I don't know if this has been covered in a different forum but the full auto rules in SR3 either make everything hit or everything miss.

Does anyone have a better way of doing this? It just seems a bit strange that even the first couple of rounds would miss thats all.

You'd know only if you are using the Suppression Rules.

I think you're missing the point. What Zephania is trying to say (I think) is that the chance of hitting someone with the first bullet in a stream of full-auto fire should not really be different than hitting someone with a single bullet fired in SA mode.

And yes, this has been covered before. One solution is to simply count every bullet as a separate instance, using a single dice roll and comparing those successes with an incrementalling increasing TN ending with the last bullet fired. Bullets start missing once you fail to generate successes for a given TN. Dodge test results would then be compared to each individual bullet's number of successes. This will make combat take longer and will increase the lethality of the game dramatically... but hey, if thats fine with you then go for it.

Example: you are standing on an open plain with goon A at short range. You dont like goon A. You have initiative and fire 10 rounds from your AK-97 at Goon A. Since you have a smartlink-2, your base TN to hit goon A is 2. So you roll your assault rifle 5 skill with 2 combat pool and score 9,7,5,5,3,1,1. The TN for the first bullet is 2, and you got 4 successes. That one hits. The second bullet has its TN increased by 1 to a total of 3. That bullet hits. The third bullet hits with 4 successes at TN 4, the fourth bullet hits with 4 successes, the fifth bullet hits with 2 successes, as does the 6th, and the 7th and 8th bullets each hit with a single success. The 9th and 10th bullets miss.

Goon A is in trouble. He rolls 4 combat pool at TN 4 for his dodge test (the TN does o increase because supressive fire is not used) and generates 2 successes. He manages to avoid bullets 5-8, which is good. What isn't good is that he's still hit with 4 bullets.

Heres where you have an option: either keep with the theme of treating each bullet as a separate instance and resist damage for each one individually - in this case that would be 8S damage 4 times. Alternatvely, you can apply the normal rules for burst fire DL modification and using the lowest number of successes that still resulted in a hit for staging - in this case you Goon A must resist 12D damage.

The only problem with that, BitBasher, is that it still doesn't make it easier to hit with the first shot. Personally, I favor just making it a mixed open-success test. You roll your dice against the TN without recoil, note successes as normal, but also note your high die. The difference between the high die and the TN is the number of bullets that hit. Add one bullet hit for each point of recoil comp the weapon has. If you get any successes at all, 1 bullet automatically hits. You can't hit with more shots than you have ROF.

So if you were shooting at TN 4 on full auto, you'd roll your dice (let's say you've got 8 of them) and get something like 09 05 04 04 04 03 02 01. Your opponent doesn't get to dodge, let's say (he's surprised, doesn't that suck?). You count your successes (5) and note your high die (9). Subtract the TN from the high die and that's how many bullets that hit (9-4=5). Add your recoil comp (3) to determine the final number of bullets that hit (5+3=8). Now modify the damage code per the normal rules and the defender tries to resist damage (say 3 successes). Decide what you're going to do with the resulting hamburger meat.

I like this system because 1) skill has a large effect on the number of bullets that hit, 2) recoil compensation has a much larger effect on the number of bullets that it, 3) it doesn't add much to the die rolls that currently exist, and 4) a good shot can put all 10 on target while a bad shot might just get one.

Yeah, I wasnt trying to address the "first bullet hits", I was addressing the "all bullets hit".

I dont think your system is bad except that Open Tests are the worst thing since Greedo shooting first. I eliminated all open tests because tyhey freaking suck mechanically, so I wont be using them for this.

Noone has any direct comments about the system I proposed?

I'll comment. Far, far too much math. The KISS principle rules. Adding a single extra die roll is cool. Adding up to 15 extra comparisons for using a minigun or 12 for a HVAR is way too much.

Also does each bullet stage up individually, will he need 40 sucesses from the first 10 bullets to stage it down if they hit?

It depends on how you use the FA action, as to how likley things will/wont hit.

Like say theres 5 guys in the room, at short range, and you wanna shoot; and FA gets you 10 rounds to use. For sake of ease, Im gonna say youve got yourself 6 points of recoil comp, and a basic smartlink, and that the gun is 8M using normal rounds. You could:

Fire all 10 at the first guy. TN would be (4+4rc-2sl=) 6. Damage would be (8M+10rounds=) 18D-over. Guys TN to dodge would be (4+10rounds=) 7.

Fire 3 bursts of 3 at the first guy. TNs would be (4+0rc-2sl=) 2 for the first, (4+0rc-2sl=) 2 for the second, and (4+3rc-2sl=) 5 for the third. All dodge TNs would be (4+3rounds=) 5, and all damage codes would be (8m+3rounds=) 11S.

Fire a burst at the first 3. TNs would be (4+0rc-2sl=) 2 for the first, (4+0rc-2sl+2secondguy=) 4 for the second, and (4+3rc-2sl+4thirdguy=) 9 for the third. Damage would be (8M+3rounds) 11S to each. All dodge TNs would be (4+3rounds=) 5.

Fire 2 bullets at each guy. TNs would be (4+0rc-2sl=) 2 for the first, (4+0rc-2sl+2secondguy=) 4 for the second, and (4+0rc-2sl+4thirdguy=) 6 for the third, (4+2rc-2sl+6fourthguy=) 10 for the fourth, and (4+4rc-2sl+8fifthguy=) 14 for the fifth. All dodge TNs would be 4, takes 3 rounds to increase it. The Damage would be 10M to all.

As you can see, the ability of everthing to hit/miss depends on what youre doing. How you allocated each round, and the order, is what makes the differeing TNs. Only in the first case is it all or nothing, all other scenarios involve multiple rolls for different segments of the fullauto fire.

My reply is to original poster, I dont have any comments on all the house rule stuff. And it is, afaik, the way the rules say to do it. If Im wrong lemme know.

Yeah, I like most of what you were saying Jason the increasing target no. etc. I'll probably do that and then work out one damage resistance test based on how many hit.

Thanks everyones comments were appreciated.

The power of the hit is part of what goes up, though. The only use for power is as part of the Damage Resistance test... it has nothing to do with skill or dodging.

There's skill involved, yes, but not with the power level. It's static. The only things that change damage level are ammo type, number of bullets fired, and armor. There's no skill in that part. Some luck (combat pool) can come into it, but besides that it's pure body which is rolled against the power of the attack.

Also, while you can stage damage with dodging, you will never stage it below the damage level as it is increased by the number of bullets because if you do, the attack misses (ie, you've rolled more successes than your attacker on the dodge roll). You still get hit by all of the bullets. At that point, body is the only thing that can stage down the increased damage level. The way those 10 bullets hit you is about all you can affect.

Full Auto is wonky on the rules side and mechanics side.


1 success on any test means it's a success. You hit the target, you jumped the chasm, you mended the wound. Anything more than that just means you did it spectacularly.


So 1 success on a full auto attack means every bullet hits.

The problem with this is that each bullet adds power and the damage level. Just because a bullet travels with 5 of it's buddies at you quickly doesn't mean that your Armor plated jacket's protection should'nt matter.

I always opt to make the person use the base damage of the gun, but I do use the extra damage levels inflicted.

Normally and very deadly
8M full auto weapon 10 round burst does 18 D with 1 success.
You need 8 successes at a huge target number. 18ish to take no damage

in my game it's still very deadly
8M full auto weapon 10 round burst with 1 success does 8M+10DLs (+1 from each bullet)

Now you need 14 successes at a much much lower target number.


It ensures that even the mighiest of tanks can still be hurt and torn down. It also means that the piddly weak will still be torn up.


So take your Average Sammy with 6 body, and 6 armor. (for ease)

Normal rules he would have to resist
12D with body+CP with about 12 dice. There's very little chance he'll survive. Some nights I can't even roll one six.

My game he would face 2M+10 DLs. So with all of his Body and CP he can at the most hope to stage it down to an L. Provided all successes.

Chances are he's taking an S or a D as he should.


The only problem with my rule is that Troll tanks tend to shrug it off rather well, but thats why the ShadowRun gods created APDS and ExEx.

PS Oh and addition to my rule. each 2 Extra successes add more DLs to resist. So getting shot is definately a bad thing.

You know, its actually rather easy to avoid any on-the-fly math at all with the system I proposed by simply preparing a table with the numbers 4 through 16 in the first row, with additional lines for levels of recoil compensation on it. Apply non-recoil TN mods to the dice roll itself, then just check your results against the line corresponding to the appropriate level of recoil compensation you have and only check for successes up to the number of bullets fired. Easy.... unless you dont like tables.

Tinker: what I want to know is, how does your system handle multiple successes and staging? Say the base TN is 4. A guy fires a 3-round (uncompressed, just to simplify things) burst, and rolls 7, 7, 4, 4, 2 on his Assault Rifles test. Now, is that 2 net successes with three bullets, 4 net successes with 3 bullets, or 4 net successes with 1 bullet and 2 net successes with the other 2?

Oh, and another thing: someone mentioned the surgery rules having multiple different TNs in a single test, and I don't see that anywhere. From what I read in M&M the surgery rules are a good old Success Test, with a threshold of 3 successes in order to aboid any negative options. Did I miss something there?

(Edit: mixed up systems. I like this one the best of all; the others just require too damn much dice rolling. Tinker's system works because it's immediately comprehensible, although it has the complication that I mentioned above, plus it's far too powerful.)

Well I do remember that full-auto is harder to dodge...

Anyway, I like your system, but I'm concerned that it makes full-auto weapons far more powerful than they are currently. Certainly it won't make recoil compensation as absolutely necessary as it is currently. If I were to go with this, I'd at the very least only give a +1 to Power for every two bullets, and +1 DL for every three.That *does* end up giving you a "sweet spot" of getting a big boost to power and damage at multiples of 6, but this doesn't concern me so much, as SR seems to have that problem with sixes in general.

It does make full auto more powerful, but... as it stands right now, full auto is rarely useful for straight out shooting. Recoil comp is still king, though, since each point means a bullet automaticly hits.

The balancing factor is that the dice only rarely break 12. Shooting TNs are generally in the 6-10 range. You're not likely to hit with many bullets unless you're in one of the more rare TN 2-4 cases. At which point, being lit into with full auto fire should be a death sentance.

To balance it, I might go so far as to reduce the dodge TN penalty to only account for rounds which would miss you. Because there are less rounds off target, it means that there is less errant lead for you to dodge into.

For those who would be interested in such a thing, I went ahead and generated a table for use with the system I proposed (note, however, that said system has not been "field tested" yet) .

Upload an .xls file to a website and link to that -- if geocities, two hyperlinks away.

Otherwise, I don't think you can do it directly.

However, Excel allows a user to save a spreadsheet as an .htm file - you could open the .htm file in notepad and copy-past the requisite code for your table.

-Siege

Hmm... okay. I've given it some revised thought and come up with another possibility that seems to work as well as the first.

To fire full auto, you roll a success test as normal. You don't count your recoil on the TN for doing this. One success indicates that your target has been targeted accurately. These successes are used in the exact same manner as any attack test and can be dodged normally (with TN modifiers on the dodge test based on the number of shots fired, per normal).

Okay, here's the tricky part. For each success past the first remaining on the attack test, one bullet hits. For each point of recoil compnesation available, one bullet hits. Maximum of the number of bullets you fired.

Stage damage according to the ruels for bursts and short bursts per normal. Proceed with damage resistance per normal (successes on the damage resistance test apply only to reducing the normal effect of extra successes on the attack test and do not lower the number of bullets that hit).

So let's take a goon with a SMG (SA/BF/FA, 6M, RC2, skill 5, smartlink). He's firing on a runner with no cover in good lighting. He is at 5 meters and goes full auto. His target is walking. His TN is 3 and he rolls his 5 dice. They come up 08 04 03 02 01, or 3 successes.

Okay, the runner tries to dodge, using 5 cp against a TN of 7 (4 + 3 for 9+ rounds of autofire). His dice come up 07 05 03 02 01, so 1 success.

The runner has been hit with 2 net successes. The goon figures out how many rounds actually struck his target and stages damage accordingly. He starts off with a base of 0 rounds and adds 1 for extra successes and 3 for recoil compensation. He has struck his foe with 4 rounds, which boosts his base damage to 10S.

The runner rolls to resist the damage (10S with 2 successes) with his body as normal.

Characters who are serious about autofire can get recoil comp as high as 9, making this a workable system for all involved.

Oh, I *like* this one. It even addresses BitBasher's objection to combining an Open Test and a Success Test at the same time. Only one issue: