Was the Boost trait a bad idea?

[HolyFlamingo!]

Recently, a thread appeared on Reddit where a GM expressed concern over the plasma caster weapon, specifically how everyone in the party seemed to be taking it because it did so much more damage than anything else. SF2's diverse weapon catalog was being entirely ignored, and this GM's players were twisting their builds in knots to make sure they could use boosted weapons. Slotted spells, solarian strikes, and the soldier's primary target + area fire were not keeping up.

I've also noticed in a few Society games I've run that 1) players tend to get caught in a Boost loop, which results in very samey turns, 2) players who DON'T have a boostable weapon feel bad/weak compared to their boosting peers, and 3) enemies with boosted weapons punch waaaay above their weight, to the point that it's really hard to make fights against them feel fair (one enemy in particular was able to oneshot the tankiest member of the team on a regular, non-critical hit).

This has got me wondering if the Boost trait was a mistake. While it certainly solves the early game peashooter problem, it causes heavy melee builds to just win even more, while also causing combats to devolve into just piling on as much damage as possible, eliminating most tactical elements from the game. I don't think this is a healthy or interesting metagame at all. Perhaps some kind of fix is in order, such as limiting Boost usage to once every 10 minutes? I'd like to know what others think.

EDIT: I just remembered, Boost was added later in development, well after the initial public playtest began. Thus, the trait was never adequately playtested and thus not as subject to public feedback.

[moosher12]

Can't say I have any wisdom running it, but I'll admit, the boost property has been a worry for me. But I'm waiting to run Guilt of the Grave World to see if any of my players notice it.

It's certainly not reassuring to see my worries are seemingly well-founded.

I'd reason if a change could be made, there are many approaches.

Firstly, you could use breath rules. Perhaps you can only boost once every 1d4 rounds?

Another thing to note is Boost does theoretical damage comparable, and occasionally slightly less than two successive hits with a weapon. Considering MAP goes into play, another balance point could be that using Boost imposes a -5 item penalty to the attack roll. And makes the strike count as two attacks for the purpose of MAP.

If a numerical decrease is needed. Other approaches could be instead of adding damage dice, it simply increased the damage dice by one or two steps. If a 1d6 becomes a 1d8, that's +1 average per die, instead of +3. And even if a 1d6 becomes a 1d10, that'd be a +2 average, instead of +3.

Another approach is letting it grant you an effective Strength Score that might override your current Strength Score for a melee weapon, or grant a ranged weapon an "effective" strength score giving it the extra punch to be more along the lines of a damage from a thrown weapon. Say what if Commercial gave you a +4 to damage, then a Superior Weapon would increase it to +5, and a Paragon would increase it to +6. (Alternatively, Commercial could be +2, while Advanced was +4.) There is also the option for melee weapons to let the bonus be addative with a strength score, or instead of giving an effective strength score to melee weapons, it might just pull a 1E, and let you apply 1.5x your Strength Score to the attack.

[Rotfell]

Boost can be a problem, as it's one of the few direct damage buffs there is in Starfinder 2e, and it adds already two damage dice with an advanced weapon.
And we're not talking about a small one like one damage per die, like backstabbing. Like moosher12 already said, the damage is also comparable with two attacks and therefore it's usually better (as there is no MAP involved).
It's basically emulating several class feats in PF2 like Vicious Swing with fewer downsides.

As it's now online and boosting was a SF1 mechanic, there are limited options to reign that in officially and many will be seen as what they are: Balance updates instead of errors that worked their way into the final product. May be needed for game health though, depends on what Paizo will stomp out later. Either reducing the boost dice of the current weapons or tacking some demerit to the trait (like -2 circumstance penalty to attacks while boosted or increasing the expand for each damage die [as SF1 also needed more charges for boosts], a cooldown, etc.) might work.

While I know that this is not appropriate as spellcasters are supposed to do less damage, I compared Ignition to the damage of a plasma caster used by an operative. It's definitely not as dry (as there are no upgrades or special actions like aim in there), but if you want to compare two actions that are spammable with each other and aims at AC, it might be a good starting point. The plasma caster has the same item level as the caster would need to get to the rank.

Spoiler:

Rank/Ignition/Boosted Plasma Caster
1/5/13,5
2/7,5/13,5
3/10/20
4/12,5/23
5/15/23
6/17,5/27,5
7/20/34
8/22,5/39
9/25/39
10/27,5/49

Oc there are also some critical hits to consider and I won't see it as anything else than a starting point.

Making boost 2 actions would also be an interesting thought experiment, but it would heavily limit its use with classes like soldier or operative who seem to be the ones who should use it more than others.

[Christopher#2411504]

I instantly understood it was going to be a problem, the second I saw it.

If they wanted to fix Ranged Weapons having to low damage for Resistances, they should have made this a general Action for all ranged weapons. I rememeber a reddit suggestion to make Aim a action for all ranged attacks. But it could also be boost. Having the fix to a system problem on a Weapon Trait doesn't fix the issue - it just makes those weapons mandatory.

And I also suggested they turn it into a 2-Action Activity, so it stops being a no-brainer combination with every single meta Strike and the Area Fire.

[Rotfell]

I noticed that I made an error in my table earlier, as I accidentally counted the d8 fully in the plasma caster variant. So the new table would be:

Rank/Ignition/Boosted Plasma Caster
1/5/10
2/7,5/10
3/10/16,5
4/12,5/19,5
5/15/19,5
6/17,5/24
7/20/30,5
8/22,5/35,5
9/25/35,5
10/27,5/45,5

If I would see the whole boost trait as a problem will probably show with the SFS-scenarios and Adventure Paths, as these are as close as you can get to the game as the makers have envisioned it. If we get enough ideas how to not have whiteroom combat, then boost may not be meta. As long as combat remains a damage race with few interceptions, the numbers won't lie.

[Driftbourne]

I've run a few games now where, even without the party using boost and only using ranged weapons, wipe out the opponents quickly, one-shotting many of them. In one case, it was a party of 4, all 1st level. I ran the encounter with the harder adjustment, and all the opponents had cover, and I still felt like I could have applied the harder adjustment a second time as reinforcements to make the encounter more interesting, but still not put the party in any real danger. To be fair, this was a low encounter, but it ended up being the ending of the game because the PCs chose to go left instead of right near the start of the adventure.

So far, all the scenarios I've run have all had low and moderate encounters. Boost seems like something handy or balanced for the PCs to have in more difficult encounters. Another way to balance that is give low encounters more cannon fodder when needed.

The Lore spire says
"There are no rigid rules on when to use these adjustments. A party of six high-level PCs might seem like the ideal case for the Harder adjustment, but if the players are all relatively inexperienced, the standard difficulty could be best. In most cases, a four-PC party of low-level characters would use the Easier adjustment, but there are situations where the GM or players prefer not to apply it, such as if all players are experienced and want a challenge.

A GM’s goal is for the players to complete the adventure and feel as if they have overcome obstacles to do so. Attempt to run games which are neither extremely easy nor extremely hard; cakewalks are not the desired experience, but neither are consistent TPKs. GMs can alter their adjustments partway through an adventure based on the PCs’ performance, using different adjustments for different encounters.

GMs must: Run combat encounters without substantially increasing difficulty, except as dictated by the scenario.

The scenario says: "You can use the Adjusting Difficulty
sidebars to make the adventure easier or harder."

Playing devil's advocate... It doesn't say you can't apply the harder adjustment more than once. Runs for cover...

[pauljathome]

From a game balance perspective its probably a bit of a problem but not a huge one. You're essentially giving everybody access to the Vicious Swing feat if they take a boost weapon. And the consensus on that feat (at least the last time I glanced at the consensus) is that it is sometimes better than swinging twice and sometimes not. Of course, the math changes somewhat for starfinder as there are generally less damage bonuses being handed out so the damage dice are a larger part of a characters damage.

From a game world/variety point of view then yeah, it becomes a larger issue. Boost weapons are absolutely significantly better than most other weapons, they relegate low level Solarion weapons into the "mostly trash" category, etc.

[Perpdepog]

pauljathome wrote:

From a game balance perspective its probably a bit of a problem but not a huge one. You're essentially giving everybody access to the Vicious Swing feat if they take a boost weapon. And the consensus on that feat (at least the last time I glanced at the consensus) is that it is sometimes better than swinging twice and sometimes not. Of course, the math changes somewhat for starfinder as there are generally less damage bonuses being handed out so the damage dice are a larger part of a characters damage.

From a game world/variety point of view then yeah, it becomes a larger issue. Boost weapons are absolutely significantly better than most other weapons, they relegate low level Solarion weapons into the "mostly trash" category, etc.

Another potential issue is that it allows characters to use Vicious Swing at range. My guess is that's why OP brought up the plasma caster instead of, say, the fangblade.

Honestly, I really like the idea that Boost bumps up the weapon's damage dice by one step, maybe even two. That'd grant an average of 1-2 extra damage per damage die, which still deals more damage than you'd otherwise get, but less damage than the current Boost deals. It's also got the twin advantages of effectively being Two-Handed for weapons that either already require two hands, or don't require you to use up your other hand, in exchange for some battery charge and an action, and gives players that little dopamine kick of getting to swap out their normal batch of dice for different, bigger dice.

[Tim Emrick]

We discovered last night that, while boost is powerful, it can be risky in melee. It's an Interact action, so has the manipulate trait, and thus triggers reactions such as Nimbus Surge and Punitive Strike. (Though those two reactions won't disrupt the manipulate action on a crit like Reactive Strike does, so the boost remains hard to prevent short of taking out the user.)

[Arutema]

Tim Emrick wrote:

We discovered last night that, while boost is powerful, it can be risky in melee. It's an Interact action, so has the manipulate trait, and thus triggers reactions such as Nimbus Surge and Punitive Strike. (Though those two reactions won't disrupt the manipulate action on a crit like Reactive Strike does, so the boost remains hard to prevent short of taking out the user.)

At higher levels, once things like Hair Trigger come online, it will probably get risky at range as well.