Hi guys, I know that most of you don't like (or don't care about) house rules but I'm posting mine here for (constructive, I hope) criticism and feedback. Hope you like it.

The first house rule is about miniguns. In the current rules, miniguns are all-or-nothing weapons, you either imposes a -14 on target dodge tests, effectively negating it altogether or you deals +14 damage, an horrendous overkill. So we are using a mix of both: when firing narrow bursts, miniguns deals +10 damage AND imposes a -4 to the target's defense pool; when firing wide bursts, its deals +4 damage AND imposes a -10 to the target's defense pool. Also, when used in suppressive fire, the threshold for the target is equal to the number of hits from the attacker x 1.5 (round down).

The second house rule is the addition of a characteristic for weapons: size. In our game-table there was too much characters running and shooting sniper rifles like they were pistols and some players questioned the utility of submachine guns, as assault rifles seemed simply better.
So now each weapon has a size:
- pistols: 1
- submachine guns: 2
- assault rifles, shotguns, bows and crossbows: 3
- machine guns, sport and sniper rifles: 4
- assault cannons and rocket launchers: 5
Now, the value of "size" is used in place of the following modifiers:
- Attacker running
- Attacker behind cover
This is to emphasize the role of pistols and submachine guns in close combat and to give at least a modicum of reason for characters to not using the heaviest weapon that they can get their hands on.

The third house rule is about aiming and scopes. Again, there seems to be a flood of scopes in the game-boards. The ability to simply ignore range-modifiers with a simple attachment is too good to pass by. The rules that we are using is as follows:
To use a scope, the character must take a number of "take aim" actions equals to the number of range bands that he wishes to "ignore". So, a sniper using an scoped rifle to hit a target at 900 meters (extreme range), so he has 3 options:
- he can take aim for one simple action and shot as if the target was at long range (-3);
- he can take aim for two simple actions and shot as if the target was at medium range (-1) or
- he can take aim for the full three simple actions and shot as if the target was at short range (0).
Also, since the scope generally substitutes the iron sights, fast target acquisition is harder: the character gets a -2 penalty on his attacks unless he uses a take aim action specifically for this.
Finally, characters suffering from the "firing behind cover" penalty can use a "take aim" action specifically to negate this penalty.

Well, that's it. They may seen a little complicated but it is because of my broken english. Sorry, this is not my native language.

I like the idea for the weapon size rule. Personally I think Crossbows should be less unwieldy than bows, and since assault rifles tend to be heavier/more bulky than sport rifles I'd put those in the same category even if the sport rifle might be longer. But thats just finetuning.

Your rule for aiming longer for range penalty negations looks good too, but it seems to be a bit at cross-purpose with the intentions behind your weapon size rule.
Weapon size is meant to motivate your players to not run around with the large weapons so much, but you make shooting at the longer range categories so painful with the second rule that your players will want weapons with a better reach - resulting in motivating them to wield exactly those weapons you feel you see too much in your games.

As for your minigun rule, I honestly fail to see how +14 DV is horrendously overkill while +10DV -4AP is not. The second option is only 2,66 damage less on average while on the same time reducing the chance for a complete miss. YMMV, of course.

Well, thanks for the quick reply! About miniguns, when I wrote "overkill" I was talking about the all or nothing nature of the damage when on narrow burst. I don't know what are the averages on damage and stuff but it SEEMS to be a "little" less lethal this way, specially against more robust opponents. And, now that I'm reading your reply, it seems like you've read "AP" were I wrote "defense pool". I'm not putting an AP value were none existed, I'm "mixing" the burst types.

I think I don't explained well, I don't want to make larger weapons unusable, I want to at least try to create niches for the different types of weapons: you should prefer a submachine gun over a rifle when in close combat, where the distances are closer and the combatants needs to make more moves in the battleground. But, in the same way, you should prefer long-ranged assault rifles and sniper rifles when in open battlefields, where combatants are more likely to stay immobile for prolongated periods and aim more before shooting.

Well, that what I was trying to achieve.

Again, thank you for the answer.

-4 to the dodge test, not a -4 AP. This means that even on a narrow burst a minigun is more likely to hit. Similarly with the wide burst being -10 to dodge and +4 damage you have the minigun still being difficult to get out of the way of, but also doing more damage than your standard full auto.

I would have to disagree with the scope rules you have in place. First off, smartgun or even laser sights basically negates the need for iron sights, and other actions such as firing two guns at once don't take any penalty for not being able to make use of the iron sights. Honestly I'm not sure how common iron sights would be in 2072 with everyone using smartguns and laser sights.

I'm a bit conflicted about the sighting for range though. On some level I agree that the further you are the longer it should take to aim, but once again, with smartguns it isn't much of a problem because it flashes up which direction the target is in if you get him/her off your sights while zooming in and so on. Also, you more or less make taking aim to cancel out range mostly pointless. I mean for two actions I can remove a -1 penalty and fire, or I can just fire twice. If I have a normal DP of around 12+ then a single die isn't going to be worth the cost of an extra shot. Generally only if taking time to set up an ambush or something like that will the time spent be worthwhile, and if that is the case, time tends to not be a big issue.

And finally to round it out for your size rules. I agree with Nixda about bows vs crossbows. Crossbows are going to be way easier to handle than bows. I'm also unsure about the running rules. I'd actually consider reversing them, because a larger weapon (like an assault rifle) will be easier to aim while running because of the way it is held, and because it is larger and so will be more resistant to your running moving it off target. That's just my thought though, no personal experience firing weapons while running.

Oh, right, nearly forgot. The 'take aim to negate firing from behind cover' rule seems a bit silly, because the entire idea behind the penalty is that you are behind the cover, and poke your head out for just an instant to shoot, and then duck back. Taking aim would kind of negate the advantage of cover because you'd be sticking your head out as an easier target for longer.

I very much like your size rules and the appropriate modifiers for using when running/behind cover. I would juggle them around a little slightly on personal taste, but the idea itself is very good. I would happily introduce this to any future groups I run.

I like how all the rules 'feel', in that this seems to mirror real life a little more. Crossbow/bow thing, yea have to agree with other posters but like Nixda said, that's just fine tuning. Not sure how it would all play out in game however. As Karoline says, smartlinks help compensate for a lot of the problems people face now with aiming. Things like direction of target, elevation and a bunch of other things that either get calculated manually or on a computer or just gone on with a gut feeling, are handled by the smartlink.
I think the weapon size rule especially lends itself to a more tactical game and is the one I like the best. I don't know that I would use the aim rules but I have toyed with similar ideas in the past. The mini-gun rule seems like it would just add more paperwork to keep track of. Also my campaigns don't really feature mini-guns much, so I've never felt a need to adjust those rules.

I like these rules in general.
Ill have to agree with what was said about smartlink compensates for the bulky scope, and how firing from cover might be an issue (its a bit fuzzy actually, a cover for everything but your head is still a decend cover)
But if you dont mind, ill copy those rules to my shadowrun notes, then i can take a look at them if i feel like the game needs them. As we are a fairly new group of shadowrunners still, we like to include more rules as we go to make it easier on the GM and players untill we are more comfortable with the system. (atm, we don't care too much about ammo sizes, but thats probably the next thing to get implemented)