22 hours ago, Jedi Ronin said:
50% chance to double your damage? That sounds amazing. And at my table an attack targeting a "typical" Nemesis does a lot more than 3-4 damage.
I'm inclined to think that other GM's are facing somewhat different challenges at their table than you than they are lazy GMs who don't know what they're doing. There are a lot of experienced GMs on these boards who think Autofire is a problem (and others who don't). Most seem to agree that Jury Rigged is broken. Everything - practically - is a glass canon in this game and the ability to hit twice with the same attack roll is potent. I'm not convinced either way on whether it's broken but I lean towards thinking it is because it's such a powerful ability that's easy to take advantage of. I've got an Ataru Striker in my group who has finally acquired Hawkbat Swoop and Saber Swarm and can now actually exceed the Heavy's damage output but he had to spend more XP to get to that point and he has to spend more resources (Maneuver, Strain) to pull it off. Autofire is one of the if not the most premier way of dealing damage in this game and at relatively low cost. I do know that whenever I pull out Autofire weapons against my PCs they do everything they can to take that out as fast as possible.
I don't think comparing Autofire to one of the other oft-considered broken Talents in this game (Pressure Point) helps your argument that Autofire isn't broken.
im not comparing this to pressure point I originally said that with 200-300 earned xp i can create s brawl oriented character that can hit for minimum 20 dmg per hit , without pressure point, then pointed out that you could put the cherry (pressure point) on top after that. A heavy has a good damage output, to be sure, but then a basic gunslinger is able to consistently put out more for less xp expenditure as he can remove the extra difficulty and reduce the advantage to trigger meaning that the second hit is way more consistent to the heavy's spotty second and third hits. It's only the weapons (under the GMs control) that allow the additional advantage to be added in combat , and the targets talents and nemesis level (also under the gms control) and locations(under the GMs control) , environment(under the gms control) and jury rigged (not under the GMs control) that affect how often it triggers.
So much of this is down to the GM to provide suitably challenging environments, opponents, equipment, and locations to challenge his or hers PCs. Yes the autofire character may toast the key NPC at the end , but so what that might happen, but if done right it might only be a 1 in 10 chance. So that is a 1 in 10 chance for that character to shine and be awesome, combat in this game is like that 9 times out of 10 the character maybe gets 1 or 2 hits on the key npc , lets say they do 13 damage against a soak 8 opponent, that is 10 damage , definitely not enough to drop a nemesis. Said Nemesis should not be alone either and shouldn't be the only threat on the battlefield, and while the heavy is firing is he watching for the other nemesis, who happens to be a melee expert sneaking up on them. Autofire doesnt break the game and what the OP was describing was 3 yellow skill, which is hardly enough to threaten a nemesis except with a fluke roll, which if that happened as a GM I'd welcome it.