Skipshot pistol, can it shoot through objects?

[Driftbourne]

The Skipshot pistol has the Teleportive Special Property.

"Teleportive- This weapon’s fired ammunition teleports a short distance after being fired. You take only a –1 cumulative penalty when attacking outside the range of this weapon."

I checked the errata and FAQ for the book this is in. It seems like it needs an errata or FAQ to define better how it's used. "teleports a short distance" leaves a few questions open:

1: Can it shoot through objects? That seems to be the point of it in the first place.

2: "teleports a short distance" suggests a gap in the range where it would do no damage. For a level one pistol, it has a ranger that's 20 to 40 feet longer than any other pistol. So would it only be able to hit targets more than 20 or 30 feet away? What's the range of the teleport gap?

3: If it can shoot through objects, I'm assuming you would be shooting blind if you can't see through an object like a wall.

How do you rule on this in your games?

[Zwordsman]

Well it realistically is only a range penalty reducation. But.

I would prefer if it was a more rare weapon, it was unwiedly as well. and it did legi teleport the shot. Its unwiedly because you have to chose the range it fires. and I would have it so they still get full concealment so you'd almost certainly miss anyway. but would allow one to try. They'd just get cover bonuses and concealment bonuses unless you set up a good method of bypassing it.

Of note in general though, this is somewhat what phasing does

This ammunition is tipped with quantum-variable molecules, allowing it to phase through many materials prior to impacting with its target. If you take a move action to aim and then fire on the same turn a weapon with phasing ammo (including doing so with a sniper weapon), the attack ignores any cover the target has with a hardness equal to given value or less (hardness 10 for 7th-level rounds, hardness 20 for 14th-level rounds). The rounds literally bypass the cover, doing no damage to it.

[Driftbourne]

If it could only hit things over 30 feet away and cover over 30 feet away still applied, it would be a very situational weapon, making it pretty balanced. Even if you're shooting through cover within 30 feet range, it could still act as concealment. As it is, it's tied as the cheapest pistol available, with twice the range of most pistols and 20 feet more than the next longest-range pistol. It just seems like there is a piece of a puzzle missing from it.

A Skipshot pistol with phasing ammunition gets interesting. The combination has no disadvantage if there isn't a minimum range.

[Xenocrat]

No.

[Driftbourne]

Yes. (homebrew)

Too much good flavor to waste on a weapon that could have been done with just plane tech to increase range only.

[Wesrolter]

Since the question is in the Rules section, and not Homebrew, then the answer is No, it is just a descriptive and since the Phase ammunition is currently only for Sniper or Longarms, then the combination is a moot point, since the pistol can't have the ammunition.
If you want assintance with homebrewing a variant on the pistols rules and the ammunition, then I would say it would be best to post that in the Homebrew section.

All the "Teleportive" weapon property does is set the ranged modifier penality to a -1, rather then a -2, the same way far shot does. It does not provide any other special ability as written in the core books.

[Driftbourne]

It was a rule question at this point it looks like homebrew is the only option to make it work like the flavor sounds.

[Clebsch73]

One could assume the magic is designed to know the target distance and TP the round partway there. If you shot at closer than 60 feet away, it would cut out about 30 feet. If less than 30 feet, it would cut out 15 feet, which would not have any effect on the accuracy.

By the way, both Archive of Nethys and The Hidden Truth have details of the weapon but they both say the source is Near Space p. 150, which has nothing about the weapon. Page 150 is the start of the NPC section. One NPC (magical duelist, p. 178) is listed as using the pistol, but that entry doesn't have any stats for the weapon.

I couldn't find any other reference in a search of the PDF or a scan of the index.

[Wesrolter]

Page 150 is the Weapon descriptive section, the fluff piece. The "Teleportive" ability the weapon has is on page 148 of Near Space.

The weapon stats are at the very bottom of page 148 and continue on 149.

[ThermalCat]

I could see that this would be useful for the following situations (possibly homebrew rulings, but I didn't see a similar discussion in the homebrew forum so I'll add it here):

1. Your target is on the other side of a thick transparent aluminum wall, so you can see them and they don't get concealment. The skipshot lets you shoot at them without damaging the wall.

2. You are shooting at an enemy but your allies are in between you. The skipshot pistol would let you avoid the soft cover penalty since you don't have to worry about hitting your friends.