In Shadowrun characters (and NPCs) tend to hit their targets more often than happens in real life. In very many Shadowrun campaigns it's not uncommon to see a character storm through a corporate facility with his team and a Predator and acting as part of that team blow away a whole platoon of guards without ever needing to reload his pistol since he rarely totally misses.

I've been wondering what would happen if I ran a game of SR where all the to-hit TNs regarding firearms and ranged attacks were significantly raised to result in a lot more misses.

I was thinking about the following:
*In order to represent the hand-shaking chaos of violent conflict, base target numbers for ranged attacks are doubled. So, base TN for close range becomes 8, base TN for medium becomes 10, etc.
*Both bonuses and penalties are doubled. A called shot, for example, would now represent a +8 penalty, but a smartlink would give you -4.
*In order to make long and extreme range shooting more feasible, I'd give a TN bonus (maybe -2, with the doubled TNs) for firing prone at a target at Medium range or futher, and furthermore deploying a bipod while firing prone would give you an additional stacking -4 or -8 bonus.


Possible positive outcomes:
*More realistic ammo expenditure
*More shots fired with fragmented bullets and casings everywhere, less bullshit "I clean up all my brass because I only fired two shots" dynamic, so evidence a bit harder to plausibly clean up all the time
*Characters would spend more time aiming at long range targets by necessity, so more working of tactics versus short range and long range shooting

Possible negative outcomes:
*Magic becomes extremely powerful because of relatively low TNs.
*Melee combat becomes more powerful than shotguns at close range? (I guess SR was already like that anyway)
*Combats take longer


Comments or thoughts?

Use cover, movement, and non-optimal lighting. That alone will do much to cut down on the hit rate. Beyond that, high skill and cyber is supposed to make hard shots look easy.

Ranged fire has lots and lots of potential modifiers. My character in the Nouveaux Reflections game, Tombstone, had 9 skill dice and 10 Combat Pool dice, and he still struggled to hit people when they did the run. Light, movement, and other modifiers can quickly bring that TN up. A TN of 4, you will get half the time. A TN of 6, you will get far less often, and TNs higher than that are often one or two rolls from a big handful of dice, if that.

I can only imagine that your GM has been ignoring most of these modifiers to speed up gameplay. This might be a viable house rule for someone using these new TNs instead of figuring out modifiers, but using both would be an overcorrection resulting in frustrated players.

I agree with Glyph, TN Modifiers often make even a smartgun-link'd character have TNs of 5+. If the GM is ignoring those modifiers, then yes, you should at least start with a TN of 6, adjustable by a smartgunlink, laser light, etc.

adjusting the TN cuts both ways, you'd only be helping him by making it harder for the grunts to hit him, I assume he has laser sight or smartlink as it is.

keep all of these things in mind
recoil,
cover,
movement(self),
movement(opponent),
vision mods,
distance(smartlink doesn't stack with vision mag, but I believe it does with a range finder),
I also seem to recall switching targets but my memory is fading.

The system is built to incorperate all of these, often most are neglected and make the sam unstoppable.

Though an evil GM would consider using neurostun grenades against the PC to push up the stun boxes while dealing physical dmg through other sources.

A much better idea is to create a merit/flaw system that represents how well someone reacts in combat. Of course, this makes solos, drones, etc around 10x better than anyone else.

If you want to try to make it more realistic add something like 5 minus professional rating to all combat TNs. This means that rentacops at prof level 1 can't hit you if you were standing right in front of them, while most runners who are prof rating 5 will shoot you right in the face and go through your wallet afterwards.

On the other hand, the wide availability of 90%+ reality VR training should greatly reduce some of this. In the grim darkness of the future, everyone's a kill bot.

I missed in combat often enough, until I started aiming on short range (those -3 TN really come in handy). But then, even my streetsam hasn't had more than a skill rating 7 (I'm still talking SR3).

One little detail I'd recommend, require that the scope take a Simple Action to use. As it stands, someone could be at extreme range, and shooting from the hip with a base TN of 3.

Hmm. I appreciate the thoughts, everyone.

One thing which I experienced in my time GMing was that slapping players with a lot of penalties for fog, lighting, etc, tended to cause more in game arguments regarding what constituted partial light.

I suppose that such problems could theoretically be avoided by applying at least a partial a light penalty generously and frequently from the very beginning with a new gaming group.

I'm supposed to get back to the US from the Federated States of Micronesia later this year. If I ever get the chance to play or GM Shadowrun again, I suppose that I could try that strategy of penalizing heavily and early to eliminate any arguments later. I imagine as a player I'd cut a funny sight at the gaming table by constantly urging the GM to penalize me further.

Something to consider are the skill levels. SR has your typical beat cop with a firearms skill of about 3, most soldiers would probably be about the same level. SWAT and very well trained soldiers would be a point or two higher. At those skill levels, missing would be quite common.

That said, I understand what you mean about combat stress. That is a real thing and there have been studies on it. GURPS addressed the problem with optional modifiers. Converted to SR, this could range from a +1 to +4 on target numbers (-1 to -4 penalty in SR4) depending on the situation. Having someone draw and start shooting when the characters were sort of expecting it might be a 1 or 2. Coming under a hail of automatic gunfire out of the blue would probably be worth a 4. You might also consider a penalty is one is under suppressing fire. This could also apply if a shooter is watching your location and is waiting to shoot the first thing that popos up, and you know it. For example: you are pinned behind a dumpster and your opponent is waiting for you to show yourself and shoot. You know this so that stress should apply a penalty since you know that as soon as you pop up for a shot, you are going to be taking fire.

The studies I mentioned also showed that people were affected to differing degrees. Some people in a fight just plain freaked and went to ground or ran. Most would carry out training to one degree or another. A small percentage, however, weren't overly phased by combat. You could rule that certain characters like Sammies fall into that category and wouldn't have much in the way of a penalty.

Training also helps. The better trained a person is, the better they will react in combat. Beat cops are so so because they spend some time training whereas SWAT is better because they train realistically and very often. If the characters train, even if in VR settings, then they too could offset the combat penalties. If this is used, rather than make them spend karma, just have them spend the time training, basically sharpening skills they already have.

Now you're getting into SOTA for skills.

another thing to consider is at what range the conflict is occurring at. I've found as a GM that most conflicts took place at short range for even heavy pistols or SMGs. PCs would use concealment, cover or disguise to get as close as possible before opening fire. I'd say in one quarter of combats i've run, the npcs never survived long enough to return fire. of course I've also had NPC gangers fire full-auto into an elevator filled with shadowrunners at a distance of about of less than 2 meters, and hit nothing but air (and an ork who declined to dodge but was too heavily armed to suffer anyway)

Most PCs I've seen take firearms skills at the very least "trained" and usually "expert". When they take skills that put them at spec-ops levels its no suprise their characters shoot at that quality.

for added realism, I would enforce a connection between skills taken and background.

Gm: "Your character is a 12 year old Otaku who lives on the street."

PC: "Right."

GM: "and has Assault Rifles at 6, with AK-97s at 8?"

yes, TNs should be raised if you want more realism. this will force characters to actually stop and aim, rather than taking snapshots all the time. i don't think going prone or using a bi/tripod should lower your TN, but it should allow you to take more aim actions. combining higher TNs with TN-lowering autofire would also be a good idea.

deek, we're discussing SR3.

My bad...I noticed comments directed at SR4 in prior posts...my mistake. Please strike my comments from the record:)

yeah. it might be cool to port stuff like that into SR3.