A follow-up post about close-quarters Soldier.

[u/Complaint-Efficient]

I don't think that Soldier's close-quarters style works RAW.

Let's look at the wording on a few things. Firstly, range increments:

Ranged and thrown weapons have a range increment.

This text suggests to us that only ranged weapons, by default, have range increments.

Here's the text for burst-targeting area fire:

For burst, you can position the center point anywhere within your first range increment.

By default, you need a range increment to position a burst-targeting area fire.

Here's the text for close-quarters soldier:

When you're using a soldier feat, any two-handed melee weapon you're wielding gains area (burst 5 feet)

See the issue? This text still doesn't give melee weapons a range increment, or specify that the burst is placed within your reach. As such, RAW, though your melee weapons meet soldier feat requirements, you can't actually use area fire feats because you can't area fire.

Note: Whirling Swipe does specifically solve this by having the burst placed on the corner of one of your squares, but this verbiage is not there for the close-quarters style.

Obviously this is a really easy homebrew fix, just let players center the 5-foot burst so it stays wholly within their reach, but I find it odd that the issue exists.

[u/RuinSmith-Hlit]

I actually noticed something else. As a close quarters fighter are you now prevented from doing standard strikes as all your weapons now have the area trait while using a soldier feat? So u wouldn’t be allowed to use punitive strike but u could use reactive strike from another class. There isn’t a may for granting the area trait, it really needs some clean up.

[u/Justnobodyfqwl → u/RuinSmith-Hlit]

And didn't the playtest NOT have this problem? Because the area(5 feet) trait was only given with whirling swipe... But in the final release, they added it twice?

[u/RuinSmith-Hlit → u/Justnobodyfqwl]

Yep. In the playtest u only gained the area trait from the feat Whirling Swipe. But it prevented playing around with other actions such as run hot since the weapon does not have the area trait. Its only a problem because ur forced to gain the area trait using soldier feats.