Does this allow me to fire my Stellar Cannon or any other big AREA OF EFFECT "Heavy Weapon" Twice in a single round for just 2 Actions? Essentially making 2 strikes with a saving throwing attack?
I think the idea is the bonus Strike from Primary Target only hits that one foe? I'm not sure. You're making a basic ranged Strike, not doing the Area Fire action... right?
Perhaps, you are making a Ranged Strike it says but then that makes certain weapons, like Stellar Cannon not entirely a Soldier weapon and instead makes the class almost exclusively auto-fire weapons. Which is not bad but not entirely an interesting weapon class to be locked in. If you can call it a weapon class.
No :area attack" I mean exchange it to "Auto-fire" class. If you can't use Stellar Cannons as part of their kit then that reduces their effectiveness down to just Auto-fire weapons as I said for their Primary Target which i think might be a huge waste. It Dramatically reduces the weapons they can effectively use.
Does this mean when I use a Area of Effect weapon like the Stellar Cannon when I actually trigger Primary Target do i somehow ignore the Area (10 ft burst) and somehow make a completely normal attack where the trait says it can ONLY use Area Fire for 2 actions?
This is where the confusion is coming in from, because it as RAW makes me do 2 attacks with any Area or Auto-fire weapons but Area weapons can only attack using their listed Area, so do I?
1) Ignore the Area Trait and make a single target attack, somehow seemingly doing the impossible?
2) Make a second Area attack using the Primary Target as the center of this new attack
3) Just ignore Area Weapons like the Stellar Canon from Primary Target/
3.1) Exclusively only use Primary Target with Auto-fire and completely ignore the part where it says i can sue Area weapons?
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To me it seemed that the only reasonable interpretation was that the strike granted by Primary Target was an exception to the usual rules for area weapons. The designers obviously intended for the feature to be useable with area weapons since the description lists them among the weapons you can use it with. You also don't get an additional area fire since Primary Target specifies a Strike.
Also, looking further down into soldier class feats there is Punishing Salvo. Requirements: Your last action this turn was an Area Fire attack. As an action make a ranged strike against your primary target. Ignore the unwieldy trait. This does not make a new area attack, and is treated as a Strike made using primary target.
Clearly this feat is intended to be used with area weapons since it only works with area weapons and it spells out clear as can be that you resolve the attack as a Strike even though the weapon has the area trait.
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Correct, this is a specific exception to the general rule of area weapons only being able to do area attacks. This just makes an additional, basic Strike against your primary target.
The biggest problem I have with Primary Target is that it consumes ammo. I'm already kinda iffy on how tiny all the magazine sizes in the game are (I know this was also the case in 1e, but I've never played that one and would probably have disliked it there just as much). But then this feature that is meant to let you use area weapons in bossfights and the likes (I DO know Pathfinder 2e, so I doubt many bosses would ever fail the reflex save) but with most of the weapons with area in the playtest, you are forced to reload either after one shot or two using that feature, usually with a 2 action reload, so 2-3 rounds into the bossfight you have a dead turn where all you do is reload and maaaybe move.
Automatic weapons fare better, admittedly. And you do get bigger magazines for batteries as you climb levels. But it still feels very... dissatisfying? It might work fine in play, my group isn't going to clear up our schedule to playtest for a while yet, but just reading it... man.
Yeah, I'm not a fan either. Beyond the in-universe logic issues it creates for area weapons, consuming ammo makes you calculate whether using one of your central class features is a good idea at any given time.
Why do you have a dead turn when reloading? Most of the weapons seem to have one action to reload. At higher levels batteries have more Charge but the weapons don't have higher Expend, so for battery powered weapons you can go longer before needing to replace the battery.
If you have a weapon that takes two actions to reload there is a feat to make that one action if your last action was one that consumed ammo. So unless something had a reload of more than two actions you pretty much can reload for one action, and still get a two action attack off. You wouldn't be able to move around at the same time unless you had a feat that lets you fire for one action.
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Yeah I don't really understand why battery sizes scale up so much. Swapping batteries will feel very uncomfortable at low levels and then at higher levels you will simply... stop doing it? Your battery will be too large for it to ever run out during combat. It's strange.
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And it feels kinda bad when you're using projectiles, which don't scale, so you never get that longevity bump.
I wonder if abstracting ammo even further wouldn't be warranted. Batteries and cartrages don't increase in level and weapon magazines do as you upgrade them, or those increases are smoothed out and flattened for all weapon categories.
My biggest problem with the system right now is the weird ammo economy and the way some weapons just get to ignore it at higher levels while it's always scuffed at lower levels.
If all ammo scaled, you'd just stop reloading at higher levels. That's weird. But I can see it as a general boost to ranged combat at higher levels, which is nice but means all the reload feats become useless.
If no ammo scaled, ranged combat would always be awkward with very low magazine sizes.
As is, we're in this weird in between world where you probably want cartridge guns at lower levels and by level 11 NOT picking a battery gun is actively gimping yourself.
Though I also dislike the ammo economy in general. It's so... needlessly complex? People already hate keeping track of arrows, now having to keep track of multiple different types of ammo (because you want multiple guns for resistances etc) AND different levels of consumption AND a bunch of extra ammo using features and feats...
I'd really rather have ALL weapons use batteries (or generic magazines that scale like batteries), and for batteries to be cheaper. Make them magical magazines with nanobots that adapt to the gun or whatever.
Powered melee weapons already run for 10 days straight with just the commercial battery, so that part doesn't change.
Honestly as a GM, idk if I'm gonna track the ammo of more than 4 enemies in an encounter. It seems like a lot of overhead for little reward. They're going to be dead in 2-4 turns anyway. No sense giving myself another layer of tracking on top of hp, monster abilities, ally buffs, and debuffs from PCs. I'm fine with players needing to reserve that bandwidth, they only have to play one character