My son's character has a blaster rifle with long range. He wants to be sniper and add a marksman barrel bringing the range to extreme. He also has two ranks of the sniper shot talent. Do those talents help at all? Is this firmly in the area of GM fiat?

19 minutes ago, Ahrimon said:

Is this firmly in the area of GM fiat?

IMHO, yes. If the situation warranted I might allow Close range on the Planetary scale at my table, but it would have to be for special occasions.

That much sniper shot isnt to shoot people at extreme range with a rifle, but to do it with a hold out blaster.

That said, yeah, I would let him shoot anything he could see with that rifle. Want to do some big game hunting from orbit? No problem.

So, here's what I do at my table:

If we reduce each range band to a number, on personal scale, it goes as follows:

0 - Engaged;
1 - Short;
2 - Medium;
3 - Long;
4 - Extreme.

Using personal range bands, planetary range bands are, like planetary-scale damage, 10 personal range bands. So using personal scale, the planetary ranges are:

5 - Close;
10 - Short;
20 - Medium;
30 - Long;
40 - Extreme.

And then there's a third scale - orbital scale, which is basically planetary scale while in space. There's no additional multiplier for things already AT planetary scale, but for personal scale characters, the number of range bands is as follows:

10 - Close;
20 - Short;
40 - Medium;
60 - Long;
80 - Extreme.

If you can somehow generate more than 80(!!!) personal-scale range bands...first off, what the heck are you doing? And second off, you can probably affect things across an entire system.

EDIT: And yes, this means that, with only one additional range band past Extreme, you can get to planetary (close). But you'll need 5 more to get another range band .

Completely irrelevant, but now I'm wondering how the gunner of the Starkiller base got enough Sniper Shot talents to hit things in entirely different systems.

Personally i don't use sniper shot. A blaster with attachments to get to the range you want is much more effective. Why intentionally add 1 or more opportunities for a despair and much lower chance for success even if you had 5y1g. True aim is much more effective IMHO anyway.

6 hours ago, jayc007 said:

Personally i don't use sniper shot. A blaster with attachments to get to the range you want is much more effective. Why intentionally add 1 or more opportunities for a despair and much lower chance for success even if you had 5y1g. True aim is much more effective IMHO anyway.

True aim doesn't let you shoot past the listed range

There's no barrel for a pistol

The talent is part of a tree and you have to get it to continue

Your special weapon isn't always available and you have to use what you can get your hands on.1

@Ahrimon Your points are totally valid and I do agree with you on all. I just count sniper shot as a backup in an emergency situation. But if you want to be a sniper then sharpshooter is the main route to go. There are other decent options but 2 ranks of true aim rock. I was considering getting gunner after for 4 ranks in true aim but my sniper character ended up going in a different route.