Why does this post exist?
One, Auto-fire and area weapons are currently an exercise in frustration. Every single player I've personally talked to so far has disliked them, because all you ever seem to do is fail. My own group has even refused to even try the Soldier, because that was immediately obvious to them. Why is that?
Saves roughly correspond to the next highest category of AC. So if a moderate save was AC, it would be high AC. And high save means extreme AC.
High AC is the highest innate AC a typical monster will have and martials are supposed to find those challenging. To go beyond that - into extreme territory - it has to be thematically extremely tough, an NPC that is supposed to be a Soldier for example. But those monsters are both rare and typically are weaker in other areas to compensate. Those monsters require a lot of effort and teamwork to even scratch. Reducing their AC by any means necessary or circumventing it is a pure necessity. And AC is a whole lot easier to bring down than saves.
That is right, a moderate save is the equivalent of a "normal" martial having to struggle and a high save is "find other ways or you will accomplish nothing" territory. Gods help you if you are level 11 or higher, where extreme saves start to appear occasionally.
Even in an ideal world, where "only" one third of monsters has a high Reflex, the second third has a moderate one and the last a low one, the math is against you. For an aoe weapon user, a full third of all monsters you could possibly face would effectively be a no-go zone (think Rogue/Operative vs oozes or ghosts). In the best scenario. Another third are "only" hard to deal with, but you will find at least mixed success. Only the last third is where you will actually find a good chance to succeed, but there you will thrive.
Second, on a more personal note: if I'm playing a character, I'd much prefer to actually roll the dice that decide if I do anything.
(The third reason is that the current system has no interaction with proficiency, making simple and martial aoe weapons pointless, as anyone can just jump straight to advanced. Well, in a world where we get a good advanced weapon ;). But unfortunately I don't have a good answer to that..)
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The Solution
If saves are the problem, then the solution is not to work with saves, but AC instead. But we can't just use regular attack rolls like any other weapon, because that would make characters that are great at single-target damage (such as the Operative) automatically great at multi-target damage. And I think we can agree that whatever you might think about the Operative otherwise, "it needs a massive buff" is a little out there.
But the solution to this problem already exists, to an extent. If you come from PF2, you already know it. The Kineticist basically attacks with its class DC already and caster spell attack rolls exist as well.
So instead of forcing enemies to make a save, I propose that aoe weapons should make single attack roll with your class DC -10. This then gets applied to all enemies that would now make a save. That's it.
What would be the problem with making an attack roll that targets Reflex DC instead of targeting AC?
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As long as they dont critical susceed doing half damage on a group of opponents is not bad depending on the number of oppnenets. I normally try to save area attacks for when there are least having 3 opponents in the area of effect. Also taking advantage of area fire depends a lot on encounter desgine too. Area fire is kind of a waste against a single Boss monster and best against a lot of mooks. At least for grenades in SF1e you would add your dex bonous to the save DC
What would be the problem with making an attack roll that targets Reflex DC instead of targeting AC?
It wouldn't solve the problem. Rolling against a DC and the target making a save instead has basically the same odds.
Which reminds me, I forgot a big part of my solution.... it is supposed to be a basic attack roll with your DC -10.
As long as they dont critical susceed doing half damage on a group of opponents is not bad depending on the number of oppnenets. I normally try to save area attacks for when there are least having 3 opponents in the area of effect. Also taking advantage of area fire depends a lot on encounter desgine too. Area fire is kind of a waste against a single Boss monster and best against a lot of mooks. At least for grenades in SF1e you would add your dex bonous to the save DC
You need a lot of enemies to make that work, though. And they need to be clustered pretty tightly and at a relatively short distance so you can actually catch them in the aoe. As you say upwards of 3 opponents it gets pretty ok, but that is in no way something you can count on to happen regularly. If these are supposed to be at all viable "normal" weapons and the Soldier has to deal with them, then the degree to which they can depend on encounter design has to be limited.
Plus, if five years of PF2 has taught us anything, it is even spellcasters struggle mightily with this problem and constant failure is bad for player enjoyment, even if you still do something. And their spells quickly do more when an enemy succeeds at their save than when an enemy fails against an aoe weapon. A lot more. They can also circumvent the problem (mostly). If that is as big and lasting of an issue as it is, imagine the constant complaints about this!
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Let me begin by agreeing with the problem of using aoe weapons ignores category proficiency. Martial weapon? Advanced weapon? Who needs proficiency? I've got a class DC.
That said, I disagree with the other points.
I think the perception of failure is a problem of perception on the side of the player, not the system. This is because the 'failure' still involves doing damage. Other players that purely rely upon attack rolls often experience turns of zero damage. But Jay is totally reasonable to view dealing less damage as 'failure' right after Alex just whiffed on all his attacks. Woe is Jay...
To add to this, aoe weapon attacks do not increase MAP. Machine guns for the win.
That said, I disagree with the other points.
I think the perception of failure is a problem of perception on the side of the player, not the system. This is because the 'failure' still involves doing damage. Other players that purely rely upon attack rolls often experience turns of zero damage. But Jay is totally reasonable to view dealing less damage as 'failure' right after Alex just whiffed on all his attacks. Woe is Jay...
No, this is very much not just a problem of perception. If anything, "they still do damage on a success" is the illusion in this case.
Two enemies being caught in your aoe and succeeding their save - which should be the most common situation you will face - has the same effect as 1 basic Strike made by a baseline martial. But for the cost of 2 actions, rather than 1. You need at least 3 pretty mooky enemies (or fewer with a low Reflex save) to even get ahead of people succeeding at a single, basic Strike. Much less compete with the stuff that elevates them above the baseline. And you are just not going to get that with any kind of reliability.
Meanwhile, regular martials are expected to and balanced around succeeding at at least one attack every round. This, on the other hand, is very reliable.
To add to this, aoe weapon attacks do not increase MAP. Machine guns for the win.
Both Auto-fire and area fire have the attack trait, so they absolutely increase MAP. Only the Soldier's Primary Target Strike doesn't.
You need at least 3 pretty mooky enemies (or fewer with a low Reflex save) to even get ahead of people succeeding at a single, basic Strike. Much less compete with the stuff that elevates them above the baseline. And you are just not going to get that with any kind of reliability.
I would say this is the actual issue. The Soldier, in my opinion, really does not need to be a single-target damage powerhouse, which is why I think Primary Fire is misplaced as a feature. Rather, the class I think needs to be good at what they're actually meant to do, which is to hit lots of enemies at once. The thing is, there will be plenty of occasions where there are in fact 3 or more enemies in an encounter. Trouble is, those enemies are usually far too spread out to be hit in the same AoE, and have no reason to clump together. This needs to change if AoE weapons are to have any relevance at all, beyond just the Soldier.
While I do endorse using class DC-10 against AC instead of weapon proficiency for those area attacks, as this would make those weapons far more consistent, I also feel we're getting into very gamey territory where we're basically bending over backwards to find a way for the Soldier to make better use of these weapons than the Operative, let alone the Fighter and Gunslinger. I think this begs the question of which classes these AoE weapons are meant to serve, and I really don't think they're really made for anyone but the Soldier. I should perhaps playtest this aspect a bit more, but if there really is no other Starfinder class who'd want to take on AoE weapons, then it might be better to make AoE on weapons the Soldier's thing specifically, and focus on making more guns good in different ways -- including potentially by giving certain weapons the splash or scatter traits for a bit of AoE.
To be honest, if you have two targets in your area and they both pass, I typically wouldn't call that turn a waste. Especially if a soldier adds any riders or debuffs or additional attacks to that turn.
The problem is how often at least one of those targets crit passes.
So, the question is, with saves what they are, how often are non boss enemies crit passing their saves? And also, given the pitiful ranges of current area attack weapons, how often do you fail to get two enemies in one area of effect?
I had a kineticist in my last PF2 game I ran, and they really didn't care about enemies passing save... but they also had a lot of other effects going on besides pure aoe damage.
To be honest, if you have two targets in your area and they both pass, I typically wouldn't call that turn a waste. Especially if a soldier adds any riders or debuffs or additional attacks to that turn.
Not even the Soldier (outside of the Bombard) adds any riders on a success, though. Which is made even worse by the fact that many of your feats interact with suppression. So when you can't reliably suppress people, those feats don't work either.
If the "suppressed on success" thing from Bombard was actually baseline and you'd still have Primary Target, then for the Soldier it becomes pretty ok-ish. Not good, but ok-ish.
But literally nobody else gets anything at all.
The problem is how often at least one of those targets crit passes.
So, the question is, with saves what they are, how often are non boss enemies crit passing their saves? And also, given the pitiful ranges of current area attack weapons, how often do you fail to get two enemies in one area of effect?
In my experience, catching two enemies in an aoe is pretty reliable. Well, if you are an Action Hero Soldier with certain automatic weapons or a Bombard Soldier with a stellar cannon anyway. I wouldn't bet on anyone or anything else. Especially all those 15ft cone area/automatic weapons are completely unusable.
As for how common crit successes will be?
For the Soldier, it's actually not that bad. You are typically looking at around 20% tops for non-boss enemies (that's high reflex and at your level). That's still not great, especially for how common high reflex enemies are, but it could be worse. Most enemies you will face should be your level -1 or -2. It's really the success chance not the crit success chance that hurts you the most.
Speaking of being worse, pretty much everyone else. Without the better class DC progression of the Soldier, there are a lot of levels where you dip into the 30%+ crit success chances. And no class besides the Soldier has any reason whatsoever to deal with that.
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There is also something to be said about the performance against boss monsters or even minibosses. Sure they are not common, but they are extremely important, both mechanically and story-wise. Currently, even the Soldier (except the Bombard) is basically impotent against them. And I have a big problem with a class failing you and your party when you need it most. This inevitably leads to strong negative feelings for everyone, I've seen it too often for it to not ring all the alarm bells.
My playtesting experience with the Soldier seems to have been almost the complete opposite to what others have mentioned here. I've only rarely caught more than a single enemy in my AoE, because enemies are often quite spaced out from one another and have no reason to get closer to each other either: for instance, the Fire Team Fiasco encounter in Field Test #5 positions two aeon guards and a glass serpent quite far from one another, so while the Soldier can deal quite a lot of damage to the glass serpent's moderate Ref saves + Primary Target (plus a second Strike with an automatic weapon), they're pretty much guaranteed to only hit one target at a time. The same thing can be said for the second encounter in Shards of the Glass Planet, where enemies come from all different sides of the battle map.
On a different thread, I suggested removing Area Fire from weapons, and I'm actually starting to flip back to that idea, because I feel there's always going to be a fundamental contradiction with trying to use weapons to deal meaningful amounts of AoE damage: because you can't use weapon proficiency for that AoE damage, you have to use some other bucket instead, but class DC is awkward because it's not really the designated bucket for AoE damage (Pathfinder's Commander class is heavily focused on single targets yet has a legendary class DC), and spell DC is even more awkward on a weapon. By contrast, we already have (fairly weak) traits for weapons to deal splash damage that I think could be applied more commonly to Starfinder's weapons, with a twist for the Soldier:
With this, AoE weapons would continue to exist as a baseline, and would play much better with weapon proficiency, while the Soldier would continue to reign as the undisputed master of AoE weapons. As an added bonus, this would make the Soldier more compatible with Pathfinder weapons, which use splash and scatter. Area weapons would no longer deal with high Reflex saves by default, would respect weapon proficiency, and would avoid unintended edge interactions with Pathfinder classes like the Commander and Kineticist.
Have you actually played a few playtest rounds ? Area weapons are great. They ignore concealment entirely (because they don't target), they don't care for MAP (but increase it), so you can use a normal attack and then follow up with an area attack and they still deal damage when you "fail") because they use a basic reflex save.
And Soldier is an absolute Monster. Using an Area Attack with a soldier allows you to hurt multiple enemies and then you attack your primary target again without any penalty. This is basically Power Attack++.
The only bad thing about Area attack is its limited range and lack of range increments. And while it makes sense to keep grenades simple and not have them use range increments it feels really bad to use a machine gun with a tiny range.
I've technically played, yes, but nothing related to this feedback directly. It is also not necessary in this case because we've dealt with a similar problem and the related math for half a decade at this point: save spells.
That's why I can say with confidence: they are anything but great. They are the same problem, but without the workaround, worse starting conditions (less reason for enemies to cluster up + more enemies with good a reflex save) or lacking the individual effectiveness that make save spells work regardless. That's before you get even into the range and aoe size problems.
That's exactly why, when presented with aoe weapons, my players all gave them and the Soldier a hard pass. Why should they use weapons that are in no way supported by your character options (for classes other than Soldier)? And hence I have no direct SF2 playtest data for these weapons.
Most importantly, the Soldier and aoe weapons are not the same thing. This thread is about aoe weapons, not the class.
In PF2 reload weapons and specifically firearms we have a prime example of what happens when you design weapons in a way that only a single class can use them well and others need heavy feat support to even bother with them. So we should at least try to not make the same mistake again.
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As a note, "area weapons" are only weapons with the area trait. The collective term for area and automatic weapons together seems to be "area of effect weapons".
And it is in no way certain that the save isn't affected by MAP, because the existing rules on the matter directly contradict eachother.
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Have you actually played a few playtest rounds ? Area weapons are great. They ignore concealment entirely (because they don't target), they don't care for MAP (but increase it), so you can use a normal attack and then follow up with an area attack and they still deal damage when you "fail") because they use a basic reflex save.
And Soldier is an absolute Monster. Using an Area Attack with a soldier allows you to hurt multiple enemies and then you attack your primary target again without any penalty. This is basically Power Attack++.
The only bad thing about Area attack is its limited range and lack of range increments. And while it makes sense to keep grenades simple and not have them use range increments it feels really bad to use a machine gun with a tiny range.
I can say I have, and they're really not great at all.
Enemies don't group up naturally in SF2e due to being ranged, so the AoE component is often just hitting 1 person. Without the Primary target bonus which makes it a little bit underneath a striker ranged martial (such as fighter/ranger), the damage is really not all that good. You're spending 2a for what is only about the same average damage as a Strike most of the time (the Strike has a higher chance of critting for double, even if it can miss for nothing).
The lack of flat mods on it really makes this issue a lot worse at level 1-3 where you don't feel like you do much damage at all, and are just a suppress bot. This issue goes away once you pick up your striking runes, but may come back depending on interpretation WRT weapon upgrades working on AF (I playtested that they did work so the Soldier's damage was fine - great even with Overwatch nearly always triggering for bombard).
Shot on the Run is a great feat to allow the Soldier to have good mobility (for getting around cover/LoS blocks) while dealing with the somewhat clunky activity cost of Area Fire every round.
All that and I haven't mentioned using Area Weapons on anything except for Soldier. That's because... they're not very good on anything except a Soldier. Operatives and Envoys don't want a 2 action essentially vanilla strike most of the time, and without Soldier's feats to make it more worthwhile or less clunky, they'd rather just Strike.
Mystics and Witchwarpers can generally do about the same damage with a cantrip for a lot of levels, for the same action cost, and on later levels a spell of level-X can probably more reliably get 2+ enemies for the same or more damage.
Solarians don't want Area Weapons.
Hell, I have had experience with AoE Weapons as successful. The only draw back is their extremely limiting range. A lot of them only have like 30ft AoE ranges as lines or cones. That makes them extremely difficult to use and or justify. 2 Actions to hit maybe 6 creatures at max not including flying in a perfect in a 15ft perfect cone with the Advanced Weapon - Screamer. Amazing 1d1w sonic damage but 15ft range ... I don't understand who is suppose to use this weapon outside of the niche case of a Soldier. wait never mind the Soldier is not trained in Advanced weapons making the Screamer effectively useless since you can't reliably use Primary Target.
Tracking adds to class DC, so even someone who has master class DC max is more accurate than a legendary spellcaster; the soldier blows them out of the water (and has con as a KAS to boot).
My biggest issue with it honestly is that casters don't actually improve class DC and are thus hard locked from using Area weapons at all after a certain point; which I feel is a big deal since the elemental mystic's first focus spell is "summon gun" and the flamethrower or singing coil to shoot a big blast of element feel like cooler picks than a regular ol gun if your thing is channeling elements.
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I like the idea of bringing in the existing Scatter trait. Interestingly, in SF1 the only weapon type that had enemies rolling reflex saves was explode (which the playtest calls burst). Lines and cones still made attack rolls against AC. Attacking with area weapons wasn't a special action and you could theoretically do it more than once a turn using the full attack action like any other weapon - unless the weapon also had the unwieldy trait, which the vast majority of area weapons did. The exception was automatic fire, which was a special kind of full attack that basically let you decide to do a cone attack in place of using it like a regular gun, which the playtest rules translate into PF2 language pretty faithfully.
Getting a little into the weeds of how 1e combat worked, that made area weapons unattractive to Soldiers. They had class features for attacking more than once that didn't play well with those weapons, and explode weapons didn't take advantage of their high attack bonus. These were the weapons you'd give to someone who wouldn't normally be rolling full attacks. Technical classes with busy move actions and likely not maximizing dexterity. I can certainly see the motivation behind wanting to change that up a bit, though the current draft is a little weird.
I think in general the Area Fire action is just trying to reinvent what Scatter does already, at least for burst weapons. If every burst area weapon used the Scatter trait instead, and other weapons used similar traits for line or cone damage, that would make those weapons a lot more generally usable, and you could switch the Soldier's Primary Target feature into a feature that'd instead let you turn that splash damage into additional attack rolls for a chance at full weapon damage (and suppression). Will probably write this down properly in a separate thread.
Tracking adds to class DC, so even someone who has master class DC max is more accurate than a legendary spellcaster; the soldier blows them out of the water (and has con as a KAS to boot).
That is only part of the full picture.
In practice, the caster can also target at least one of the two other saves and will reliably catch more targets in their aoes. So unless Reflex is already the low save, a spellcaster will typically be more accurate.
Then there is the fact that spells are massively more impactful than aoe weapon activities. Quickly, their more limited nature stops mattering (and becomes far less limited). That's because you can realistically expect at least double the impact per spell without even using your highest spell slots. Quite quickly as well, 4th rank/level 7 at the latest. As high as 4 rounds of effort with a single spell is very achievable.
My biggest issue with it honestly is that casters don't actually improve class DC and are thus hard locked from using Area weapons at all after a certain point; which I feel is a big deal since the elemental mystic's first focus spell is "summon gun" and the flamethrower or singing coil to shoot a big blast of element feel like cooler picks than a regular ol gun if your thing is channeling elements.
Yeah, it's weird that the WW is the only one.
And why not give the option of using spell DC instead? Tracking only applies to class DC, but could easily affect spell DC when using those weapons as well. Aoe damage is traditional caster territory, so it would only be appropriate.
Not that I expect many takers over just a laser pistol even in this case, but the restriction just feels unnecessary.
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As long as they dont critical susceed doing half damage on a group of opponents is not bad depending on the number of oppnenets. I normally try to save area attacks for when there are least having 3 opponents in the area of effect. Also taking advantage of area fire depends a lot on encounter desgine too. Area fire is kind of a waste against a single Boss monster and best against a lot of mooks. At least for grenades in SF1e you would add your dex bonous to the save DCYou need a lot of enemies to make that work, though. And they need to be clustered pretty tightly and at a relatively short distance so you can actually catch them in the aoe. As you say upwards of 3 opponents it gets pretty ok, but that is in no way something you can count on to happen regularly. If these are supposed to be at all viable "normal" weapons and the Soldier has to deal with them, then the degree to which they can depend on encounter design has to be limited.
Plus, if five years of PF2 has taught us anything, it is even spellcasters struggle mightily with this problem and constant failure is bad for player enjoyment, even if you still do something. And their spells quickly do more when an enemy succeeds at their save than when an enemy fails against an aoe weapon. A lot more. They can also circumvent the problem (mostly). If that is as big and lasting of an issue as it is, imagine the constant complaints about this!
I just spent 3 hours researching and writing a reply then my internet connection went out and lost it. Short answer just use SF1e rules and do safe for half damage.
I think in general the Area Fire action is just trying to reinvent what Scatter does already [...]
And the short reply to not re-tread too much ground: splash damage is not a viable solution for actual aoe damage. It becomes mechanically almost worthless by midgame due to enemy HP scaling and it simply doesn't fulfill the fantasy.
Just because aoe weapons don't work properly right now doesn't mean we should just abandon the entire concept. Which your idea is.
And the short reply to not re-tread too much ground: splash damage is not a viable solution for actual aoe damage. It becomes mechanically almost worthless by midgame due to enemy HP scaling and it simply doesn't fulfill the fantasy.
1 splash damage per damage die means that your splash damage is always proportionate to your weapon damage. As listed elsewhere already, 1 splash damage on a 1d8 weapon against three 30 HP enemies is proportionately the same as 4 splash damage on a 4d8 weapon against three 120 HP enemies.
Just because aoe weapons don't work properly right now doesn't mean we should just abandon the entire concept. Which your idea is.
Unless you're proposing to give these weapons d20 damage dice or something equally ridiculous, you are unlikely to ever get these AoE weapons to work to a satisfactory degree, and if you do somehow get there, that is likely a very bad sign. No matter which way you slice it, dealing AoE damage through guns means that damage is going to have to be diluted in some form: the benefit of the scatter trait is that it still lets you deal competent single-target damage, whereas Area Fire and Auto-Fire take up most of your turn and will pretty much always make you deal less single-target damage than just Striking twice. If encounters were full of lots of low-HP enemies that clumped up together all the time, perhaps that wouldn't be so bad, but the reality is that enemies rarely if ever do that in ranged-centric combat, to the point where you'll be lucky to catch more than one enemy with your AoE in an encounter even once. That is why so many playtesters, myself included, have rated the Soldier so low, because the class who's forced to use these weapons rarely if ever makes use of their strengths, but is always saddled with the downsides.
I think the attack vs. Reflex DC is actually a nice solution since I'm pretty sure math wise the attacker has an slight advantage over the one that defends, though unlike spell attacks these would scale with bonuses to attack too, right? This technically means any martial would end up with the equivalent to legendary +1 to their attacks with these weapons, and operatives would be legendary +3.
Making any kind of attack roll against a save DC using weapon proficiency is unfortunately off the table, for a couple of reasons: for starters: weapon proficiency bumps happen much earlier relative to saving throw DC bumps (expert to master at 5 and 13 for martials, compared to 7 and 15 at the earliest for casters), so making an attack roll against a saving throw DC would become disproportionately effective at certain levels where that's not intended. Second, any legendary proficiency class is going to be a problem, because legendary weapon proficiency indicates a specialization in single-target damage rather than AoE damage. An Operative (or, if we include Pathfinder classes, a Fighter) making attack rolls with these weapons would effectively become better at AoE with those weapons than every other class except the Soldier, when that's really not meant to be a strength of theirs. Of course, using class DC instead means legendary DC classes like the Commander or the Kineticist can make better use of these weapons than most others, despite the Commander being a single-target damage class and the Kineticist a class that's not meant to use weapons, but that's all the more reason why the current implementation ought to change IMO.
I don't like changing it to attack rolls honestly.
And, responding to an earlier response, a typical 20% chance of crit success for on level enemies is absolutely unacceptable, especially since it means a 5% chance of crit fails for just about any enemy you encounter, unless you're running into level -3 enemies with bad reflex for some reason.
If anything, I would like a soldier class feature that ups their DCs for area attacks above and beyond even where we are now (legend + 3, maybe it goes to legend + 5 for specific actions/weapons), and then add that ability being available for soldier multiclass at level 10-12 so other characters can get their piece of the pie.
I think the attack vs. Reflex DC is actually a nice solution since I'm pretty sure math wise the attacker has an slight advantage over the one that defends, though unlike spell attacks these would scale with bonuses to attack too, right? This technically means any martial would end up with the equivalent to legendary +1 to their attacks with these weapons, and operatives would be legendary +3.
Another thing why that doesn't work: the math would be the same at many levels. As an extreme case, for the Soldier it would only make a difference at levels 14 and 15. Targeting already provides the same bonus to attacks and DC. The statistical .5 "roller's advantage" is not significant enough to change the outcome.
This whole issue exists because saves are always higher than the equivalent "difficulty" of AC. Moderate is usually +1 above the equivalent AC, while high saves are typically +2 or +3. And high reflex saves are a whole lot more common than high AC, especially in the current Starfinder monster design.
1 splash damage per damage die means that your splash damage is always proportionate to your weapon damage. As listed elsewhere already, 1 splash damage on a 1d8 weapon against three 30 HP enemies is proportionately the same as 4 splash damage on a 4d8 weapon against three 120 HP enemies.
HP scales far more aggressively than damage. When you do 1 splash damage at low level, enemies have maybe 20-40 HP. 1 damage matters quite often. When you start doing 3 splash damage at level 12-ish, enemies start rocking 200 HP and more. 1,5% or less of an enemies' HP is a near meaningless amount. It will slightly reduce the number of enemies that just survive at single digit HP, nothing more.
Unless you're proposing to give these weapons d20 damage dice or something equally ridiculous, you are unlikely to ever get these AoE weapons to work to a satisfactory degree, and if you do somehow get there, that is likely a very bad sign. No matter which way you slice it, dealing AoE damage through guns means that damage is going to have to be diluted in some form: the benefit of the scatter trait is that it still lets you deal competent single-target damage, whereas Area Fire and Auto-Fire take up most of your turn and will pretty much always make you deal less single-target damage than just Striking twice. If encounters were full of lots of low-HP enemies that clumped up together all the time, perhaps that wouldn't be so bad, but the reality is that enemies rarely if ever do that in ranged-centric combat, to the point where you'll be lucky to catch more than one enemy with your AoE in an encounter even once. That is why so many playtesters, myself included, have rated the Soldier so low, because the class who's forced to use these weapons rarely if ever makes use of their strengths, but is always saddled with the downsides.
I'm confident the devs will find a good way. I proposed a viable solution in this exact thread. If I can do that, they can certainly do even better. Also, people seem to forget the Kineticist is a thing.
And if they don't have a good solution, I'd rather they scrap the idea entirely than give us anything like splash damage. Everything else is just selling the player a lie.
HP scales far more aggressively than damage. When you do 1 splash damage at low level, enemies have maybe 20-40 HP. 1 damage matters quite often. When you start doing 3 splash damage at level 12-ish, enemies start rocking 200 HP and more. 1,5% or less of an enemies' HP is a near meaningless amount. It will slightly reduce the number of enemies that just survive at single digit HP, nothing more.
Just to link to another conversation you're also following, splash damage actually still wins out -- you're dealing more damage to your main target than your secondary targets, but in practice your splash damage is not going to be trailing all that far behind, nor would it limit your ability to deal good single-target damage, in my opinion an essential function of any weapon. By contrast, the problem with AoE weapons is that even if you do catch two enemies in your AoE, you're actually still liable to deal less damage overall unless the enemies are exceptionally low-level. Your single-target damage is constantly going to be substantially worse, and you'd need to catch more than two enemies for the payoff to start becoming substantial. Effectively, splash damage looks bad but remains a consistent source of damage throughout, even with HP inflation, whereas AoE weapons look promising but underdeliver in practice -- and so in a way that is unlikely to ever be solved with damage buffs.
I'm confident the devs will find a good way. I proposed a viable solution in this exact thread. If I can do that, they can certainly do even better. Also, people seem to forget the Kineticist is a thing.
While your solution would almost certainly improve guns, I simply don't think it's enough. The Kineticist is certainly a thing, but a crucial difference is that the class has the immense flexibility of making single-action impulses as well as two-action impulses, while also having damaging impulses that are balanced to be about as strong as a slot spell cast at about max rank-2. They don't have to spend an action to swap out each time they want to make a quicker impulse, nor do they have to contend with mediocre AoE damage, because those impulses are balanced around a class that's intended to excel with at-will AoE. Guns, by contrast, are a much less flexible and much weaker affair, and because martial classes are not meant to excel with at-will AoE by default, it's unlikely AoE guns will ever be allowed to deal satisfactory AoE damage.
And if they don't have a good solution, I'd rather they scrap the idea entirely than give us anything like splash damage. Everything else is just selling the player a lie.
Selling the player a lie I think is unfortunately the fundamental problem of AoE weapons as implemented. To be clear, I don't think the developers are being deceptive, let alone intentionally so, but I do think they tried doing something different and are hitting the reality that what they're proposing to implement is just fundamentally never going to work very well.
I don't think that necessarily means throwing the baby out with the bathwater, though: splash damage on weapons is a fairly inoffensive trait that, as you saw in the thread I linked, does not need to come at the cost of single-target damage on a gun. Giving all characters access to a minor amount of splash damage on guns is better than giving all characters access to no splash damage on guns, because dealing a bit of splash damage is a desirable trait like many others. Splash damage on guns means any character can opt into a bit of gun-based AoE, including casters looking to "cast gun", so that would satisfy the developer's goals there too. If the Soldier could then have a class feature that let them turn that splash damage into full damage against every enemy in the AoE, then you could genuinely have the best of both worlds, where everyone could access AoE within reason, but Soldiers would excel at it above all others.
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Firstly, I was incorrect about MAP and area actions, they do have the attack trait. Though as was stated above, if you strke first, the area action is not affected by MAP.
Secondly, I remain unconvinced by the points against vanilla area attacks as they are now. The only issue I see is how they interact with weapon proficiency and class DCs.
Thirdly, I had not even looked at soldier before 10 minutes before posting this. I found out, very quickly and easily, that the different subclasses of soldier have different ways of suppressing. What is this ridiculousness about the bombard way should be the default!? Have you read the other subclasses? Heck, erudite warrior just auto suppresses one target with an action.
Firstly, I was incorrect about MAP and area actions, they do have the attack trait. Though as was stated above, if you strke first, the area action is not affected by MAP.
Secondly, I remain unconvinced by the points against vanilla area attacks as they are now. The only issue I see is how they interact with weapon proficiency and class DCs.
Thirdly, I had not even looked at soldier before 10 minutes before posting this. I found out, very quickly and easily, that the different subclasses of soldier have different ways of suppressing. What is this ridiculousness about the bombard way should be the default!? Have you read the other subclasses? Heck, erudite warrior just auto suppresses one target with an action.
1) We don't know that. The two instances of the MAP rules in PC1 are contradictory.
2) That is what playtesting is for, but the math is clear.
3) Yes, they have a chance of maybe suppressing one target. Only the EW's thing is guaranteed, but that isn't actually a suppression tool, but a soft taunt.
And ofc all but Action Hero and Bombard can easily conflict with your main thing, as they require additional actions on top of the two that are reserved for area/auto-fire every turn.
None of that helps with the main problem either. Their shared core class feature - Suppressing Fire - has a very high chance of just not working. It is clearly supposed to be the main source of suppression to spice up your aoe attacks. And it practice, it just isn't.
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As far as I can find, MAP gives penalty to checks. A DC is not a check.
In-game is not completely able to be white room mathed. Having played many spellcasters in PF2, the complaints about saves are mathematically correct, sure, but in game my spellcasters do very well. Thus, going against the mathematical analysis.
Their shared core feature is just a base feature. And works exactly as it seems intended to. So the difference between us is just that, we seem to disagree on the intent.
As far as I can find, MAP gives penalty to checks. A DC is not a check.
According to this, yes. This has no such limitation.
In-game is not completely able to be white room mathed. Having played many spellcasters in PF2, the complaints about saves are mathematically correct, sure, but in game my spellcasters do very well. Thus, going against the mathematical analysis.
It is not going against the mathematical analysis at all. Casters are designed around dealing with this problem, after all. They can avoid the enemies' strength. And spells are the most individually powerful abilities in the entire game as well.
By level 5 at the very least, aoe weapons are vastly weaker - the rift growing with every spell rank - and the two activities have exactly zero avoidance options. It's reflex save or nothing.
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I feel like characterizing the problem as 'fundamental' and unsolveable is too pessimistic.
Fundamentally the concern is that expected output is a little bit too low, due to a combination of too-high reflex saves and a few other factors.
Like, most of the problems simply evaporate if you add a +1 or +2 somewhere, or introduce a more balanced suite of enemies instead of only putting out ones with very high reflex saves. Maybe add a success effect to suppressive fire. Probably not all three because that would just create the opposite problem, since area weapons aren't actually that far behind the curve unless the AC/Reflex discrepancy is really bad (and they're fairly strong if the discrepancy points the other way).
None of that helps with the main problem either. Their shared core class feature - Suppressing Fire - has a very high chance of just not working. It is clearly supposed to be the main source of suppression to spice up your aoe attacks. And it practice, it just isn't.
That feels kind of like saying a barbarian's rage "just doesn't work" if you miss an attack. Yeah, it happens slightly more often per-target with suppressive fire, but it's somewhat apocalyptic phrasing, too.
An interesting note on the underlying math: generally, making two Strikes at master proficiency against an at-level enemy's high AC (high AC is usually what you'll encounter) has you dealing about 110% of the damage on a hit on average in total. Meanwhile, an at-level enemy saving with a moderate modifier against a master DC will be taking about 80% of the damage on a hit on average. All else held equal, using an AoE gun instead of a regular gun with the same damage die corresponds to approximately a 27% reduction in single-target damage. Thus, a d12 AoE weapon deals only a touch more single-target damage than a d8 single-target weapon. This is before factoring in other elements that generally favor attacks over DCs, like the off-guard condition, status and circumstance bonuses to attack rolls, and so on.
So, in theory, switching to attack rolls would be an improvement, right? Well, not quite, because just that first attack at 0 MAP is going to deal only 70% of your damage on a hit on average. That's a 36% single-target damage reduction compared to Striking twice. Now, you're probably thinking: what if you deal half damage on a miss? Well, that on-average 35% miss chance adds an extra 17.5% of your average hit damage, bringing the total up to 87.5% of your gun's damage on a hit on average. That's a comparatively tamer approximate 20% single-target damage reduction, roughly equivalent to downgrading a damage die.
All of which is to say that with perhaps a slight tweak, Karmagator's initial proposal is just about the closest any of us may have come to solving the problem of area weapon damage -- and, in my opinion, I think it's both still not enough and also potentially too much. I still don't think it's enough, because dealing AoE to tightly-packed enemies is too specific a niche for most martial classes to purchase, upgrade, and carry a bulky weapon just for that purpose, which would be unlikely to serve as a main weapon and still too action-intensive to accommodate many classes, whose class DC proficiency would also dip relative to attack proficiency for quite a few levels (8 levels for fast-scaling master DC classes like the Champion, Monk, or Ranger, 12 for slow scalers like the Rogue). I also think at that point it'd be too much, because on the occasion where you do catch even one additional enemy, let alone several, the returns very quickly become disproportionately large -- with two at-level enemies, you're dealing about 60% more overall damage than with a single-target gun, which is probably okay, but with three, that jumps to nearly two and a half times more damage, and over triple damage with four.
And this is why I ultimately don't have that much faith in pure AoE weapons working out that well in the future: at their most basic level, they're about making a square peg fit into a round hole. Weapons aren't made for AoE damage, nor are martial classes, yet these are a subgroup of weapons specifically geared towards dealing uniformly AoE damage. Not only does this force the weapons to key off of weird stats that inevitably lead to edge cases (the Commander gets top-tier accuracy with AoE guns under both the vanilla implementation and Karmagator's proposal, despite dealing no innate AoE damage), it also prevents those weapons from realizing their full potential, because as soon as they start dealing competent AoE, that's likely a sign that they're too strong. I suspect this may be why they're implemented as-is: we get to see high damage dice, even though in practice the damage we deal per target is much lower than that of a single-target gun with the same die. It's in my opinion the reverse problem from splash guns, where instead of dealing deceptively high damage with seemingly low numbers, the much higher numbers on AoE weapons end up doing deceptively low damage overall.
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Does this factor in an increased DC from tracking?
Does this just address base weapon dice?
At what level?
If it is high enough level to add a shock module, does it include that extra damage?
If the weapon has the shock module, does it account for the arcing damage from a potential crit? From the arcing from each potential crit?
There would be another way to make the Soldier in particular work without changing aoe weapons at all, though it sounds a little insane. But in effect it would do largely the same thing as my initial proposal:
- initial proficiency in class DC is expert
- Master at 7
- Legendary at 15
This would mean that at level 1 (DC 19), a level 1 creature would usually have a chance of 60% (moderate Reflex) - 45% (high Reflex) to fail your save. A rough look at other levels shows a very similar picture, typically +/- 5%.
I think that feels acceptable.
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Does this factor in an increased DC from tracking?
Does this just address base weapon dice?
At what level?If it is high enough level to add a shock module, does it include that extra damage?
If the weapon has the shock module, does it account for the arcing damage from a potential crit? From the arcing from each potential crit?
Assuming you're referring to my post, and in order: yes, no, at levels where attack and class DC proficiencies are equal, yes, no, and no. Making an attack roll instead of a save does favor on-crit effects, as you're generally more likely to critically succeed than an enemy is likely to critically fail, so that plays in favor of making attack rolls.
There would be another way to make the Soldier in particular work without changing aoe weapons at all, though it sounds a little insane. But in effect it would do largely the same thing as my initial proposal:
- initial proficiency in class DC is expert
- Master at 7
- Legendary at 15This would mean that at level 1 (DC 19), a level 1 creature would usually have a chance of 60% (moderate Reflex) - 45% (high Reflex) to fail your save. A rough look at other levels shows a very similar picture, typically +/- 5%.
I think that feels acceptable.
While this would make the Soldier more accurate with these weapons from level 1, I'm not sure what exactly this aims to solve, as the issue with the Soldier specifically is that they can't catch enemies often in their AoE, whereas the broader issues with AoE weapons wouldn't be affected by these changes at all.
It would create a workable basis in anticipation of more reasonable aoe sizes on the actual weapons. Though Action Hero with a decent weapon is already functional as far as the latter is concerned, imo.
The higher base accuracy plus making suppressed on a success baseline would make the Soldier acceptable whenever they only catch one target in the AoE. Which will happen no matter how the Soldier is changed.
And the most common actual AoE scenario in my experience - 2 enemies in the AoE - would be at a good level, finally. This should still be the default scenario even with better aoe sizes.
All in all, while the class would still be a bit situational, it would be fine overall. The rest has to be done on the map and enemy design side.
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That's a pretty big assumption, but I think also doesn't address the fundamental problem, which is that of AoE weapons themselves being mediocre in anyone else's hands but the Soldier's. If the Soldier needs a +2 to their starting DC and Primary Target just for it to be worthwhile, what's the point of picking these weapons on anyone else?
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And you are entirely correct. I'll try it "for science" in my group once we have run enough vanilla SF2 for the actual playtest. At this point, my game will have some major modifications anyway, so what is one more XD ?
But for the second part, it seems that people generally don't give a damn. It always goes straight to talking about the Soldier every time, you being the exception ofc.
So I've stopped bothering. I'm gonna write my feedback that'd be cool if these - automatic ones especially - were more generally useable but stayed aoe weapons. Be it through changing the weapons or just by making it viable to have one as a backup. Then hope that the devs manage to do that.
And if they don't, if this is the PF2 reload weapon thing again, then that's that. I'll be mildly disappointed, but as long as the Soldier works then it won't be too big of a deal.
That's entirely fair, and best of success with the playtesting! I've been doing a few experiments of my own with splash traits -- I'll post the findings in a separate thread, but it gives me a lot more hope for AoE on both guns and the Soldier.
And I agree, ideally it'd be good for AoE weapons to feel like worthwhile picks on many classes, and especially good on the Soldier. Failing that, so long as the Soldier works, that's the most important part as you mention.