From experience in my group Oleander feels a bit like it invalidates the basic Death Head in most cases.
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Who cares you can only shoot 1/round when you can OC loop reload anti-mat rifle without ordnance and ignoring enemy resistances. Stack on Roland chamber, op cal and crack shot and you're essentially able to one shot every standard enemy and even some multiple structure ones.
Being able to heal yourself once per scene, gain seeking and crit on 18 is just icing on the cake.
I just got the book. And I am concerned with the Oleander. Do you find after more testing that is it indeed un/balanced? Or is it OK? "your heavy weapon gain ONE of the following effect"... only one of them, that's not too bad after all... all effects stack only for one shot, so it looks OK to me, on paper at least.
I have since concluded that campaign and I can say it was a mess. At LL6 Oleander got so busted that it made rest of the party's damage dealers useless by comparison and any multi-structure NPC a joke. When I buffed enemies to stand a chance against it, the other players were not able to keep up instead.
The rest of the book is great though. Since then I just haven't allowed these alt frames in my campaigns, which isn't a big deal considering they are 3d party. And then Shadow of the Wolf released the Tagetes...
I just got the book. And I am concerned with the Oleander. Do you find after more testing that is it indeed un/balanced? Or is it OK? "your heavy weapon gain ONE of the following effect"... only one of them, that's not too bad after all... all effects stack only for one shot, so it looks OK to me, on paper at least.