I've been musing over my experiences with the ranged weapons in the BB. I think they could use some work. I found myself gravitating to the biggest ones available, meaning arbalests, arquebuses, blunderbusses, and pistols. The bows felt anemic in comparison. I think something needs to be done about this.

 

A part of it I think has to do with the general balance issues between fast/light and slow/heavy. The DT system favors heavy weapons, and lots of if not most enemies had moderate to high DT. That pushes me into a situation where I have to pick between a weapon that's great some of the time and ineffective a lot of the time, and one that's OK some of the time and great a lot of the time. I'll pick the latter every time, rather than switch. IMO it would be very important to make fast/light weapons at least OK most of the time.

 

Here's one possible thing that might be worth trying --

• Increase the heavy ranged weapon load times even further, and make the punch even harder. Turn firearms and arbalests into "opening move" weapons, powerful enough to take out squishier foes with a single volley, but so slow you'll really not want to be reloading while combat is on. The impact of a volley could be something along the same level as, say, a fireball. (Note: by "volley" I mean all or most of the party firing at once. Obviously having an arquebus fire fireballs would be way OP.)
• Improve the DT penetration of light ranged weapons somewhat, and improve their base interrupt a lot. They wouldn't become absolutely much more powerful, but they would be more all-around useful rather than useless baggage against armored targets; they would also beef up the currently IMO problematic interrupt/PER mechanic.

Assuming I only have room for one ranged weapon per character in my weapon slots, this will force me into a tactical choice: I can either go with a powerful opening punch, potentially taking out the most dangerous enemies before the action even starts, but effectively foregoing use of missile weapons during the rest of the encounter, or I can take something that won't make all that much of an impact in the opening, but I can use tactically over the course of the encounter, to interrupt enemy casters (hence the raised interrupt) and generally direct damage at a chosen target.

 

Thoughts?

Doesn't the fact that they attack more often (faster) inherently give them more interrupt in the current perception system? Perhaps I am misunderstanding.

 

And as an aside, on the long reloading weapons, if you swap weapon mid-reload, is the weapon automatically reloaded on the next swap, or does the game remember that you had not yet reloaded your weapon. I minor point, I think, but possibly very stratigically important on harder difficulties.

I've heard tell that by using high perception for the interrupt mechanic, that makes the faster weapons very affective. Is there any truth to that? Beyond that yes those sound reasonable.

Please alter the combat animation when using a rifle, lowering the gun between shots really looks akward. It would look a lot better without any animation between shots.

Edited August 28, 201411 yr by Mayama

Re Interrupt, I honestly can't tell how much of a practical difference it makes. I did make a melee interrupt build (max PER, max DEX, fast weapons), and there was a visible difference in the way he hampered his melee opponent; however I felt it was a fairly inefficient way of doing that compared to the other things we have available.

 

A high-Interrupt barb might be interesing though, what with Carnage. We haven't really seen too many spellcaster in the BB, so I don't know how good a high-Interrupt archer would be at ruining their day, either.

Please alter the combat animation when using a rifle, lowering the gun between shots really looks akward. It would look a lot better without any animation between shots.

 

it's not a rifle; it's a muzzle-loading primitive firearm. You have to lower them to reload them between shots. That's one animation that's IMO quite crucial.

 

Please alter the combat animation when using a rifle, lowering the gun between shots really looks akward. It would look a lot better without any animation between shots.

 

it's not a rifle; it's a muzzle-loading primitive firearm. You have to lower them to reload them between shots. That's one animation that's IMO quite crucial.

 

OK than make it so that he actually reloads it instead of just lowering it

Some of this can be solved through itemization. If they give us bows that cause status effects (chance on hit) the faster attacking weapon should proc more frequently. I do agree with both of the above suggestions.