I'm currently still reading through the combat chapter of SR5 and had a few questions. Apologies if these have been covered before and lost pages into a thread somewhere.

1) Can SA weapons fire in SS mode? If not, what's the difference between firing a single shot from a SS weapon and a SA weapon? By the rules the SS weapon doesn't suffer recoil while the SA weapon does even if it only fires one shot per action just like the SS weapon.

2) Can you use the Multiple Attacks action to target the same enemy twice? In the multiple attacks action section it doesn't specify, but in the burst section it says 'multiple opponents'. If you CAN'T do this, why not? Surely shooting 2 people is harder than shooting one person twice?

3) Is there any difference between a burst and a semi-auto burst? I can't see any. Why does SA burst exist?
SA burst is complex action, burst is simple action.

Answers to any and all appreciated.

Thanks

Josh

1. in order for a weapon to fire in SS it must have the SS option, if the gun says SS/SA then it can fire as either or, if it has SA only it can only fire SA, however, just because you have SA doesn't mean you can;t just fire a single shot regardless.

2. By a strict reading of the rules, you cannot fire a single firearm twice in the same round. However if the GM has bypassed this little detail, then I don't see any reason you'd be forced to split it into different targets so long as you split the dicepool as normal.

3. All SA guns can fire Semi-auto Burst (SB) as a complex action. but not all SA guns can fire Burst Fire (BF), also BF is done as a simple action while as mentioned the SB is a complex, but otherwise they are identical.

1. Yeah, I got that much. I wondered why a Semi-Auto gun firing at the same rate as a SS gun suffers recoil while the SS gun does not?

2. You can by the burst rules though. It states 'Burst Fire weapons can take advantage of the Multiple Attacks Free Action to fire at multiple targets with the same burst.' I'm wondering why you can't also fire at the same target multiple times with the same burst, especially with a Semi-Auto Burst where it's technically 3 separate shots. I'm going to assume it's just to represent bursting an area, but it still seems weird. Can you multi attack the same person in melee?

3. I missed that a SA burst was complex while a burst is simple. That's the difference then

well its also that SB is available to ALL SA weapons, while BF is not.

1) as i recall, there was some indication that the devs basically meant that if you ever do something in between taking shots, your recoil drops back to zero. so for example if you shoot and then ready a grenade on your first action, then shoot and throw a grenade on your second, you wouldn't suffer recoil.

which basically means that SS only really has the advantage if you <not shoot> + shoot, then shoot + <not shoot> right after. still a little screwy, but whatever.

edit: note that i am not saying this is errata, or that i'm even saying this will be errata (although it appeared that's what the authors who were commenting on it thought should happen). i'm just saying that this is what some of the authors (who may or may not have been the author that wrote the rules in question, i don't know) thought it was supposed to work like.

also note that i would (edit: wouldn't) hold your breath on waiting for that errata...

As far as I understand it, you could also:

Aim // Shoot // Aim // Shoot // and so on... and by aiming reset the recoil.

This, all in all, leads to extensive recoil on firemodes, that use a complex action, unless you stop to take a breath in between.

Wish Aim // Shoot // Aim // Shoot did reset Progressive Recoil, but by my understanding it does not. The example on page 177 has the character Shoot (at -1 due to Progressive Recoil) // Take Cover // Aim (noting here that Progressive Recoil is now reset) // Shoot.

From page 175: "Recoil penalties are cumulative over every Action Phase and Combat Turn unless the character takes, or is forced into, an action other than shooting for an entire Action Phase." An entire Action Phase, for the purposes of resetting Progressive Recoil, is apparently the equivalent of two consecutive Standard Actions (which can extend from one Action Phase to the next) in which you do not shoot, or one Complex Action where you are doing something other than shooting.

like i said, some of the authors seem to think it works differently (or at least, that it was supposed to work differently). not saying that's what it does say, but i am saying that's what those authors thought it was supposed to work like.

of course, we won't know if CGL plan on changing it until we see some errata, and who knows when that's going to happen.

Considering SR4 books that could use some errata, I certainly am not holding my breath for SR5's core book.

That might actually work. If we tell Catalyst that we'll ALL throw an immature tantrum and not buy their stuff anymore unless they give it the support needed to make it playable then they might take notice of the lost revenue and actually release a timely errata.

I think we'll find a universally acceptable fix for technomancers before we convince enough people to boycott Catalyst products.

On the plus side an archery question was resolved: Firing an arrow is a Standard Action. Too bad it took a new edition to get that one.

I think you are reading too much into the statement about multiple targets. It states 'Burst Fire weapons can take advantage of the Multiple Attacks Free Action to fire at multiple targets with the same burst.' It doesn't state that you must fire at multiple targets, particularly if you don't use a free action to state that you are firing at multiple targets.

First one is easy, we eliminate all of the creepy little freaks, with extreme prejudice.

I have a technomancer main character in a line of fiction I'm still seriously considering retiring once the timeline hits 2075.

Either that or run him as a full on decker with a Fairlight Excalibur instead.

the good news is that technomancer skills are no longer separate.

so you actually can, provided you get your hands on a good cyberdeck, instantly switch over.

that said, i'm sure they'll manage to overcompensate when the matrix comes out and instead of making technomancers balanced, they'll give them some ludicrous echoes that make them completely insane once you get a couple of submersions under your belt.

They really need a Centering equivalent for Fading and a Filtering equivalent for Noise. The power imbalance between Echoes and Metamagics is ridiculous.

Yeah, I know. Of which I've pretty much had to house rule how that's handled for the SR5 conversion since that little tidbit was not mentioned.

If the technomancer has ranks in both versions of a Cracking and/or Electronics skill, they get added together (max 6) before being converted to the SR5 scale, gaining karma for the excess levels.

the SR4 core rulebook echoes were generally not that great either. look at what happened in the expansion =S

Not really. I'm aware that you don't have to fire at multiple targets. My query is if I can burst 2 people to attack twice using the multiple attacks rule, why can't I burst 1 person and attack twice using the same rule. You're effectively just halving your dice pool to attack a second time. It's more that it doesn't work in my head, especially with a semi-auto burst. Really what it's saying is that I can shoot 2 people once each with one attack, but I can't shoot one person twice, which is notably easier than switching targets IRL.

You can actually burst 3 people, but I would say that using the burst for multiple targets doesn't get the -2 defense penalty, where using it on a single target does.

My thought is that the burst mechanic is already supposed to take care of the 'shooting a guy twice' version -- fewer defense dice = more damage, after all. Then you get into the abstraction of rolling one net success = one bullet hit (9P for a heavy pistol), five net successes = a solid hit and a couple grazes (13P for a heavy pistol), or however you want to describe things.

No. This is purely a balance issue, not a logical one. SS weapons have the advantage of not accumulating recoil where SA weapons can do burst attacks.



The burst mechanic covers this. You shoot multiple bullets at one target and it mofies defence pools. The intention behind 5th ed is to streamline combat so people don't take 20minutes for each turn. It's counter intuitive to be able to do the same action mechanically 2 different ways. By RaW you can't, if you really want to then by all means do it, but I'm guessing that the only reason you would want to is because against some opponents you see there being a damage advantage in doing so.



Yes, one is designed for weapons capable of burst fire, so you pull the trigger once and it fires 3 bullets, while the other is just a abstraction of firing multiple shots at a single target by pulling the trigger multiple times. It makes pistols a little more versatile.

See, you read "other than shooting for an entire action phase" as doing something other than shooting "for that entire action phase" i.e two simple or one complex non shooting event.

I read it as doing anything that doesn't "shoot for an entire action phase"; ie complex shooting actions or multiple single shooting actions consecutively.

So by my reading Aim|shoot // Aim|shoot would reset recoil.

Aim|shoot // Shoot|something else would not.

Complex shoot // Aim|simple shoot would also reset.

But Complex shoot // Simple shoot|something else would not.


Its up to your interpretation of the sentence and definately needs clarification.

@Renmar,

The problem is that the book has two examples, one right after the other that seem to contradict one another:

"Wombat is plugging away at some obnoxious gangers who
insulted his street name. He starts with 1 free point and has a
Strength of 3, giving him 2 points of compensation. He’s using
a Colt Manhunter with 1 point of recoil compensation, which
brings his compensation total to 3.
On his first Action Phase he fires a Semi-Auto Burst, which
is 3 bullets. That takes his compensation down to 0, meaning he
has no penalty on this shot.
On the next Action Phase he fires only one shot. That moves
his recoil penalty down one more point, making it –1. He has to
take a single die away from his dice pool before rolling his attack.
He then uses his other Simple Action to Take Cover. In the
following Action Phase, he uses a Simple Action to Take Aim,
which removes the effects of progressive recoil and resets his
recoil compensation back to its initial 3 points. (He also has the
option of increasing his dice pool by 1 or increasing his applicable
limit on the next shot by 1.)
On the fourth Action Phase he attacks with a Semi-Auto
Burst again, which again reduces his recoil compensation to 0.
Again, he has no penalty on this roll.
Starting a new Combat Turn, Wombat continues to fire. On
his first Action Phase of the new Combat Turn he fires another
Semi-Auto Burst. That’s 3 more bullets fired, moving his recoil
score from 0 to –3. He has to take 3 dice out of his pool before
rolling his attack.
On his next Action Phase, Wombat again fires a Semi-Auto
Burst. That means his recoil score drops by 3 more points, taking
the penalty down to –6. He’s going to have trouble hitting
anything, but he’ll probably stop shooting soon so he can reload."

In the above example, you'll note that simply by taking two non-shooting actions in a row, even ones that occur in two different action phases, he resets his progressive recoil.

Now look at the next example:


"Full Deck prefers the extra hitting potential of firing in bursts
with his Ingram Smartgun. His Strength of 4 gives him 2 points
to add to his 1 free point of compensation The Smartgun adds 2
more points of recoil compensation, making a total of 5.
On his first Action Phase Full Deck fires in Long Burst mode.
6 rounds are subtracted from the 5 points of recoil compensation,
meaning he has a –1 dice pool penalty when he fires.
On the next Action Phase he goes for Burst Fire. That’s 3
more bullets, so it makes the recoil penalty –4. The accumulated
recoil is starting to stack up, so he may want to think about not
attacking in the next Action Phase."

If two non-shooting actions in a row reset progressive recoil, then when he acts in the second Action Phase, he can shoot the burst, and then Aim (or Observe in Detail, or any other Simple Action) and then in the next action phase, Aim again (or whatever) and the progressive recoil is gone, and he would not have to "to think about not attacking in the next Action Phase" as he can reset his recoil.

It is like two different people read the rule, and then wrote the examples separately, and never read each other's work.

You're right. I'd wager the second example is writen assuming that a regular burst is a complex action, rather than a simple.

The bigger problem in my mind is the micro-management needed to manage this. Some players will be excellent at it while others are not and the GM has to remember who took 'scratch my balls' actions after shooting last round and those that don't.

In my mind it would be much simpler if you just had to not shoot in an action phase for it to reset, which could be filled with reloading clips, readying grenades, sprinting between covers, etc.

even if a regular burst was a complex action, he could still aim as a simple then fire a single shot.

They are pretty much the answers I suspected and was expecting.

The first point really isn't logical with my initial reading of the recoil rules (more on that shortly).

The reason for multi-attacking a target is for a damage advantage, quite a large one I suspect though I haven't worked it out fully. I understand that it works how you said, it's just a weird abstraction for me. I suppose it's more 'bursting an area' than actually attacking twice. You'd think there would be a 'targets must be within x distance of each other' rule or something, but I haven't seen one.

I get the SA burst now. My initial though was if all SA weapons can burst, why not just add that fire mode to them instead of a different action but I'd missed that an SA burst was complex.





See now this, this is more like it. It's not how I read the rules first time though. I knew there was another interpretation but once you're read something one way it's hard to see it another. THIS rule I like, and it is sort of RAW even though not how I first interpreted it. It is however definitely what I'm going to use because it makes sense to me. Also, with this rule SA pistols make more sense (as in my first question, they could fire once a turn without penalty) and it makes the difference between simple and complex shooting actions more important, as with the SA vs normal burst above. It makes sense that 2 consecutive complex actions stack recoil. So this is the way I'm going to play it now, thanks! To word it better 'If a character spends their entire turn shooting (a complex action) then their recoil carries over to the next turn"

It is more elegant and makes sense with Remnar's way.

If however someone wants to stick to the first concept of reset only occurring from other than shooting for that entire action phase, I would suggest still allow the aim simple action to override that as it is an action specific to gathering oneself to make the next shot, and by default should be restabilizing the weapon in any case.

It is interesting, in that until Remnar said it, I would never have read it that way.

An Action Phase consists of a Free Action and two Simple Actions or One Complex Action. So, even if you fire a Semi-Auto Burst (a Complex Action), you are not really shooting for an "entire action phase."

If they wanted it to mean that you could avoid recoil by "SA shot/Aim, then Aim/SA shot" but NOT avoid recoil by "Aim/SA shot, then Aim/SA shot" then I think it should have been written differently than the way they did it. Something along the lines of "If you a non-firing Complex Action OR two consecutive Simple Actions, even ones that are in two different but consecutive Action Phases, then your progressive recoil resets."

I also disagree with allowing Sendaz's Aim/Shoot resets recoil - only in this regard:

If you read it as you have to SKIP an action phase in between shooting to reset progressive recoil, then if you want to be resetting your recoil between shots, you need to fire every other Action Phase:

Phase 1 Shoot
Phase 2 - any two simple or 1 complex non-shooting action
Phase 3 Shoot

If you read it as Remnar does, then you can shoot for 2 turns, skipping the third

Phase 1 Shoot then Aim
Phase 2 Aim then Shoot
Phase 3 Aim and Aim
Phase 4 Shoot and Aim
Keep on going

So there is some reduction in firepower either way (although less of one in the 2nd case.)

However, allowing you to Aim/Shoot ad-infinitum without taking a penalty not only allows you to never incur progressive recoil (as long as you are not taking a complex fire action), it also allows you to gain the benefit of the Take Aim action. I think it might be more palatable if you allowed the Take Aim action to be used to either do its normal function (add 1 die to the test, or add 1 to the accuracy, or allow you to use a scope OR reset the progressive recoil.)

I think that everyone is looking at this too closely (i.e not being able to see the forest through the trees). You need to look at this as a whole and remember that you only get one shot or burst per action phase. Therefore when they say "unless the character takes, or is forced into, an action other than shooting for an entire Action Phase," you need to ask 'have there been 2 standard or 1 complex action since the last time I fired?' If so, you are reset. If not, then keep on accumulating.

Which honestly makes no sense, since a SS gun cares not, and a SA gun firing a single shot per phase would accumulate per your description, if fired in each phase. When, in reality, we all know that there should be absolutely no difference between the two firing a single shot per phase. Again, it is a fail, on the designer's part, that this intolerable situation is even a thing.

It makes perfect sense if you look at what you are firing. The definition of an SS gun is a single-action revolver, pump-action shotgun, bolt or lever-action rifle, or assault cannon. How many times can you cycle the bolt on a bolt-action rifle in 3 seconds? Now how fast can you pull the trigger on a SA rifle? That is the difference. I personally would rather see the SS being a one shot per combat turn instead of one shot every pass, but... *shrugs* And you can still get Recoil penalties with SS weapons if you are firing 2 of them in the same pass using the Multiple Attack Free Action.

It's not to do with how fast you 'can' pull the trigger though, it's how fast you 'are' pulling the trigger. If you're firing the same number of shots at the same rate then the recoil should be the same.

Personally though, I like the way Remnar read it and I'm just going to go with that. It makes much more sense, actually works and isn't confusing to track, and reduces the power of full auto somewhat without nerfing all prolonged gunfighting.

Whcih is completely irrelevant if you are firing a single shot from ANY of those types of guns. Which is the point. It does not matter that You CAN fire more often than a SS gun with other firing modes. The recoil is NO MORE than that SS gun for a Single Shot, irregardless of the potential firing mode. As such, a single shot from either type of action should function identically.

If you have 3 passes and you fire a SS gun in all 3 passes, then you generate no recoil. If you fire a SA (or guns CAPABLE of Burst Fire) gun in those same 3 passes, but only fire a single shot each pass, you generate recoil... I call BS. Again, it is an indicator that the designers have no concept of how guns work.

So, NO, it does not "make perfect sense" since it is fundamentally flawed from the very beginning. *shrug*

Yeah, I did the opposite. I read it as I described and didn't even consider an alternate interpretation until I saw it argued on Dumpshock. Shows that it's obviously not a very clear passage. I guess until we get an errata (or maybe clarification from Bull for Missions) we'll all have to go with how the GM reads it.

Granted, I doubt I'll ever actually get to play again, so its pretty moot for me.

" an action other than shooting for an entire Action Phase"

Hm well I actually read something along the line of: "until you do something else than shooting the whole phase long"

Which made sense to me, in regards of limiting attacks that use a complex action (i.e. SA Bursts or fullauto, as they are very exhausting). Should the developers really mean, that a whole actionphase, with a complex actions worth has to be spent on manicure, to reduce recoil, they simply would have failed again.

Logically an aim action would work too since you are riding recoil, bringing sites onto target and then aiming before firing again, which would imply reoil resetting. As opposed to just ripping off round after round.

Then again, logic doesn't always (or even usually) apply.

If it would be a "forced" shooting pause of one full action phase, it would be two aim actions. While aiming is nice and all... this recoil rule still lacks logic. One aiming action should suffice and a single shot from a heavy pistol, should be a single shot, from a heavy pistol.

Remember you get to ignore the first bullet in a phase, so SA weapons fired once per phase don't build recoil.

What I think would work here would be a 'Steady' simple action -- an action that does nothing but drop something like (Strength) uncompensated recoil.

So you fire a complex burst with your Ingram, you've got Str 4 (for 2 RC) and the Ingram has RC 2. The complex burst imposes 5 recoil, leaving you with 1 uncompensated recoil.

You fire a second complex burst next phase, leaving you with 6 uncompensated recoil.

On your next action phase, you spend one simple action to Steady, dropping the uncompensated recoil down to 2. You spend your second simple action to fire a simple burst, bringing the uncompensated recoil back up to 4.

Next phase, you spend another action on Steady, dropping uncompensated recoil to 0. Your second simple action is another simple burst, pushing it back up to 2.

And so on and so forth.

Then, if you ever go a full action phase with no shooting, you reset all recoil and start over.

Not any more

I keep coming back to this point on these forums. People seem to get to obsessed with realism with this game. You are exactly right Tymeaus, it shouldn't work any differently if you think logically about it, but the fact is that logic isn't what drives this ruleset. The rules provide you with 2 options:

1) Use a revolver and ignore recoil (more or less) a good option for dual wielding pistols (which is usually a bad option anyway), or people who just can't be bothered managing it.
2) Use a SA pistol and get another tactical option of the complex 'burst' fire.

As Shadowrun has no jam mechanics for guns, this is in place to make revolvers a viable choice.

On a more general point, I don't think [aim/Shoot] [aim/shoot] should reset recoil. There isn't a complex or 2 consecutive simple actions spent not shooting in this scenario. In my mind for it to work it would need to be

[Shoot/scratch balls] [aim/shoot]. In this scenario the 2 simple actions are consecutive.

Still seems like more effort that it's worth. In my mind it should be:

Action phase 1[Shooting occured in this phase]
Action phase 2[shooting didn't occur here]
Action phase 3[recoil has reset here]

Those with only 1 action phase aren't really affected (unless it carries from round to round?) those with 4 IPs will need to manage their machinegun fire.

Recoil penalties are cumulative over Combat Turns.

And that is the problem... RULES should employ logic. Otherwise they really aren't rules, but a cluster of illogical statements strung together.

On this we agree.

And that just becomes politics.



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