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Since the only thing that guns get to add to damage in the playtest is weapon specialization (or precision with operative) it makes them very underwhelming especially if you face anything with DR or Hardness such as the playtest adventures. Rolling two ones on a critical and getting 4 damage because you rolled 2 ones which can't even beat 5hardness/DR just absolutely sucks the fun out of playing a 'science fiction' game. Might as well just be playing pathfinder and using a bow. This makes the playtest and future of SF2e prioritize melee over ranged and thus it just becomes a 'skin' for PF2e.
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Bad dice rolls suck that hasn't changed in 50 years. Even if you added a deadly d10 to every weapon you're still sometimes going to roll all 1s for damage.
Starfinder survival guide, use recall knowledge often and have weapons to cover more than one damage type. Doesn't matter if they are ranged or melee if something is immune to that damage type. Whenever you find a creature with immunity or resistance that's a good time to check for weaknesses.
You're not going to find one weapon that can overcome all of this. I left out the names of the creatures to not spoil them, this covers all creatures from 2 of the playtest scenarios and second contact, there were only about 5 or 6 that didn't have some resistance or immunity. NOTE there are 2 immunities I didn't list so as to not spoil them, but I'll give a hint, some creatures have weaknesses to certain skill checks.
Resistances piercing 5, slashing 5; Weaknesses fire 9
Immunities precision, swarm mind; Weaknesses area damage 5, fire damage 5, splash damage 5; Resistances bludgeoning 2, piercing 5, slashing 5
Resistances bludgeoning 7, slashing 7
Resistances physical 10 (except adamantine or bludgeoning), poison 15; Weaknesses electricity 15
Immunities cold, precision, swarm mind; Resistances bludgeoning 10, piercing 10, slashing 5; Weaknesses area damage 10, splash damage 10
Resistances acid 10
Resistances cold 10
Immunities fire, radiation; Weaknesses holy 10
Immunities death effects, disease, paralyzed, poison
Immunities bleed, death effects, disease, paralyzed, poison, unconscious; Resistance cold 6, electricity 6, fire 6, piercing 6, slashing 6
Immunities bleed, death effects, disease, paralyzed, poison, unconscious; Weaknesses slashing 10, vitality 10
regeneration 20 (deactivated by electricity or fire); Weaknesses electricity 10, fire 10
Immunities bleed, paralyzed, poison, sleep
Immunities bleed, paralyzed, poison, sleep
Weaknesses cold iron 10; Resistances cold 10, fire 10
Immunities critical hits, mental, precision, unconscious, visual; Weaknesses demagnetization; Resistances electricity 5, physical 5 (except adamantine)
Weaknesses cold iron 2, fire 2; Resistances cold 1, electricity 1
Resistances fire 5
Resistances fire 5
Immunities death effects, disease, paralyze, poison, unconscious
Resistances acid 5
Resistances acid 10
Immunities bleed, death effects, disease, doomed, drained, fatigued, healing, mental, nonlethal attacks, paralyzed, poison, sickened, unconscious; Weaknesses electricity 5 Exigency see above.
Immunities death effects, disease, mental, paralyzed, poison,
unconscious; Weaknesses electricity 10, slashing 10
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A much bigger problem with firearms in Starfinder 2E is magazine sizes .
B.T.W., larger Ammo Clips can actually help with "bad rolls" as it will allow more attacks.
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A much bigger problem with firearms in Starfinder 2E is magazine sizes .
B.T.W., larger Ammo Clips can actually help with "bad rolls" as it will allow more attacks.
More attacks don't help when all you get to ever roll is dice + a small weapon specialization (much later on). Where melee gets to add str mod, which on a crit would get doubled. It works in PF2e because it is a more melee focused realm. But in Starfinder melee should actually be the rarity imho. Just like you don't see people wielding swords on a modern battlefield.
And for me this issue just adds to the reality that SF2e is becoming a campaign skin for Pathfinder 2e and dropping what made it stand apart. All the people I GM for and play under don't care about crossplay. If we ever wanted to cross play stuff from PF2e and SF2e we look as that being on the GM and players to make it work.
Bad dice rolls suck that hasn't changed in 50 years. Even if you added a deadly d10 to every weapon you're still sometimes going to roll all 1s for damage.
Starfinder survival guide, use recall knowledge often and have weapons to cover more than one damage type. Doesn't matter if they are ranged or melee if something is immune to that damage type. Whenever you find a creature with immunity or resistance that's a good time to check for weaknesses.
You're not going to find one weapon that can overcome all of this. I left out the names of the creatures to not spoil them, this covers all creatures from 2 of the playtest scenarios and second contact, there were only about 5 or 6 that didn't have some resistance or immunity. NOTE there are 2 immunities I didn't list so as to not spoil them, but I'll give a hint, some creatures have weaknesses to certain skill checks.
Two things in a "Cosmic Birthday" have hardness. One of 5 and one of 10. The 10 is impossible to damage.. period at level 1. The other the ranged players just basically got to watch the melee player play while the Mystic kept him up. Unlike resistances, hardness applies to all damage types.
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Two things in a "Cosmic Birthday" have hardness. One of 5 and one of 10. The 10 is impossible to damage.. period at level 1. The other the ranged players just basically got to watch the melee player play while the Mystic kept him up. Unlike resistances, hardness applies to all damage types.Bad dice rolls suck that hasn't changed in 50 years. Even if you added a deadly d10 to every weapon you're still sometimes going to roll all 1s for damage.
Starfinder survival guide, use recall knowledge often and have weapons to cover more than one damage type. Doesn't matter if they are ranged or melee if something is immune to that damage type. Whenever you find a creature with immunity or resistance that's a good time to check for weaknesses.
You're not going to find one weapon that can overcome all of this. I left out the names of the creatures to not spoil them, this covers all creatures from 2 of the playtest scenarios and second contact, there were only about 5 or 6 that didn't have some resistance or immunity. NOTE there are 2 immunities I didn't list so as to not spoil them, but I'll give a hint, some creatures have weaknesses to certain skill checks.
I don't have Cosmic Birthday yet, so not familiar with the encounters in it, are you fighting a creature or trying to break through a wall or something? Also was this something you had to deal with in or out of combat? I would think that if they intentionally put something with a hardness of 10 at the first level either there has to be some way around it or it has some weakness, or so I would think. If it was an object engineering lore would be the way to find a weakness.
I just took a look at the Playtest book again, there are some weapons built to do extra damage against objects using the Razing trait, add Forcafull to that for even more damage, and Concussive to get around some resistances or immunities.
Disintegration Lash: Razing
Reaction Breacher: Razing, Concussive
Breaching Gun: Razing
Artillery Laser: Razing, Forceful
Razing: Razing weapons are particularly good at damaging
objects, structures, and vehicles. Whenever you deal damage
to an object, structure, or vehicle with a razing weapon, the
object takes an amount of additional damage equal to double
the number of weapon damage dice.
Forceful: This weapon becomes more dangerous as you
build momentum. When you attack with it more than once
on your turn, the second attack gains a circumstance bonus
to damage equal to the number of weapon damage dice,
and each subsequent attack gains a circumstance bonus to
damage equal to double the number of weapon damage dice.
Concussive: These weapons smash as much as puncture.
When determining a creature’s resistance or immunity to
damage from this weapon, use the weaker of the target’s
resistance or immunity to piercing or to bludgeoning. For
instance, if the creature were immune to piercing damage
and had no resistance or immunity to bludgeoning damage,
it would take full damage from a concussive weapon.
Resistance or immunity to all damage or all physical damage
applies as normal.
Hard to tell without knowing exactly what you encountered, but does get me wondering about building a character that is specialized against objects and things with hardness.
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In practice, the parties I ran still favored guns over melee, because the classes work much better with guns than melee weapons (with the obvious exception of the Solarian, who still had to stick exclusively to guns in some encounters), but enemies with damage reduction were a major pain point in my playtests. I do think it was a bad idea in general to use Pathfinder's baseline for HP and resistances in a gun-centric game, because even enemies with no resistances have often been quite spongey, and when enemies can resist damage or have Hardness, they have often outright negated certain successful attacks, which feels awful. Without even touching guns, simply reducing the HP and resistances of monsters around a lower baseline would help significantly with making combat less of a slog.
One thing I did later in my playtests was test out a few different universal actions, and one that worked quite well was the following: as a single action, you help an adjacent ally with their next ranged attack, allowing it to treat cover as one step lower and giving it a circumstance bonus to its damage roll (I went with half your level, to a minimum of 1). This not only helped boost gun damage up to a minimum amount, even on low rolls, but also encouraged both PCs and NPCs to group up in encounters, which made the party Soldier very happy indeed. I don't know if that damage bonus should be applied directly to guns (I'd prefer it not to), but I will definitely agree that a damage floor makes a big difference.
The other big issue I took with guns in the playtests was the tracking of ammo, particularly for NPCs: usage in my opinion was not a terribly fun statistic to handle, nor did it lead to particularly interesting gameplay, and it just stretched out turns just a little bit more due to the tracking involved. While this represented only a fairly minor, albeit unnecessary bit of upkeep for the PCs, it did create a lot more bloat when I was handling several different NPCs with guns. What was particularly frustrating was that in the majority of cases, the NPCs died before they ran out and had to reload, so tracking their magazine was all for nothing. Gun ammo tracking could therefore stand to be simplified by a lot I think, and many guns I think have such large magazines that I don't think they need to reload at all, because they already don't in practice.
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Many of my characters still favor ranged over the melee, especially with a 3-action economy and +10 = crit. Some creatures have special attacks that I wold never want to get into melee range of like paralize. Also if you are in melee with a creature it would need a really good reason to not keep attacking you. In ranged combat, there is less certainty you will be the target of an attack each round.
I don't mind Hardness and resistance as long as they have weaknesses to balance them out. Using recall knowledge feels much better with 3 actions so it's not using up half your turn like it does in SF1e. I like having to learn alien creatures' weaknesses, not knowing makes them feel more alien. I do think the DC for recall knowledge should go down if you have already attacked a creature and triggered its resistance, or it's used its special abilities.
The other side of the issue with lots of creatures having resistances, is do the PCs have ways to deal with them. In a Sci-fi setting a lot of that could be through equipment. Grenades are great for that, especially now that they are simple weapons in the playtest. The only thing I don't like about grenades in the playtest is that creatures with high Reflex saves are almost immune to grenades. Since guns are a big part of the game having ammo with different damage types could help, or ammo with more than one damage type.
Spells that could debuff resistances, immunities, or hardness would help too.
I do like Teridax's idea for adding to damage, kind of something like Harrying Fire for damage.
Many of my characters still favor ranged over the melee, especially with a 3-action economy and +10 = crit. Some creatures have special attacks that I wold never want to get into melee range of like paralize. Also if you are in melee with a creature it would need a really good reason to not keep attacking you. In ranged combat, there is less certainty you will be the target of an attack each round.
I don't mind Hardness and resistance as long as they have weaknesses to balance them out. Using recall knowledge feels much better with 3 actions so it's not using up half your turn like it does in SF1e. I like having to learn alien creatures' weaknesses, not knowing makes them feel more alien. I do think the DC for recall knowledge should go down if you have already attacked a creature and triggered its resistance, or it's used its special abilities.
The other side of the issue with lots of creatures having resistances, is do the PCs have ways to deal with them. In a Sci-fi setting a lot of that could be through equipment. Grenades are great for that, especially now that they are simple weapons in the playtest. The only thing I don't like about grenades in the playtest is that creatures with high Reflex saves are almost immune to grenades. Since guns are a big part of the game having ammo with different damage types could help, or ammo with more than one damage type.
Spells that could debuff resistances, immunities, or hardness would help too.
I do like Teridax's idea for adding to damage, kind of something like Harrying Fire for damage.
As per the rules identifying a creature which is using a skill is done as part of another action so it shouldn't be taking up any of your action economy in SF1e. You can do it as part of a move or as part of retrieving something from your inventory etc.
In an unrelated note…
And for me this issue just adds to the reality that SF2e is becoming a campaign skin for Pathfinder 2e and dropping what made it stand apart. All the people I GM for and play under don't care about crossplay. If we ever wanted to cross play stuff from PF2e and SF2e we look as that being on the GM and players to make it work.
There is conversion info on Pages 498 to 528 of the Starfinder 1e Core.
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As per the rules identifying a creature which is using a skill is done as part of another action so it shouldn't be taking up any of your action economy in SF1e. You can do it as part of a move or as part of retrieving something from your inventory etc.Many of my characters still favor ranged over the melee, especially with a 3-action economy and +10 = crit. Some creatures have special attacks that I wold never want to get into melee range of like paralize. Also if you are in melee with a creature it would need a really good reason to not keep attacking you. In ranged combat, there is less certainty you will be the target of an attack each round.
I don't mind Hardness and resistance as long as they have weaknesses to balance them out. Using recall knowledge feels much better with 3 actions so it's not using up half your turn like it does in SF1e. I like having to learn alien creatures' weaknesses, not knowing makes them feel more alien. I do think the DC for recall knowledge should go down if you have already attacked a creature and triggered its resistance, or it's used its special abilities.
The other side of the issue with lots of creatures having resistances, is do the PCs have ways to deal with them. In a Sci-fi setting a lot of that could be through equipment. Grenades are great for that, especially now that they are simple weapons in the playtest. The only thing I don't like about grenades in the playtest is that creatures with high Reflex saves are almost immune to grenades. Since guns are a big part of the game having ammo with different damage types could help, or ammo with more than one damage type.
Spells that could debuff resistances, immunities, or hardness would help too.
I do like Teridax's idea for adding to damage, kind of something like Harrying Fire for damage.
Good to know, I think I forgot that over the years because 90% of the time when I'm taking my first move during combat I'm using that to draw a weapon.
I just downloaded A Cosmic Birthday, I've only had time to quickly page through it, but it's already obvious that with 23 hazards it's largely a hazard playtest, and with almost all the hazards having hardness they might be testing how much hardness to use. Most hazards can be dealt with skill checks, One quick idea I had is to have every x amount of damage done to a hazard reduce the DC of certain skill checks to disable them, or making an attack count as adding a skill check instead of damage.
I saw the creature with the high hardness, and rolling low crit damage would really suck when it has a cool dramatic reaction to any crit damage that gets through. But I think that's more of an issue with the crit rules not necessarily with guns themselves, it also could be changed within that creature's stat block too. Overall it's a cool encounter when it goes well. I feel it was meant to be hard with a cool twist, once you get far enough along in it.
If anything I think Starfinder would naturally have more hazards than Pathfinder. Caves and dungeons are carved out or formed out of solid rock, whereas a space station or starship is a giant mechanical hazard with living spaces built into it.
So the thing I think we might need more of in Starfinder is more high tools to deal with hazards. I like the idea of finding ways or new weapons or equipment to deal with hardness, if you have that then you also have ways to deal with mechs and vehicles in combat.