Arsenal page 33 describes a Safe Target System that prevents friendly fire. This would be a useful gadget, if friendly fire had any kind of feasibility. As rules are, it's doesn't. The only chance of hitting a friendly target is by rolling a critical glitch in an appropriate situation, which is seldom enough that nobody ever thinks twice about shooting into a not all hostile crowd or especially into a melee combat situation.

I have always been unhappy with how rules handle firing into melee combat, but when someone recently decided to fire a wide burst into a melee fight to negate the target's partial cover (which was the shooter's team mate that the target was fighting with), with little to no chance of hitting anyone but the target, I decided enough is enough. Our table has two melee specialists (my character when I'm not GMing is one of them, so maybe I'm biased), so such situations are not uncommon. I'm considering suggesting the following house rules next session, please tell me what you think.

Stray Bullets House Rules
Bullets fired using SS, SA and narrow burst modes miss their target and become stray bullets if the attacker has no net hits in the attack. When using wide burst mode, the number of stray bullets is equal to (number of bullets fired) – (half of attacker's net hits, rounded up).
Stray bullets create a transient cone of suppressive fire ranging 1 meter around the original target and up to 10 meters behind it. Other characters within the suppressed area at the time of the attack must defend against a threshold equal to the current number of stray bullets with a Reaction + Edge Test (+ Dodge if on full defense). They defend one at a time, starting with the character with least Edge (or when equal Edge values, GM's discretion). The usual defense modifiers apply. If the test fails, the character is hit by one bullet, suffering damage at the weapon's base DV (base DV +1 on a glitch, base DV +3 on a critical glitch). For every hit, reduce the number of stray bullets by 1 for the next character's Reaction + Edge Test until all bullets or all characters are accounted for.
Note that characters may be surprised by the attack, e.g. friendly characters may not be expecting an attack from that direction. Apply appropriate Perception and Surprise Tests at GM's discretion. Surprised characters defend with Edge only.

Looks good enough. Adds more bookkeeping to a game, but simple enough to eyeball quickly for more experienced GMs in situations where it would be important.

Well if nobody is in the suppressive fire area, nothing needs to be done. But you're right, I'd prefer a more KISS solution, it's just that I can't come up with one while achieving the wanted effect.

For more KISS, you could only bother invoking the rules for Wide Bursts. It all depends on the tradeoff you'd like. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

my houserule? in crowded areas:

glitch = shoot a bystander
critical glitch = shoot Friendly or self.

edit: or whatever gives the most narrative power.

The reason I do like the idea is because as is a group of experienced shooters wouldn't think twice about firing on the enemy standing in front of a schoolbus full of kids. As long as they don't glitch the kids will never be hit even if their target dodges the bullet completely.

Obviously this is the type of rule that wouldn't need to be used most of the time, but if you did use it a lot could be used to the player's advantage as well, creating fields of fire with multiple enemies in a row such as in a hallway and even if they miss their intended target, the poor saps behind him have to dodge too or eat some APDS rounds (essentially giving the runner an extra attack). Only makes sense though really.

Not only experienced shooters: the chance of rolling a critical glitch with 7 dice (bog standard grunt shooter) is approximately .5%. Glitches are highly overestimated, except with very low dice pools.

Bad lighting, range, cover (including hostages), movement, smoke/weather, and wound penalties will shave a few dice off a shooter's max potential pretty quickly.

Cover no longer subtract attack dice, it adds to defensive Dice...

And if you are getting too many vision modifiers close your eyes and take it blind (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) as you can get stacking pens higher than having your eyes closed if your GM is silly. In the same vain I once built a joke Adpet for a one shot who geased his powers to being blinded (eyes closed ot a bilnd fold) Worked quite we as I spamed the hell of of smoke nades ect. hightend conectration was the key power as was improved pistols 3. Was fun to play with.

Yep, I would also simply use the glitch mechanic. Easy and straightforward.

Bye
Thanee

Why not just treat a wide burst like suppression fire except without compensating for the recoil.

Everyone in the area gets -9 dice to dodge, and everyone in the area has to make a dodge roll or take the base DV.

Who is the bystander and is the a direct or even 1 or 2 step indirect consequence to my character? A 1 or 2 step indirect consequence isn't a matter of violating laws since my character is probably already engaging in unlawful and illegal behavior anyway.

--



So.... that reminds me of a funny bit about suppressive fire....



Let's say I step out onto a crowded sidewalk pull out an assault rifle and use suppressive fire on the crowd out to a distance of 100 meters. Let's say there are at least 50 people in the area targeted by the suppressive fire. Now assuming that all these people run, all 50 would qualify for making the check to avoid taking fire. Considering they're civilians, let's say they all fail. By RAW all 50 should take damage.... from 20 bullets.

Well, bullets can go through multiple bodies. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Bye
Thanee

Yeah, I guess that's a simple and efficient way of handling wide bursts in tight situations. (I presume you mean -9 for a FA burst, -5 for long, -2 for short.) GM eyeballs the suppressed area depending on the length of the burst, etc.

But I'd still want a house rule "normal" shots gone wide if they could be a danger, simply because the glitch mechanic fails here (it actually fails pretty much everywhere, if you ask me). Take a look at the glitch mechanic statistics:


Dice Pool | Probability of a glitch | Probability of a critical glitch

1 | 16.67% | 16.67%
2 | 30.56% | 19.44%
3 | 7.41% | 4.63%
4 | 13.19% | 5.17%
5 | 3.55% | 1.36%
6 | 6.23% | 1.92%
7 | 1.76% | 0.41%
8 | 3.07% | 0.44%
9 | 0.90% | 0.127%
10 | 1.55% | 0.136%
11 | 0.46% | 0.040%
12 | 0.79% | 0.042%
13 | 0.24% | 0.013%
14 | 0.41% | 0.013%
15 | 0.13% | 0.004%

So if your char has, say, 9 dice to shoot at a slim elf who is standing right in front of your unaware big fat troll friend, and the elf manages to dodge because he went full def and is agile as f**, in 799 of 800 cases you will not hit your troll friend. Call me pedantic, but I'd say there's something wrong with the mechanics, here.


Not really. Any decent runner and any reasonably sophisticated security will have technology to compensate bad lighting/smoke/weather, cover adds to def rather than being subtracted from attack, and range is seldom more than short or med (depending on weapon) when shooting at someone who in a fight with a friend of yours. That leaves movement and wound penalties, which of course don't always apply. And then there's smartlink, etc... If negative modifiers don't get your pool below 5 dice, the chance of rolling a critical glitch is neglectable.

I also think that there should be a rule to govern stray bullets for the same reason as you, Myrgan.
Even experienced shooters should think about firing at someone who is close to friend or noncombatant.
But i agree with ZeroPoint as well that your rule adds a lot of bookkeeping, so i came up with this:

If the shooter achieves no net successes on the attack roll, everyone within 1m (SS/SA), 3m (BF) or 5m (FA)
has to roll edge in order to not get hit by a stray bullet, tresholds beeing 1 (SS/SA), 2 (BF) and 3 (FA).
If the bystander fails on this test, he/she takes the base-DV of the attackers weapon.

This is easier to use (i think) and should also make the PCs/NPCs think twice about shooting wherever they want.

What do you guys think?