
Raxmei |

Whirling Swipe allows soldiers to use two-handed melee weapons as area weapons. You gain a two action activity that gives the two-handed melee weapon you are wielding the area and unwieldy traits until the end of your turn, and then as part of the same activity you make an Area Fire attack. Since quite a lot of what soldiers do involves area attacks, it's important to see how this interacts with other features involving area attacks and examine whether this is intended.
Suppressing Fire: Yes. There is nothing preventing Suppressing Fire from working in melee and this appears to be functioning as intended.
Primary Target: No, or yes in a really weird way that doesn't look intentional. Primary Target grants a ranged strike, not a melee one. While it isn't fundamentally impossible to make ranged strikes with melee weapons, that looks inelegant at best here. Suggestion, drop the word "ranged".
Bombard fighting style: Yes. This feature works just fine in melee.
Pin Down feat: Yes. Whirling Swipe is an Area Fire attack and your weapon retains the area trait until the end of your turn.
Warning Spray feat: No. Your weapon doesn't gain the area trait until after you've used Whirling Swipe on your turn, which happens after you've rolled initiative. I don't see any great harm in allowing these feats to work together.
Shot on the Run feat: No. Your weapon doesn't gain the area trait until after you've used Whirling Swipe. These are also two separate two-action activities, so you can't do both in the same turn. It would be really nice to be able to use Shot On Run with Whirling Swipe considering how important movement is for melee users, but the rules don't line up.
Punishing Salvo feat: Same as Primary Target, Punishing Salvo specifically grants a ranged strike.
Shoving Shot feat: No, for the same reasons as Shot On The Run. Shoving Shot also assumes your weapon has a range increment.
Stock Striker feat: Special. This allows you to use firearms as melee weapons. For our purposes, this means that as long as we're willing to settle for this not very good melee weapon we can satisfy the requirement of wielding an area weapon without having to attack with Whirling Swipe first. While this doesn't affect the action economy conflicts with most of these feats, it does open up a few.
Widen Area feat: Mostly no. Your weapon doesn't have the area trait until after using Whirling Swipe unless you're also using Stock Striker. There is a subtle difference in wording between Widen Area and Brutal Barrage that appears to make Widen Area usable with Whirling Swipe once you find a way to satisfy the wielding a weapon requirement. Brutal Barrage specifically requires either Area Attack or Auto Attack while Widen Area simply requires an action to make an attack with a weapon that has an area.
Covering Fire feat: No. The one-action usage requires a ranged strike, while the two-action usage requires a weapon with a range increment.
Fog of War feat: No, for the same reasons as Shot On The Run.
Concentrated Shot Feat: No. Same as for Shot On The Run, plus assumes a ranged weapon. Since your melee weapons can already make strikes without using area effects, the benefit of doing this if the rules allowed it would be the ability to make a strike with a bonus to damage at the cost of an extra action.
Deflect Missile Feat: Mostly no. Your weapon loses the area trait at the end of your turn so this could only work if someone shoots a missile right next to you during your turn. Deflect Missile also assumes your weapon is a firearm.
Overwatch: No. Requires a ranged weapon. Overwatch is form of ranged reactive strike. Curiously, reactive strikes at range are a soldier feat while the melee version is limited to the Close Quarters fighting style.
Run Hot feat: No, same as Shot On The Run.
Brutal Barrage: No. Requires the next action to be an area fire or auto fire. Whirling Swipe isn't one of those actions.
Shell Shower feat: Yes. Descriptive text aside, all the feat requires is for you to make an Area Fire or Auto Fire attack. Maybe you're smashing up the ground with your melee weapon to generate that difficult terrain.
Rocket Jump feat: No, same as Shot On The Run. I could see reasons to want to rocket jump with a melee weapon, though it is also reasonable not to allow it.
Fanning The Hammer feat: Yes. Your weapon retains the area trait until the end of your turn and Fanning The Hammer only costs one action.
Run, Cowards! feat: Yes. Works just fine with no complications.
Scattering Fire feat: No, same as Shot On The Run. Shame, this looks like it would be useful and fun in melee if worked.
Special Delivery feat: No, same as Shot On The Run plus it assumes a range increment.
Terror-Forming feat: No, same as Shot On The Run. Since we're talking about melee range anyway you should just use Shell Shower which somehow does work with Whirling Swipe.
Excavating Bombardment feat: No, same as Shot On The Run.
Light 'Em Up feat: No, same as Shot On The Run.
Overkill: Yes, except for the parts involving Concentrated Shot and Primary Target. Though this has nothing to do with Whirling Swipe, I note in passing that this feat will cause weapons that deal fire damage to inflict persistent bleed damage. Propose to change the persistent damage to the type matching the weapon's damage type, bleed for physical.
Coordinated Fire feat: No, same as Shot On The Run.
Damoritosh's Grip feat: Special. This allows you to wield a two-handed gun at the same time as a two-handed melee weapon. This unlocks the same options as Stock Striker while letting you use a much better melee weapon.
Spread The Love feat: No, same as Shot On The Run, plus Spread The Love's effect pertains to Primary Target.
Hybrid Technique feat: Yes, in a weird convoluted way. Combine with Stock Striker or Damoritosh's Grip to satisfy the requirement of wielding an appropriate weapon. Now you can use Whirling Swipe and combine it with one other soldier feat of the sort that take two actions and require a weapon with certain traits.
Living Typhoon feat: I don't think so. My reading is that this only affects the regular area fire and auto fire actions, not any of the special area attacks granted by soldier feats.
Two conclusions:
First, Whirling Swipe doesn't interact with Primary Target as written and I think it should.
Secondly, a matter of Whirling Swipe's place in the soldier's repertoire. The soldier's feat selection includes a lot of feats that take two actions and require you to wield a weapon with the area or auto fire trait, granting a special area attack. As currently written Whirling Swipe is one of those feats, making it impossible to combine with any of the others. This makes it frustrating to build on. Trying to make a melee soldier locks you out of a lot of options not because those feats shouldn't work in melee, but because unlocking the ability to do soldier stuff in melee takes up the space for doing any of those other options. If it worked like a stance or something it'd be easier to build around.

25speedforseaweedleshy |
stocks triker are so much worse than reinforced stock it doesn't even make sense
super high tech weapon doesn't have a stock smack harder than a piece of wood
if Whirling Swipe are not specific action but replace two handed range weapon refered in all soldier feature and feat with two handed melee weapon then a melee soldier build might work
but now even if Whirling Swipe trigger primary target it is not good enough to prop up melee playstyle

![]() |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

This should really just be a free action, start of turn trigger that adds unwieldy and area burst (5ft) to a two-handed melee weapon you are holding so it works with all of Soldier's feats.
Soldier has one of the best feats to support melee combat - Shot on the Run - allowing it to both move and area fire with 2 actions, then use a third action to back out to cover/whatever (or just a second stride to approach) but it doesn't currently work with Whirling Swipe.
Close Quarters should also just get this as a bonus feat.

Dragonchess Player |

IMO, a soldier with Whirling Swipe should probably be an ancestry with four or six arms and/or take Quick Swap to switch between ranged area attacks and melee area attacks efficiently.
Whirling Swipe with a cryopike is pretty nice, since reach extends the area.