Competitive Small Arms Damage through Magic Hacks and Mechanic Tricks.

[Mutty06]

Does anyone agree that small arms should be viable for more than just Operatives?

Currently Operatives make small arms viable through skills. So the other options would be magic and tech. The simplest way I see is to make a technomancer magic hack and a mechanics mechanic trick.

For balance sake it would be important that they don’t stack with trick shot or with each other. Now trick shot is a full class feature and does competitive damage on its own. The hack and trick, are not full class feature, just a part of one, so my thought is that they stack with other tricks and hacks to produce that same competitive damage.

So how much should this increase the damage? Im thinking these tricks and hacks should make small arms do damage equal to an equivalent long arm. This would be less than the operatives trick shot but both classes have other means of bringing their damage up from there.

How do you prevent it from being stacked with trick shot. Either make it cost a move or standard action or the small arm becomes unwieldy. If the trick and hack called out a non-unwieldy small arm they would not stack with each other. Mechanics would do best using the unwieldy route as the exocortex would be hard up for action economy with tracking and overcharging. The technomancer has the move action to empower and standard to use spell shot, seeking shot or phasing shot so they might also do better with the unwieldy route.

Thoughts? Opinions?

[Metaphysician]

I would argue they are perfectly viable. "Viable" is not the same thing as "Equally powerful to long arms". You trade out FPS, in exchange for lower cost, lower weight, and "being able to spend feats on other stuff". Which, given the classes lacking in long arm proficiency indeed do have *other stuff*, this seems a no brainer. Yes, your technomancer or envoy won't do as much damage with their laser pistol as the soldier with his laser rifle. This doesn't matter, because the technomancer will regularly be casting spells instead with their own highly useful ( and often damaging ) effects, and the envoy is going to be dropping various useful buffs and debuffs in combat ( often at the same time as shooting stuff! ).

[Erk Ander]

Well a simple solution is to allow full weapon specialization on small arms. It's nowhere near OP. Longarms etc already deal far more than small arms even prior to weapon spec. Both mechanic sub-classes deal far more damage (roughly 33% I think) with long arms than trick attack with full weapon spec on a small arm. There are alot of old threads and a customization spreadsheet that allows you test out various changes on the DPR of classes. Search the topic

[Wingblaze]

I don't think there is a problem. I've noticed some people seem bothered/offended/etc that small arms don't dish out as much damage as longarms. To me that makes perfect sense. Soliders use rifles rather than pistols because they are more effective. Game-wise it's also a balance consideration in part because you can dual-wield small arms.

[Kochean]

I don't understand why small arms and in part also operative weapons are penalised with half damage when specialised compared to all the other weapons. just seams silly that a whole class of weapons are effected just to limit one class' damage output.

[Wingblaze]

It's not just one class. :)

If a solider can shoot and do lots of damage, and a spellcaster can shoot and do almost as much damage and cast spells on top of it, I suspect that's something most people would call "not balanced".

Consider also the BAB progression. There are full BAB classes, and 3/4 BAB classes. Starfinder does not have 1/2 BAB classes, so your spellcasters are shooting as well as your operatives and envoys and other weapons-driven classes.

Then consider that ranged weapons are the norm in Starfinder compared to Pathfinder etc.

Classes who's main job isn't "pew pew" have small arms proficiency but not longarms. If small arms is putting out nearly as much damage (and look out if you pick up two of them) then there's really not enough difference between your gunners and your casters.

So if you want to look at is as "a way to limit damage output" I would say yes, it is. But it has impact on more than one class, and I suspect it was done with purpose and testing.

[Metaphysician]

I mean, lets go back over all the non-longarm classes:

-Technomancers: Can cast spells, including some highly damaging ones.

-Mystics: Ditto.

-Mechanics ( Drone ): Has a drone, which on average means twice as many attacks, amongst other benefits.

-Operative: Trick Attack, which makes the Operative something like the third best DPS anyway, even with Small Arms.

-Envoy: The only one that doesn't have an obvious source of damage. But really, a fairly typical Envoy build will be so busy granting stamina heals and attack bonuses, they'll scarcely have time to shoot anyone anyway.

[Asurasan]

I've been secretly thinking the game needs a feat that gives full specialization damage bonus on small arms when firing as part of a standard action(not full attack). This would be decent for Envoy's who are often otherwise dumping their move actions onto other tasks.

Wouldn't really hurt for operatives too much either.

[Dracomicron]

Asurasan wrote:

I've been secretly thinking the game needs a feat that gives full specialization damage bonus on small arms when firing as part of a standard action(not full attack). This would be decent for Envoy's who are often otherwise dumping their move actions onto other tasks.

Wouldn't really hurt for operatives too much either.

Wouldn't help Operatives much, either, since Trick Attack is part of a Full Action.

I'm not sure why such a feat would be necessary. There's already a feat to add half your BAB to your damage; it's called Deadly Aim. That's almost as much damage as you're suggesting.

[Asurasan]

Dracomicron wrote:

Asurasan wrote:

I've been secretly thinking the game needs a feat that gives full specialization damage bonus on small arms when firing as part of a standard action(not full attack). This would be decent for Envoy's who are often otherwise dumping their move actions onto other tasks.

Wouldn't really hurt for operatives too much either.

Wouldn't help Operatives much, either, since Trick Attack is part of a Full Action.

I'm not sure why such a feat would be necessary. There's already a feat to add half your BAB to your damage; it's called Deadly Aim. That's almost as much damage as you're suggesting.

Yeah, I was just making the assumption that the 1/2 specialization to damage on small arms was some balancing mechanic to allow operatives multi-attack damage to be over the top.

Deadly aim also penalizes your to hit, so that might not be always palatable for non-full BAB classes.

If it was a feat, I'd probably consider it as a small arms user.