I was playing at a con this weekend with a new Bombard Soldier. Bombard let's you suppress even when an enemy gets a success. I thought Pin Down would let me catch those that critically succeeded, but the GM said a success is different than a critical success so Pin down couldn't trigger. Our VC was playing at the table and agreed. They both have a lot more rules knowledge than I do so I'm not going to try to argue. My issue is that the only other ranged feat only affects weapons with reload 2. The other 3 are all related to melee. So there aren't any useful 1st lvl feats for a Bombard Soldier that isn't using a reload 2 weapon. I chose a ranged subclass and don't want to do melee. It's 1st lvl so I can't even take a dedication. That can't possibly be how they intended it, right?
I think it was something the devs accidentally overlooked. This happens frequently enough, especially with Starfinder 2E. But as it is, there is not much fix until Paizo comes out with more feats.
In the meantime, if you have no plans to engage with melee mechanics, what I'd probably recommend is to let Ready Reload be an encouragement to take a reload 2 weapon instead of a reload 1 weapon as your primary, as that's the most useful feat you'd get access to. Right now the pickings are small, being Autotarget Rifle, Blockthrower, and Machine Gun, but with Tech Core coming out in about two months, I'm pretty sure the options will expand.
You might be sleeping on Quick Swap too.
While you might want to use ranged weapons and avoid melee, that doesn't mean that the enemies are going to let you do that.
In this case, Quick Swap would be a trap option. 2e does not have universal reactive strikes, and not a lot of enemies get reactive strikes, even rarer than Pathfinder. There is little incentive to switch to melee in melee range unless you have a melee weapon that does more damage than your ranged weapon, which becomes less likely at higher levels once you have an upgraded ranged weapon, but a base melee weapon. Most enemies won't be able to stop you from using your gun unless they disarm or grapple you. The only reason you have to switch to melee is if your melee weapon does better average damage than your primary ranged weapon.
Quick Swap is more useful in the hands of a melee main soldier who is using their ranged weapon to get by until they get in range.
Only way I can see a ranged soldier making use of it is if they are using a volley weapon, which would be an odd choice as soldier isn't much of a sniper class. Otherwise, they won't be getting much use out of a side melee weapon like a knife or a sword unless they upgraded the weapon and invested the strength to give it competitive damage output with their gun.
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Yeah, this is a major pain point in the system for me. Bombard Soldiers are one of the most fun classes at level 1, and they're very new player friendly because of how teamwork-oriented the blast protection is and how reliable their Suppression ability is. But for some reason or another, every single feat is just awkward and poorly fitting .
And the worst part is, I know exactly how this happened, too. During the playtest, my Bombard soldier took a REALLY cool level 1 feat that interacted with Demoralizing enemies, but it was changed into a higher level feat in the move from the playtest to the final release. I think they did that without realizing the consequences it would have on Bombard.
My placeholder recommendations:
- The Toughness general feat. It's on-theme and not going to be too strong.
- An extra first level ancestry feat (possibly limited to the standard ones from Galactic Ancestries so that it won't be anything too much)
Voltage wrote: Bombard let's you suppress even when an enemy gets a success. I thought Pin Down would let me catch those that critically succeeded, but the GM said a success is different than a critical success so Pin down couldn't trigger. I think it should still trigger on Critical save success, unless it explicitly says otherwise.
For example, Feign Prone says:
"Trigger A foe fails or critically fails to Trip you, or you fail, but not critically fail, to Trip a foe."
PF2 has similar abilities.
Pin Down still has its usage, as it still is a debuff that you can apply to a creature which isn't your primary target. It only has your reaction as a cooldown and enemies will succeed often enough, so especially as a ranged fighter taking away 10 feet speed can work wonders (as often the higher level enemies will succeed more often, and making them primary targets can help, but only if you hit). So see it as an assurance and you'll be fine.
Quick Swap can be useful to get from your burst weapon to your line or cone weapon, the moment an enemy approaches. These are also the kinds of weapons you really like to make use of your Athletics to get them into better position to have more enemies in your AoE, therefore Burst of Strength shines in this regard.
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