Every once in a while when I wake up in the morning my head is suddenly and inexplicably full of ideas on how to make SR3 firefights more realistic.

I now think that there are a few things in terms of mechanics (not touching on Raygun-esque firearm damage code tweaking which also would make for a more enjoyable game) that, being tweaked, would make the firefights a lot more realistic. I believe they are the things that, not being addressed, make your firefight feel weird for the lack therof.

They are:

1.) Suppression fire (and aspects of automatic fire)
2.) Not really taking into account postures, like whether or not you're in a firing position, facing, etc. (without handling this everyone gets to aimbot spin...look at how Phoenix Command specified all this stuff, look at how all the early tactical Rainbow Six were all about which way your team members were facing)
3.) Giving penalties for using certain firearms in close quarters besides for just the usual RPG penalties at long range
4.) Let there be hit locations, but let that be a function of the number of successes, so it doesn't conflict with damage staging

The thoughts:
1.) Suppression fire tactics in SR were never powerful enough to make suppression fire worthwhile. Part of the reason is that automatic fire in SR is really really slow. If you had realistic rates of fire for 1 to 3 second periods of time you could put a lot more bullets in the air.

So, the first thing you need to do is make the rate of fire realistic. Use Raygun firearms or use real world ones and determine number of rounds that would be fired in a turn from the particular firearm in question. If someone has more than one action per turn divide that number up by the number of actions the character can take. The number of rounds that may be fired goes way way up.

For burst fire or point automatic fire, have the player character roll his attack, but don't treat the whole burst as either a big hit or a big miss. Instead, count every bullet discharged. The player makes one attack roll with pool, and that attack determines how the first round in the burst hits. For the next round, remove the highest-scoring dice from the rolled dice, and raise the TN for recoil. So you have a higher TN and 1 less dice; this gives you the outcome for the second round. Keep going in this way until you have calculated what happened to each bullet in the air. There can never be less than 1 dice, because there is always at least a miniscule chance of hitting, even if the TN is really high and you're looking at only 1 dice. For weapons with double uncompensated recoil, subtract 2 dice. That would really simulate how with a FN FAL every round past the 3rd is pretty much wasted if you fire full auto while standing.

For suppression fire, have the player specify the area he is covering in meters, and have him spend his turn firing full auto. You get a number of rounds derived from the weapon's cyclic rate of fire. If there are any eligible targets within a certain meter span of coverage, roll a number of dice equal to the number of bullets in that meter that are in the air versus a TN equal to the TN that would be required to hit that target, including recoil penalties. This would make suppression fire actually be dangerous and let unskilled people be dangerous in close quarters if they spray out a large volume of fire. If you have Raygun-esque damage codes, as well, it means that people actually have an incentive to duck to avoid suppression fire instead of it being entirely BS based on Willpower rolls that everyone passes anyway. (You can still have Willpower rolls to determine if suppression fire gives you TN penalties due to flinching, if you want, but this way suppression fire can at least actually hurt you, and machine guns with a high rate of fire and a .30 cal cartridges are actually usable in their intended role.) I suppose that if you wanted to be really realistic you could even subtract dice as enemies got hit and absorbed bullets from the air for the next enemy.

2.) People have to determine the facing of their character. The character can cover a 30 degree arc. Changing your facing by 30 degrees is a Simple Action. So people with wired reflexes can still aimbot-spin on you if they move first and have more actions, but at least it's not instantaneous or inexplicable, and you can use delayed actions to cover doorways and such, thus creating satisfying tactical gameplay.

One thing I liked about Pheonix Command was that your shooting was penalized unless you were in a proper firing position and in order to do so you needed to take an action. In my opinion, in Shadowrun it would be better, if you firearms skill is 1-3, you are assumed to be firing from the hip and will be penalized unless you use a Simple Action to get into a firing stance. If you firearms skill is 4 or higher, you are assumed (unless you're totally surprised) to have your weapon in a high ready, but you still need a Simple Action to look down your sights instead of point shoot, so you'd still be penalized for not being in your optimum shooting stance, but the penalty would be a lot less. If you're shot you get knocked out of your optimum shooting stance and need to use another Simple Action to get back into it. If you fire without doing so we would treat it as firing from the hip.

If you've been knocked down by an attack and you're sprawled on your back it requires a Complex Action to get into a prone shooting position that will let you shoot with bonuses as opposed to penalties.

3.) Everyone already knows this, but you should be penalized for using a scope at a range other than it was intended to be used. Even an ACOG can be wince-inducing if you try to use it on a target that's very very close. Personally in real life I prefer irons over a red dot sight because I feel irons are the most versatile.

One annoying and comical thing in SR is how everyone is running around with guns that have comps, i.e. gas vent recoil compensation. I participate in competitive shooting sports and there are indeed some competitors who use gas vent recoil compensation on their handguns and it helps them for competition. However handguns intended for police or military use seldom have such systems because the expelled gasses could burn you if you were ever forced to fire the gun close to your body. Therefore to be more realistic there should be additional penalties if you try to fire a comped weapon while you're in melee combat. If you glitch maybe the gasses even burn you badly enough to give you a L wound.

4.) 1 success is a peripheral hit. Your damage code is staged down by 1, but unless otherwise specified the ballistic armor on the target only counts for half because peripheral armor tends to be lighter. 2 successes is a center mass hit, you have your standard damage code and full armor of the target applies. 4 successes is a headshot, only helmets can provide armor, and the damage code is raised by 1. 6 successes or more is a hit to the sino-ocular cavity, and only helmets with face shields can provide armor, and the damage code is raised to D automatically.

Thus we have hit locations and armor locations but it doesn't mess with the damage staging system. This should be used in lieu of called shots, I think.



Last time I spent a lot of time thinking about this, it pretty much got ripped apart by what I feel was pretty legitimate statistical criticism. Hopefully this is better. Good for a tactical SR game?

Given the RoF on some modern firearms, obviously you can't go with their ACTUAL rate of fire. A TN of 200 is basically a guaranteed instant hit on anything. In my experience, the problem isn't how easily people dodge suppressive fire (since an 8 is still awfully tough to dodge), but that suppressive fire doesn't really stage up. But yeah, it doesn't seem unreasonable to boost the maximum rate of fire, especially if you go with your next suggestion.

I'm working with the SR3R project, and one suggestion people tossed out is to eliminate automatic staging, but have burst/auto fire add extra dice - it removes the 'all or nothing', and represents that more bullets make it more likely for you to hit with the spray (and yes, at short range, more likely to turn the guy into jelly). I've been working with this for a while, and my party loves it. A burst of 3 adds +3 to the power (just to keep things balanced) and 3 'free' dice. No boost in damage level. Everything else stays the same. Autofire at long range just doesn't happen any more.

I think your idea adds more accuracy, but it takes a lot longer. I like one dice roll and off I go.



Oh! I like this! It also keeps everything in line with the autofire rules we're already using. I think I'm going to suggest that with my group.



I'd consider that if I had a hex sheet. I run games online, so it's too much hassle. But a good idea, still. (I'd probably increase it to a 60 degree arc though. 30 degrees is awfully narrow. Plus, doesn't fit well on a hex sheet.)



Shadowrun already has the 'ready weapon' action. Wouldn't it make sense to just expand that to be more explicit?
If you've been knocked down by an attack and you're sprawled on your back it requires a Complex Action to get into a prone shooting position that will let you shoot with bonuses as opposed to penalties.




I always just assumed that in 50 years they fixed that, so the scopes automatically adjust to the range of the target. Same with the gas comps.



Not sure how I feel about this. As a GM, I take liberties. If someone gets 8 net successes, he hits the guy through the throat. If the target has his head in a giant, Mad Max-style helmet, but his chest is bare, he gets hit somewhere else. I don't think the idea is BAD, but as a GM, I like the flexibility currently under the rules, to shift the description to the situation. I don't see any particular reason, in my game, to write it out as formally as this.

Thanks for taking the time to articulate your thoughts.

So far, I'm getting a lot less constructive criticism than last time, so this iteration of the rules might be a lot closer to the mark. Now I'm considering starting to write this up in a formal way.

There is just one point of clarification I was hoping you could provide me with. You said something to the effect that you couldn't use real-world rates of fire because it would guarantee too many hits. Do you mean that in reference to point fire, to suppression fire, or both?

Basically all.

Going with a more-or-less random example, the Steyr AUG. Nice assault rifle/machine gun, meant to be fired without any sort of major bracing or mounting. It fires 680-750 rounds/minute. Let's put that down to 720 for easy math. That makes 36 rounds per combat round (3 seconds).

This means my firearm suffers +36 recoil. It means when I'm doing suppressive fire, the person needs to get 36 successes to dodge. By the RAW, if I manage to hit, you suffer 43DDDDDDDDD damage. The reason the cut-off for autofire was set at 10 was because the rules, as written, stop giving benefits and start getting really wonky past that.

Hmm, I see your point.

Now I'm brainstorming, so I'm just throwing this out there for consideration, as opposed to proposing it as a solution per se...

...what about going with Raygun's system for dodging? In Raygun, instead of getting a RAW dodge test, you get to use your Reaction score if you're aware of an attack to try and move around evasively. Instead of you rolling dice to avoid an attack, your Reaction score serves to add a TN penalty to people trying to shoot at you. That would be more compatible with the stuff I outlined above, but would that break something else?

only problem I see with using reaction is that certain character types can get their reactions pretty high. Most dedicated riggers have a reaction of around 13. I'm sure sam and adept builds would be pushed to max it out as well.

Exactly how are most dedicated Riggers obtaining a Reaction of around 13?

I have yet to ever encounter a Rigger with that high of a Reaction... I would think that it would be a RARE character with a Reaction that high... Not saying that an Extreme build could not be put together to do that, just that I have never seen that high of a Reaction for a Rigger...

Keep the Faith

Thats true, it does requiring maxing out quick/int and then grabbing VCR3 along with a means to up int/quick in order to grab that last point.

Most our games have been pretty unforgiving, so pushing to extremes generally leads to higher survival. So I suppose rarity would depend on the game type. Though I don't see how maxed attributes and a VCR3 with a reaction of 12 would be seen as rare in the shadows. I should also clarify this is used only when jumped into a vehicle/drone. A sam or adept could easily do the same and likely go further than 13 further into the game.

My Apologies Telion, I missed the Line that referred this to SR3... How common that is in 3rd I do not actually know, as I never really ran a Rigger in 3rd Edition...

Keep the Faith

Hrm... Not too keen on Raygun's idea. I like the current setup where you have to manage your pools, representing where you're putting your attention (and combat pool already does include Reaction). If you're focusing especially on shooting, you shouldn't be able to dodge, but if you are dodging, there's no reason you can't make snap shots - that's what combat pool represents.

If you wanted to change it so a character can dodge before a shot is taken, and successes on a basic TN(4) test add to the TN to hit him, that could work, although that still goes down the direction of there being a lot of misses in combat, which may not be preferable. If the Tn penalty from the dodge test applied to both the shooter and dodger, then you have more realism and a reason NOT to dodge. Hrm... I'd have to think about it.

On Riggers and Reaction: It's not that surprising at all for a rigger to have a Vehicle Control Rig at Rating 3, an Int of 6, and a quickness of 6. That alone gives a reaction of 12. A single edge (Bonus Attribute Point: Int) and being an elf gets to 13. Considering everything a Rigger does is based off Int or Reaction, I'd expect 12 to be stock standard.

A standard adept who used Geased Improve Reflexes 3 would have about the same.

So yeah, if you add your Reaction to the TN to hit you, you're invincible.

JaronK

JaronK: I'd actually call that an exceptionally rare case; Bonus Attribute Point and Exceptional Attribute+buy-up gives you 13 (elfing is too expensive) and are The Right Thing anyway, so I'd probably die of shock if a Reaction 12 Rigger came across my desk.

~J