Let's make guns more fun!

[Teridax]

For a game that's all about gun-based combat, Starfinder seems to be struggling to make guns feel good to playtesters. Threads critical of guns or their mechanics are among the most common discussions that appear, to the point where some even question their effectiveness over melee weapons entirely. Though I wouldn't go that far, I've written several critical reports of guns myself, and in my playtesting experience I found there were a lot of aspects to guns that were needlessly restrictive or tedious, some of which I think genuinely made certain classes worse to play too. To summarize some of the common criticisms made in these types of discussion:

Guns just feel weak, especially at low levels where a single, naked damage die can easily lead to rolling 1s, or 2s on a crit. The lack of a flat modifier typically found on melee weapons makes a big difference, especially when running up against enemies with resistances and Hardness balanced around Pathfinder's melee-centric combat, where successful hits and even crits often end up dealing zero damage.

Ranged combat doesn't necessarily bring out the best in guns just yet, because 2e's cover mechanics are a bit of an afterthought and there are no rules to encourage clever positioning at range, so ranged-versus-ranged encounters can end up becoming very static and repetitive.

Ammo tracking and expenditure is tedious and often pointless. Many guns don't need to reload mid-combat or quickly cease to require reloading once higher capacity comes into play, the expend statistic looks designed purely to make certain guns cost more to fire, which quickly becomes trivial with a few levels, and all of these statistics also apply to NPCs who usually die before they run out or even just need to reload.

There doesn't seem to be all that much diversity to guns at present. Every rifle-type gun has a single-shot magazine, energy damage seems to be costed quite heavily, and several of the new traits either seem to make little impact (boost, professional, or unwieldy, though the latter only because everyone who uses unwieldy weapons gets to ignore the unwieldy trait), or are relegated to just one or a handful of specific builds (area or automatic with the Soldier, unwieldy with the Soldier and Sniper Operative). Some advanced weapons have more interesting traits or trait combinations, but it's very difficult to access advanced weapons in the playtest and most of them are so weak as to not be worth picking over martial weapons (for instance, the advanced AoE weapons, whose implementation makes weapon proficiency irrelevant for their AoE attacks). Many traits from Pathfinder that could be used to make guns more interesting seem to be missing.

Some of the new traits I think just don't work. Unwieldy is a trait that has to be bypassed on every build that uses unwieldy weapons, and both area and automatic weapons are so mediocre that even the Soldier, who gets to set save DCs higher than those of casters and make a free Strike on top, needs extra help just to do well with them.

In a nutshell: guns in Starfinder should be about firing meaty lasers and explosives while using future tech to do things no bow or firearm in Pathfinder could achieve, but in practice using them is often an exercise in tedium, where even the most successful use of guns doesn't really generate great returns. This I think is disappointing, but also worrying, more so than any problems with classes or other mechanics, as guns are at the core of Starfinder and its combat. In order for this game to do well, I think it is absolutely non-negotiable for guns to feel good to use. Players have often argued to straight-up buff guns, and while I think there's room for that in several instances, I think the more important bit here is the feel: if we were to take out or change the elements that make guns feel worse to use, and instead try adding more stuff that makes them feel more fun and powerful, I think there's a lot of improvements that could be made before even starting to raise their power level.

I can't speak for everyone who's raised these criticisms, but here are some suggestions I'd throw in based on my experience, some of which I've seen others make too:

Let players add flat damage to their guns in some way in general, not just via the boost trait (which could itself be significantly improved in my opinion). In a brew I wrote and tested towards the latter stages of my playtest, I proposed a new universal single action, Spot, that let you buff an adjacent ally's next ranged Strike to partially ignore cover and deal bonus flat damage. In my playtest, this worked a charm, and made guns feel meatier when teamwork got involved.

Reward clever ranged positioning with more damage. In that same above brew, I added rules to cover that made creatures taking cover off-guard from angles where they weren't benefiting from cover, which not only increased the damage of guns overall, but also made combat significantly more dynamic as everyone moved around more and entrenched themselves in cover less.

Remove the expend statistic, and remove the magazine and reload statistics from as many weapons as possible. Most guns simply do not need to reload mid-combat, and streamlining all of this bean-counting in a manner that would be much easier to handwave as desired at the table would make guns much less tedious to fire. Players should not feel like they should have to hold back on using a gun in combat unless they're using special ammunition, in my opinion.

Make energy damage cost less in a weapon's power budget. The assumption seems to be that energy damage is a benefit, but in my experience it's more power-neutral, because energy damage may trigger weakness more often, but also runs more often into resistance and outright immunity.

Give some rifles a higher magazine capacity before needing to reload, and make the single-shot rifles more powerful. The Seeker Rifle in particular I think got massively overnerfed and could be made a lot better, even by simple weapon standards, and reload I think needs to be treated as a much more significant downside when it kicks in, especially as it becomes far more important the fewer shots you get to make before needing to reload.

Add many more traits to guns in Starfinder, including traits found exclusively on melee weapons in Pathfinder. We could do with more guns that have the agile, sweep, or twin traits, for example, and simply including these traits more would make guns significantly more diverse.

Special mention goes to the kickback trait, which adds bonus flat damage and imposes an accuracy penalty unless you have enough Strength: this is a power-neutral trait that would not only make some heavier guns feel meatier, but would also incentivize Strength on certain builds, as currently the attribute I think is the weakest in Starfinder and not really worth boosting if you're not opting into a melee build.

Just remove the unwieldy trait. It's a mechanic that divorces guns from 2e's three-action economy, arguably the best part of the system, and any build that currently uses unwieldy weapons is routinely made to ignore the trait. If it really needs to exist, just make it work like the opposite of agile where it incurs a heavier MAP (i.e. 0/-6/-12 instead of 0/-5/-10).

Rework AoE weapons. I've made several threads about this now, but having these guns make regular Strikes with various forms of splash damage has, in my experience, made them feel significantly better to play, usable on many more characters besides the Soldier, and far more able to interact with all of the traits and mechanics that make weapons so fun to use in 2e, including the above. When I adjusted the Soldier around these guns, the class also felt immensely better to play, without needing nearly as many compensatory mechanics as they do now.

All of this is to say: I'd like to see a Starfinder where my Soldier could fire a heavy machine gun with the kickback, agile, and maybe a cone splash trait for lots of rapid-fire, yet consistent attacks, while my Operative gets to choose between a single-shot assassin rifle that truly lives up to the motto of "one shot, one kill," or other slightly less intense rifles that get to fire more than once before running out. I'd like to see a much more diverse range of guns that get to have lots of combinations of traits and damage types, and although I'd like all of these weapons to be balanced along 2e's overall standards, I don't think that should go against being able to deal consistent base damage on a hit or crit with a gun. I'd like to fire all of these guns without having to do a bit of accounting with every shot, and I'd like to have more ways of making my guns feel even better if I interact with my teammates or position myself tactically against my enemies.

There are so many ways in my opinion to make Starfinder's guns feel better to play, many of which already exist in 2e, and if a new playtest ever rolls out that allows for more substantial changes to the material we have now, I'd like to see the envelope pushed much farther on all of this. In fact, while I do want balance compatibility with Pathfinder in the finished product, I would also be fine with a playtest that intentionally pulled out all the stops on guns and just focused on making them fun to play without worrying about them being too powerful, just to see how much could be achieved. Guns in Starfinder both deserve and need to feel awesome, and I'd like to see guns evolve significantly to achieve that in the future.

[Justnobodyfqwl]

I agree with your overall point that "Guns in Starfinder both deserve and need to feel awesome", and "I would also be fine with a playtest that intentionally pulled out all the stops on guns and just focused on making them fun to play without worrying about them being too powerful"

I also agree that ammunition tracking is in a weird place right now, since you're hard pressed to find a weapon that you're realistically going to expend in a single fight. And man, hardness on enemies REALLY sucks in a ranged meta! I even like some of your ideas a lot- I think the idea of "enemies are more vulnerable on one side of cover than the other, so you wanna tactically position around them" is so genius!

However...I gotta be real man, i've actually had a great time with guns and SF2E's combat. I like it a lot.

Now keep in mind, I've played very little Pathfinder 2e, so maybe that's a big factor. I won't have the same expectations of a level 1 character doing X+Y damage per strike that many others might, which would contribute to feeling bad that starfinder guns do just X damage. (And I DO agree that the fact that not adding any ability to damage increases swinginess in combat, which can both feel bad and make combat harder to balance)

However, I tried to develop my SF2E combat encounters around what the book seemed to emphasize are important, and I have a great time! (I originally had a big write-up here about Range, Hazards, Verticality and Cover, but it started to feel too off-topic to the greater point of guns, haha)

This isn't really meant to shut you down, as much as offer a perspective that doesn't line up with what this forum seems to encounter with guns.

[Driftbourne]

In the playtest I've played a mystic, operative, and soldier, so far.

raw dice rolls
mystic 5, 6, 10
Had to use a pistol because the target had immunities, note spells, and a pistol both on 30-foot range. Bad dice rolls it happens

operative 3, 10-5 MAP, 9, 9-5 MAP
Aim action felt good much better than trick attack, Bad dice rolls happen again.

soldier
(auto fire) half damage, half damage
(primary target) 12, 3
Autofire + primary target felt good, doing 1/2 damage despite bad dice rolls felt good.

Overall, I'm happy with guns in the hands of operatives and soldiers, bad dice rolls happen.

Thought on non-martial classes with backup pistols. Chk Chk’s sidearm is an Arc pistol that deals electrical damage. with a 30-foot range increment. An electrical Arc doesn't necessarily travel in a straight line, but it's not a cone either. What if some energy weapons had a wide beam trait

Wide Beam: This weapon fires a wide beam of energy making it easier to hit a target. If you miss by only 1 you still do 1 point of damage.

Maybe the range of the miss and damage could scale with the level of the weapon.

[Teridax]

Justnobodyfqwl wrote:

This isn't really meant to shut you down, as much as offer a perspective that doesn't line up with what this forum seems to encounter with guns.

On the contrary, diverse opinions are what make these places actual discussion spaces rather than echo chambers (we could in fact use more diverse opinions, as these forums I think are quite echo chamber-y sometimes), and the perspective you offer is as valid as mine. I don't think we disagree all that much on overall enjoyment either, because I too very much enjoy 2e's combat and enjoy combat in Starfinder as well, warts and all. For all the criticism I have, I also actually think Starfinder has been doing some combat arenas a bit better than Pathfinder, as some in the playtest scenarios integrate hazards in a manner that significantly enhanced encounters, and that's something I'd like to see much more often in PF2e (it also gave Lancer vibes, which is never a bad thing).

From what you've said, it also seems like you're not so much opposed to what I'm saying (in fact, you've agreed with bits of it!), so much as just more generally laid-back about guns and combat in Starfinder, which isn't a bad thing at all. For all the changes I'd like to make to guns and gun-based combat, the end result ought to be satisfactory to all, or at least as many people as possible, including you. If there are elements of guns that you currently really enjoy and wouldn't want to see changed, that too is something worth bringing up, regardless of how it sits relative to mine or anyone else's opinion. It's easy to lean heavily on critical feedback (I'm often guilty of that), but citing things that you especially enjoy I'd say is really useful feedback too and can help drive future decisions as well, so it's also worth celebrating aspects of Starfinder's guns that you like.

Driftbourne wrote:

Wide Beam: This weapon fires a wide beam of energy making it easier to hit a target. If you miss by only 1 you still do 1 point of damage.

I like this a lot. I think one unexplored avenue of 2e is more weapon traits that let them do something even on a miss, which we sort of have with the splash trait but not really on anything else. Any such trait would make "casting gun" much more attractive on casters with their reduced attack modifier too, so the trait you're proposing would be especially worthwhile on a character like Chk Chk.

[Driftbourne]

Teridax wrote:

Driftbourne wrote:

Wide Beam: This weapon fires a wide beam of energy making it easier to hit a target. If you miss by only 1 you still do 1 point of damage.

I like this a lot. I think one unexplored avenue of 2e is more weapon traits that let them do something even on a miss, which we sort of have with the splash trait but not really on anything else. Any such trait would make "casting gun" much more attractive on casters with their reduced attack modifier too, so the trait you're proposing would be especially worthwhile on a character like Chk Chk.

Speaking of the splash trait, that could help grenades, currently how grenades work on saving throws, extreme Boss monsters are immune to grenades. Also missing when you are just wasting ammo is one thing but it's even worse for wasting a spell slot, having spells using attack rolls that did 1 point if you missed by just 1 would help too. Maybe add that as a feat for spell casters so it could be used with old spells too.

[moosher12]

I've always been of the opinion that "Juice" is one of the most important considerations to creating a game.

I know, for example, that even if the stats work out favorably, that +X to damage means a lot to players. That's why I ended up allowing dex to damage on melee finesse weapons in Pathfinder as a home rule. A minute upgrade to damage that does not mean much, can mean the difference between a complaining player, and one who is playing along without such. Even if the mechanical change is not much.

Now, I've also been on record saying that I support keeping track of ammo.

But toward Teridax' point, if some players feel there is room for better feel, there is room for better feel.

I do have an alternate approach to suggest.

One aspect, for example. is when it is said that many guns do not need to reload mid-battle. Perhaps Starfinder can get away with using more realistic magazine sizes. Magazine sizes, where a one-handed weapon has 10-20 shots, and a two-handed weapon has 30-60 shots.

This way, you still have to keep track of ammo, but not in a scale of a single battle. If anything, these upper limits would only apply to Area attacks.

I guess one example was. I once played in a homebrewed D&D game. The GM of that game wanted to do a mixed setting theme, where fantasy met cyberpunk. As such, my character had a P-90. The magazine could hold 50 rounds. Impossible to expend in a session. But, when I had free time between encounters, I'd transfer bullets from my ammo box to my magazine to keep it topped off.

If a gun is supposed to be as usable in Starfinder as a melee weapon is in Pathfinder, then perhaps you don't need to worry about reloads except under a prolonged fight.

Perhaps guns should have a high volume of bullets they can hold. Perhaps automatic weapons can be given a burst fire option that expends more bullets and gives a bonus.

Say all automatic weapons allow you to expend 3 bullets from your 30-round magazine to get a +2 to damage as a burst-fire shot, as an example.

And of course, give bullets weight so they are a genuine kit-factor. Make it to where it's a valid choice whether or not to be conservative with your ammo.

[Driftbourne]

moosher12 wrote:

One aspect, for example. is when it is said that many guns do not need to reload mid-battle. Perhaps Starfinder can get away with using more realistic magazine sizes. Magazine sizes, where a one-handed weapon has 10-20 shots, and a two-handed weapon has 30-60 shots.

This way, you still have to keep track of ammo, but not in a scale of a single battle. If anything, these upper limits would only apply to Area attacks.

I guess one example was. I once played in a homebrewed D&D game. The GM of that game wanted to do a mixed setting theme, where fantasy met cyberpunk. As such, my character had a P-90. The magazine could hold 50 rounds. Impossible to expend in a session. But, when I had free time between encounters, I'd transfer bullets from my ammo box to my magazine to keep it topped off.

If a gun is supposed to be as usable in Starfinder as a melee weapon is in Pathfinder, then perhaps you don't need to worry about reloads except under a prolonged fight.

I agree with this, one issue it causes is all the class abilities and feats that deal with quickly changing magazines become useless. One way to keep them still useful is if we had different types of ammo then being able to quick change still has benefits. Although auto-fire combined with your next suggestion would be a reason to track for auto-fire weapons, see below think I found a way to deal with both issues

moosher12 wrote:

Perhaps guns should have a high volume of bullets they can hold. Perhaps automatic weapons can be given a burst fire option that expends more bullets and gives a bonus.

Say all automatic weapons allow you to expend 3 bullets from your 30-round magazine to get a +2 to damage as a burst-fire shot, as an example....

Normally, Automatic Fire expends ammo equal to the number of targets in the area × 2. Gaining +2 damage to multiple targets is a big benefit, I would suggest making it use up the rest of your ammo, this helps get rid of needing to track individual rounds, and makes having quick change feats or abilities still be useful. Using the rest of the magazine also makes it a feature people would save for special occasions and not just use every attack. Also, I'd suggest having it cost an action to sustain fire. If it's costing an action, and uses up all your ammo, and can only be used after a 2 action auto fire attack thus taking up your entire turn, might even be able to bump up the damage to 1d4+1

[moosher12]

Driftbourne wrote:

Normally, Automatic Fire expends ammo equal to the number of targets in the area × 2. Gaining +2 damage to multiple targets is a big benefit, I would suggest making it use up the rest of your ammo, this helps get rid of needing to track individual rounds, and makes having quick change feats or abilities still be useful. Using the rest of the magazine also makes it a feature people would save for special occasions and not just use every attack. Also, I'd suggest having it cost an action to sustain fire. If it's costing an action, and uses up all your ammo, and can only be used after a 2 action auto fire attack thus taking up your entire turn, might even be able to bump up the damage to 1d4+1

I guess I should clarify, for my burst suggestion, I don't think Auto Fire should get the bonus. If you're attacking multiple creatures, the damage would stay as is (though tweaking the adjudication of the degrees of success for auto-fire should certainly be done.)

The burst idea was for an enhanced Strike against a single creature. Spend more bullets against the one, get a damage bonus to reflect the extra bullets being used, but without being so large as if you had shot them with two seperate Strikes.

For auto fire, the extra bullet expenditure is to ensure accuracy when your attention is divided against multiple creatures. For burst, the extra bullet expenditure would be a reward for focusing on a single target.

Plus it would make both an Area fire and a burst fire seperate usecases, where Area Fire is better when dividing attention among mooks, and burst fire is better when focusing on a more prominent threat.

Personally, I don't like the idea of expending all ammunition in a spray. As it is more of a game-ification that I, as a major fan of gun games, always ruins my suspension of disbelief. I hated it in D&D and I hated it in the Field Test, relieved when they reduced it to 2 per enemy. Granted, I don't mind increasing it to 3, or even 4 per target, to offset larger magazine sizes, but I do think a full magazine dump is overkill. Cyril Figgus in Archer doing it while yelling "SUPPRESSING FIIIIRE" was done as a joke, As that's not really the done thing in a more realistic sense. At least, not offensively. Burning a whole mag like that is more for defensive tactics to keep people off of field, than to actually attack.

Driftbourne wrote:

I agree with this, one issue it causes is all the class abilities and feats that deal with quickly changing magazines become useless. One way to keep them still useful is if we had different types of ammo then being able to quick change still has benefits. Although auto-fire combined with your next suggestion would be a reason to track for auto-fire weapons, see below think I found a way to deal with both issues

I like the idea of having variant ammunition as an option for changing magazines. I actually brought up in another thread the idea of having high-powered or hollow point ammunition that raises the damage die by one step, but might increase the cost per bullet by a certain factor, or having subsonic ammunition that makes less noise, but decreases the damage die of the gun, and also increases the cost per bullet, there is also the concept of using variant enchanted bullets for other uses, like how we have for bolts and arrows in Pathfinder.

[Driftbourne]

Applying the idea of sustaining fire to energy weapons like lasers, Arc pistols, and maybe even sonic attacks, basically, any damage type where it makes sense that holding it on the target longer does more damage. A sustaining fire action could look like this.

Sustain fire ◆◆ Your last attack hit your target with an energy weapon, you continue focusing energy from your weapon on the target, using up the rest of your batterie. The target gets a reflex save on a,
crit success no damage
save 1 point of damage
fail 1d4 damage
crit fail 2d4

When counting damage against hardness add the original damage to the Sustain fire damage. This could also apply to the autofire example in my previous comment above.

Using 2-action makes it not work with other already powerful 2-action attacks.

The downside of all of these suggestions is the other side could use them against you too.

[Driftbourne]

moosher12 wrote:

Driftbourne wrote:

I agree with this, one issue it causes is all the class abilities and feats that deal with quickly changing magazines become useless. One way to keep them still useful is if we had different types of ammo then being able to quick change still has benefits. Although auto-fire combined with your next suggestion would be a reason to track for auto-fire weapons, see below think I found a way to deal with both issues

I like the idea of having variant ammunition as an option for changing magazines. I actually brought up in another thread the idea of having high-powered or hollow point ammunition that raises the damage die by one step, but might increase the cost per bullet by a certain factor, or having subsonic ammunition that makes less noise, but decreases the damage die of the gun, and also increases the cost per bullet, there is also the concept of using variant enchanted bullets for other uses, like how we have for bolts and arrows in Pathfinder.

Here are some of my ideas on how to balance some types of variant ammunition.

Hollow points: raises the damage 1 die size, but does half damage vs heavy armor, or anything with hardness.
Armor-piercing: Roll damage normally, double the damage only to see if you make it through hardness, damage reduction, or resistance to piercing. If any damage gets through, or the target doesn't have hardness, damage reduction, or resistance, then the target takes 1/2 of the original damage roll, rounded up. On a crit hit the target takes full damage doubled.

These examples have strong enough drawbacks that people won't just always have them loaded in their guns, and make regular ammo obsolete. If cost is the only drawback then found special ammo has no drawbacks to using it all the time.

[Sebastian Hirsch]

I question that a lot of this is necessary, helpful or that it would add a lot, particularly once the word "realism" crops up.

While it is tempting to offer solutions, Paizo's playtests tend to work best when people post their problems and avoid offering specific solutions, after all the designers might already have their own, plans based on the feedback they have received.

[Driftbourne]

Sebastian Hirsch wrote:

I question that a lot of this is necessary, helpful or that it would add a lot, particularly once the word "realism" crops up.

While it is tempting to offer solutions, Paizo's playtests tend to work best when people post their problems and avoid offering specific solutions, after all the designers might already have their own, plans based on the feedback they have received.

I have complete confidence the Starfriends can find solutions on their own. Personally, I treat the playtest like a brainstorming session that ends in December. When getting feedback on the video game I wrote, often I found player suggestions much more useful than just if they liked something or not. Often I found players were wrong about what the actual problem was, but reading their suggestions pointed out the real problem. Sometimes their suggestions pointed out or solved a completely different problem or ended up as an entirely new game feature. So I hope the developers take anything I say in the play test as a suggestion, not the solution.

I just woke up it's too early to talk about "realism"

[Cellion]

On the topic of ammo in SF2E, my experience with SF1E was that almost no one kept track of ammo. It's too much tracking for something that is basically almost never a real restriction, and it looks like we're heading that direction for SF2E as well. I think Paizo should 100% consider a more abstract ammo system as an optional variant rule (if not the main rule) wherein you have infinite ammo for normal attacks, but you use up your whole magazine when you use your gun's special ability - be that area fire, or something else. That way you have a delayed action cost (reloading) when you do your "cool thing" but otherwise you don't have to monitor ammo.

As someone who has played a lot of Lancer over the last year, that system is not particularly simple overall, but it uses abstraction and simplification in several spots to bring in-play complexity and overhead down. No ammo tracking at all there, for example.

---

I also thoroughly wish for Paizo to consider how to make the ranged combat baseline more interesting for SF2E. There have been good suggestions above, but I think a simple dichotomy between cover being super strong and there being multiple ways to flush people out of cover would be the first key step. PF2E's standard cover bonuses are pretty good, but it lacks ways to defeat cover in interesting fashion from range (usually done by just having your melee allies rush the enemies in cover). Powerful but delayed aoe attacks would do the trick, but they have to be strong enough that I don't just want to sit there and eat them.

[Squiggit]

So part of the problem is that by making positioning less important and removing athletics from the default assumption of the game means there's a lot less for ranged characters to do besides striking.

The solution then has to be to give things back.

1) I'd like to see guns be weirder in general. Right now SF is full of unique ranged weapons that kind of just give you a bunch of different ways to do d6-d8 damage (sometimes d10 if you're lucky).

Right now automatic weapons (since area weapons always are) are the only thing in the game with an internally unique action, something that could be expanded upon with other trait types.

Another avenue to address this might be weapon swapping. Right now like.. Area weapons are situational with different weapon shapes, but the action cost of weapon swapping and the physical cost of buying multiple weapon types makes the idea of sometimes using a flamethrower (etc) just kind of generally a bad idea. If swapping weapons to take advantage of different energy types and weapon properties was more convenient, it would make combat more dynamic by default. It would also help address the complaint that area weapons are niche, weird, and seldom worth it because you wouldn't need to commit to them in the first place.

2) Class specific actions. There are already a handful of them, but expanding unique features and feats that give you new ways to engage in combat. In PF2, Inventors can shoot lightning or explode, dragon barbarians can breathe fire, kineticists have a whole suite of unique combat actions.

There's zero reason why Operatives, Soldiers, Envoys and Solarians shouldn't follow in the same mold. There's already some of this, but there really needs to be even more in these classes.

[BigNorseWolf]

Building automatic weapon progression into the game would help switch hitters a LOT.

[Cellion]

Or make damage scale with some personal upgrade rather than purely via striking rune equivalents that are tied to individual weapons.

[Driftbourne]

Cellion wrote:

I also thoroughly wish for Paizo to consider how to make the ranged combat baseline more interesting for SF2E. There have been good suggestions above, but I think a simple dichotomy between cover being super strong and there being multiple ways to flush people out of cover would be the first key step. PF2E's standard cover bonuses are pretty good, but it lacks ways to defeat cover in interesting fashion from range (usually done by just having your melee allies rush the enemies in cover). Powerful but delayed aoe attacks would do the trick, but they have to be strong enough that I don't just want to sit there and eat them.

Guns in SF2e create the ranged meta, other weapons counter it, having an anti-cover missile would be fun.

Grenade area great way to get opponents to move out of cover but you need a grenade that has an effect that lasts for more than one round. other wise the target just takes the damage and then decides to stay in the cover. The SF1e smoke does that, but the new SF2e smoke grenade provides concealment or obscure vision. Both types are useful I hope we get the SF1e version back to go along with the new one.

We know from the 3rd playtest errata that grenades are being looked at and reworked, I hope they keep the new feature that lets you bounce them off walls, I think that rule should l so apply to throwing them over cover. I also liked that grenades are now simple weapons, grenades are a great way to fill in gaps in any class to pick up a different damage type. Grenades are not just for combat I've used holo grenades several times in social encounters, I even used one in a court trial to dramatically display evidence.

Just last week in SF1e I used Acidic myst to get opponents out from cover, but I have a feeling the PF2e spell balance might not allow for a 1st level area effect damage spell that lasts several rounds.

[BigNorseWolf]

Driftbourne wrote:

Guns in SF2e create the ranged meta, other weapons counter it, having an anti-cover missile would be fun.

.

The patriot arrow

[Driftbourne]

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Driftbourne wrote:

Guns in SF2e create the ranged meta, other weapons counter it, having an anti-cover missile would be fun.

.

The patriot arrow

I'll take 2!

[Teridax]

Based on what's been discussed in this thread, there's a ton of different ideas that could be integrated into the game! Some stuff on my side based on what others have been suggesting:

A reliable trait that has your effect deal minimum damage on a failure, but not a critical failure, so you treat all dice rolled as if you'd rolled a 1 (based on Driftbourne's suggested Wide Beam trait).

Building on that, a precise trait that has your effect deal maximum damage on a crit, rather than double damage, so you treat all dice rolled as if you'd rolled the maximum amount. This would cater to players wanting to avoid rolling a total of 2 on their gun crit, and because this is a net nerf to crit damage (you deal 1 less damage per damage die on average), this could be used to buff those weapons further.

Different ammo types for weapons, including special ammo types that would be worth tracking. Some of these ammo types could add traits like razing or a trait that deals additional damage to organic, unarmored targets (based on Driftbourne's suggested alternate ammunition types).

Instead of the current expend and magazine stats, have a magazine trait that tells you how many attacks you can make before needing to reload, if it's more than 1. This should probably just be 2 or 3 so that it stays relevant in most encounters. By default, your guns would therefore expend 1 unit of ammunition per attack, and most guns ought to have reload 0 and no magazine trait.

A burst-fire trait that would allow you to add damage to your attack, but empty your weapon and require you to reload as a single action to use it again (based on moosher12's suggestion to let automatic guns burst fire for more damage).

A delayed trait that causes an area effect to only take effect after a certain number of rounds indicated in the trait. Several new grenades could then have the delayed 1 trait so that they explode at the start of your next turn, and thus incentivize targets to move out of cover. Because this is generally a nerf trait, this could be used to make those explosives much more powerful, and you could then also have mechanics that develop on this too, like a Soldier being able to cook a delayed grenade and throw it when it would explode with one feat, and having another feat to pick up and throw back a delayed explosive in one action or reaction (based on Cellion's suggestion for powerful but delayed AoE attacks and Driftbourne's suggestion for grenades with effects that last for more than one round).

A reworked kickback trait where you deal bonus damage on your attack equal to the kickback value, and take an item penalty to your attack roll equal to the kickback value unless your Strength mod equals or exceeds the kickback value. You could therefore have kickback 1, 2, or even 3 guns that'd reward a Strength investment (which is a big investment for ranged characters in Starfinder) with reliable, flat extra damage. You could even make this a common element of heavy, AoE-focused guns so that the Soldier gets to feel more rewarded for building Strength, and because kickback is generally a power-neutral to low-power trait due to its restrictions, you wouldn't have to alter the balance of those guns too much necessarily either.

And these are just additions to existing mechanics for the most part. I have an idea for reworking cover that I might post on the homebrew section of the PF2e forum and link here, the basic idea being a) you only benefit from cover when you take the Take Cover action, b) Take Cover and Raise a Shield become the same action, so shields provide cover rather than their own circumstance bonus to AC (and same as with obvious concealment, cover from shields wouldn't grant you a bonus to Stealth or let you Hide when you normally wouldn't be able to), c) cover is always directional unless you're using a shield or some other special-cased effect, and d) while Taking Cover, you're off-guard to attacks you're not covered against.

[NightwalkerTheOnerai]

This thread is an excellent summary of the issues, both mechanical and in terms of "feel", which I have seen raised so far. I particularly found the issues with the unwieldy trait noticeable and the implementation of scatterguns disappointing, both in terms of mechanics and "feel" during play.

I especially like the suggestion of a reworked kickback trait being used as a way to balance heavy weapons, shotguns and powerful rifles. It would allow them to have a higher base damage, but with the tradeoff of requiring either high strength or a supported firing position to use effectively. This would be a good alternative to the unwieldy trait, and allow Soliders to have some Strike actions with guns that aren't automatically outclassed in effectiveness by the same weapon in the hands of an Operative.