Why play a melee soldier when you can just shoot?

[Neuromancer]

Richter Harding wrote:

So now that the game has had a few years I keep noticing, why are ranged

weapons getting so many toys?

From gunner harness to bipod, You don't have to invest in strength to use heavy weapons anymore wich was their only downside, and these are stupid cheap.

Heavy Gunner harnass combined with a bipod and sniper atack allow you to make your full attacks with no penalty to hit.

Melee needs to run into range and take fire and then when they get to full attack, they will do less damage than ranged just because they have less chance to hit?

If you just hunker down with a heavy weapon and a gunner harnass, you can pump all other stats, ending with better survivability and better damage.

'But you are bad in melee!'
Add an operative weapon bayonet and there you go, no longer defenseless.

Seriously? What gives?

Don't think bipod and sling would stack ae front grip might

[Claxon]

Dracomicron wrote:

Claxon wrote:

So I didn't know Qi Adept existed, and now I want to make a Vesk Armor Storm soldier that picks up Qi Adept as their secondary style.

I'm not sure to what extent Qi Adept works with Hammer Fist (probably does not work), but it should be fine with Natural Weapons.

Would have been awesome for Zoggy, but is sadly not legal in Society.

I think the Qi Adept Plasma Blast (which is what I'm interested in) works fine with Hammer Fist, as it modifies the damage of your unarmed strike.

What doesn't stack is the vesk natural attack and Hammer fist.

But from what I recall the vesk natural attack and hammer fist alternate back and forth for better damage.

Or maybe I'm thinking ring of fangs.

[Dracomicron]

Claxon wrote:

I think the Qi Adept Plasma Blast (which is what I'm interested in) works fine with Hammer Fist, as it modifies the damage of your unarmed strike.

It does not. Hammer Fist is not an unarmed strike. Your fist turns into a battle glove, which is a weapon, and thus no longer an unarmed strike.

Quote:

But from what I recall the vesk natural attack and hammer fist alternate back and forth for better damage.

You are correct. Hammer Fist starts off as better, gets superseded by Natural Weapons level 4 or so, and then gets better again around 10th level.

I end up using Natural Weapons anyway, because it allows me to use Unarmed Mauler for the Wound critical. With Qi Adept, at level 9, it would be nice to not have to rely on my Holy Called Throwing Opportunistic Yellow Star Nova Lance for ranged damage, but the Reach is nice anyway.

[Claxon]

Dracomicron wrote:

Claxon wrote:

I think the Qi Adept Plasma Blast (which is what I'm interested in) works fine with Hammer Fist, as it modifies the damage of your unarmed strike.

It does not. Hammer Fist is not an unarmed strike. Your fist turns into a battle glove, which is a weapon, and thus no longer an unarmed strike.

Quote:

But from what I recall the vesk natural attack and hammer fist alternate back and forth for better damage.

You are correct. Hammer Fist starts off as better, gets superseded by Natural Weapons level 4 or so, and then gets better again around 10th level.

I end up using Natural Weapons anyway, because it allows me to use Unarmed Mauler for the Wound critical. With Qi Adept, at level 9, it would be nice to not have to rely on my Holy Called Throwing Opportunistic Yellow Star Nova Lance for ranged damage, but the Reach is nice anyway.

I disagree.

The ability says:

Quote:

You treat any unarmed attack you make while wearing heavy or powered armor as being made with a battleglove (see page 187) with an item level equal to or lower than your soldier level, and you calculate damage for these attacks as if you had the melee striker gear boost (see page 112).

When I read that, it doesn't say (to me) it stop being an unarmed strike. It just says you treat it as being made with a battleglove. Which doesn't have a clear meaning beyond it changes your damage.

I'm not saying I'm right, or you're wrong. Both interpretations could be valid. It seems really sad to give this ability that is supposed to enhance unarmed strikes, but not allow it to work with other things that support unarmed strikes, like Qi Adept. It seems like they should work together as two soldier fighting styles.

[Outatime1985]

I would treat the Plasma Blast as how you would for a normal melee attack in my case

[HammerJack]

Outatime1985 wrote:

I would treat the Plasma Blast as how you would for a normal melee attack in my case

What do you mean? Treat Plama Blast as a melee attack in what way? We know that it is a ranged attack.

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs42uah?COM-Qi-Adept-Unarmed-Combat#9

[BigNorseWolf]

Claxon wrote:

When I read that, it doesn't say (to me) it stop being an unarmed strike

It absolutely does, because you cannot treat something as both an unarmed strike and an attack with a hammerglove.

[caps]

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Claxon wrote:

When I read that, it doesn't say (to me) it stop being an unarmed strike

It absolutely does, because you cannot treat something as both an unarmed strike and an attack with a hammerglove.

You can't? Why not?

[Dracomicron]

caps wrote:

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Claxon wrote:

When I read that, it doesn't say (to me) it stop being an unarmed strike

It absolutely does, because you cannot treat something as both an unarmed strike and an attack with a hammerglove.

You can't? Why not?

If the attack uses the rules for a Battle Glove, it's not using the rules for an Unarmed Strike. Unarmed Strike riders don't hop on.

[BigNorseWolf]

caps wrote:

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Claxon wrote:

When I read that, it doesn't say (to me) it stop being an unarmed strike

It absolutely does, because you cannot treat something as both an unarmed strike and an attack with a hammerglove.

You can't? Why not?

What is the damage for an unarmed strike power battleglove ?

Trying to treat it as two different things will give you contradictory answers every time those two things are different.

[Pantshandshake]

These unarmed attacks don’t benefit from other abilities that apply specifically to unarmed attacks (such as the Improved Unarmed Strike feat).

So here's the last line of Hammer Fist. My presumption is that arguments about battlegloves and unarmed vs armed vs ranged melee attacks are all moot, since Plasma Blast is most certainly an ability that applies specifically to unarmed attacks.

Aside from that, the other two Armor Storm abilities (bonus land speed or a flight speed) wouldn't work with power armor anyway. Unless you don't want to wear power armor, but then why go Armor Storm?

[HammerJack]

For bullrush plus melee damage into AoO shenanigans?

[Claxon]

Pantshandshake wrote:

Aside from that, the other two Armor Storm Qi Adept abilities (bonus land speed or a flight speed) wouldn't work with power armor anyway. Unless you don't want to wear power armor, but then why go Armor Storm?

I think you meant to write Qi Adept here, but my reasoning would be that 30ft range on unarmed strikes is enough.

And you wouldn't get to select more options until 17th level*. Depending on what adventure path you're playing or if you're playing in SFS you might never reach beyond 17th level (or at least not much beyond) that it might be worth it.

*Secondary style is counted at level -8 so if you take Qi Adept as a secondary you gain the ability to add one option at level 13 and two options at level 17.

However, I agree that the line in Hammerfist makes it clear that regardless of whether or not Hammerfist counts as an unarmed strike, you couldn't augment an unarmed strike with both Plasma Blast and Hammerfist due to Hammerfist's rules.

[Dracomicron]

Pantshandshake wrote:

Unless you don't want to wear power armor, but then why go Armor Storm?

There are two basic ways of doing Armor Storm. First is to go all-in on Hammer Fist by maxing out Strength but not using power armor (as the armor is weaker than you until very high levels). Second is to have just enough Strength to use power armor and to crank Dexterity in order to use all those armor-mounted guns.

Both are quite valid. The other abilities in Armor Storm are reasonably agnostic between the two styles (Mobile Army benefits power armor more, but at least it also applies to Hammer Fist).

Qi Adept would have been great for my vesk armor storm soldier, because he alternates between Hammer Fist and Natural Weapons (the latter of which works with Plasma Blast).

[Pantshandshake]

I guess its just a personal preference thing, it just seems really odd to me to go Armor Storm and then eschew power armor.

On the other hand, something I just thought of.

We know that IUS interacts with a power armor's unarmed attack. It's probably not what Paizo intended, but it kind of seems like a power armor's unarmed attack would also interact with Plasma Blast. From the brief research (here, research equals 'looking at a couple power armor's unarmed damage dice') I did, it kind of looks like a similar "Sometimes the armor has higher damage dice, sometimes not" situation that we get with natural weapons/hammer fist, etc.

[Dracomicron]

Pantshandshake wrote:

I guess its just a personal preference thing, it just seems really odd to me to go Armor Storm and then eschew power armor.

Yes, especially since Armor Storm's abilities are explicitly based on Heinlein's Starship Troopers, which (contrary to the movie) is about power armor jockeys. But Starfinder heavy armor is pretty close.

I had thought about the Qi Adept Plasma Blast/Power Armor Unarmed Strike thing, but I decided that it needed further review. Have to check the exact wording on all the rulings.

[Pantshandshake]

The words Paizo uses when discussing Power Armor is very Heinlein, but in practice the armor behaves a little closer to the armor in Armor by John Steakley.

And, it seems like it works, but its totally a thing I'd expect a GM to call me a rules lawyer for trying to argue and not allowing it in-game.