If the actual purpose is to let characters use scatter weapons in melee range, giving resistance to splash damage seems like a really big hammer to do that with.
How about just ruling that shooting someone point-blank with a scatter weapon excludes yourself from the blast area. You might even make the distinction between a shotgun-stye scatter weapon and an explosive-rounds-style scatter weapon, where if you are using explosive rounds then you don't exclude yourself from the blast area.
I'd rather make it a character option than change the rules on scatter.
Odd. I look at the rules for scatter and go, 'Huh? How are you going to hit yourself when you shoot someone else with a shotgun?' So that is what I would fix.
You think a class feat would be too much? Splash damage almost never comes up so it might be undertuned.
Yeah, paying a class feat for the ability to ignore 1-3 points of splash damage from a scatter weapon seems really underpowered.
Having a class feat that lets you resist splash damage in general would be about right, but also seems like it is something that is going to have a lot more of an effect on the character and the game in general than anticipated. It would apply to scatter weapons that other characters are shooting in your direction as well as alchemical bombs and a few other things.
I mean, it is a class that primarily uses smoothbore flintlock gunpowder weapons, which where prone to inflicting powder burn or straight up exploding.
Having a feat that gives them a small amount of resistance to splash damage (developed from repeated powder burn and blowback mishaps) is pretty thematic for the class, so it can be thematically about that while stealthily being there to enable the use of scatter weapons.
