Breeching Barriers, Using the SR3 Firing Through Rules Options

[Drraagh]

I had a discussion with someone a while back about a discrepancy with the Firing Through versus Breaking Through rules of the Barriers. P124-125 of the BBB.

On Firing through, you're looking at a 2*Barrier Rating versus Edged Weapons, and against Blunt Weapons it's Standard Rating. On breaking through, the barrier has twice its normal rating against all attacks. But, then under the Barrier Effect Table, they were saying that since you can put a hole in the wall if you do more power than the Barrier Rating, they were claiming they could attack the 'air' on the other side of the wall and thus ignore the double barrier rating since they were attacking a target on the other side of the wall instead of breeching the wall.

Of course, my answer was no, you can't do that. I used a bit of logical justification (or at least what I assumed could be logical) that the damage you're doing with blunt is physical force rippling through the wall (sort of like the whole Bowling Ball on the bed not knocking over the glass) and the other part was just 'the rules are there for both circumstances', so since you're not having a physical target you're breeching it.

However, their idea got me thinking, is there any way you could take advantage of those rules besides keeping some tools on your person to cut/burn/blow your way through the walls? Never know when you'll be trapped in a room and the walls are closing in on you or something.

Edit: A second thought occured to me after reading some of the thermographic seeing through walls posts; Could you use thermographics to find a heat variance for plumbing, air vents/ducts, electronics wiring, etc; and use that as a target to attack? Or some sort of similar approch such as the building's blueprints showing you where to hit the wall at?