Simply: By pure magic both projectiles strike at exactly the same point, so the second one breaches the armor at the point which was already weakened by the first.

But actually the combination of MRSI and non-exploding projectiles seems easy to houserule, just use the burst fire rules. Explosive payloads on the other hand...using the rules for overlapping blasts leads to madness and requires knowledge of the SI prefixes above giga (nothing is more embarassing than confusing ExaDMG and ZettaDMG). Using burst-fire rules on the other hand fails in the opposite manner, +2 DMG for placing three DPICMs within 1 minute of arc would be like, are you kidding me?

Hehe. Honestly, *if* that were the case, it'd make sense. AFAIK, it's not. It's more like the shots all land *near* each other *within* a relatively short time period. Bleh.

It's not that multiple-explosive damage is madness, it's that it's too realistic. The game is designed to dial *down* their wild lethality in the first place, AFAIK. As we know, the problem is game-iness, and it's not easy to fix.

Against soft targets it's a highly complicated way of saying that the players suffer fatal polytrauma due to getting hit by huge chunks of minerals in freefall.

Against hard targets, it shows the poor scaling of SR rules for anything larger than a troll: Tie a few ordinary grenades together and you get more damage than an oh-so-fearful ATGM. With significantly less scatter.

Yah, the scatter rules are the most fucked up thing about this whole mess . .
If i can sue a grenade to do lethal damage by throwing it at someone, then if he takes damage i did hit him.
this means scatter is zero.

Maybe you hit him in the face (doing strength based damage) and then the grenade bounced off and exploded somewhere else.

Yes, but all grenades: "[…] may come with a built-in timer to detonate after a pre-set amount of time (usually 5 seconds), a motion-sensor set to detonate on impact, or a wireless link set to detonate upon remote command."

The bowyer makes the bow. The fletcher makes the arrows. The archer shoots the bow and arrows.

So use them as improvised throwing weapons, set to explode a milisecond after impact.
This gets messier with missiles, of course, which are vehicles, so use ramming rules. Suck on that

I now think of a Troll-Spearman throwing missles around like toothpicks O.o

If its the only way to get a direct hit with a missile, do it.

AFAIK, only *some* missiles are vehicles (drones). And it'd still be improvised throwing if you threw them, haha.

Why would he, This is how battlefield archery works, 3 arrows on target every time you fire.

Just explain again how you manage a rate of fire that is around 30 times faster than anything historical? Compared to the finest archers in the world trained from birth. I can see a factor of 3 or 4 from high tech / cyberware / magic... hard to see the rest

it takes a bit longer than 3 seconds but the target won't know the difference. You fire at three different angles to the target starting from a high arcing one. This is step 2 of an arrow storm. Step one is get lots of competent archers

If you wish to slow things down for archery, you could make it "using a skill".

I know it's not fully on topic but I've yet to see anyone bring up Lajos Kassai and his reconstruction of Hungarian techniques for accurate rapid fire with bow and arrow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yorHswhzrU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVYyEg3N9nI

Sorry just my two cents.

Thanks,
Brent

Hmmm, if we really wanna take historical numbers into account, the fastest fire rate I've seen recorded is done in Japan, Sanjusangendo, for their "Oyakazu" competition. The extant record for number of shots fired within a 24-hr period was 13503 arrows, fired by Wasa Daihachiro in 1686. This translates down to roughly 9 shots/min averaged out and he had an overall accuracy of about 62%. Oh also the distance was 120M on a 1M diameter target.
Now it's probably reasonable to assume that for a sort period of time you can actually EXCEED the 9shots/min given that the number shown here is actually averaged over 24 Hrs
Therefore let's assume for our simple math purposes that a non-augmented master archer can fire at a rate of roughly 10 aimed shot/min.
This comes out to 1 shot every 6 seconds for an unaugmented archer which is all in all, not a bad rate, 1 shot per 2 combat turns.
I see it roughly like so:
Turn 1: Ready Weapon (Nock Arrow): 1 Simple Action, Take Aim: 1 Simple Action
Turn 2: Take Aim: 1 Simple Action, Fire: 1 Simple Action.
We can probably simplify it a bit by taking only 1 take aim action per arrow and thus it gives us about 1 shot every 1.5 combat rounds.
Now assuming a maxed out augmented archer, we are able to take 4 initiative passes in a given combat round.
Turn 1
IP1: Nock, Aim
IP2: Fire, Nock
IP3: Aim, Fire,
IP4: Nock, Aim
Turn 2
IP1: Fire, Nock
IP2: Aim, Fire
IP3: Nock, Aim
IP4: Fire, Nock
That's 5 arrows, in 6 seconds which is 1 arrow every 1.2 seconds or so with aimed fire. It looks to me from a pure numbers standpoint you COULD send enough arrows into the sky for a MRSI attempt, but you'd have to be damn near maxed out on speed. Or you could, you know, not aim.

Anyhow there's my attempt to translate Realism™ into Shadowrun Combat Time. I'm not sure what I may have or may not have convinced myself of though. I suppose, I figure if you ARE going to attempt MRSI, then you better be taking aim at least once.

Well Aiming wasn't really the point in an arrowstorm But i bet you could aim the flat shot every time. Course I would cheat and take Krav and aim everytime.

I was trying to be Realistic™, not take magical martials arts of hax.

Well the trick with MRSI is that you do not aim, the computer do it for you...

Unless you have automated bow-firing robo arms (and shoulder muscles, and back muscles) you still need to aim to match the trajectories that the computer calculations give you. Even with happy smartgunesque AR arrow paths you'd still have to line up your shots.

Jeez, all this talk of trajectories and no one has mentioned Injection arrows? For shame.

Nice vids. That guy went 12/12 on moving targets (at a very close range), in 17 seconds. That's about 1 arrow every 1.4 seconds. Even mounted, and riding, he got off 6 shots in 10 seconds, which is better than 1 arrow/2 seconds.

So if a combat round is 6 seconds, he'd put at least 3 arrows in the air, if not 4 or 5.

Real Life is completely irrelevant in the game world of Shadowrun.

Which is what we do...

Wait . . if this does indeed work then . .
does something like this work too?

Of course. And all the arrows strike the target at the same time, doing... what, 72P?

Just remember to divide dp per arrow, and don't forget the multiple target penalty either.

Shooting them all at one Target means 72P Damage and no multiple targets either though O.o

Well its possible to do up to 3 on a line, beyond that is just silly. And you can hit multiple targets, but aiming gets hard for all. i would apply the multiple targets penalty to all 3 arrows. I might award a die if edge was spent, for being awesome. I mean this is what combat pool was for.

On the contrary, Edge is *for* being awesome, if they want that die.

Massed archery fire: and I stress again by elite troops who are trained from birth managed to accomplish these sorts of rates: about 1 ever 2 or 3 shadowrun rounds. They don't aim. They fire into the middle of the pack. Aiming takes time, and probably costs you 1 or 2 arrows per minute

I propose we re-name Edge dice to Awesome dice.

Anyone second?





-k

Seconded.

"Burning one to be completely Awesome."

Mm a couple things. "Elite troops" simply means an archery rating of 4, 5 or 6. 7 would be people like Perseus, Yoichi, or other such legendary figures. not that difficult to achieve all told for a SR character.

Secondly. They do aim. My example wasn't a speculation off of aftermaths of a battle or anything like that
My example is based off of the rate of fire of a single man, who holds the record for most arrows fired in a 24 hr period as part of a competition. His aim clearly did suffer as a result of firing 9 shots a minute, but he still managed an accuracy of roughly 5 shots per minute, averaged over the course of 24 hrs. These numbers are not a matter of speculation, or guesswork. The man fired over 13000 arrows at a target (that's aimed) and hit over 8000 times. This was recorded. His fire rate was 9/min averaged over 24 hrs. My count did a little bit of adjusting upwards, but that's because I feel personally if you only have to fire for a minute at a time, you can probably fire faster than you could given a sustained 24 hr rate. I don't think that's unreasonable.

And yes, the man does hold a record for the Toshiya competition. I realize this. But just because he's "elite of the elite" doesn't mean a Shadowrunner can't match his skill.

That's still 1 shot per 2 SR4 turns, even fudging in favor of faster.

Aye, and that's unaugmented. In my other post I demonstrated how 2-3 shots per combat turn were possible with full IP augmentation.

And the Time To Target is still less than that, so you're never going to get two shots to hit at the same time.

Indeed: can you think of a more massive waste of IP investment?

Still.
This is Shadowrun.
It's either a Troll or an Adept(either way, it's magic) using a smartlinked bow with special software(either way, it's technobabbel) to do it.
And the book(as bad as it is) clearly states: it - does - work - with - bows.

So we've learned a valuable lesson about trusting strange new books.

even if they have candy.
especially if they have candy.

Rate of fire depends vastly on the type of bow used, the way arrows are kept/held and the use of a thumbring. Agincourt-style longbows are not meant for speed. They're meant for great power/distance.
Composite recurves are. They known for reaching an RoF approaching 1 arrow per 1.5 seconds in the hands of an expert user. On target. That firing rate justifies readying and firing an arrow in a simple action, based off real world results.
If you're going to be doing the reality thing, which tends to conflict with RAW and game balance, at least use numbers that have any bearing on the subject matter.

The video linked on the previous page shows you an expert recurve bowman in action if you want a source.
This one does a proper job as well in the second section of the video, about 1m20 in. He's a tad slow, but he's obviously done nocking long before the target's thrown with each arrow.

Just make sure the arrowheads are made out of glass and tattoo "POOR IMPULSE CONTROL" on your forehead.

You'll be fine.

At under 150M I would agree with you, Outside of that, I would say totally doable.

Yeah, that thought occurred to me, but god forbid I suggest that something is unreasonable.

If it ever comes up at my table, I think I'll say that it works for bows… using explosive tips, and only at long ranges.

On an added note: I have been watching many of these speed shooting demonstrations and most are done using bows under 50#s of draw weight, i wouldn't expect crazy high ROF with a 150 lb bow, but 3 shots in 5 seconds I could totally buy.

Especially ones that are blatant power creep.



Oh, there I'll agree. But when was the last time that ShadowRun combat took place at 150 meters or greater?



Especially ones that don't tell you the minimum range necessary to perform these types of actions.

As if the runners are ever going to get their hands on all those toys (well, the ones that matter, anyway).

Well, that depends entirely on your Strength score and how much work 150 pounds takes, doesn't it?