Is it possible to shot from total cover and maintain the total cover after shooting?

With a smartlink, tacnet and guncam? You're still exposing part of yourself to incoming fire(sure, just a hand or two, but still), but it's pretty close.

"Only a hand or two" pretty much means total cover.

Until it gets hit by a round.

I'd probably end up doubling recoil since you're firing the weapon unsupported in that case, maybe throw a die or two penalty up for shaky aim.

No different than a bullet managing to penetrate the cover or ricochet off something else.

Well, yes. 'Total Cover' has a different connotation when somebody's shooting at you with a piece out of Eraser.

I was thinking more Halo 3.

(That one being a suicide ricochet, but it is awesome)

You could fire a 40MM grenade launcher around a corner without exposing yourself, though a grenade launcher is probably not the scope of the question.

I've always ruled no, unless you are planning on firing through the wall due to having radar vision, AP rounds and the wall is made of plasterboard, or whatever.

Best Ricochet Kill i remember is the one from Alien, Ressurection, where the one Mercenary who has his Guns strapped to his forearms with slides fires one of them over head against an i-beam above on the ceiling so it ricochets back down and through the helmet into the skull of a soldier behind him who has him on gun point.

NO. The Book is preety clear.
The advantage of you forcing Blind Fire on the attacker and Good Cover modifier for yourself and benefitting from the barrier armour for any through shots is that YOU ARE PROTECTED. Any part of you exposed would mean its no longer blind fire and they have a target and can use that exposed part of you to aim. You would still get your good cover since its harder to hit you but they KNOW where you are.

Just hold said gun by the end of a tripod leg and shoot through skinlink.

Tripod actually gives you some more RC as well!

Seriously? http://m.youtube.com/index?desktop_uri=%2F...p;v=TxvcSXqpM8s

RAW? Pretty sure you can't.

Link irrelevant

As relating to RAW, certainly.

As relating to the OP's question, in a vein of 'should it be?' I'd think it totally relevant.
You have my apologies for pasting the full link though. Hardware and forum interface don't agree.

There is another way to be almost immune to enemy fire:
Nowhere does it say when you have to use your movement during your action phase, so dividing is possible. So step out of cover, shoot twice, go back into full cover.
Unless the opposition has already declared they are delaying their actions, they can only shoot through the cover to hit you, or have to move so there is no more cover between them and you.

It does however say you can declare movement ONLY at the declaration of action stage and can only be change next time you act.
So I move from here behind total cover to here good cover so i can take a shot = Movement declaration. you use up your only free action to change mode of movement standing still to moving.
When you take a shot you will be out of complete and into good only cover. no double backing.

Thats how i enforce it anyway.
Years back in SR3 this became and issue and its now not evenconsidered at my gaming table. One of my players started doing what you suggested so i said sure (i was young and didint know the rules well) but i shortly made all NPCs use the same tactic. the game grinded down to a halt EVERY combat because shots were coming from everyone but everyone was shooting NOONE and the only thing we did alot of was shooting through barrier and destroying barrier tests.

Dont want to go down that road and i dont think RAW support is as I read it anyway.

And so i could also run around, THEN stop and shoot, then begin running again to avoid the "shooting while moving"-penalty? I call bullshit on that.

I always played that all reactions are splitsecond and movement is WHILE you do something. He will be back in cover on the beginning of his next IP. Everyone having an action between his two IP's can shoot at him (as a moving target). If you do it ANY different sillyness ensues (Like in D&D... god that movement/initiative system is HORRID)

A Movement mode change only costs a Free action if it is from walk to run. Everything else is free, as in no action.

Except for surprise, most people would stay in cover, and get out of cover as little as possible.

That's because changing to Running is a Free Action and you have to keep Running until the end of your Action Phase. I was talking about walking out of cover shooting and walking back in. BTW for Shooting while Running use a Gyrostablization Unit/Cyberarm Gyro.

That however is not RAW. This only applies to Movement Rates (Walking/Running) not the actual movement. Otherwise you could not go first (for simplicity's sake everyone has 1 IP) because of High Initiative use all your movement to get to a point and do your actions, since you have to spread your movement over the whole Combat Turn i.e. during the the other people's Action Phases.

If however you wish to make Initiative meaningless unless you remain stationary, this is the way to go. You could also devise a, probably complex, rule to convert traveled distance into Intiative reduction.

Thats quite an interesting option i never considered. Now that we had this discussion i have started to break it down a bit and i see it as a good tactical advantage. my players love holiwood run in the open gun battles. so this may give them survival options.

However if this pikaboo shoot and hide back is allowed this will force delay actions all over the place just to deal with everyone behind total cover.

Does that mean every time you come out from behind the cover (since you cant see either) and someone wants to use their delay action to shoot you you treat it as ambush and give the ambushing dude the +6DP for the surprise test? and then go on do surprise test as per normal? and you do this surprise test for EVERY phase you shoot the pikaboo style as long as people are delaying and waiting for you to pop out?

or you assume everyone is not surprised and just let them use their delayed action?

what happens when you take damage does it count as intercept in melee and you are not allowed to continue back behind total cover and are still poking as you were when shooting?

Yup

I'd assume that no one would be surprised

Not according to RAW.

So....looks like it can be done and there is a nice pic of a runner doing it on page 147 of SR4A.

Unfortunately, I could not find any specific rule for doing this under ranged combat, except for:


Good cover is defined as >50%, which technically covers the situation but which I do not think differentiates enough between leaning out around your cover to sight down a pistol and sticking said pistol around the corner with just your hand.

Personally, I would use a -3 modifier (a bit more awkward, but also consistent with a mage attempting a similar stunt with spells and optics/mirrors - SR4A, p332 under optical devices) and incoming fire gets the good cover/blind fire modifiers....

Cover is your best friend in a firefight

Do be sure to *at least* use the RAW -2, of course.