Invisible and firing into cover, Rule confusion Options

[eiszeit]

Hi there,

i am running my first SR4 campaign, my players have their first firefight, everything went fine, until the mage had to cast invisibility. Now she wants to fire at someone, who is sitting behind a car in good cover. If i am reading the rules correctly, the fact that he is sitting behind a car gives him no advantage whatsoever, because he cannot defend himself, as long as the mage can see any bodypart of him. Is that correct? How can that be?

I am no expert marksman or anything, but shouldnt it be harder to hit someone if you can only see his ear behind a wall as opposed to him standing right in front of you, regardless if he can move out of the way or not? Please tell me i am overlooking something, i generally dislike houseruling, but that seems like a very strange rule to me.

Thanks

[Dumori]

While normally the cover would give him a bonuses on his defense roll. How ever if surpised you don't get the roll. The are threes things you can do roll the bonus dice any way just the bonus dice this mean that the cover might take some damage off the attack or make the attacker miss completely. Two take the bonus dice from the attackers dice pool this was how cover used to be treated but they swaped it as it meant you needed not only stupidly big dice pools to attack with but glitches and crit glitches where more common. Three live with it the defended might pop round to take a shot and not know that hes in the mage's sights ect.

[Wounded Ronin]

Cars don't usually stop bullets, so maybe instead of affecting to-hit you could just have shooting through the car affect the damage code of the attack.

[eiszeit]

I will probably use the cover modifiers for a defense roll, without reaction and all that. I had hoped that i overlooked something, because, as i said, i try to avoid houseruling, especially since i am not very familiar with the rules in the first place and dont want to mess something up because i think it needs fixing. Stupid mages ... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Thanks anyway

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

Mages follow a simple rule: "if they can see it, they can hit it". If a mage is seeing only the left foot of a person, he/she may casta a manabolt on the target.

Now, cover for fire arms is always applied. If I'm not mistaken the attacker suffers a penalty according to the cover degree.
And depending on the car's armor and the ammo, it might be easier just shoot through the car. In this case the attacker won't have any penalties for cover (but must beat the car's armor).

[Traul]

Cars don't usually stop bullets, so maybe instead of affecting to-hit you could just have shooting through the car affect the damage code of the attack.

SR cars do: most of them have at least 6 armor, which is enough to stop heavy pistol rounds.

[Yerameyahu]

In the case of a Surprised sniper target (or spell, which is the same thing), you can raise the threshold of the attack (essentially, a Success Test) to account for cover. As above, cover is usually a defensive bonus, but common sense lets you adjust that for this different situation.

Brazilian, AFAIK SR4A changed cover from a penalty to the attacker into a bonus for the defender (as someone said above, and why). Attackers have their own penalty for firing/casting *from* cover, as well.

[svenftw]

I will probably use the cover modifiers for a defense roll, without reaction and all that. I had hoped that i overlooked something, because, as i said, i try to avoid houseruling, especially since i am not very familiar with the rules in the first place and dont want to mess something up because i think it needs fixing. Stupid mages ... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Thanks anyway

That's how I play it when I GM. If you have a defense bonus from cover, nothing can take those dice away except finding a new angle. Those dice are rarely enough to save your skin, though!

[Yerameyahu]

Mhm, it should be the same effect either way, and that's more consistent.