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I feel like soldiers as grenadiers *should* be a thing... sort of. Like, I feel like Soldiers should have reasons to use grenades as secondary weapons, but maybe not as primary weapons. I'd love to see a soldier feat that would let you turn the "take one hand from weapon, grab grenade, throw grenade, put hand back on weapon" cycle into something with a reasonable action cost. Maybe single action plus flourish or something? I don't really see "soldier" as the place you get dedicated bomb-throwing maniacs, though. If the soldier is using grenades as The Thing They Do rather than as a supplemental, they should be using a grenade launcher.
Edit: Hmm, rereading the sidebars on the field test, and I think my enthusiasm may well guarantee that grenades don't get the area trait. Particularly, they'll want to ensure soldiers need to use both hands to maximize the use of their abilities, and grenades might get around that and allow someone to use a shield. Though grenades being consumables with a heavy action tax might be enough of a balance, so who knows.
Either way, I know what my first homebrew project will be if grenadier soldiers aren't a thing.
Actually, rather than making it a Soldier-specific thing, I think it'd make sense as a modification to a two-handed gun to add a single-shot grenade launcher. That way, characters can easily build around having one loaded up for situations that call for it. Maybe it still takes an extra action to engage it, so it's not better than drawing one, but then it can be a pretty cheap mod. Free-hand would still have the advantage of selecting the right grenade for the situation, and not taking a slot.
I don't really see "soldier" as the place you get dedicated bomb-throwing maniacs, though. If the soldier is using grenades as The Thing They Do rather than as a supplemental, they should be using a grenade launcher.
Bombard fighting style was in the core rule book, and taking a look at both it and the properties it runs on, that style specifically seems to be inspiring a lot of the field test soldier. So I don't think it is as out there as all that.
And in fairness, if anyone could use a grenade at short range, someone as tough and able to reduce the damage of area effects as the soldier seems to be able to do is the person to do it.
Derp. I missed that “Area fire” was a 2 action activity, so never mind.
Though I suppose drawing and lobbing a grenade is also a 2 action activity, so I can see it being made to work, like the grenadier fighting style being something like “your attacks with grenade, splash, or bomb weapons counts as area attacks for the purpose of your class abilities and feats.” That might work better as a class feat, on second thought.
But in any case, my dream of a grenade soldier will need to be shelved for now.
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Was thinking about it, and "grenadier" actually seems like it might make more sense as an archetype. Like, there's definitely a place in the genre for the character who's constantly throwing grenades everywhere. It's all over the place in videogames... but it's not particularly aligned with any one character type. So... an archetype that gives you an alchemist-style grenades-per-day pool and a bunch of feats around using grenades better just seems like a really obvious place to go with this.
Was thinking about it, and "grenadier" actually seems like it might make more sense as an archetype. Like, there's definitely a place in the genre for the character who's constantly throwing grenades everywhere. It's all over the place in videogames... but it's not particularly aligned with any one character type. So... an archetype that gives you an alchemist-style grenades-per-day pool and a bunch of feats around using grenades better just seems like a really obvious place to go with this.
That is what I'd expect as well, lobbing grenades seems like a very universal combat concept.
Though on the technical side, I'd like something more in the direction of the Alchemical Sciences Investigator in terms of resources. Few "charges" but they scale with you. Otherwise we have the "alch gets a lot of these, so they have to be weak" problem again.
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That is what I'd expect as well, lobbing grenades seems like a very universal combat concept.
Though on the technical side, I'd like something more in the direction of the Alchemical Sciences Investigator in terms of resources. Few "charges" but they scale with you. Otherwise we have the "alch gets a lot of these, so they have to be weak" problem again.
I was cycling back through this and thinking about it and... maybe both? Like, silly as it might be, I *do* want the character who's just constantly throwing grenades, even if that means that the grenades are relatively weak. Grenades every round! Grenades around every corner! Grenades for days! Of course, that narrative always has the grenades being mostly frustrating and annoying and only really dangerous with the accumulation of a thousand small cuts, unless the people being hit are just utterly overpowered scrub mooks. On the other hand, there's a completely different narrative where grenades are powerful and dangerous and you only have a few and you have to make them count. Honestly, I'd like to be able to pick... or, rather, I want to have my laughing, grenade-spewing madman without having that destroy the opportunity for other people to play the other one.
I was cycling back through this and thinking about it and... maybe both? Like, silly as it might be, I *do* want the character who's just constantly throwing grenades, even if that means that the grenades are relatively weak. Grenades every round! Grenades around every corner! Grenades for days! Of course, that narrative always has the grenades being mostly frustrating and annoying and only really dangerous with the accumulation of a thousand small cuts, unless the people being hit are just utterly overpowered scrub mooks. On the other hand, there's a completely different narrative where grenades are powerful and dangerous and you only have a few and you have to make them count. Honestly, I'd like to be able to pick... or, rather, I want to have my laughing, grenade-spewing madman without having that destroy the opportunity for other people to play the other one.That is what I'd expect as well, lobbing grenades seems like a very universal combat concept.
Though on the technical side, I'd like something more in the direction of the Alchemical Sciences Investigator in terms of resources. Few "charges" but they scale with you. Otherwise we have the "alch gets a lot of these, so they have to be weak" problem again.
If it was a full class, or probably more likely a subclass, then you'd probably have the budget to do that. Alchemical bombs are kinda bad only because AoE in PF2 is at a premium and because the resources you can use for bombs can also be used on tons of other stuff. A dedicated bomber wouldn't have the second problem and the Soldier is already a pretty good indicator that we aren't as worried about AoE stuff anymore.
It might not be grenades every round, you'll probably still have a mix of using your gun and lobbing grenades. So maybe every other round like Spellstrike. If only so that you have a good option that doesn't involve a ton of collateral damage. But a strong focus on grenades as a core feature would be really cool, yeah ^^