Building Modern Soldiers in Pathfinder?

[Palanan]

Recently myself and another Playgrounder ran a test encounter between a standard Pathfinder party and a squad of modern soldiers built with D20 Modern rules. In the process we experienced firsthand some of the imbalances between the two systems, in particular with the limited hit points and weapon damage on the D20 Modern side.

Now I’m wondering how to build modern soldiers using Pathfinder rules, and I’m wondering if there are any examples that already exist. I’m aware that there are some WWI-era Russian soldiers in “Rasputin Must Die,” the fifth chapter of the Reign of Winter AP, but I don’t own that one and I’m not sure what classes and feats they’re built with.

Does anyone know of any builds for modern soldiers in other Paizo products, or has anyone tried doing this themselves? And does Pathfinder have stats for the sorts of weapons that a modern recon squad would be carrying?

[Khosan]

Pathfinder does have rules for modern firearms (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment/weapons/firearms/modern-firearms/). Their main advantages are range and the fact that they always target touch AC (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipmenT/weapons/firearms/#Firearm_Rules). You can have a small team of soldiers equipped with light machine guns 300-400 feet away, peppering their targets for 2d6 damage per attack pretty reliably.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Khosan
Pathfinder does have rules for modern firearms.

Thanks, I've come across those before. The weapons in the first table are from the Reign of Winter AP, so those represent a small selection of weapons from 1918. Ideally I'd like to find rules for firearms in use by the US military today.

[TheTeaMustFlow]

Thanks, I've come across those before. The weapons in the first table are from the Reign of Winter AP, so those represent a small selection of weapons from 1918. Ideally I'd like to find rules for firearms in use by the US military today.

For most of them?
Get the modern weapon's wikipedia page.
Take the nearest comparable 1918 weapon from the table.
Increase capacity to match wiki.
Add autofire if appropriate.

That's basically enough, maybe increase ranges or decrease misfire values. Certainly don't increase damage or anything like that.

Firearms have changed less than you might think in the last century. Bear in mind that the M1911 Pistol, older than most of the weapons in that table, is still in use by many countries and organisations with only relatively minor changes.

[Palanan]

Details of weapons aside, how would you go about building a rifleman or a grenadier in Pathfinder?

I'm assuming that the basic fighter chassis would work, but open to ideas about feats and archetypes that would pair well with modern weapons.

[MesiDoomstalker]

There are rules for Troops (basically, humanoid swarms) as well as a Fighter Archetype specifically for firearms which were used in the Reign of Winter AP for the sections where the PC's fought WWI soldiers.

[AvatarVecna]

The AP in question ends up building soldiers as Fighter 6 (Trench Fighter), at least without touching on troops that start getting into the blatantly supernatural upgrades. There's also troops, which are 1) going to be far more threatening than individual soldiers, and will give you an idea of what militaries are properly capable of according to the PF developers, and 2) are statted up on the SRD in the Modern Firearms section. (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment/weapons/firearms/modern-firearms/#Common_Troops) That includes rifle troops, chemical warfare troops, flamethrower troops, machine gun troops, and mortar troops. That same page also has stats for the single rifleman mentioned earlier (Fighter 6, CR 5).

The same AP also has three variants of Animated Tank (https://aonprd.com/MonsterDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Animated%20Tank). If you are of the opinion that an animated tank is about as capable as one that is being piloted, this gives you a pretty good idea of how dangerous some WW1 tanks are. The same module also has a Tsar Tank, a not-animated Tank that has a proper crew running it, and that's CR 12 same as the default Animated Tank (although Tsar Tank and the Animated Tank model are different kinds of tanks I think? I'm not a tank scientist, you'll have to ask your local not-a-Nazi tank-enthusiast to get an idea about how they compare). There's a couple kinds of snipers in the module too, but both are undead, so it's unclear if they should be considered a representative of how dangerous snipers are compared to normal soldiers or not.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by AvatarVecna
That same page also has stats for the single rifleman mentioned earlier (Fighter 6, CR 5).

Thanks, I didn't see the rifleman stats when I first looked at that page.

Most of the feats on that build are pretty generic ranged feats. Does Pathfinder have any firearms feats that would (or would not) be applicable to modern weapons?

[AvatarVecna]

Thanks, I didn't see the rifleman stats when I first looked at that page.

Most of the feats on that build are pretty generic ranged feats. Does Pathfinder have any firearms feats that would (or would not) be applicable to modern weapons?

There's not a lot that's specifically applicable to firearms, it's mostly just generic ranged stuff. Which, to be fair, is plenty good on its own. There's a few that would do this build some good:

1) Rapid Reload. It's not quite as necessary for modern firearms as it is for early firearms, but it'll mean a swift action every other turn instead of a move action.

2) Clustered Shots. This makes it so that multiple attacks on a target in the same round only reduce the damage by DR a single time, instead of once per hit.

3) Improved Initiative is good for anybody.

4) It might be worthwhile to take Iron Will and boost that Will save a bit.

EDIT: I'd recommend these replacing Dodge, Toughness, Weapon Focus, and Weapon Specialization.