Are Soldiers the only ones who can't get everything out of a Plasma Cannon?

[Squiggit]

I remember this being an issue in the playtest, that Area weapons had nothing that interact with proficiency, which means that an area weapon being Advanced didn't mean anything, except for Soldiers who are the only people who get to make Strikes with area weapons (and therefore suffer a penalty for reduced/nonproficiency).

I thought I remember seeing that this got fixed/altered in the full release but I can't seem to find anything now.

[Finoan]

Squiggit wrote:

except for Soldiers who are the only people who get to make Strikes with area weapons

So what 'everything' that other characters are getting from a Plasma Cannon do Soldier's not also get?

Soldier isn't getting proficiency with Advanced area weapons automatically. Which does affect their ability to use their Primary Target class feature. But that is a class bonus perk that they are missing out on, not a fundamental use of a Plasma Cannon.

Reminder that Weapon Proficiency exists - for the reason of allowing characters to use Advanced weapons proficiently.

Granted, another class perk (similar to Gunslinger's Slinger's Precision ability interacting with Combination weapons) that gives at least basic proficiency to Area weapons would be nice to have. It wouldn't even need a wonky weapon categorization like Operative's 'guns'.

[Squiggit]

Finoan wrote:

Squiggit wrote:

except for Soldiers who are the only people who get to make Strikes with area weapons

So what 'everything' that other characters are getting from a Plasma Cannon do Soldier's not also get?

It's not what other characters are getting, but how they're effected by the existing rules.

We appear to be in this strange space where, because Area weapons can only be used in a certain way that's not modified by proficiency

A) The advanced categorization for these weapons is largely superfluous

B) Except for the Soldier, who's the only class that actually interacts with area weapon proficiency (via primary target)

C) This creates an odd quirk of the game where the 'area weapon class' is the only one who has some sort of built in discouragement from touching the advanced versions of the weapons.

Which is part of why I was asking if there was a fix I was missing because the whole idea that weapon tier doesn't mean anything for area weapons itself is kind of weird.

[Justnobodyfqwl]

The devs have been pretty consistent that they want single target weapons tied to weapon proficiency, and AoE weapons tied to class DC. This keeps Fighters good at single target damage, but bad at multi target damage- that's a big intentional weakness of theirs. Likewise, it makes Kineticists good with the at-will AoE weapons, which is already their niche and strength.

Now, granted, yeah, this absolutely does mean that the Simple/Martial/Advanced distinction would only matter for Soldiers. And so it really IS funny that this means that an advanced area weapon kinda has no reason to exist.

I just don't think it's a mark against the overall idea. Rather, I have to imagine that Paizo developers made Area-Fire and Automatic weapons at the same time as all the other weapons, so they just still thought of them in terms of "simple weapons have these traits, advanced weapons have those traits". Then they labeled them and kept them in those categories, without really thinking of it in greater terms.