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It only changes anything in two situations: the previous target of your Aim has died, or for some reason you desperately need to react to a different target and not the one you've been Aiming at. In all other cases, the target of your Aim is almost certainly going to move, shoot, or cast when they're at range, so you're still going to get a MAP-free extra attack each round. The fundamental problem is that Reactive Strike-style triggers are still far too broad for a reaction that triggers at such a large range, and the list of triggers needs to be pared down so that an opponent has a reasonable chance of avoiding the reaction without wasting their entire turn. Put another way: if an enemy had this reaction, it would still feel awful to play against due to the lack of counterplay, and so I think it still needs some more changes.
Yes, the change has removed the range limitation and Aim doesn't have one in the first place. So theoretically you could Aim at a creature much further away and it would trigger Hair Trigger.
In practice I doubt it will come up very much, given that you really want to benefit from Aim on your turn.
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As for Hair Trigger being fixed now?
I really like that it has the appropriate theme now, which the whole "I can shoot everyone" thing very much didn't.
Mechanically, the substantial nerf got rid of the cases where the feat was actually too good, so it's fine now. Still doesn't have competition and is therefore still a basically mandatory pick, but you can't fix that without adding more feats.
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I am still apprehensive about the ability to disrupt spellcasting at range, as that happened at a crucial moment in my A Cosmic Birthday game, it absolutely is a nerf, but I feel like the ability to interrupt spellcasting is an issue.
It might be fine if it could just interrupt interact actions and ranged attacks.
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I am still apprehensive about the ability to disrupt spellcasting at range, as that happened at a crucial moment in my A Cosmic Birthday game, it absolutely is a nerf, but I feel like the ability to interrupt spellcasting is an issue.
It might be fine if it could just interrupt interact actions and ranged attacks.
You forgot it can interrupt movement too.
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You forgot it can interrupt movement too.I am still apprehensive about the ability to disrupt spellcasting at range, as that happened at a crucial moment in my A Cosmic Birthday game, it absolutely is a nerf, but I feel like the ability to interrupt spellcasting is an issue.
It might be fine if it could just interrupt interact actions and ranged attacks.
My understanding is that like Reactive Strike it can only disrupt manipulate actions:
You attempt a ranged Strike against the triggering creature.
If the attack is a critical hit and the trigger was a manipulate
action, you disrupt that action. This Strike doesn’t count
toward your multiple attack penalty, and your multiple attack
penalty doesn’t apply to this Strike.
It only changes anything in two situations: the previous target of your Aim has died, or for some reason you desperately need to react to a different target and not the one you've been Aiming at.
You forget many things.
You forget the fact that it may not be available through Dedication, depending if Aim is. And if Aim is it will certainly be a nerfed version of Aim adding just a single damage die (like Sneak Attack). It will also delay the moment where you can get Hair Trigger on top of costing more feats. And it will no more be usable by casters as they need 2 actions to cast and as such don't have actions to Aim. So no more entire party using Hair Trigger because that's free attack at no cost.
You also forget the case when, by the time your target acts, the situation has changed enough to prevent/impair the attack. Classical case being another enemy with Reactive Strike moving next to you or an enemy grappling/tripping you. Actually, if there are enemies acting between you and your Aimed target, you may end up triggering their Reactive Strike twice per round. Reactive Strike will certainly shut you down massively.
You also forget the fact that if you have multiple Operative in your party the Aimed creature can just choose not to act cancelling all their Hair Triggers (unless they choose different targets but then they lose focus fire).
And it stresses even more the Operative action economy. If you ever have one action remaining you won't benefit from Hair Trigger as you'll certainly use it to attack instead of Aiming. So the Operative action economy becomes absolutely crucial and will bite you from time to time.
So I think the nerf is fine. The Operative is a massive ranged damage dealer but Hair Trigger is no more the no-brainer feat everyone has to grab somehow.
I still question why it disrupts spellcasting, that's the last point I find problematic.
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You forget the fact that it may not be available through Dedication, depending if Aim is.
This is completely irrelevant. I am talking about its impact on the Operative, who can obtain the feat as early as level 1 with the right subclass. The feat is still problematic on the Operative, therefore it is not fixed in my opinion. If the feat can be picked via archetype, which I did not assume, then that only worsens the issue.
You also forget the case when, by the time your target acts, the situation has changed enough to prevent/impair the attack.
You seem to have forgotten the contents of the post you are replying to, as I did in fact acknowledge this case:
It only changes anything in two situations: the previous target of your Aim has died, or for some reason you desperately need to react to a different target and not the one you've been Aiming at.
Emphasis added for your reading convenience. Worth noting that only an extremely small minority of Starfinder enemies have Reactive Strike, and many will prefer to fight at range, making this situation fairly niche (and also, if you're letting an enemy get in Reactive Strike range when you have the movement speed of a Monk, that's on you).
You also forget the fact that if you have multiple Operative in your party the Aimed creature can just choose not to act cancelling all their Hair Triggers (unless they choose different targets but then they lose focus fire).
This is an even more contrived and ridiculous situation that still plays extremely in the Operative's favor, as the target of these multiple hypothetical Aims is effectively stunned for the whole round. You forget that Aim is a resourceless action any Operative can do every turn, so in this hypothetical scenario the Operatives could focus-fire this one enemy and have them willingly stunlock themselves as they very quickly die. This is not a weakness of Hair Trigger, and as the post you are replying to maintains, an enemy in Starfinder is almost certain to move, manipulate, or shoot on a typical turn.
And it stresses even more the Operative action economy. If you ever have one action remaining you won't benefit from Hair Trigger as you'll certainly use it to attack instead of Aiming. So the Operative action economy becomes absolutely crucial and will bite you from time to time.
This makes very little sense, as the Operative is pushed to Aim + Strike on their turn and has many ways of achieving this, so if they're left with one action, they'd almost certainly have used another of their actions on that turn to Aim. I agree that the Operative has a fairly rigid action economy as a result, but that once again has nothing to do with Hair Trigger. I would also go as far as to say that if the Operative does have Hair Trigger and somehow got stunned 1 or something similar, it would still be in their interest to Aim rather than make another Strike, because the Strike from Hair Trigger ignores MAP.
So, to go back to the original statement:
You forget many things.
It's not that anything was forgotten, you've just produced a lot of spurious arguments that themselves deliberately ignore crucial facts and resort to extremely contrived scenarios to drive any meaningful difference. If you're running an adventure where every enemy is melee, has super-speed, and has Reactive Strike, and you have an all-Operative party that somehow never learns to position properly or Aim at different targets on the same turn, then sure, this might make a difference somewhere along the line, but in most scenarios, including the playtest APs and scenarios we received, it doesn't really change things, and it certainly hasn't in my experience.
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Still broken.
There's still almost no way to avoid it. At 100ft or even 30ft, a creature has no options but to move, make a ranged attack or use a manipulate action (i.e. cast a spell). If it doesn't do any of these things, it effectively passes its turn, which means you traded your reaction for the target you aimed at's entire turn, which is a trade I would take 100% of the time every time.
It's a little more awkward to use now, particularly at lower levels, where your aimed at target may or may not die to your attack (higher levels are much more certain due to more dice being rolled), so you might have to Aim a different creature than the one you're attacking to get it off, or might accidentally kill your target without a spare action left, meaning you lose it.
You can take Switch Target and Always Ready, then it just functions practically the same as it did before.
It being only on the target you aimed at does almost nothing to balance it because that's the target you most likely wanted to shoot with an extra MAP free attack anyway.
Soldier's Overwatch is higher level, has fewer triggers and is harder to activate (unless you're bombard) and even that activates far too consistently as a MAP free strike.