As a curious point, I was wondering if the Pistols skill used to fire a pistol is the same after adding burst fire or full auto to it. Essentially, it is a machine pistol, and that makes sense to me switching to Automatics. But I don't see any rules listed anywhere that even give a suggestion.

Barring any rules to the contrary, I would say you are now using an Automatic. The wisdom of doing such a mod is for you to decide.

You still use pistols because there are stock pistols with BF that dont say otherwise. And yeah, BF revolvers are awesome, even with only two bursts each.

Burst-fire revolver? I don't know if I should be disgusted or aroused.

Probably RAW-correct, but my gut says rule the other way on the main question. If it behaves as an automatic, use the Automatics skill. No particular balance issue, but the weapon has more in common with other automatics than with the original weapon.

Yeah, i was of course just citing RAW, i guess everyone can houserule for himself. Personally, i dont think custom weapons are a good idea altogether because they just make most of the preconfiguered ones useless and also lead to Ares-Alpha-Monocultures (there REALLY shouldnt be ANY automagical RC "by construction").

You use the skill that the weapon's *category* matches. To do otherwise is begging to crash the already-fragile weapon category system. Automatics is already the best skill, by far. Now, you've extended its reach to Pistols, Longarms, etc.—anything BF-modded. What about all the heavy weapons that fire BF or FA?

Ideally, you could revamp the system to deal with this, but you can't allow it *without* a major overhaul.

Ugh, yeah, tricky. Using Automatics feels better in terms of firearms logic, but further padding the skill's utility is annoying. Anyone have any ideas for a tweak, or is the issue too minor to bother with?

EDIT: Maybe abolish Automatics, parcel out its components, and ask 'an automatic WHAT?'

Rip out the entire weapons table, light it on fire, and start again from scratch. Also change how all the weapons skills work, along with the skill groups.

Right: the problem is you have to do a complete overhaul if you start changing anything. Spit and prayers.

Firearms Skillgroup

* One-Handed Weapons (pistols, mp's) - small, easy to conceal, low dmg
* Two-Handed Weapons (longarms, assault rifles, machine guns) - huge, not concealable, high dmg
* Ballistic Weapons (rocket launcher, grenade launcher, probably mortars) - you know them

Yup, i put heavy weapons in just as well. There is really no explanation why an expert with an assault rifle should not be able to fire a machine gun (it's the same just bigger).
This is how different weapons are categorized today as well. The difference is in how they are fired. You can get either pistol or rifle training - sadly never heard of a ballistics course though

burst firing revolvers? blech. The gun fondle-er in me cries foul. But if it existed, I'd put one on my list of dream weapons to obtain.

However, the Deadlands player in me says, Oh a Gatling Pistol. But why build it with only 6 rounds in a cylinder? and Them bullets come out wicked fast don't they Jackie?

Also if Calico Light Weaponry were to produce a fully automatic version of their drum feed pistols and rifles, that'd be fairly close to a real life gatling pistol. http://calicolightweaponsystems.com/home/

Mind you, Leon Nagant proved that you could over-engineer a revolver to enable it to be silenced (because the cylinder rotated forward when cocked and formed a gas seal), and he did it in 1895. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagant_M1895 Of course, it wasn't Mr. Nagant's intent to make it silence-able, he was after improved muzzle velocity, but the KGB figured it out.

Cordially,

Eric

It is acceptable on weapons that have a higher fire rate than their category such as BF pistols, FA shotguns or High Velocity weapons. On the Alpha, it is just cheese.

The weapons chart kind of bothers me really. I wanted to make a Dual Gun Adept.. but the rules for using two guns were.. unwieldy. So I thought.. what about two different guns and use the one more appropriate for the target. So I scanned down the Heavy Pistol and Light Pistol lines.. and the only things I saw different really was the Fire Selection and ammo capacity. All the Light Pistols were 4P and all the Heavy were 5P. So next I wanted to make a Monowhip wielding Adept.. GM nixed that idea and then settled for a unarmed combat adept.

Dual wielding works great with Super Warhawks because of the SS firing rate. Or if you're a troll, you can dual wield Panthers

Really, if you were to distill reality into a game, how would you make the different heavy pistols different? It really all matters in the add-ons that aren't in the chart (like how some have a ready installed Laser sight, or smart link, or whatever else is available)

See signature

Normal pistols don't allow as many options for recoil compensation by the rules as machine pistols, and a lot of those which go faster than SA are limited in a way. It may be not totally realistic, but I think it's somewhat balanced. So in my opinion those guns shouldn't use the automatics skill.
A general overhaul of combat skills, on the other hand...

A buddy of mine has that revolver. It's really cool!

You must not have been looking very hard, considering that even in the corebook there's a heavy pistols with 8P and 6P
But as was said allready, it's not the thinks that are in the table that truly differentiate the guns from one and other.