One of my players has been achin' for a long rifle/sniper rifle for far too long, and I am willing to give it to him: but only after tackling this nagging question...

Do the listed sniper rifles shoot magic bullets? How else do you justify the high DV and deadly AP value? Has anybody houseruled this yet? That is, in fact, my real question I need a sanitized set of DV/AP for the non-assault rifles...

While I'm here, do you think it would make sense to say the sniper in question (let's say he's on a roof, supporting his buddies down below) HAS to Take Aim, meaning he can't just shoot two seperate targets off the bat? How else is he going to be shooting at a target fairly far?

I fail to see your point. Sniper rifles are fine, just start using things like cover and line of sight and you shouldn't have big issues with snipers being overpowered (which they aren't anyway).

I simply don't see what warrants the high DV and AP, and I am trying to find a middle-ground.

Sport Rifle:
7P/-1

Sniper Rifle:
7P/-3
8P/-3

HMG:
7P/-3

So ... Where exactly is the Sniper Rifle overpowered? Apart from being Semiautomatic and thus not giving the same benefit like e.g. the HMG (Fullautomatic)??

Oh and having a look at "real life" sniper rifles with e.g. very big expulsion charges and quite heavy ammunition - they *do* cut through your personal armor like nothing. And - quite a number of special sniper rifles have a "bigger punch" than a normal machine gun.

Get rid of the magic that scopes mean you can ignore range. Nobody involved with SR combat rules has apparently ever shot a gun, so the combat rules all have weird issues, some minor, some huge. The "Attacker Using Image Magnification" section is the most obvious demonstration that they don't have the foggiest idea how shooting really works.

The other detail is that large and heavy sniper rifels are large and heavy and really long. 5ft long 40 pound guns are not subtle or easy to carry around.

Except for that fancy one that folds into a briefcase. Thats pretty easy to lug around.

But then they get nailed by building security every time you send it through the x-ray machine. I'm sure they could mask it somehow, but it would be exorbitantly expensive.

Why are you going through building security, climb up the side. Thats what gecko gloves are for anyway.

If your running a low power campaign, just give him a sports rifle instead. Or just use the stats of the sports rifle with sniper ranges. Still I think that for most groups the Sniper isn't overpowered (it can only fire SA and the one you can actually use in combat isn't that much worse than a sports rifle or shotgun firing slugs [it has a -2 ap bonus]) I wouldn't go much lower than the sports rifle stats tho. Keep in mind that Assault rifles do 6p/-1 when firing in semi-automatic mode. Of course they may also be too high powered for your group. You can also hammer on the obvious nature of a sniper rifle and also the fact that it is VERY illegal, your just asking the cops to throw you in jail for a very long time if one ever catches you with it. Note that a take aim action has to be expended to reduce range modifiers with magnification and that there is a penalty for firing at more than one target in an action phase: -1 (IIRC). This means most characters will probably concentrate their fire on 1 person per action phase. If you find your characters are taking them down in less than 1 action phase you can always increase the goons' body.

Hope that helped.

Trolls and orcs are the norm too, why not .50 sniper rounds?

Tangentially (as you guys are starting to get a little off topic)
I don't think .50 cal snipers are necessarily the norm. I think their longer barrels and less jarring actions allow the sniper rifles to be just as deadly. That is actually what the damage code measures. (plus smaller caliber rounds generally penetrate armor better)

In the real world, a sniper rifle does exactly the same damage as the same caliber deer rifle shooting the same bullet.

And for most purposes in urban areas, a good quality deer rifle would work just perfectly. It's only at long range that you start seeing the reason why you want to buy the $9000 rifle instead of the $500 rifle.

@HappyDaze: As the Sniper does more damage than the sports gun, I would assume it to have eg a higher caliber, different types of ammo, "better barrel" eg reducing "wobbling" of the bullet-flight (sorry, english is not my native language..) and thus enhancing "speed on the long run", ...
Yeah, I was thinking of a .50 sniper when comparing to a HMG.
But you could also say, that "the improved accuracy" makes efficient shooting of a single target easier (with a normal rifle you can aim for his breast, using that uber-rifle you can even aim for his heart (or at least for the assumed location of the heart and thus shoot several cm to its left side )

And yes, the "long range shooting"-rules are crappy, though every house rule I tried to design was more complicated - and thus problematic in a official setting. (The group I was running at the time actually liked it, and perhaps someday I will post it .. Needs more testing beforehand though and I will wait for Arsenal) - but that is a completely different topic

Putting aside reality - the snipers are *much* more expensive then the sport rifles - thus they should have some (worthy) benefits apart from being cool. Okay, their range is doubled - and if that is a worthy benefit for your group - well, just go along with kzt and use sport rifle stats.
Or give them a better AP (hey, it's not as if 1/3 of a hit is that much...) but keep that 6P. Or say: They use special ammo, please leave all your worldly possesion at the counter. There are so many possibilities for reducing sniper rifle efficiency

-- edit: Corrected some mistakes ..

I don't think that 'highly accurate' weapons should have a higher damage code. Instead they should have bonus dice to the attack roll (possibly only acessed with aiming). This can give extra damage with a good roll, but the base damage should not be adjusted since you can still have the same 'grazing' hit with either weapon using the same size of ammo.

I didn't say it was a particulary good or sensible idea

There are sniper rifles like the .416 designed from the cartridge to the weapon to be a sniper rifle. The .416 is not a hunting rifle round. The .50 cal is not the most efficient use of a sniper rifle.

The category of hunting rifle is a very large range of weapons, from the .17 to the .460, but others have posted some excellant examples search for User name Crusher Bob, he has posted some very good examples/rules.

WMS

They also have shooters that are, y'know, just a little bit better than your average "I take my rifle to the range once a year, just before deer season," sort of casual hunter. I'm sure that contributes more than a little to the upkeep and accuracy of their rifles.

I'd rather face your average deer hunter with a Marine Scout/Sniper's finely tuned rifle than a Marine with the deer hunter's case trophy, I can tell you that much.

Yeah, I can't even imagine bothering to train for truly, truly long ranges, and I'd like to think I'm a slight cut above the really casual guys. I find the few obsessive hunters who really do practice like crazy and spend all their free time tuning their gear kind of amusing, actually. I mean, I understand why in the military they do it. But for deer hunting? Heck, I use a shotgun and slugs pretty much exclusively these days; the way I see it, if it's far enough away to be out of shotgun range then it's far enough away for me to have a hard time knowing what's behind it if I should miss (well, okay, that and my old shotgun's just plain stupidly reliable). I just don't see any reason to risk a bad shot and hitting someone over a stupid deer; there's waaaaay too many other hunters out there in southern Minnesota for me to feel comfortable trying ego shots. I dunno, I guess they must really, REALLY like shooting.

I'm surprised not many folks have picked up on this. But the PJSS is probably the best 'sniper' weapon in the game.

Which would you rather have break action 2 shot 9P/AP-1 weapon with no legality issues. Or would you rather a semi-auto 7P/AP-3 weapon with a big 'F' for legality for no good reason. (it's just an accuraized semi-auto rifle! I can see the 'F' for the breakdownable sniper rifle, but the other one?!).

Really which would you rather have +2DR, or 22AP... I know which one is more effective! And the ability to give em both barrels for a 10P single shot doesn't hurt either.

Range brackets are almost irrelevant because of the ignore all range on optics. How often does your sniper work from 1.5klicks anyhow? How often wouldn't 800m suffice?

What I meant when referring to range brackets was with the sniper you don't even have to use a take aim action at under 150m - almost 3x the maximum range on that predator and exactly the maximum range of that Ingram Smartgun.

Yes ... Thats what I meant ... Or to put it otherwise:
People always suspect the heart to be more on the left side than it really is - thus, when aiming for the "suspected heart-location" they will miss the heart on its left side by several cm

And if you are good enough to aim "for the heart", why on EARTH wouldn't you be aiming for the head instead? CNS shots > heart shots.

Because everyone knows you want to keep their cyberskull as a trophy ala predator.

I think what Yoan is looking for consists of two things.

The first is that sniper rifles (and sporting rifles, their civilian cousins) generally use a much more energetic caliber bullet than do things like pistols or smgs (which fire pistol cartridges, that actually being the defining fact to differentiate an smg from an assault rifle). You're looking at a .308 or bigger vs. a 9mm.

The second is that the bullets used themselves are usually jacketed variants on normal rounds to aid flight over longer distances, which happen to also give better penetration.

Those are the real world reasons why a sniper rifle might be stated as having high DV and AP. Hope it helps!

EDIT: To clarify, "more energetic" doesn't mean a higher caliber necessarily. It means more powder and moving at a higher velocity due to design.

So while a .50cal is in fact a huge piece of lead, a 5.56mm M-16 is actually firing a .223 cal sized bullet, it's firing it at much higher speed for a very high energy transfer, thus doing a lot more damage than a .22.

I assume people aim for the heart not the head because with the heart it is basically center mass anyway so if you miss you still have a good chance of the bullet doing some damage, quite possibly fatal what with all the other vital organs nearby. With the head, if you miss in any direction but down then you just miss. Missing down of course hits the neck which is really almost as good.

Chris

On the bit of range. I already conceded this one. Short of the GM allowing people to 'accurize' their hunting rifle and extend it's range up to spec. But in reality, in an urban setting a 1.5km shot is probably not doing. 800m is pretty sufficient. Police SWAT snipers again use weapons which top out in range at about 800m. But is there really going to be that much of a difference in percievability of the sniper between 800m and 1.5km? I don't think there will be many cases where 800m of range won't do and even then I'd allow people to accurize their basic hunting rifle to extend it's range (no more than say 1000-1200m).

Do you have any actual practical experience w/ suppressors? I do.

There's zero reason you couldn't suppress a PJSS. It would require a custom built suppressor due to the double barreled construction and the lack of the standard threaded barrel for sure. But there's zero reasons in the SR4 rules or in real life it couldn't be done. The suppressor itself is childs play, and could be made out of local materials. Your suppressor is basically a glorified 'tuned muffler' as commonly seen for cars/bikes.

Why would I only want an 'R' rated weapon, but not care as much about a 'F' suppressor or ammo?
Simple, the weapon is large, bulky, hard to hide. I can ship the weapon legally under false pretenses... (going to hunt elk/moose/bear... etc.). The mere possession of it won't get your shadowrunner in trouble.

The other items I can craft or make on site... EG: handload legal ammo by replacing the bullets w/ 'F' bullets. It only takes basic machine tools and knowhow to make a suppessor. That's no more than a handfull of ranks in Armorer and an extended production test. Even if I need to smuggle them, they're small and much easier to conceal than the weapon itself! And would be much easier to smuggle seperately as well. EG: i can make the silencer look like engine parts, bullets are small and could be hidden in many items. (or the old standby of load up a magazine, then put 3 rounds of normal ammo on top... how many overworked customs agents are even going to bother to check the underlying round if the top rounds are legal).

Damage Code:
It's not AP-3 advantage it's only AP-2 advantage! And that's easily made up by the act that firing both barrels is a 10P weapon over your 8P. That means the PJSS does more damage w/ the same likelihood of getting lethal over stun in a single shot. And +2DR trumps -2AP by a longshot (AP is dependant on there being armor, +2 damage always happens... -2 dice defense could potentially be 2 points damage reduced, but far more likely it's only 2/3's of a point reduced statistically).

I don't think the one rifle deserves it's 'F' status. But the breakdownable 8P sniper rifle definately deserves the 'F' status. But the other reason I compared it to the other was 12R compares roughly to 10F for availability.

All the guns in the book are basic weapons. The sniper rifles are assumed to be tuned up for long range fire though. You can use armorer checks to enhance a weapon. There's no reason you couldn't accurize a hunting rifle to extend it's range. Really most police SWAT sniper rifles are based on a Remington 700 hunting rifle chambered in .308. But they have heavy match barrels, and the bolt is machined to higher tolerances, and typically the trigger assembly is replaced w/ a two-stage trigger. Another typical construction difference is the barrel is free floating only being anchored to the stock at a single point near the reciever assembly. Though really I suspect the difference between the basic hunting rifle and the 7P sniper is simply something like the difference between a .270 and a .300 winmag. I sincerely hope the HMG listed in the book is not a .50cal as 7P-3 is pretty sorry for a round which is physically much larger than the PJSS elephant rifle round!


To the original poster. One of the differences between the 'sniper' rounds and standard issue 'ball' is that the standard issue ball typically has a flat back end of the bullet, while long range bullets tend to have a shape called a boat-tail. This makes the bullet longer & heavier, moves it's center of gravity farther back, makes the round more aerodynamic and stable in flight. EG: M118 special ball as it's called has tigher tolerances on exactly how much powder and what kind of primers are allowed and uses a boattail bullet. It's used by the military for target competition and sniping. (read the wiki entry on .30-06 springfield and note the differences between M1 and M2 ball ammo).

But where you hunt yeah, you rarely need a long range shot. Same goes for the wooded areas of the east. But out west, hunting elk or big horn sheep, you need a really long range high power accurate rifle! In the plains, again you can need a long range accurate rifle to hunt mule deer (as opposed to the white tails). Then there's the guys who just enjoy handloading/tweaking their guns and basically target shooting for sport. (no different than those wierdos who go put all that custom junk on their cars.. what can I say I'm a long distance shooter).

But anyhow, I always get a good laugh out of the books like Armory (or the ones published for D20 modern or the like of modern weapons). Most of the authors have no clue and zero rangetime or experience. But even at that, I'm hoping armory adds some good stuff.

Falconer, as you've done long range shooting, what does a scope really provide to a shooter over iron sights? Other then allowing you to actually see the target at silly distances, what would you see a realistic game benefit of using a scope?

I'm a red dot and iron sights kind of guy, so I have some ideas but no real experience to support them with.

Stating the obvious would be that SR guns are unrealistic period.
I think you could be a bit more charitable in your interpretations.

maybe the sport rifles use .30-30 with soft point bullets.
maybe the sniper rifles use .300 mag (primary chambering for the WA2000, also M24 if it weren't for compromises) and .338 Lapua (for the Ranger Arms)
kick it up a notch and we could look at .408 cheytac, 9x90mm MEN, .416 Barret

The thing about scopes is that they don't really negate the difficulties of shooting at range like SR has depicted, they just allow you to more clearly see your target. This is a fraction of the difficulties which include:

-time of flight and hitting a moving target
-bullet drop and wind, bullet aerodynamics and diminished energy.
-effects of the shooters own shakiness greatly multiplied

I've always figured that was a part of their nebulous "-2 TN" or whatever. Not only did it flash into your field of vision right where the weapon was pointed, but it made a lot of things just easier because of how messed up your stance and grip could be while still keeping the weapon on target -- no need to pull a trigger, no need to maintain a proper sight picture, no need to have the weapon at eye level...all you really had to worry about was being stable enough and keeping a good enough grip on it the recoil didn't take the gun right out of your hands.

Regarding the "scope-rules for SR are broken"-discussion:
Well, my approach was splitting the range modifier in different classes:

1. Sightmodifier - they can be negated via Scopes

2. Weapon accuracy - I made tables for weapon classes and ammunition classes stating a dicepool-modifier in relation to distance - this one couldn't be negated no matter what you did. And yes, it allowed a really skilled shooter to shoot "at greater range" then a less skilled one. And it gave a (easy to handle) method for giving or taking dice of runners mistreating / looking after their guns. A dirty sniper rifle won't have that accuracy...

3. Wind, etc - those modifiers could partly be negated via a knowledgeskill "Sniper", a high weapon skill, collected data, etc
In fact shooting for high distances got much harder. Especially low-level shooter had nearly no chance at all to shoot straight at 1000m.
And yes, this means that some modifiers need more time to be calculated - but with some training it took nearly no time. Especially when "precalculating" those values for given scenarios.

What do you think of such an approach? And yes, I know that it works "against a fluid game play" at least when introducing that system to a new group.
I am by far not a sharpshooter - I have (nearly) no practial experience, only theoretical approaches so comments would be appreciated.

I tend to house-rule long range shots as an increase in threshold.

The reasoning is simple. An increase in threshold means that it requires higher skill ratings to even HIT a target at long range if hits are capped at skill rating +1. Generally I do long range +1, extreme +2 with additional modifiers as I see fit. The only people that can reliably make that shot are those with Long Arms - 3+.

- der menkey

"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."
~ Ernest Hemingway

The rest of the answers are right. The biggest advantage of a scope is being able to see the target clearly magnified against a clear sight picture.

But to put another aspect into play is something called sight radius. Pistols have a very short distance between their front and rear sight so can be very hard to aim precisely at extended ranges even if the ballistics would let you reach out that far reliably. Iron sights on a rifle are much farther apart allowing for a lot more precision at the same range. But scopes provide an optical trick which can allow the sight radius to be even farther apart for more precision.

Also as others have stated, the scope only allows you to see the target and point of aim clearly, it doesn't suppress your natural oscilations or good technique/training. Best way to get a stable hold is to not support the rifle yourself... so a bipod or benchrest type support techniques become very valuable.

As far as suppressors go, I just read the wiki article on them and it's actually reasonably good. I'd recommend it for those unfamiliar.

Looking at a solution to the suppressor issue, since supressing a long range rifle round couldn't be done easily and effectively, how about spoofing the sound in multiple locals.

Example: A sniper sets up on a rooftop 750 meters away from his target. Before actually sitting down to wait for the kill, he drops small speakers on several other buildings in the area. When he pulls that trigger, each of the speakers mimics the sound of the shot, as if it came from multiple places.

Certainly, the sound wouldn't sync up from each speaker at every point, but the multiple shots would prevent someone from using a location test with cyber ears or adept powers to pinpoint the shot quickly.