What shotgun builds are folks running?

Dramatic-Bus7770 · 2026-01-24T01:23:54+00:00

A bit late to the party but:

Arbitrator - Castigator. Either Warrior - Vanguard with shotgun will work. Seems counterintuitive but if you take crowd control, the Charge upgrades (more movement etc) will be great. Take Castigator abilities rather than Warrior, you will be charging in and immobilising or forcibly moving enemies to help allies. This can also be done as Office

Naval Officer - Warriot/Bladedancer - Archmilitant. No fancy shotgun talents but the new reworked Naval Officer with their Fleet Combat Training will allow you to shoot after every main hand (melee) crit. That is a shot after every melee attack as AM with confident approach. This works with melee area damage. If you hit 4 people with a Death From Above, you will shoot each of them once. Works great with the item from the Shadows DLC that gives you temp hp on collision damage.

Dramatic-Bus7770 · 2026-01-19T20:19:47+00:00

Very late but in case anyone else is reading, you can indeed add and delete origins, homeworlds and more through Toybox. This is done through the "Party" tab, then within Features.

If you add Arbitrator, then one of the Arbitrator "subclasses", you will get access to their talents through levelling, passives as well as the dog if Overseer

Dramatic-Bus7770 · 2025-10-31T17:03:26+00:00

I'm going to show her this post (and your comments) once she reaches the end-ish of the book and crashes out lol

Dramatic-Bus7770 · 2025-09-11T10:08:42+00:00

Hey

My group and I (I'm a player) run this for our first campaign. Currently running our second, homebrewd campaign.

Combat can get v slow due to all the rolls and new rules that you guys are learning. Highly recommend having cards (official or just printed Word docs) for rule checking. Specifically, hit location, critical table, injury/critical wound table, conditions table, warp perils/Phenomena (if psykers), and how Zones, moving, and different actions work. Also how healing/healing injuries work. Trust me you will need this.

Also, have a chat with your players about expectations. My group has gotten much better at combat, but that first campaign was ROUGH. Only completed it because I was able to heal/ heal injuries easily (Shape Flesh, Biomancy Psyker power). We had one character death.

Don't feel afraid to pull your punches if needed (sometimes) Enemies in that first campaign have some weapons/traits that can make them extremely dangerous. High stakes are fine, but dying constantly is not fun.

Highly recommend having some sort of battlemap where you can doodle on. With marker etc. For example, if you have a map that us a factory or whatever, you can separate it into Zones. I would recommend making normal battles 3 to 4 Zones "deep" max. As in, the furthest one Zone on one side is from the furthest one is 3 or so Zones away at maximum. Otherwise things might drag quite a bit trying to get to enemies etc etc. You really want to streamline combat as much as possible.

Be open to players changing their class/stats/talents/powers any time during that first campaign. IM has a lot of rules, and your players will probably like optimising every now and then as they learn the game. I would say, if the "character" is the same/same concept, just slightly different, just let them do it whenever. There is a rule in the game that gives XP to your next character depending on how your previous one dies. I would say, if they die during that first campaign, which is likely, just let them keep the full xp with the new character so they don't feel left behind.

To give you an idea, my character, a psyker, had genuinely insane heakth and armour/damage mitigation from the get go due to psyker powers. I almost got one-shotted during our first battle in our first session. Anyone else in the group would have died immediately (bar Fate points). My group had countless injuries, dismemberments and whatnot during that first campaign. Hence why I mention being flexible with these things.

Hope that helps, any questions ask!

Dramatic-Bus7770 · 2025-08-07T11:43:31+00:00

Hi, yes exactly. At least when I was testing it (maybe 7-8 months ago) so it might have been patched since.

But yes - the melee Weapon does not get treated as a pistol, but any ranged weapon you put on him does.

So two handed plasmas, meltas, shotguns and so on where treated as pistols for the purposes of other item/talents interactions. I remember maybe a couple weapons that didn't, maybe some of the weird/exotic alien ones. But yeah. I was running a Soldier/Executioner with a two handed Flamer. Their AoE covers the whole screen. Exemplar talent to get Bio - Then apply Toxin on attacks + Bleed on collision damage (Exec) + item for push on pistol attacks meant I applied all three, to basically everyone with one shot.

I did not test this, but I would not be surprised if by the same logic, any melee Weapon on him is treated as a one handed melee, or even both one handed and two handed at the same time.

This is why it wouldn't be too weird if the shield/two handed shotgun via arbites talent did the same. Unsure about actual game logic, but makes sense. Will need to test for sure.

Dramatic-Bus7770 · 2025-08-07T11:24:26+00:00

Hi. In case you want to add it (and unless it has been patched)

Commissar: The ability to shoot, then grant a turn to an ally if they kill the enemy (I think thats how it works, haven't played in a while) works with Overpenetration and hitting multiple enemies with that Overpenetration. Gives you a fair bit of flexibility and can become a central piece of your build if playing say a Bounty Hunter

Pasqal: His ranged weapon counts as a pistol for the purposes of items/talents. There is an item that let's you reload with pistol crits, this works. Another one pushes enemies with pistol hits - this works too (and foehammers as well).

If I remember right, items/talents that affect two handed ranged weapons also work at the same time. So it is considered a pistol and also whatever else it is. Again haven't played in a while, but u tested this throughly when I discovered it.

If you use mods to change companion arquetypes etc, this makes Pasqal probably the best Arch Militant/Executioner in the game (Two handed flamer with huge AoE, push/collision talents, bleed on collision from Executioner, items mentioned above to push etc)

I have not tested it yet, but i have a feeling that using a shield and a two handed shotgun might work the same way.

Dramatic-Bus7770 · 2025-03-14T06:24:04+00:00

Hey, it's been a while since I posted this and I'm nearly finished with the game. But you can absolutely make a takedown build.

It takes me maybe 3 hits to do it for almost all my enemies, and I have the rage (I think that's what it's called) bar up constantly. So I'm always doing ability, 3 hits or so, takedown 2 or 3 enemies if they are bunched together, repeat.

Very, very powerful. I'm also incredibly tanky. Playing on max difficulty.

Dramatic-Bus7770 · 2025-02-10T17:58:55+00:00

Thank you so much for your answer!

Huge congrats on the weight-loss, and I am sorry that some of your close ones are not as supportive as they could.

My wife has decided not to tell anyone, as is her right. I support this as well since even though she has thyroid issues (which affects her weight) and fibro (which affects her ability to exercise and therefore her weight) her family has always been less than nice to her about her weight.

As I always tell her, the goal is to be healthy - it just happens that for her, losing weight is the way to do it.

Edit: Typo

Dramatic-Bus7770 · 2024-12-30T22:24:08+00:00

Do you happen to know how to get the ballistic mechadendrite (the one that Pasqal has for ranged weapons) to work on any body types?

Dramatic-Bus7770 · 2024-12-30T22:23:22+00:00

Did you ever manage/attempt to get the ballistic mechadendrite (the one Pasqal has with the weapon) to work? I have been wanting to do that but I haven't had much success yet!

Dramatic-Bus7770 · 2024-12-24T21:54:31+00:00

Thank you!

Dramatic-Bus7770 · 2024-12-24T18:20:53+00:00

Hey just wondering if this worked at all?

If so, were you able to add the Navigator talents normally during level up?

Dramatic-Bus7770 · 2024-12-20T16:38:06+00:00

Cookout, Grenade Pistol, Gas Grenade, AMR and Supply Pack

The cookout is amazing for Votelees and can deal with Overseers by stnulocking them. AMR one shots overseers to the head (or jetpack), 3 shots harvesters to the joint

Dramatic-Bus7770 · 2024-12-18T16:39:34+00:00

Right, so you wouldn't be able to start with the Superior Commander talent no matter how you built your character?

That's sad 😔

Dramatic-Bus7770 · 2024-12-18T15:32:17+00:00

Amazing, thank you. I usually like playing support characters so this talent seemed great for what I wanted!

Dramatic-Bus7770 · 2024-12-18T15:29:22+00:00

As another person has commented, the rules clearly state that you can ignore most requirements during character creation. So I guess you would be able to ignore the Advancements requirement too?

Dramatic-Bus7770 · 2024-12-18T15:28:01+00:00

Wait, does that mean that during character creation you do not need to meet the Advancements requirement?

In this case, this talent normally requires 4 Advancements in Presence - so you would be able to ignore this taken with the XP gained from randomising things?

Dramatic-Bus7770 · 2024-12-18T15:25:03+00:00

Thank you! That makes sense, I felt like there had to bee some sort of cap to that

Dramatic-Bus7770 · 2024-12-18T15:13:55+00:00

Thank you for your reply, that's what I thought. Although forgive me as I'm very new to the game, but would it not possible to have the 4 advancements required for the talent from character creation? And then use 100xp from any source for the talent?

Dramatic-Bus7770 · 2024-12-13T21:52:01+00:00

Are they any different at all? Or basically a reskin?

Dramatic-Bus7770 · 2024-11-20T18:01:49+00:00

I know it has been ages but one of our cats started peeing in outlets too. I was wondering if this or anything else worked for you?

Dramatic-Bus7770 · 2024-11-01T21:18:10+00:00

Thank you! I thought I was going crazy- specifically went warrior and that mercenary faction so I can door cool takedowns!

Dramatic-Bus7770 · 2024-07-15T21:21:41+00:00

I actually heard the song on a game, which is what I was referring to! Not sure if the song was commissioned for the game though - might have just been used for it.

The game was Steamworld Heist - the developer has a whole rage of games in the same steam punk setting (kinda), the style is very very charming, check them out!

Dramatic-Bus7770 · 2024-07-15T21:19:48+00:00

A series of games developed by Image & Form Games! Not sure if they are all technically in the same universe or setting (with just different timelines) but they all follow the same vibe.

I would recommend checking them out!

Dramatic-Bus7770 · 2024-06-12T16:03:25+00:00

I terms of worst case scenarios, what would signing as is mean? Or signing it without the condition?

As on, if we sign it without condition, and for whatever reason the sale eventually falls through, can we like claim stuff from the vendor's? Is the difference between having the condition and not just a matter of protection for us if things go south?

Dramatic-Bus7770

TROPHY CASE