versa
It would be nice if other classes had some archetype or specialization to make small arms competitive. It's a pity that every Envoy has to use laser rifles, for example. A gunslinger pistolero for soldier would be cool too. And so on.
Maybe with new classes and updates it happens somewhere in the future, but right now, small arms are for operatives, and vice-versa
I agree. I think part of it is simply that Operatives are clearly the class Paizo spent the most effort on (and Envoys and Solarians the least). There's plenty of room in Soldier to let them spec into Small Arms (why do they have only one Gear Boost based on Proficiency type, and why does that one boost only work if the weapon does kinetic damage? why is there a fighting style based, poorly, on grenades, but not one for small arms?). For the other classes, it's a harder sell - the only other one clearly designed at its core to murder you with a weapon is the Solarian, and they're so poorly designed, it's a fool's errand trying to get them to work properly with Small Arms until they can even work properly with the tools they already have. That said, there's still room - for example, you could give Exocortex Mechanics who want to spec in small arms the ability to operate one arm while their exocortex operates the other, letting them increase their attack volume by dual wielding.
Hopefully we will get some new feats and other options that solve some of these issues, allowing for a greater range of character concepts.
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Well what would be good ways of making small arms a viable choice?
- Things that occupy your other hand a lot, like shields that provide a worthwhile bonus.
- Exciting 2WF styles.
- Emphasizing that small arms are concealable and not bulky. Missions where getting larger weapons in is tricky, or fighting styles around being really light.
- If Zero-G rules make an issue out of needing a free hand to steer around properly.
If the point of weapons is to hit hard, and big weapons hit harder, then making small arms viable needs to be about emphasizing that sometimes bigger is inconvenient.
Of course then you need to worry about Kasatha having plenty of hands.
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Thank you for your advice and input, everyone. Though I maintain that a heavy weapons operative could get by without trick attack, it seems abundantly clear that it is not without great cost.
I guess such a character trope was never meant to be. Sigh.
Come on dude, don't give up hope. Play the Space Rogue. Use your skills to smuggle that Tier 9 Overcompensation Class Ion Cannon onto the battlefield. Live the dream and don't let anyone stop you.
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Small arms seem to exist for the sole purpose of operatives, so it makes sense they do worse with anything else.I'm kind of sad about this, but it's true.
It would be nice if other classes had some archetype or specialization to make small arms competitive. It's a pity that every Envoy has to use laser rifles, for example. A gunslinger pistolero for soldier would be cool too. And so on.Maybe with new classes and updates it happens somewhere in the future, but right now, small arms are for operatives, and vice-versa
There are plenty of situations – or at least there should be – where the heroes cannot be walking around with their BFG 9000’s and Zweihander Chainswords. Sometimes you just want to visit the spaceport’s saloon and have a quiet drink with your smuggler contact... Sometimes you gotta schmooz with the glitterati at the opera house... Got to stop thinking with the “dungeon crawl”’mentality.
Small arms are a backup weapon for most classes, just as they are for most people in the real world. An assault rifle or a machine gun is always a better choice when you expect a firefight, but a pistol in your pocket is great for when someone surprises you with one.
Small arms seem to exist for the sole purpose of operatives, so it makes sense they do worse with anything else.I'm kind of sad about this, but it's true.
It would be nice if other classes had some archetype or specialization to make small arms competitive. It's a pity that every Envoy has to use laser rifles, for example. A gunslinger pistolero for soldier would be cool too. And so on.Maybe with new classes and updates it happens somewhere in the future, but right now, small arms are for operatives, and vice-versa
There are plenty of situations – or at least there should be – where the heroes cannot be walking around with their BFG 9000’s and Zweihander Chainswords. Sometimes you just want to visit the spaceport’s saloon and have a quiet drink with your smuggler contact... Sometimes you gotta schmooz with the glitterati at the opera house... Got to stop thinking with the “dungeon crawl”’mentality.
Small arms are a backup weapon for most classes, just as they are for most people in the real world. An assault rifle or a machine gun is always a better choice when you expect a firefight, but a pistol in your pocket is great for when someone surprises you with one.
Yes, and there are other situations where you can't carry a weapon at all, including sidearms. In those situations, unarmed combat is a valid option. In the kind of way that playing a character with no legs is fine if your campaing goes about winning medals in the special olympics.
That doesn't change the fact that pistols suck big big big time, unless you are an operative. Including for classes that "should" be using them, thematically, like mystics, envoys or technomancers. EVERYBODY but the operative "rushes" to get at least longarm weapons. And that's sad. Even if the GM puts social encounters here and there that force people to use small arms because longer guns are not alowed, classes still will rush to get longarms for all the other situations where a real gun can be used. That makes "small arms use" a forced situation, imposed by your GM, not a style choice. You could not make an overwatch McGree clone as a soldier for example. He'll suck, because his weapon of choice is a revolver. If your desired "look" involves one or more pistols, you have to be an operative.
Not sure how optimal it is, but I've been sketching out a Vesk operative with a baton. High dex, secondary str. Use the trick attack to get up close or ensure a hit, but on weaker foes or easier to hit ones just use the full attack and leverage high str to bring the pain.
For the operative with a big weapon try a sniper rifle. There's an operative trick to let them work with trick attack, and big damage + trick attack damage on a single attack at great range should be satisfying and sometimes useful (it's confirmed they get to use the sniper range as part of the trick attack).
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That doesn't change the fact that pistols suck big big big time...
Well, ya see, that’s because the simple reality is that pistols “suck big time” compared to longarms. Despite all of its fantastic and sci-fi trappings, the underlying sensibility of Starfinder is still that of the D20’s real-world verisimilitude. It’s more “simulationist” than “cinematic,” which is why D&D/Pathfinder heroes do way less damage with a dagger than they do a longsword*. Because daggers suck compared to swords. Likewise, in SF we see that handguns do way less damage than longarms**. Because handguns do suck compared to rifles and shotguns.
The meme amongst gun owners is that “A pistol is what you carry when you can’t carry a real gun.” Back when I was on active duty with the USCG, I qualified as an expert marksman with both the Beretta M9 (sharpshooter) and SIG P229 DAK (expert). If I was going to be in a situation where violence was likely, then I sure as hell was going to ask for an M16, M4, or (my personal favorite) Remington 870. Because as good as I was with my sidearm, it was still only a dinky .40 S&W... Gimme a .12 ga any day.
* Unless you really focus on a Class/Prestige Class/Feat combination that makes you a wuxia-style knife god.
** Unless you really focus on a Class/Prestige Class/Feat combination that makes you a John Woo-style gun-fu god.
For the operative with a big weapon try a sniper rifle. There's an operative trick to let them work with trick attack, and big damage + trick attack damage on a single attack at great range should be satisfying and sometimes useful (it's confirmed they get to use the sniper range as part of the trick attack).
I thought that trick didn't allow the damage.
For the operative with a big weapon try a sniper rifle. There's an operative trick to let them work with trick attack, and big damage + trick attack damage on a single attack at great range should be satisfying and sometimes useful (it's confirmed they get to use the sniper range as part of the trick attack).I thought that trick didn't allow the damage.
Damn, you're right. Oh well, bleeding shot or deactivating shot should still work.
And your target still ends flat footed for you and your team after level 4.
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Debilitating Sniper, a 6th Level Operative Exploit, allows you to use Trick Attack with Sniper keyworded weapons. You do not add Trick Attack damage to your attack, but the target is still flat-footed, and you can use other Debilitating Trick exploits.
How useful those other Debilitating Trick exploits will be is situational (and probably party dependent too), but none of them standout as a foolish choice. Although, to be frank, most of the time I don’t think the sniping role is something an Operative should dedicate themselves too, the opportunity costs of picking sniping-related Class Features and Feats when compared to the relatively uncommon nature of Encounters at that range...
As I see it, in campaign types where outdoor planetary exploration or Shadowrub-esque covert ops are the norm, then a dedicated Operative Sniper (preferably with a dedicated Soldier Sharpshooter partner) makes a hell of a lot of sense. But, for the more typical mix of dungeon-crawling-through-spaceships, cantina shootouts, and the occasional evil scientist-wizards’ lair-boratory? Sniping just doesn’t seem like the best primary combat focus for an Operative.
It’s still an excellent secondary choice. Don’t get me wrong. I think most single-classsed Operatives should probably pick Smallarms or Melee as their primary, Sniping as their secondary, and Melee or Smallarms as their tertiary priorities for class features/combat feats/equipment. So when the situation comes up that the significant range advantage of a sniper rifle or longarm over a handgun/knife is needed, presto.
Here are comparassions
I'm not sure if Shot on the Run would allow an operative to move, attack (with trick attack), move for the round, but if it does that's pretty powerful to me. Depending on terrain it can allow you to run between sources of total cover allowing you to attack while the enemy has to instead try to re-position themselves to attack you.
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That’s exactly what the Feat allows you to do:
“As a full action, you can move up to your speed and make a single ranged attack at any point during your movement. If you have the trick attack class feature, you can take your movement from trick attack at any time during a trick attack with a ranged weapon (instead of only before).”
Not necessarily.
Specifically just look at the part about trick attack, "you can take your movement from trick attack at any time during a trick attack with a ranged weapon (instead of only before)" makes it sound like you can take it before or after but can't separate it. Now I'm not sure that's the intention, but the way it's written that's what it does.
The ability to (as a full round action) move, attack, move would preclude it's use with trick attack, which is it's own separate full round action that would't interact with your trick attack ability at all.
Because normally you can only move prior to making the attack in Trick Attack. This feat (as written) would allow you to do it after making the attack (a significant difference from current ability).
Nothing within the way it's written indicates to me that it would allow you to make a Trick Attack and treat it as some equivalent to Pathfinder's Spring Attack. It needs extra wording if the intent was to allow you to move, trick attack, continue moving.
Basically Shot on the Run has one effect if you would normally try to combine a move and an attack action and a different effect if you try to use it with Trick Attack.
I'm not sure if that was the intention or not, but it probably should be clarified.
Ran some numbers :
Level 15 Operative, 26 Dex, CR15 OpponentLaser DPR - Standard/Full :
Small Arms (Laser pistol, parallax) - 56/48 (44.8/32)
Sniper Rifles (Diasporan rifle, ultra) - 42/NA
Heavy Weapons DPR (Artillery laser, perihelion) - 26.4/39.6Projectiles DPR :
Small Arms (Semi-auto pistol, paragon) - 51.75/43 (40.25/25.8)
Sniper Rifles (Shirren-eye sniper rifle, paragon) - 43.2/NA
Heavy Weapons (Reaction cannon, heavy) - 37.8/54
This had me curious, as I could have sworn I had different numbers. I ran them myself. I discovered the fundamental problem is how much operatives hate pistols with Boost, because they can't use it, making the parallax laser pistol out-of-band bad for them.
Gyrojets are also deeply unfortunate, because on a crit, they make the target harder to hit. :'( If you fix them with a fusion, though, you should assume one for the kinetic analysis of the L15 operative.
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Quindraco, can you explain further? I’m not getting why those are problematic for the Operative... Maybe I’m just dense.
Claxon, I can see where you’re coming from. Strictly RAW, I think you’re right. But it’s not how I feel the Feat was meant to work. Hopefully, we’ll see this addressed as a future erratum. Until then, hurrah for Rule Zero!
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What's poorly worded about it? It says you can take your trick attack movement at any point during the trick attack.
There are only three times you can take your move: before, after, and both before and after the attack.
Before doesn't work, as that was already explicitly allowed.
If it were after only, they would have just said you could move after the trick attack.
So it must be both, which also lines up with shot on the runs intent with normal attacks.
Seems pretty clear to me.
If "Shot on the Run" only let you attack and then move with trick attack, wouldn't they call it "Shoot and then Run?" I really don't know how people are misinterpreting not only the name of the feat but "at any time"
If "Shot on the Run" only let you attack and then move with trick attack, wouldn't they call it "Shoot and then Run?" I really don't know how people are misinterpreting not only the name of the feat but "at any time"
It wasn't designed for only trick attack, it just also happens to have some effect on trick attack.
I can also make the same question of "I don't know how people can interpret it to allow you to move, trick attack, move".
The feat says the following:
As a full action, you can move up to your speed and make a single ranged attack at any point during your movement. If you have the trick attack class feature, you can take your movement from trick attack at any time during a trick attack with a ranged weapon (instead of only before).
When I look at the first sentence and compare it to the second setence and they way they're written, it leads me to read it in a way that doesn't allow for you to make the ranged attack from trick attack while breaking up the movement. That may have been the intention, but if it is it should be clarified. It would be better written as:
"If you have the trick attack class feature, you can take your ranged attack from trick attack at any time during the movement."But they didn't. So I'm not really sure of the intent, but they didn't reuse the wording they had just used in the previous sentence, and I'm unsure if that's significant or just poor writing. Hence my desire for clarification.
Thank you for your advice and input, everyone. Though I maintain that a heavy weapons operative could get by without trick attack, it seems abundantly clear that it is not without great cost.
I guess such a character trope was never meant to be. Sigh.
It can be done, just takes some investment and an extra arm.
Weapon prof long arms
Weapon prof heavy arms
Weapon spec
Now, the trick to make it really work is a third arm with a pistol. Use trick attack once you have debilitating trick to make them flat footed, shooting them twice next round.