Me Again

Dangerous Modifications includes the ability to fashion weapons from templates, providing a base model to improve on with a Mechanics check. In the Ranged Weapons chart there exists the option to add the Autofire Quality, which can be applied to either Ranged [Heavy] or Ranged [Light]. The chart does not, however, provide access to the Linked Quality. This quality exists in only one personal blaster weapon that I know of: Blastech's HH-50 Blaster pistol.

Since there does exist the precedent of a in-game item, is it reasonable to houserule that a player could create a blaster weapon with the Linked Quality using the template and the same costs as the Autofire Quality?

As always, thanks for reading.

Force on.

It could be house ruled but I'd say it drops the template's range by a band by 1, increases the encumbrance by 1, decreases HP by 1, and can only be applied once.

It's deliberately not there as the Linked quality is pretty **** powerful, since it doesn't have the difficulty increase that autofire or wielding two weapons has, and even Linked 1 on something like a heavy blaster pistol can be devastating; there's a blaster with Linked 1 in Stay on Target, and a PC in a TFA-era game I was in got dropped in one attack simply by the shooter spending the 2 Advantage to trigger the Linked 1 quality. A double-bladed lightsaber in the FaD game line is brutal due to having Linked 1 on a weapon that's also got Breach 1; a typical Inquisitor build (Brawn 3, Lightsaber 4) wielding one of these is going to probably brutalize at least one PC in a fight if that PC doesn't have a few ranks of Parry to protect themselves, or failing that a monstrously high wound threshold to fall back on.

I'd be leery about allowing a PC to be able to build such a weapon effectively "on demand," but would probably treat it as adding the autofire quality as per the chart on page 79 of Special Modifications, in that you need to spend 4 Advantage (or Triumph) but that you can only add it once, limiting the weapon to Linked 1.

I know the chart doesn't list such a thing, but I'm tempted to note that adding Autofire (or Linked) quality to a weapon using the crafting rules would have the range reduced by one as per 2P51's suggestion.

22 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

It's deliberately not there as the Linked quality is pretty **** powerful, since it doesn't have the difficulty increase that autofire or wielding two weapons has...

I admit that the Linked Quality has a powerful up-front effect, but it loses against autofire when considering repetition. To my knowledge autofire is limited by the amount of advantage you have, and a build for Hired Guns actually allows the difficulty of the check to be reduced. In addition, jury-rigging autofire can reduce the cost to maintain the rate of fire as well, making four advantage into four shots if you so desire.

The limitation of the Linked Quality keeps the user from activating any barrels more than once per action, and so even if the cost of the Linked Activation was reduced through Jury-Rigging, the user would still be limited by the number of barrels.

Personally, I think that balances out against Autofire. I'm curious as to why 2P51 would suggest the reduced Range Band and Hard Point.

32 minutes ago, Darcune said:

I admit that the Linked Quality has a powerful up-front effect, but it loses against autofire when considering repetition. To my knowledge autofire is limited by the amount of advantage you have, and a build for Hired Guns actually allows the difficulty of the check to be reduced. In addition, jury-rigging autofire can reduce the cost to maintain the rate of fire as well, making four advantage into four shots if you so desire.

The limitation of the Linked Quality keeps the user from activating any barrels more than once per action, and so even if the cost of the Linked Activation was reduced through Jury-Rigging, the user would still be limited by the number of barrels.

Personally, I think that balances out against Autofire. I'm curious as to why 2P51 would suggest the reduced Range Band and Hard Point.

It's definitely not. It's rare you get to trigger Autofire more than once until you're very high level. It is possible if you jury-rig it, but pretty much everyone agrees jury-rigged autofire is gamebreakingly overpowered so you really shouldn't use it to justify anything. Plus. getting to autofire without a difficulty boost requires a specific class, a specific talent, and a maneuver to activate that talent.

30 minutes ago, Talkie Toaster said:

It's definitely not. It's rare you get to trigger Autofire more than once until you're very high level. It is possible if you jury-rig it, but pretty much everyone agrees jury-rigged autofire is gamebreakingly overpowered so you really shouldn't use it to justify anything. Plus. getting to autofire without a difficulty boost requires a specific class, a specific talent, and a maneuver to activate that talent.

You get with the HH-50 4 hits out of 3 (automatic generated advantages) with a pair of jury rigged linked pistoles and one tinkerer spend on the main weapon to apply an extra superior, to the standard banta-eye + paired for both. So all you need for that is roll one success and no threats. Still more expensive jurry rigged autofire as you need jurry rigged twice and one tinkerer on top, but the HH-50 is with 2 hardpoints on the rather conservative ends too. If you assume that you can roll an advantage or two you can leave out paired and one jurry rigging use, if you assume that rolling 3 advantages are normal you just go along without any talents and have still one mod left for the off-hand weapon. BAM comes to mind, as the setback dice don't apply to the dice pool and having for punch on the second gun is for sure nice, especially as the HH has a base damage of only 7 which makes all those 4 hits easier to mitigate with soak.

If you add the link option to pistoles with a larger punch that disadvantage diminishes, if the pistol template has has just 2 hardpoint, it becomes possible with the crafting system to make them 3 or 5 HP weapons and allow for all those nice extra damage mods and paired and banta, and bam and superior and creating those 4 hits becomes easy even without talent goodies. Unlike heavy rifles or gunnery weapons, pistols are easy to hide and commonly accepted across the galaxy. Some might say everyone in the outer rim should wear one. So using here some social convention issues or even let local law enforcement interfere with those pistoles becomes unrealistic, at least as constant reason to keep them on the ship until the action calls for heavy arms.

Nah, you don’t want Linked. You want Paired.