I was looking at the firing into melee friendly fire sidebar. It all makes sense that if your attack misses because the defender dodges it, you risk hitting your friend. However, it also means that the more bullets fired, the less chance that the defender will dodge it, so the only "safe" thing to do is full auto 10 bullets.

Full auto + defender in melee penalties sums up to -12, which is enough to completely negate most defense pools. Since the defender is hit, the friend in melee don't need to take a defense test, so this is by and far the safest option unless the defender has a really high defense pool. Missing outright means none of them are threatened, despite the number of rounds fired.

To avoid this silliness, a simple fix:
1. If you fire semi-auto burst or short burst into melee, the friend has to defend against half the number of hits even if the defender failed his defense test.
2. If you fire long burst or full auto burst into melee, both defender and friend have to defend against the same attack.

Or, to put it in other words: If you absolutely have to shoot an enemy that close to your friend, make sure to aim well and fire once.

No input on this? Is is a bad house rule, a good one, or just not worth implementing? Or did I misunderstand the rules?

Not much to say, a harder to dodge attack being... harder to dodge? That's pretty much the rule working as intended. I think your house rule is more realistic, but Shadowrun combat frankly isn't. It's action movie combat, and wailing away with full auto weapons is part of that.

So it's just a question of what you want combat to look like at your table.

I'd be more vicious. Instead of making single shots easier to avoid, have anyone in melee with a target that is being autofired at make the same defense test +1. This represents the fact only one bullet actually hits on autofire.

The problem is not the attack being harder to dodge, but the fact that it's 100% automatic to dodge for anyone close to the attack. If you don't care about your friend being hit, full auto into close combat is fine and probably will hit both of them.




That's actually less vicious. My proposal was equal defense test, but having the test be +1 makes the intended target takes some of the brunt of the attack at least. I could go further giving the friend cover bonus of +2 or +4 if the enemy is blocking the attack. Note I'm not at all making single shots easier to avoid, single shots will use the current rules as they seem to work just fine. Dodging a single shot at -3 risks your friend being hit instead? Sure.

I meant that they make the test even if the original attack is successful. So no matter what, your friends are dodging bullets.

That's exactly what I meant too by "both defender and friend have to defend against the same attack." Plenty of bullets to go around.

Nice Shooting!




-k

Yup, checks out. This documented footage of real life fire exercises show how full auto is always safer.