Fixing the Fusillade feat

[Mortagon]

I've been playing a Kasatha gunsliner and my entire concept was based around the fusillade feat since I thought it seemed so cool, but since starting to play I've been able to use it once having three enemies in my area of effect and only hitting one and nearly hitting one of my allies in the process.

I've found that this feat is extremely underwhelming IMO and my GM agrees, but I have yet to find a way to balance the feat without making it to complicated. have anyone here found a way to make this feat a bit more usable?

Thanks

[BigNorseWolf]

Abadarcorp's weapon manufacturer wing has a weapon that will exclude allies from its area... would probably work if you put it on all your pistols.

[Mortagon]

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Abadarcorp's weapon manufacturer wing has a weapon that will exclude allies from its area... would probably work if you put it on all your pistols.

Thanks. Actually that's not a huge problem anymore since our melee pc's has taken a feat that allows them to be excluded in my attacks and I'm picking up a feat from a 3rd party book that allows me to do the same, but I'll look into it as an alternative. What level are those pistols?

Do you know of any way to get more range on your guns without having to cash out a fortune? I find that most pistols have an extremely limited range and combined with the ridiculous ammo expenditure it's very rare to get more than one enemy in a cone.

Drawbacks of using the fusillade feat:

-Halve the range
-Spend all ammo
-Can't crit
-Chance to hit allies
-4 penalty to hit
-Have to spend a full action
-Have to use 4 identical pistols

Benefits

Target all enemies in a cone

I just can't see how this is a good tradeoff.

[BigNorseWolf]

Mortagon wrote:

Thanks. Actually that's not a huge problem anymore since our melee pc's has taken a feat that allows them to be excluded in my attacks and I'm picking up a feat from a 3rd party book that allows me to do the same, but I'll look into it as an alternative. What level are those pistols?

Its a manufacturer, so its an add on to any pistol you buy. You pay more (usually 10% more) and they have a very minor/niche additional effect.

Quote:

Do you know of any way to get more range on your guns without having to cash out a fortune? I find that most pistols have an extremely limited range and combined with the ridiculous ammo expenditure it's very rare to get more than one enemy in a cone.

Sites and scopes but those won't help your fusilade i think.

Drawbacks of using the fusillade feat:

Quote:

I just can't see how this is a good tradeoff.

maybe against the swarm?

[Alangriffith]

Mortagon wrote:

Do you know of any way to get more range on your guns without having to cash out a fortune? I find that most pistols have an extremely limited range and combined with the ridiculous ammo expenditure it's very rare to get more than one enemy in a cone.

-Halve the range

You're aware automatic mode halves the range increment, not the range, right?

So if you use any main book laser pistol it has a range increment of at least 80, halved to 40. So you can do an 80 or 120ft cone, you just take a -2 to hit on targets outside the 40ft range, and -4 to those at 80-120. It's a pretty steep penalty with your existing -4 for automatic on top, but it gets you a lot of shots if there are, say 10 targets there (and you definitely have enough ammo for 10 targets, and have to use it all up anyway).

To me the main issue would be that you need your GM to habitually throw lots of enemies at you in one encounter, as you'd need at least 4, preferably more, enemies in your cone for it to be worthwhile. But I find it hard to see why you couldn't be able to get most of the encounter in your cone (unless using sonic or flame pistols, which have truly terrible range).

***

In terms of making the fusillade feat better, the obvious way I'd do it would be to add the rule that if you are spending more than twice as much ammo as you would need for a normal automatic shot (which you almost always would be, unless you go for low capacity superpistols in an attempt to powergame), you get two attacks on each enemy in the cone instead of one, still with the -4 for automatic fire and any range penalty. That works out the same as a full attack on each enemy, without crit, and you're using up all your ammo and effectively missing the next turn to reload or switch weapons (plus your weapons need to be identical so will be lower level than those of the other PCs due to the quadruple cost). Doesn't seem overpowered to me against multiple weak enemies (since a melee guy with cleave can take down 2 or 3 of those in a fullround anyway, or grenades can be used), and against multiple stronger enemies the damage from 2 hits with underlevelled smallarms won't put them down anyway.

Against a single target this upgraded fusillade is still far worse than a normal full attack, so you can't use it as a bosskiller, just for crowd control.

[Pantshandshake]

Alangriffith wrote:

Mortagon wrote:

Do you know of any way to get more range on your guns without having to cash out a fortune? I find that most pistols have an extremely limited range and combined with the ridiculous ammo expenditure it's very rare to get more than one enemy in a cone.

-Halve the range

You're aware automatic mode halves the range increment, not the range, right?

Incorrect.

Automatic:
When you make a full attack with a weapon in automatic mode, you can attack in a cone with a range of half the weapon’s range increment.

[gnoams]

Automatic is like whirlwind attack from pathfinder, yeah there's instances where it is the best ability to use, but those instances are going to be rare to never in a standard campaign. Not only do you need to have a lot of low level enemies, but they all need to be bunched up in the right formation for the ability to be better than just a normal full attack.

[Alangriffith]

Pantshandshake wrote:

Alangriffith wrote:

Mortagon wrote:

Do you know of any way to get more range on your guns without having to cash out a fortune? I find that most pistols have an extremely limited range and combined with the ridiculous ammo expenditure it's very rare to get more than one enemy in a cone.

-Halve the range

You're aware automatic mode halves the range increment, not the range, right?

Incorrect.

Automatic:
When you make a full attack with a weapon in automatic mode, you can attack in a cone with a range of half the weapon’s range increment.

Well page 170 says "range: the weapons range increment" but I guess that's only for reading the weapon tables, not the special rules.

Okay then, I stand corrected. I also amend my houserule suggestion for fusillade to also make the cone range into range increment, since you're making rolls to hit anyway and can apply the usual increment penalties. That would also make the far shot feat useful for this build.

I really have no idea why this feat is so weak - are there uber-smallarms in the Armoury or APs somewhere that could be used to abuse it? Would it somehow stack with Trick attack or something weird?

[Garretmander]

Nope, fusillade is just not that great of an option.

[Pantshandshake]

You'll get no argument from me that the feat isn't particularly good.

As to why, my best guess is that whoever wrote didn't have a firm grasp on the mechanics of Starfinder, and it seemed a lot better in their head than on paper.

Automatic, as a weapon property, is also something I feel is much more highly valued (in terms of credit cost and damage loss) by the Starfinder dev team than by actual players. I mean, I love the idea of going all rock'n'roll with an automatic heavy laser weapon, but numbers-wise it seems preeeeety meh.

[Mortagon]

I feel that combining some of the ideas here allowing the attack to hit an enemy multiple times, increasing the range depending on the range increment with appropriate penalties and allowing the feat to avoid hitting enemies would make the feat more viable, but I still think it's rather circumstancial.

I also dislike that you have to wield four identical pistols. I understand why they did it but it doesn't seem to difficult to just allow the character to choose which weapon to target each creature as long as he divides the different weapons evenly or roll randomly to see which weapon hits a target.

Another solution is to roll fixed damage say 1D6 plus 1D6 for every 2 levels of the weapons used and and allow each target to roll a reflex save for half damage.

Just some ideas I had.

[Metaphysician]

I definitely agree that Automatic seems to be way overvalued by the designers. I mean, its nice, but I'm not at all sure that "one -4 attack against every target in a cone, at high ammo cost" is any more useful than "two -4 attacks against whoever you choose, possibly the same person, at normal ammo cost". Nice if you are facing a ton of low power mooks, but odds are *someone* in the party is going to have an area attack that would do just as well if not better.