Heavy Bipod + Deadly Aim

[Scottybobotti]

My soldier uses the sharpshooter fighting style and likes to set up his heavy bipod and full attack with his rifle. Any thoughts on how efficient it would be to full attack with Deadly Aim since with the bipod set up the penalty would be -4 as opposed to -6. Is the trade off in damage worth it as opposed to full attacking at a -2 penalty?

[jabberwoky]

It depends on the character's Base Attack Bonus (or BAB).

Assuming that you have a level 2 Soldier, you have +2 BAB, meaning you take an additional -2 penalty to attack to deal an additional +1 to damage when you use Deadly Aim.

At level 5, your Soldier has +5 BAB, meaning you take a -2 penalty to deal an additional +2 damage when you use Deadly Aim. However, by level 5 you can make three attacks on a full attack due to your Focus Fire ability.

By level 13, your soldier has +13 BAB, meaning you take a -2 penalty to deal an additional +6 damage when you use Deadly Aim. Also, assuming you are using Focus Fire, each attack against the first target deals an additional 2d6 damage.

As your BAB increases, Deadly Aim becomes more valuable. I believe that Deadly Aim is a perfectly good feat for a Sharpshooter-style Soldier. However, Deadly Aim isn't really worth it at early levels, but since it's a combat feat, you can easily pick it up later as a bonus feat.

[Dracomicron]

jabberwoky wrote:

At level 5, your Soldier has +5 BAB, meaning you take a -2 penalty to deal an additional +2 damage when you use Deadly Aim. However, by level 5 you can make three attacks on a full attack due to your Focus Fire ability.

Ah, Focus Fire doesn't give you any extra shots. Soldier's Onslaught does.

Focus Fire (Ex) 5th Level
When you make a full attack with a ranged weapon, you can make both attacks with a –3 penalty instead of a –4 penalty as long as they both target the same creature. If your first attack kills or knocks out the target, you can instead make the second attack against a different creature at a –4 penalty. Once you have the soldier’s onslaught class feature, you can use this ability with it, making three attacks against the same creature at a –5 penalty; if your first or second attack kills or knocks out your target, you can make your remaining attacks against a different creature at a –6 penalty.

SOLDIER’S ONSLAUGHT (EX) 11TH LEVEL
When you make a full attack, you can make up to three attacks instead of two attacks. You take a –6 penalty to these attacks instead of a –4 penalty.

So the Focus Fire style feature is modified slightly by having the 11th level class feature.

[Cellion]

Here's some calculations at 12th level

Assume 3d8 artillery laser - full attacking:
<assume we've optimized enough that we have +21 to hit vs. EAC>
Base chance to hit is 0.75 against a hypothetical equal-level enemy's EAC.
With Focus Fire and a heavy bipod, the full attack penalty is -3.
The damage per hit for your laser is 25.5 F

No Deadly Aim: 25.5 x 0.65 * 3 = 49.73
Deadly Aim: 31.5 x 0.55 * 3 = 51.98

So a modest improvement in damage. Whether this stays true for you depends on a lot of factors - but the broad strokes are that if you have high accuracy (you're attacking EAC, you have get 'em, etc) Deadly Aim gets better, and if you have high damage deadly aim gets worse. One big break point for the sharpshooter soldier is 13th, because once you're dealing 2d6 bonus damage per attack, deadly aim falls behind when full attacking, almost no matter how many accuracy buffs you stack.

----
TL;DR: Don't bother. Even when its good, it doesn't improve your damage more than marginally.

[HammerJack]

The one other caveat that goes with that is that deadly aim is better when your weapon is worse. So you will get a bit more mileage out of it when you need to use one of your backup weapons, whether it's to get around damage immunity, or because you needed to sneak a holdout pistol into somewhere.

[Dracomicron]

Deadly Aim mostly shines for grenades and other Explosive weapons that attack an AC 5 map vertices.

[Cellion]

Dracomicron wrote:

Deadly Aim mostly shines for grenades and other Explosive weapons that attack an AC 5 map vertices.

For those weapons, the -2 attack roll penalty applies to the Reflex save. Deadly aim is definitely better for those weapons, but its still not great as a result.

[HammerJack]

Yeah, I'm not sure I would say it "shines" with explode weapons, except for cases like the all Strength soldier who carries an explode weapon in case he needs a ranged option, and would have an extremely low save DC, anyway.

[Scottybobotti]

Everybody made good points. My character is not min/maxed and I don't plan on leveling him that way. He's going to probably stick with the acid dart rifle line all the way to the end if he can just for RP reasons. If deadly aim gives me just a little boost in damage per attack I'm fine with it. I've seen so many times in sessions I've played in a 1 point boost making the difference in all kinds of situations. So while my character is not completely optimized I'd like to see if I can optimize him based on the concept I put together for him.

[jabberwoky]

Dracomicron wrote:

Ah, Focus Fire doesn't give you any extra shots. Soldier's Onslaught does.

My mistake. Thank you for the correction.