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So watching the "Head Shot the Rot" it was interesting to see the new guns in play...the one thing I thought was weird was the "Scatter" Property.
http://2e.aonprd.com/Traits.aspx?ID=413
Is it really meant to hit the person firing the gun? In several cases Zakzak and Booker were effected by there own shot. I read the property it seems like it should but it felt weird. Not being able to blast zombies adjacent seemed a little strange. I suppose ricocheting shot could bounce back but it felt more like a bomb then gunfire.
Am I reading that right?
Consider: primitive firearms have not that much power in their bullets then modern, on top of that there are many more enemies who are naturally armored or have metal plating or other reinforced materials around
so hitting yourself with a blunderbuss is probably riccochet
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Blowback of the hot gasses and overpressure that come out of the barrel and don't have anywhere to go because there is an enemy in front of you maybe?
A lot of rocket launchers can cause you serious injury if you fire them from inside an enclosed structure, just from the pressure wave and hot gasses that comes out the back end of a launcher.
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Scatter is meant to represent the spread of a weapon like a blunderbuss or a hand cannon. If you fire at someone 20ft away and have a Scatter 5ft weapon, everyone within 5 feet of the target would receive 1 splash damage. This is a simplification to how complicated Scatter weapons were in 1e, and this way is much easier to run. It just happens that in the One Shot, there wasn't much room to move around and it's common that you would be adjacent to the enemies, or within the 10ft Scatter range of the Dwarven Scattergun.
I'm definitely going to be ignoring it at my table. The person interested in scatter guns wanted scatter guns for a more up close character and they're not a fan of shooting themselves in the foot for ... playing a shotgun style character like an archetypal shotgun style character.
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I mean, it is just 1 damage per damage die?
From looking at the gun weapon traits it seems like scatter has been drastically overvalued by designers
Some of the guns with it look really bad. They still keep relatively low damage die and then do a tiny amount of scatter
I started listening to the head-shot as I was considering running it. But I couldn’t get over how upset I would be if I drew the goblin with the terrible terrible gun. Sure it is funny but that only goes so far
Now I listened to this too late in the evening and dozed off so I don’t know if I missed something about the goblin build or not but the scatter guns seem poor
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It's not really that much damage. When I GMed the adventure, the total amount of damage dealt to the party from Scatter was probably 10 damage. Meanwhile enemies were hitting for 10 per hit. It's chip damage to those around the target, but the main benefit I see of it is the fact it triggers Swarm Weakness, or to deal the chip damage to large groups of enemies. It's not like an Alchemist who does 4+ splash even on a miss. You have to hit to trigger Scatter, and then it caps out at 4 damage at level 19.
The only real use I could find for it has been using it with Alchemical Shot to triggers weaknesses on several enemies at once. Otherwise its just a bit of chip damage. Not the worst trait in the world, certainly better than something like backstabber or disarm.
Designer
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From looking at the gun weapon traits it seems like scatter has been drastically overvalued by designers
Some of the guns with it look really bad. They still keep relatively low damage die and then do a tiny amount of scatter
I started listening to the head-shot as I was considering running it. But I couldn’t get over how upset I would be if I drew the goblin with the terrible terrible gun. Sure it is funny but that only goes so far
Actors play for scenes, not for mechanical effectiveness. If he'd chosen slashing for his spoon gun the scatter would have triggered the zombie weaknesses and he could have easily cleared several of those encounters himself. The GM also missed that the spoon gun is a hand cannon, which can change its damage type every time it's reloaded instead of as a separate Interact action (which meant Zakzak lost a lot of actions and was disincentivized from doing the thing he's supposed to do, try out damage types until he sees a wave of zombies collapse when he chooses slashing).
Scatter also applies to the target of the hit and scales with striking runes, meaning every scatter weapon has roughly the same damage profile as a weapon one die size larger in addition to doing (potentially weakness-triggering) chip damage in the area.
From looking at the gun weapon traits it seems like scatter has been drastically overvalued by designers
Some of the guns with it look really bad. They still keep relatively low damage die and then do a tiny amount of scatter
I started listening to the head-shot as I was considering running it. But I couldn’t get over how upset I would be if I drew the goblin with the terrible terrible gun. Sure it is funny but that only goes so far
Actors play for scenes, not for mechanical effectiveness. If he'd chosen slashing for his spoon gun the scatter would have triggered the zombie weaknesses and he could have easily cleared several of those encounters himself. The GM also missed that the spoon gun is a hand cannon, which can change its damage type every time it's reloaded instead of as a separate Interact action (which meant Zakzak lost a lot of actions and was disincentivized from doing the thing he's supposed to do, try out damage types until he sees a wave of zombies collapse when he chooses slashing).
Scatter also applies to the target of the hit and scales with striking runes, meaning every scatter weapon has roughly the same damage profile as a weapon one die size larger in addition to doing (potentially weakness-triggering) chip damage in the area.
Oooo I didn't realize the splash hits the target too! I'm definitely down for a blunderbuss dwarf now.
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Yeah, the Dwarven Scattergun in particular is a beast, boasting the highest damage of any firearm due to Kickback and Scatter on the same weapon.
...of course, you'd better be ready for friendly fire with it, but eh.
I like it!
From looking at the gun weapon traits it seems like scatter has been drastically overvalued by designers
Some of the guns with it look really bad. They still keep relatively low damage die and then do a tiny amount of scatter
I started listening to the head-shot as I was considering running it. But I couldn’t get over how upset I would be if I drew the goblin with the terrible terrible gun. Sure it is funny but that only goes so far
Actors play for scenes, not for mechanical effectiveness. If he'd chosen slashing for his spoon gun the scatter would have triggered the zombie weaknesses and he could have easily cleared several of those encounters himself. The GM also missed that the spoon gun is a hand cannon, which can change its damage type every time it's reloaded instead of as a separate Interact action (which meant Zakzak lost a lot of actions and was disincentivized from doing the thing he's supposed to do, try out damage types until he sees a wave of zombies collapse when he chooses slashing).
Scatter also applies to the target of the hit and scales with striking runes, meaning every scatter weapon has roughly the same damage profile as a weapon one die size larger in addition to doing (potentially weakness-triggering) chip damage in the area.
Thanks. I thought there must have been some things I was missing. The scatter damaging the original target being the obvious one but also the weakness trigger in this particular adventure
Could also synergise with a ruffian dishing out weakness but that is niche
The alchemical shot thing seems fun . Not least because the idea of a goblin firing cutlery at a fire bomb is so delightfully absurd to me