So, my character have these stats:

Agility: 4 (A little bit more than typical)
Firearms skill group: 3 (Professional)

So, I'm a professional with a better than average agility... not bad... A military grunt according to the rules...

He purchased a HK MP5 TX, nice submachine gun... So, I got 2 points of recoil compensation and a nice laser sight (+ 1 dice)

He try to fire at a punk who is 3 meters away...

The punk is not running, moving at normal speed...

So, If I try to shoot him with full auto (-9 dices minus gas vent 2) = - 7 Dice
+1 dice for my laser sight
For a total of -6 dices of modifier...

7 basic dices - 6 dices = 1 dice remaining...

I have only 33.3% of chance of hitting my target who is at ... 3 meters away... with 10 bullets?

66.7% of chances of missing?!

WTF?! And I'm a professional with better agility than average?!?!

Am I understanding this right?!

You get +1 Dice for Point Blank and the Punk gets -9 Dice to Dodge if Its a Wide Burst
If you Shoot only a long Burst (6Bullets)instead of Full Auto, You'll get +3 more Dice and you could Aim for a simple Action +1 more Dice

Hough !
Medicineman

I don't find the point blank modifier in my book. What page?

Shouldn't it be easier to hit targets with full auto rather than single-shot?!

At full auto? Dear god, yes you will miss without some more recoil compensation.

Use burst fire(short and long) and recalculate your odds.


edit: seriously break out Arsenal and get yourself an auto-adjusting weight, slings, foregrips, something if you want to use full bursts.

Yeah, I know, I just find it ... weird/dysfunctionnal.

I don't find the point blank modifier in my book. What page?
German Arsenal Page 169
and Its a +2 Mod (Sorry )

Shouldn't it be easier to hit targets with full auto rather than single-shot?!
Not for You to Hit, but for the Punk to Dodge(thats why he gets -9 to Dodge on Full Auto Wide Burst)

with an even better Dance
Medicineman

even worse, you have a 33% chance of shooting yourself
but at full auto without recoil, you're just spreading bullets in every direction vertical and horizontal...what do you expect?

HK MP5 TX have Folding Stock that gives 1 rc if used..

if you do not care about noise:
FN P93 Praetor (1 rc) (2 rc if using stock)
Gas- vent 3 (3 rc)
Personalized Grip/ Electronic Firing mechanism) (1 rc)

2x short narrow Bursts (3 rounds/burst) (no recoil Penalties) or
1 Long narrow Burst (6 rounds) (no recoil penalties)

And it is for targets within 1 meter only. If the target is not in melee.

Not really.

They call it spray & pray for a reason.

Short controlled bursts. Know it, live it, love it.

I tried that short controlled bursts thing in paintball...

The full auto guys seemed to have awesome (and painful) accuracy.

Was fun to get 'em when they went to reload though.

RL tangent aside, the problem with automatic fire in SR is that it's all based upon how much recoil throws off the last bullet and forgets that the first one coming out of the barrel shouldn't be so wildly inaccurate.

Paintball isn't exactly an accurate representation, using air means the recoil is so eligible that you can be as accurate as the gun is, but you're right that that the first shot in Shadowrun probably shouldn't have the recoil modifier applied fully.

It'd be such a pain to track them separately, though. While nothing's really 'real', I don't mind the system too much. Just use it right and remember that it's a game.

Amen.

3 rouund bursts FTW.

This man has never fired a submachine gun.

Think about holding a jackhammer in the air, and keeping the point of it in the same 1" area. This is not an easy thing to do without a large amount of mechanical assistance (recoil compensation).

Full auto has one purpose, suppression fire. You probably won't hit them, but they're not likely to spend time shooting back with all that lead in the air.

Since your guy is trained, he'd know that full auto is basically for noobs and that most militaries (including the US military branches) modify their assault rifles so that they can only be fired in single shot or burst mode, because giving even well trained soldiers the opportunity to fire in full auto during a combat situation is basically just throwing away a lot of good money on wasted bullets. I mean, you can only carry so many bullets -- you should make them count.

Probably has something to do with the fact that paintball guns don't have a heck of a lot of recoil compared to many automatic firearms.



Why is it weird or dysfunctional?

You try firing an old Ingram MAC-10 without any recoil compensation in real life and you'll have maybe two shots in the general direction of where you were aiming and the rest will be in the ceiling.



-np

i recall hearing a story where a gangster survived a attack thanks the to the recoil of the tommygun the attacker used, resulting in the bullets ending up above and to the right.

It's weird/dysfunctional because in SR, the first two shots you mention wait around and follow the last one out of the barrel, so they all end up in the ceiling.

I'm not a professional soldier (I'm a professional sailor), but I qual on an assault rifle every year, sometimes several times a year, and I've been range qualified for longer than I've been in the military. In the 12 years I've been handling firearms I have fired on automatic a single time, and expended one mag. Why? So I could learn how impossible it is to be accurate with full-auto.

The penalty for full-auto game-wise reflects not only recoil, but the all too human tenancy to compensate too heavily. If you're three meters away, put two rounds in his chest, that'll handle him just fine.

If he's a troll, and you're three meters from him, get away.

You can't. He's faster
You better lay down and pretend you're Dead.(Helps with Bears,might Help with Trolls)

with a fast Dance
Medicineman

I've fired an MP-5, it's perfectly controllable on full auto. You could put the entire magazine in long burst into a torso sized target at 3 meters. The automatic weapons rules are a bug, not a feature. There is a reason why 9mm and smaller caliber SMGs are used across the world and 7.6x51mm SMGs are NOT. Small light bullets recoil a lot less and can produce controllable guns on auto. This is also why most UK FALs and most US M14s are prevented from firing on automatic, those are virtually uncontrollable.

However, the recoil produced by the 10th bullet doesn't influence the trajectory of the 1st bullet in the least, so if your sights are on target so the gun would hit in semi-auto the first bullet from a burst on "uncontrollable" automatic weapon will still hit. They 10th bullet might well be shot wildly into the air, but the first one won't be.

Wait for the SR RAWdogger apologists to get to this one. Wait for it...

His point is true and accurate. This is not a RAW apology either. However, I will say this: Give me a viable alternative that keeps the game moving. Until I see one, RAW is the mechanic we have; even if the rule for my make-believe game doesn't match reality.

Seriously, this is one of those topics that likes to keep popping up. However, I don't recall seeing a viable alternative. I really would love to see one that does make more sense though.

1 take your fully automatic weapon
2 get into your firing stance that is adjusted so you can compensate for some of the recoil
3 try to aim using the sights.... oh wait that may require you to hold the gun in a different posture, so now you aren't braced for full rock and roll.

I suppose you could just houserule that you only get the benefit of 1 bullet but use 10 from the magazine to do it, not sure what folks are looking for.

I am curious. With your post and you signature, why do you continue to play the game or post on the forums if you are that unhappy with it?

I love Shadowrun. I think the rules are crap, but the setting had a lot of things that I loved. Some of that has lessened with crap like YotC and technomancers, but there is still a great deal about it I enjoy. The SR4/4A rules can go straight to dead system hell as far as I care.

Fair enough.

The solution HERO used was that every two point that your roll exceeded the required hit number you hit with another bullet, then used some sort of modifier.

For SR4 use each success over minimum being another complete hit, make it every two successes for rifle rounds when not supported by something, and worse for one-hand etc. Then apply some sort of increasing recoil mod applied to the next burst. This doesn't really represent that you hit with x bullets, it represents the damage of the entire burst. But the targets armor applies against each "bullet".

Sounds complicated.

I'm sure that works great for HERO, but lets apply this to SR4:

You are suggesting that for 1 complex action I can fire off a full-burst (10 bullets) at a target with an assault rifle with no modifier to my attack roll. If I wind up with 4 net successes I've efectively shot him 3 times and he has to make 3 different soak rolls. Then, the next time I shoot I am at a penalty because my firearm is currently pointed at the sky.

If that understanding is correct I'd never let it fly at my tables. Combat already takes longer than any part of the game, adding in more soak rolls would make it worse. Not to mention, with no penalties, why would anyone start with anything other than a full-burst? If the complaint is about realism it's worth considering that full-auto is not how a fight usually starts (unless we're talking suppressive fire to buy some time), but rather something a fight escalates to.

What I would like to see from someone (and I don't have the answer or I'd just put it up here) is a rule that works within the SR4 framework that meets the following criteria:

1. Accomodates that the earlier bullets are more accurate and so a full-burst should have a good chance to hit, even if all the bullets don't hit. Your suggestion meets this.

2. Takes into account that full-bursts are harder to shoot and should have a mechanism in place that does reflect this. Your example does not do this adequately IMO.

3. Does not involve extra dice rolls, charts, or things that dramatically alter the flow of the game. Full-auto works like burst fire, which works like multiple semi-auto shots in the same round. 1 point of recoil for every bullet past the first. Give me something similarly workable and memorizable. I don't want things slowed down any more. If I wanted a game of balistic realism I'd find something that didn't have elves and dragons in it. Otherwise, you should also be concerned with the lack of variables that affect a sniper shot (gravity, wind, air pressure, etc).

I want a simple game mechanism. Do I think that the one in SR4 is currently the ideal one? No. Do I think its the best one I've seen for this game system, yes.

The first bullet has no recoil modifier already... which is why the 3 Round burst only produces a -2 Modifier...

Keep the Faith

Well the easy hero style fix would be to say your nets hit determine how many bullets hit each bullet that hits increased the DV by 1 and each net hit also increases the dv by 1. So SMG base DV 4, hose down with 10 shots i get 4 successes I hit for 4+4+4=12 DV and waste 6 bullets. Heck you could say every 2 net hits=1 bullet hitting, recoil compensation instead of having a rating is an on off function and that changes it to 1 for 1.

This doesn't really handle 2. Takes into account that full-bursts are harder to shoot and should have a mechanism in place that does reflect this. Your example does not do this adequately IMO. But I don't see how you can have that and your first request at the same time. Bursts are not inherently hard to shoot, they can be hard to hit with everything.

Confession time guys:

I got rid of narrow bursts in my games a long time ago. All bursts are treated as wide bursts; if you want max damage, I'll let you use a free action to do two called +1-4 DV short bursts in a round if you want, but that's it. I find wide bursts to be slightly less non-sensical since you still often end up dealing more damage than a typical attack by virtue of being able to reduce your opponent's defense pool and thus you end up with a healthy amount of net hits. It hits me as as good a way of simulating getting hit by more rounds as the somewhat arbitrary "X damage and +1 per round after" system used by narrow bursts, anyway. It also keeps things from being quite so instantly lethal and all or nothing, which I consider to be a plus-- when people stick to wide bursts, you end up with a lot less compensated at point blank but shoot naught but air situations. Besides, these systems really only come in two flavors: Arbitrary or slow, so it's mostly a matter of picking which results annoy you less and stacking the deck towards that result. Biggest drawback is that full auto doesn't help you any vs. targets you have complete surprise against. YMMV.

A quick fix for the initial hit vs. continued targeting issue without modifying the # of rolls existing is this:

Make autofire into the spray and pray vs. targetted process. Spray and Pray, same as current. Targetted (starting on target and trying to hold it in place) makes it harder to keep each next shot on target. No INITIAL roll modifiers, but upping the DV gets harder. Eitehr do it progressively: (1 +1, 3 +2, 6 +3, 10 +4), or every 3 hits gets a +1 DV to the inital.

Would need to be playtested but it makes for the first bullet being easier to keep on target and the additionals get harder and harder.

The other issue is that range modifiers need to be aggressively applied for burst fire. It doesn't take much to put bullets off target at 100 meters, much less 500 meters.