The New Primary Target

[Justnobodyfqwl]

Hi Everyone! I'm so fascinated by the newest change to how Primary Target works. If you haven't seen the recent update, it's now:

"Before resolving the area of effect attack, make a ranged Strike using your weapon against the selected target. Ignore the unwieldy trait on your weapon when using this action. If two or more creatures are equidistant or closest, you can choose which one is your primary target. If you successfully hit your primary target with this Strike and the target rolls a success against your Area Fire or Auto-Fire action, they get a failure instead. This Strike doesn’t count toward your multiple attack penalty.”

This is very interesting to me! Before this, Primary Target was mostly an Action Economy tool. Area Fire/Auto-Fire take two actions to do as a downside, in exchange for their many upsides (targeting a specific save, being able to damage multiple enemies, half damage on a save, etc). Soldier, as the class best at using AoEs, naturally had an ability that let them effectively get rid of the two-action downside and keep up with the number of attacks made per turn as their allies. In exchange for this, your additional damage had to come through as a single strike- which is a real downside, as accuracy isn't a soldier's strong suit! (Their whole CLASS is themed around not aiming, when you think about it...)

However, do you think this new ability has now redefined the purpose of a Primary Target? Now, it's not just an extra attack stapled on to keep up- it can single handedly turn someone's success into a failure, guaranteeing suppression and additional damage! That has a lot of mechanical implications. Enemies with an AC lower than their Reflex save are now much more vulnerable, since being able to hit AC means making the Reflex save harder. Soldiers might find themselves drawn to pumping their dexterity more, since your Primary Target shot has gone from "a fun rider" to "the straw that can break a camel's back". Soldiers can also get a lot more out of anything that reduces AC but NOT reflex saving throws, although i'll be honest i'm not sure if those exist? If anyone knows, please sound off!

However, I think that this makes the Bombard ability of suppressing enemies even on a saving throw be in an ...odd place. It's an ability that I feel like was already such a high quality-of-life upgrade that it maybe should be baked into the core class, but also is a huge fun part of the power budget of Bombard Soldiers. Now that we have the new Primary Target that DOES bake in the ability to tip the scales towards suppressing more enemies, where do you think that leaves the Bombard ability? Still too good, or more in line with the others?

Most importantly: that Bombard ability felt FUN, big, and impactful! If more enemies are failing the saves than ever, does that make it feel less splashy and fun?

Personally, even tho i'm poking around about unintended consequences, this change makes me want to skip and click my heels like a giddy schoolchild. I think this is SUCH a cool change to what's already my favorite class, and it REALLY drives in the idea that you're just absolutely trying to nail this guy in particular with your bullets and explosions! It also makes primary target feel much more like an important, distinct class feature that really interacts with the core class chassis and its gameplay loop. It's another one of those feel-good things about Starfinder 2e as a system- big, impactful, powerful abilities that are fun and simple to use feel great!

But I don't want to just do a manifesto on what I think- I'm really curious to hear everyone's first impressions, as well as what we all find from playtesting the new changes! Happy Starfinding, everyone!

[Teridax]

Ever since Primary Target was changed from the original field test to damage the target, it's been an extra attack stapled on to keep up -- and even before this latest errata, it was excessive in how it made the Soldier, an AoE-centric class, too good at single-target damage when using an automatic weapon. This change pushes the class even farther over the edge by increasing their single-target damage output even more, as well as their overall damage.

To me, this change reeks of overcompensation: clearly, at least one person at Paizo felt AoE weapons were underwhelming even when the Soldier gets to fire them with save DCs better than those of casters, so they implemented this change just to make those weapons deal more damage (on the Soldier), much like how the Sniper Operative cancels a terrible trait that makes a bunch of different weapons heavily undesirable. In neither case do these changes address the core issues (AoE weapons are still awful as a baseline, unwieldy is an awful trait that should probably not exist), and in both cases I don't think the end result is something that really feels fitting, even if the Soldier or Sniper will certainly have more raw power. Even more broadly, this latest wave of errata seems to try to take classes in new directions rather than just fix errors and rules problems, yet at first glance at least it doesn't look like they're really addressing several of the main problems bogging down the playtest classes right now.

[Perpdepog]

Justnobodyfqwl wrote:

Soldiers can also get a lot more out of anything that reduces AC but NOT reflex saving throws, although i'll be honest i'm not sure if those exist? If anyone knows, please sound off!

You could flank the enemy if you're a melee-focused soldier.

[siegfriedliner]

So my experience so far just one combat as a melee soldier is that the envoys get em is groovy for double dipping that bonus. The enemy is easier to hit less likely to save and takes more damage it's great synergy.

[HolyFlamingo!]

Teridax, it's likely that the sweeping weapon changes you'd like to see are going to take more time and effort than some mid-playtest errata drops. That said, I agree that I don't like the design approach of kneecapping gear, then creating a class to fix that gear. It narrows build possibilities a little too much, I think. Then again, the two major shooty-shoot classes being weird little offshoots of the historic gunslinger makes some thematic sense to me, so... I get how we got here, I think?