| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I know Action Hero and Bombard have been getting most of the attention but I felt the Close Quarters fighting style had something interesting to offer. I got a chance to play one the other day in the level 5 adventure It Came From The Vast.
Character: Littlehorn Minotaur with Electrician background who notionally started with 3/3/3 physical scores, 1 Int, -1 Cha, boosted to 4/4/4/2/0/-1 at level 5. Took the Stretching Reach ancestry feat at level 5 and had Whirling Swipe, Shot On The Run, and Stock Striker as class feats. For weaponry he had an advanced stellar cannon. He also had a tactical fangblade but that was irrelevant to the adventure. He couldn't afford to have a second Advanced grade weapon and missing that damage die meant that he did more damage with Stock Striker for the time being. Other adventurers in the party included Iseph the Operative, Dae the Solarian, and a healing connection mystic.
The boss fight outside the ship was another story. My soldier and Dae both had mag boots. The party was split up one to a cannon despite knowing this was tactically inadvisable. Sample 62 initially attacked the Mystic, and Blossoming Interference also spread some damage around. Mystic ran and healed, Iseph fired the Advanced laser rifle, Dae used Stellar Rush and failed his attack, I used Shot On The Run with my stellar cannon and dealt an otherwise respectable 2d10 damage twice that Sample 62 happened to be resistant to. Due to the distance of engagement I would not have been able to draw a melee weapon, get to melee range, and strike in that turn. Round 2, Sample 62 focused on Iseph due to his use of fire damage and downed him with two crits in a row. Mystic healed Iseph. Dae used Stellar Rush again, this time in Graviton mode. Sample 62 passed its saving throws and Dae missed his photon shot, though this did get Sample 62's attention. I moved to melee distance and used Whirling Swipe with Stock Striker, doing 2d6+4 bludgeoning damage twice. Iseph picked up his rifle and fired two shots without aiming, judging that it was more important to get that second shot of fire damage than to get the aim bonus. Round 3, Sample 62 tried to move out of melee range of me, eating my Punitive Strike and Iseph's Hair Trigger. End combat.
Conclusion: I think I did reasonably well. I was consistently dealing 2d10 twice a round with my area fire and primary target. That's not far behind Iseph's two strike routine, though I think Iseph would do more damage than me even before considering the enemy's resistance and weakness situation. More to the point, I started doing my character's actual job on the second turn, getting in Sample 62's face and punishing its attempt to engage the ranged damage dealers.
Over all I did as the book suggested and mostly played it straight as a ranged soldier. Without a melee-compatible gap closer this guy is always going to end up shooting more often than slashing. The features that come from Close Quarters won't come up in every fight but when they do they're potentially crucial. As it happened I had no problem avoiding hitting my allies with my Stellar Cannon so I wasn't really missing much by not taking Bombard. Close Quarters did come in handy in one fight in which I used Punitive Strike to good effect. Seriously, it's better than Reactive Strike. The only thing holding it back is being attached to the Soldier class. There are also imaginable scenarios in which melee does more damage than ranged, though at this particular point in this character's career he had allowed his melee damage to lag a bit. Stock Striker isn't great damage but at least it allowed me to get in there and do what I had to do without burning an action switching weapons. If I had been stuck in melee for a longer period of time and had an on-level melee weapon I think I would have switched for the second round in melee. Prior to stock striker I think what I would have to do to initiate melee would be switch weapons, stride, strike. Stock Striker enables Stride, Whirling Swipe, Primary Target, or even Stride, Stride, Strike. Without a proper gap closer I'm either using Close Quarters to intercept melee combatants or perhaps kind of slowly maneuver to make an enemy's shooting position untenable.