The rules say when shooting a barrier to blow a hole in it, it is 2dv per bullet modified by your successes on the combat test.

If you shoot a burst is it a bunch of separate 2dvs hitting the wall or the total of the bullets x2 dv.

So if you do a full burst of 10 and just hit. Is it

1. 10 separate 2dvs

Or

2. 20DV.

Bullets used * 2 DV.

A burst is treated as one attack. You'd treat it as one damaging attack if you pointed it a target other than a barrier.

The use of English is ambiguous here, but by reading the example and inferring from the table, it should be read as DV = "NumBullets * 2". This would then modified by hits as usual.
(The key phrase that shows that by inference you multiply the number of bullets by 2 is "One bullet only has a base DV of 2 against barriers" in the example on page 158 of the SR4 Core rules)

So answer 2 would be the correct one.
This means that full auto will mess up hardwood, armoured glass, and probably brick walls if you trade the resistance roll for autohits.
10 rounds of Full auto will be stopped by concrete however.

Check out "shock lock" shotgun rounds in Arsenal.


At your GM's descretion, Assault cannon rounds, Explosive and Ex-Explosive ammo may be counted as explosives vs barriers, which would allow you to effectively ruin barriers with a 10 round burst from most weapons.
There are many ways to apply that, and it will probably depend on what your GM determines is realistic enough for him.

okay that is how I was reading it, it just was not totally clear to me. I wish the example had included a use of burst fire.

Hi everybody!

I created an account just to ask this question:
Is everyone ok with "DV of 2 per bullet"?
I think this is way too strong.
Not only that, but it doesn't even seperate between bullet types!
It doesn't matter if you're using gel or ex-explosive rounds.

Example:

To destroy a blast bunker (Armor 32+, Structure 17+) you only need a weapon with full auto capabilites, like a Steyr TMP (machine pistol). Lets say the bunker is extraordinarily strong and has Armor 36, Structure 20. If you use a complex action to declare "Supressive fire" on the wall, you can basicly shoot 20 bullets in one action.
That's a DV of 40. (You don't add net hits to supressive fire.) The wall gets to resist with armor x2, so it rolls 72 dice.
If we use the "hit buying" rule (as suggested in the shooting through barriers example of the bbb), we get 18 hits; which leaves 22 damage boxes for our wall (producing a 1 square meter hole).

Even with normal full auto, the base damage would still be 20 (+ net hits), which is not enough to blow a hole in it at first. But it's enough to damage it. And that alone is ridiculous (from my point of view, at least) because it implies that, given enough bullets and time, you can destroy any barrier! (Or at least any barrier with an Armor rating <40.)

Isn't that slightly overpowered/unrealistic?
I've never shot a full automatic weapon at a wall, maybe bullets really can penetrate "anything".
Just wanted your opinion on this rule and how fitting it is.

Quite. Not only are barriers easy to take down regardless of method (except magic), but grenades are too effective (why use a timered grenade that the opposition can throw back and/or run away from? Just air-burst it and kill them all).