Sniper (5th level) playtest - PFS 1-23: The Star-Crossed Court


Gunslinger Class

Liberty's Edge

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As planned, yesterday I played this guy* through The Star-Crossed Court, for which spoilers follow. The other PCs were a leshy druid (3rd), dwarf dragon instinct barbarian (4th), a human scoundrel rogue/oracle (4th), a human stumbling style monk (4th), and a gnome armor inventor (5th).

The Build: As with my other gunslinger playtest, I went into this with a plan for how I expected his turns to go. In this case, it was basically a routine of Strike, Hide, Running Reload/Sneak. I wanted to maintain mobility as much as possible to keep from getting pinned down, even if I was hiding. With mobility in mind, I decided to stick with the musket over the arquebus. My biggest concern with the build was the lack of reliable damage; even with Firearm Ace, my minimum damage on a successful hit was only 4 pts, and I couldn't do much about that. My hope was to use attacks from hiding to increase my crit potential, making up the difference that way, along with One Shot, One Kill on the first round to offset not having the bonus from Firearm Ace. I feel like I should absolutely note that I would have 100% swapped out Risky Reload for Rogue Dedication had this not been a PFS official playtest, where archetypes are not, by my understanding, allowed.

{spoilers for PFS 1-23)

The Encounters:
The adventure is a mix of skill challenges and combat encounters. I had an absurd number of trained skills - literally everything but Nature, Religion, and Performance - though I wasn't necessarily all that good at all of them; +7 is better than nothing, but when it can be matched by a 1st level character, it's not much to write home about either. The first encounter, a choice between attempting some social checks or getting poisoned, wound up with us going the latter route. I made the save, as it happened.

The second was another social encounter, interrupted by an attack from four (!) basilisks. As my PC had already said he was on alert after the poisoning and had moved to put his back against the bar, and because the GM was being generous due to the playtest, I got to actually use One Shot, One Kill - although I was very aware that I probably shouldn't have. Nonetheless, I won initiative with a nat 20 and followed my plan. I moved to get some cover behind a table, took a shot at the nearest basilisk, and tried to Hide. The shot was a non-nat crit for a very respectable 45 damage, taking about 3/4 of the basilisk's hp in one hit, and stunned it to boot thanks to the crit specialization. The Hide check, on the other hand, was a nat 1. The basilisk was understandably annoyed with me and replied with a Petrifying Gaze; I rolled a 3 on the die for the Fort save, spent my hero point, and rolled a 2 on the die instead. So that's me slowed 1 for the combat. To be very clear: being slowed as a reload character sucks. The next round I used Running Reload to relocate to some higher ground further away from the developing melee, then took another shot for regular damage. At that point, I settled into a routine of Running Reload to get into position, then fire. Unfortunately, I didn't get another crit that combat, I did waste a turn getting a nat 1 on another attack, and the other two hits I did were not impressive: 6 damage and 12 damage respectively. It was a total of 63 damage across 4 rounds and 4 attacks. (5/7 of that damage was one attack.)

The next encounter was another social encounter followed by a combat. I was actually able to roll well enough on my Diplomacy check - after using my other hero point - to help save that encounter from going sideways, so that was something. The combat was against what was essentially an infinite level 3 elemental generator, very much in the Gauntlet arcade game style. 5 rounds of randomly spawning elementals - due to my choice of position, I mostly wound up attacking brine sharks and sod hounds. Since this was an intentional fight, more or less, I was able to take cover in a stairwell before init was rolled, so my use of One Shot, One Kill was legitimate here. On the other hand, I was an idiot and forgot to use my moderate quicksilver mutagen, despite this being the perfect place to do so. Regardless, I rolled well on initiative and went before the elementals when they appeared. My first shot was just barely a hit, but those still count. 13 damage, thanks to One Shot, One Kill. I then reloaded and hid, this time getting a nat 20. As there wasn't really any cover anywhere else in the room besides the stairwell I was crouched in, I didn't wind up moving much at all and my routine was planned to be shoot, reload, Hide - although it didn't quite work out that way. The second round, the brine shark had critted and Grabbed the rogue, so I popped out and critted it this time, for 35 damage (and a dead shark), then hid again. Round 3, with no targets all that close to me, I decided to forgo hiding to actually take two shots at the sod hound, hitting once for 10 damage and missing (by 1! man I should have used that mutagen) with the other. On round 4, another brine shark spawned, so I reloaded, shot it and reloaded, hitting for a near-max 17 damage on a regular hit. Unfortunately, the shark then bit (non-critically, but they still pack a huge punch) the rogue again, putting her back down to single digit hp. On round 5, I took another shot, landed a nat 20 crit, and did 36 damage, killing it once again. I then reloaded and fired at another sod hound, missing. Had there been a 6th round I had intended to actually try using Risky Reload, but the fight auto-ended at the end of that round. I wound up doing 111 damage across 5 rounds and 7 attacks.

The rest of the mod was more skill challenges and not especially relevant to the playtest. I'll just note that the RNG was not on our side.

After-Action Assessment: All in all, I was definitely contributing to the party, albeit not necessarily as much as I would have liked against on-level enemies. The swinginess of the damage is difficult to overstate: it was kind of insane going from 45 damage on one attack to 6 on the next. If I hadn't had the fighter-level proficiency to help trigger those crits, I would have been completely useless.

In the end, the decision to use the musket over the arquebus wasn't really borne out by the way the encounters played out - I wasn't able to leverage my mobility in either fight, and in both cases probably would have been better off with the longer range and opportunity to try to get some use out of the sniper trait. In the first fight, I could have moved to the higher ground I eventually wound up on anyway on the very first turn, dropped my tripod, and fired from well out of range of the monsters for the rest of the combat without risking getting slowed. In the second, I found myself setting up a sniper position and basically never moving anyway, but had chances to Hide and maybe get that extra point of damage. (Also, if the fatal d10 crits were good, the fatal d12 ones... Mmm. Yummy.) Whether that might apply over a wider range of encounters, I'm not sure, but it's incontrovertible here, I think.

One Shot, One Kill felt fragile and not meaningful enough. Completely losing my subclass bennie in an ambush situation would be terrible, and the bonus damage on just one shot of a combat didn't seem to completely make up for the overall weakness of having to reload and no/minimal static bonus to damage. I also didn't really feel like there was any reason to actually play like a sniper - that is, shooting from a concealed position with single, powerful shots. If I'd had access to Vital Shot and/or Ghost Shot, obviously that would be different, but 9 levels is a very long time to wait for your class to start working like it should. I was struck by how badly I wanted to take Rogue Dedication and Sneak Attacker to actually make all my hiding and sniping pay off in a meaningful sense, as well as help address the swingy damage a little.

I admit the sniper trait might have helped, but I'm not convinced +1 damage would utterly change my outlook here. I'll say this, though: I was thinking at one point about whether I might have gone for the assassin archetype in a non-PFS context, and though I decided I wouldn't (too melee focused), a sniper-trait version of Expert Backstabber would have gone a long way to making me change my approach to the character.

In the end, my experience with the sniper was passable but a whole lot less fun than my martial artist/drifter. Although I was making real contributions to the fights, I just felt unstable (ha!) and precarious, dependant on luck and GM mercy to do what I wanted to do.

*I initially forgot to give him his 5th level ancestry feat, so in addition to the listed stats he also had Natural Skill (Arcana and Occultism).


Nice round up and assessment. One Shot, One Kill definitely seems...heh...situational in that it only (maybe) works once per combat. It would appear that being able to reconfigure somehow (position, stance, Stealth status etc, heck even Initiative) might make it more fun. I can see Vital Shot and Ghost Shot attempt to make the fun, but those are as you say at 9th and 15th levels.

I know it says “Sniper” and just because it says that doesn’t mean we should expect to snipe ehbuddy allatime but still...


One Shot, One Kill could also trigger when you first manage to hide in an encounter or something to fix it not triggering at all in a combat.

I really hope there's a good build for a "Sniper" playstyle. Assassin really offers very little beyond the lvl 12 feat but a spell casting dedication grants access to true strike which could help make every shot count.

Shattering Shot looks neat since it lets throw a bomb 80ft. with an arquebus, and do damage for 15 feet beyond that. Low damage OTOH.

Scarab Sages

Honestly, the ability for a hidden sniper to study/take aim on a target and just get true strike without needing a spell feels like it would be very thematic and help the Way a lot more than an extra bit of damage maybe once a fight. It could be limited by frequency or something if needed (since true strike is very powerful). Or if grit were brought back as a focus point ability, this would make sense for that as well.

Liberty's Edge

Investigator multiclass ;-)

Scarab Sages

That's my plan. :) Or rather, an Investigator using a gun either with or without whatever the eventual Gunslinger Dedication looks like.


Formulating a build I'd probably multiclass gunslinger into bard for true strike and inspire courage.

Liberty's Edge

Investigator using guns + Bard MC.

Why even bother with the Gunslinger chassis TBH ?

I do not mean to sound belligerent or antagonistic here. But as things stand, what does the class by itself brings ?


The Raven Black wrote:

Investigator using guns + Bard MC.

Why even bother with the Gunslinger chassis TBH ?

I do not mean to sound belligerent or antagonistic here. But as things stand, what does the class by itself brings ?

Better scaling proficiency, dexterity class score, better action economy with guns.

Liberty's Edge

Schreckstoff wrote:
The Raven Black wrote:

Why even bother with the Gunslinger chassis TBH ?

I do not mean to sound belligerent or antagonistic here. But as things stand, what does the class by itself brings ?

Better scaling proficiency

It's going to be very very difficult to ignore this part. Especially since firearms are a critfisher's weapon, the fighter-level proficiency is kind of a big deal.

Liberty's Edge

Shisumo wrote:
Schreckstoff wrote:
The Raven Black wrote:

Why even bother with the Gunslinger chassis TBH ?

I do not mean to sound belligerent or antagonistic here. But as things stand, what does the class by itself brings ?

Better scaling proficiency
It's going to be very very difficult to ignore this part. Especially since firearms are a critfisher's weapon, the fighter-level proficiency is kind of a big deal.

I believe that the current design was indeed done around this : fatal + fighter-proficiency to crit more often.

It does not feel very satisfying if you do not want to play a crit-fishing Gunslinger or if you want to use a gun with another class that will have even less crit-fishing support.


I still see a lot of “dedications”/MC to shore up the base chassis. That doesn’t feel like the gunslinger is well formed on its own.


OCEANSHIELDWOLPF 2.0 wrote:
I still see a lot of “dedications”/MC to shore up the base chassis. That doesn’t feel like the gunslinger is well formed on its own.

Chassis looks pretty strong but the feats are lacklustre, particularly for the 1 shot per round sniping style, beyond the must haves.

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