Long air repeater.

[aobst128]

Have we figured out of this thing is supposed to be 2 handed?

[Thezzaruz]

I'd say yes because of logics.

And also if you look at the description of the regular Air Repeter it says; "The air repeater and its longer-ranged, two-handed variant are still..." which would indicate that the "Hands: 1" of the Long Air Repeater is an error. But some errata wouldn't go amiss.

[aobst128]

I wonder if that's the only thing wrong with the text. We'll have to wait for the errata looks like

[Michael Sayre]

Thezzaruz wrote:

I'd say yes because of logics.

And also if you look at the description of the regular Air Repeter it says; "The air repeater and its longer-ranged, two-handed variant are still..." which would indicate that the "Hands: 1" of the Long Air Repeater is an error. But some errata wouldn't go amiss.

And the long air repeater refers to its one-handed variant, yes. The long air repeater is a two-handed weapon.

[Onkonk]

Hmm, interesting that the damage does not increase and it loses a trait going from 1h to 2h.

You gain 2 more ammo and 30ft. more range for needing both hands.

For melee weapon such a change usually gives you two damage dice increases and even for other guns you gain one damage dice increase for it (dueling pistol vs arquebus).

[aobst128]

Onkonk wrote:

Hmm, interesting that the damage does not increase and it loses a trait going from 1h to 2h.

You gain 2 more ammo and 30ft. more range for needing both hands.

For melee weapon such a change usually gives you two damage dice increases and even for other guns you gain one damage dice increase for it (dueling pistol vs arquebus).

Yeah, it's strange. I guess since it's basically the same propulsion and ammunition as a regular air repeater, it does the same damage. I do wonder where a d6 2 handed repeating weapon is. It would fill out the niche of the repeating trait with a martial option. Only simple and advanced weapons have the trait aside from the repeating heavy crossbow. Only counts for it's limited shots though.

[Michael Sayre]

Onkonk wrote:

Hmm, interesting that the damage does not increase and it loses a trait going from 1h to 2h.

You gain 2 more ammo and 30ft. more range for needing both hands.

For melee weapon such a change usually gives you two damage dice increases and even for other guns you gain one damage dice increase for it (dueling pistol vs arquebus).

Dueling pistol and arquebus are both martial weapons with more wiggle room in their weapon budget. Agile is also a weird trait in that it's only intended for 1-handed Light Bulk weapons and should never appear on any other type of weapon.

Melee weapons can't manipulate action economy the way ranged weapons can.

You need to consider the place a weapon holds from a holistic perspective; a dueling pistol isn't just a die size lower than the arquebus because of the 1 to 2 hand switch (though that's a factor), it's also got a net positive trait (concealable) while the arquebus has a net zero trait (kickback); kickback gives you functionally the same benefits as propulsive, with the main mechanical difference being that propulsive can impose a damage penalty if you don't meet the Strength threshold while kickback imposes an action penalty in the form of needing to deploy a tripod (or an attack roll penalty which may end up being worse over the course of several rounds than the action penalty.)

So action economy is the real balance point between an air repeater and a long air repeater. In a standard combat, your total contributions can be broken down pretty concisely into an efficiency matrix: what did you do, and how many actions did it cost the party (not you! that's a very important distinction) for you to do that?

So if we take a ranger and give him either an air repeater or a long air repeater in a PC-initiated combat, what might that look like?
****

"Short" Air Repeater

Round 1) Our ranger has located their tracked foe and begins combat. For the sake of normalizing our comparisons, we assume the ranger enters combat with Hunt Prey active since they were tracking in this scenario.
The ranger must close to within 30 feet of the opponent to initiate combat, so he starts out 30 feet away from our ogre. His actions are-
Strike > Strike > Take Cover (4 pellets remaining)

Ogre Warrior-

Stride, Trip, Strike.

Round 2) This already sucks, and now we're trapped in a loop that favors the ogre.
Stand > Stride > Strike (3 rounds remaining)

***
So now our air repeater ranger is in a sucky situation. They can't get a safe distance from the ogre without giving up an attack entirely, and they're already down to 1/2 their magazine after having dealt some permutation of 3d4 damage. What about the long air repeater character in the exact same circumstances?
***
Long Air Repeater

Round 1) Our ranger initiates combat from 60 feet away thanks to his longer range.
Strike > Strike > Stride (now 85 feet away from ogre, 6/8 rounds remaining)

Ogre-
Stride (60 feet away), Stride (35 feet away), throw javelin (penalty to attack roll for still being just out of range)

Round 2) Our ranger realizes that as long as he has open ground, the ogre can never beat him.
Stride > Strike > Strike (now 60 feet away from ogre, 4 rounds remaining, some permutation of 4d4 damage, 4/8 rounds remaining in magazine)

***

So in a field situation the advantages of the long air repeater over the air repeater aren't in the damage dice or the weapon traits, they're in the action economy you gain. Having double the range and two extra rounds means that just within the first two rounds of combat we have the potential to have dealt more damage, taken little to none compared to our unfortunate one-hander ranger, and have the ability to kite into perpetuity with more rounds left in the chamber until we have to reload. And the one-hander going dualies doesn't really meaningfully change that; the only piece of the above equation that would change is how many rounds the character still had available and how much money they spent before ending up in that situation. They'll also have to pay back the advantage they gained early on by having more rounds through the dualies if they need to reload, since they'll need to take a feat or burn actions holstering one of their weapons at a time to reload.

There's a ton of permutations that could happen, but a weapon should be balanced to the performance ceiling otherwise it isn't balanced at all, and the ceiling here is pretty straightforward- can the player control the engagement distance? Whenever that answer is yes, the long air repeater offers strictly better action economy on two different axes, which equates to more damage dealt and less damage taken (there's also a point in time where less damage taken also converts into more damage dealt, that being when the action economy required to keep you alive could be used to continue DPR on the enemy but is instead spent keeping you functioning.)

[aobst128]

Michael Sayre wrote:

Onkonk wrote:

Hmm, interesting that the damage does not increase and it loses a trait going from 1h to 2h.

You gain 2 more ammo and 30ft. more range for needing both hands.

For melee weapon such a change usually gives you two damage dice increases and even for other guns you gain one damage dice increase for it (dueling pistol vs arquebus).

Dueling pistol and arquebus are both martial weapons with more wiggle room in their weapon budget. Agile is also a weird trait in that it's only intended for 1-handed Light Bulk weapons and should never appear on any other type of weapon.

Melee weapons can't manipulate action economy the way ranged weapons can.

You need to consider the place a weapon holds from a holistic perspective; a dueling pistol isn't just a die size lower than the arquebus because of the 1 to 2 hand switch (though that's a factor), it's also got a net positive trait (concealable) while the arquebus has a net zero trait (kickback); kickback gives you functionally the same benefits as propulsive, with the main mechanical difference being that propulsive can impose a damage penalty if you don't meet the Strength threshold while kickback imposes an action penalty in the form of needing to deploy a tripod (or an attack roll penalty which may end up being worse over the course of several rounds than the action penalty.)

So action economy is the real balance point between an air repeater and a long air repeater. In a standard combat, your total contributions can be broken down pretty concisely into an efficiency matrix: what did you do, and how many actions did it cost the party (not you! that's a very important distinction) for you to do that?

So if we take a ranger and give him either an air repeater or a long air repeater in a PC-initiated combat, what might that look like?
****

"Short" Air Repeater

Round 1) Our ranger has located their tracked foe and begins combat. For the sake of normalizing our comparisons, we assume the ranger enters combat with Hunt...

You might have forgotten that hunt prey effectively doubles your first range increment. So the second scenario is doable with the regular air repeater. Ranger is probably not the best example, but the point came across.

[aobst128]

I feel like the power budget still favors the standard air repeater over the long. It being one handed allows for so much more options for many classes. Especially simple weapon classes like alchemists.

[Michael Sayre]

aobst128 wrote:

You might have forgotten that hunt prey effectively doubles your first range increment. So the second scenario is doable with the regular air repeater. Ranger is probably not the best example, but the point came across.

Yeah, ranger wasn't the best choice since they have a lot of fiddly bits and my goal was mainly to just get us to a normalized review of weapon X vs. weapon Y based on their own merits. Call it a sneaking rogue instead of a tracking ranger, the point is the action economy differential.

[aobst128]

I can see casters carrying around a long air repeater if they don't have staves or scrolls. Martial classes have bows and so do rogues. This has more to do with specific class design but anyone with access to bows would almost certainly take a regular air repeater over the long, since if they plan to use both hands, they would just use a bow. The choice is more apparent with alchemists, and casters that aren't the bard and wizard.

[Michael Sayre]

aobst128 wrote:

I feel like the power budget still favors the standard air repeater over the long. It being one handed allows for so much more options for many classes. Especially simple weapon classes like alchemists.

What an alchemist gets out of it is pretty much irrelevant. As I mentioned, balance is about ceiling, not floor. The folks in the middle getting slightly more out of one thing for their playstyle is fine; an alchemist getting more out of an air repeater compared to a long air repeater doesn't meaningfully change anything because it's probably just a third action for them, and if they're focusing on it, there's better things they could focus on than a d4 weapon with a 3-action magazine reload. A bomber will find it interferes with their best options and a mutagenist and chirurgeon both have room to grab the archer dedication for a bow if they want it, so while the air repeater is convenient, it's far from the ideal option on a general level (even if it is pretty nice for a variety of more specific builds). It might make it easier for the alchemist to avoid hitting their optimization floor, but it's still not going to raise their ceiling.

Just about everything in PF2 is balanced against two very simple questions - "What is the most effective thing someone could do with this in a tactical environment?" and "What is the most effective thing of this type anyone can do in a tactical environment?"
Those two questions establish your design ceiling. Everything below that is "safe" design space where you can innovate with different toggles and switches, but you should never break that ceiling, otherwise you're introducing power creep.

[aobst128]

Michael Sayre wrote:

aobst128 wrote:

I feel like the power budget still favors the standard air repeater over the long. It being one handed allows for so much more options for many classes. Especially simple weapon classes like alchemists.

What an alchemist gets out of it is pretty much irrelevant. As I mentioned, balance is about ceiling, not floor. The folks in the middle getting slightly more out of one thing for their playstyle is fine; an alchemist getting more out of an air repeater compared to a long air repeater doesn't meaningfully change anything because it's probably just a third action for them, and if they're focusing on it, there's better things they could focus on than a d4 weapon with a 3-action magazine reload. A bomber will find it interferes with their best options and a mutagenist and chirurgeon both have room to grab the archer dedication for a bow if they want it, so while the air repeater is convenient, it's far from the ideal option on a general level (even if it is pretty nice for a variety of more specific builds). It might make it easier for the alchemist to avoid hitting their optimization floor, but it's still not going to raise their ceiling.

Just about everything in PF2 is balanced against two very simple questions - "What is the most effective thing someone could do with this in a tactical environment?" and "What is the most effective thing of this type anyone can do in a tactical environment?"
Those two questions establish your design ceiling. Everything below that is "safe" design space where you can innovate with different toggles and switches, but you should never break that ceiling, otherwise you're introducing power creep.

Right, I get why things have to be balanced in a vacuum. The long air repeater makes sense. It's just in context, it becomes a tougher sell to most classes.

But what I was saying about the alchemist was just that if they HAD to choose between the 2, they would probably pick the regular air repeater. Rogues too of they already have a short bow

[aobst128]

We have martial bows with a d6 and 60 feet of range, so a reload 0 simple weapon probably shouldn't be a d6. Makes sense. The "varmint rifle" I can see a druid hunter character using it well enough. For martial classes, if they have access to firearms, I see the one handed repeater being the better pick since it offers something that a bow doesn't have. The long repeater is just a worse bow for those classes.

Arming a bunch of peasants with long repeaters sounds like it could happen though. Simple weapons and all that.

[Michael Sayre]

aobst128 wrote:

We have martial bows with a d6 and 60 feet of range, so a reload 0 simple weapon probably shouldn't be a d6. Makes sense. The "varmint rifle" I can see a druid hunter character using it well enough. For martial classes, if they have access to firearms, I see the one handed repeater being the better pick since it offers something that a bow doesn't have. The long repeater is just a worse bow for those classes.

Arming a bunch of peasants with long repeaters sounds like it could happen though. Simple weapons and all that.

The Commoner's Rebellion of 4719 AR, wherein a Chelaxian noble house was overthrown by a squadron of peasants armed with long air repeaters. This rebellion is now celebrated every year on its anniversary by having the town militia load their weapons with paint rounds and reenact the siege, with the festival champion being the man whose paint marks the most "Chelaxian defenders" by sundown. The Chelaxian defenders are usually portrayed by the swiftest and most obnoxious of the town's adolescents.

[graystone]

aobst128 wrote:

Arming a bunch of peasants with long repeaters sounds like it could happen though. Simple weapons and all that.

Just make sure there are no wizards in that crowd, since they aren't as well trained as peasants. ;)

[aobst128]

graystone wrote:

aobst128 wrote:

Arming a bunch of peasants with long repeaters sounds like it could happen though. Simple weapons and all that.

Just make sure there are no wizards in that crowd, since they aren't as well trained as peasants. ;)

*Angry wizard noises.

[aobst128]

The long repeater fits in it's category. It's just by the circumstances of class design that it isn't as good of a choice as the air repeater most of the time.

[aobst128]

But now I'm thinking of alchemists and repeaters and have another question. Presumably you can poison your repeater rounds. Would you have to keep track of the order of which bullets are poisoned in the chamber? That makes the most sense. A toxicologist with a repeater loaded with 6 or 8 wyvern poisons would be scary.

[Onkonk]

Thank you for your insight Michael, always very interesting to see the thought going through this.