Just ran some players through the first part on DNA/DOA. Only one of them brought anything bigger than a heavy pistol and that was a SMG, so they all tok the offered AK97s and AK98s, even though they had no AR skill.

Anyway, they get into the sewer and hit the first firefight against a 6 person gang led by a Street Sam.
I'm thinking +2 modifiers for using astral perception (all of them had it, but no flashlights), defaulting for using a firearm they don't have the skill for, maybe a few more...

The first guy decides to fire full auto, 10 shots, across the 2 meter wide sewer. So puts 5 bullets in each meter. The gang burns through its combat pool (probably a mistake and should have saved it for the damage resistance test.) Only the St. Sam got enough successes, and that took a reroll. So then the suppressing character makes a standard ranged combat Attack Test against the defender. Apply modifiers only for the attacker's wounds, the target's cover (if any), and a +2 for suppressive fire. So most of the gang takes a moderate or serious wound. The next PC saw how well that worked, so mimics it, 3 more moderate wounds because he missed half the gang, even though they had no combat pool left to dodge.

The next PC is worried about losing intiative and taking return fire in these close quarters, so pours all 10 shots into 1 meter, the one with the St. Sam at serious +3 boxes. It didn't matter that he put all 10 shots into the one meter, because that only matters to the dodge roll. The gang was done dodging this round. But his 2 successes are enough. The only NPC with a starting reaction over 10 is now dead. The next PC sees that the number of bullets don't matter so fires a burst into the 1 meter where the surviving 3 gang members are and kills them all.

Then he asks if he could have done it with one shot? I say no, because then it's a shot, not suppressive fire. Something about killing 3 people with 3 unaimed bullets seemed bad enough, but killing 3 with one bullet seems a bit too much.

Is this silly because of the close confines or did I screw up somewhere?

Let me put it this way.

If it's a two-meter area, and you're pumping FA fire into it, anyone on the other side should be dying, and fast, regardless of skill.

In other words, you did it properly but I submit that it is not silly.

~J

It'd sound somewhat less silly if rates of fire in Shadowrun were more realistic, since we'd then be talking about ~3-6 times as many rounds fired into the same space in the same time.

Still, even 30 rounds fired somewhat accurately into a 2 x 1 meter corridor within a few seconds would indeed cause serious problems to whoever is occupying said corridor at that time.

One thing that perhaps should be taken into account is that if 3 gangers occupy one side of the 2-meter-wide corridor, some of them are probably behind the others. Thus hitting them all would be rather problematic, at least with just 3 rounds fired. Maybe apply a Barrier Rating of (BOD + Armor)/2 of the ganger(s) in front when trying to hit the guys behind, or something of that nature, or just give them some measure of Cover.

Another thing: Thanks to a perceptive Dumpshocker, the latest errata of the Cannon Companion includes this bit: "Page 107: Suppressive Fire [3]
In the third paragraph, in the second sentence add "defaulting," between "attacker's wounds," and "the target's cover""
So your PCs, without any AR skills, should probably not have been hitting the gangers that well.

I haven't read the suppressive fire rules, how do they differ from normal fire? If the rules make it so that suppressive fire is better than normal fire, then the rules are definitely silly. You should not be able to kill people better with random fire than with aimed shots.

you have to fire a minimum of 6 rounds in order to suppress. so, no, no 1-bullet suppression.

you did it right. the only silly part is that it took 30 rounds in a 2-meter area to kill six people. and even that isn't that silly.

Agree with the above. But wanted to point out its 1 meter squares, not linear divisions of space. As in, a sewer thats 2 meters wide, and 2 meters tall, has 4 square meters of space as far as designating surpessive fire. That said, against people standing straight up with the ability to crouch, shooting the lower 2 square meters is a pretty fair move, but theres times when thats not the case.

oh, yeah, i'd fire 30 rounds just to be sure, too--unless i were playing shadowrun, in whichi case i'd fire 60 rounds just to be sure. in real life, 15-20 rounds or should ought to be enough; the other 10-15 are just to be sure. in SR, it actually takes all 30 rounds to do the job.

Surpessive fire in an enclosed space is incredibly deadly. Field of fire and zone of control is all that matters, you could be sending 6L rounds down there and it would still chew anybody up similarly to the chunky salsa effect of grenadesIMO.

What was that old Shadowtalk line about MPs? Or was it the Supermach?

Something about, "Oh boy, now I can flatten light rounds against body armor faster than ever before."

Not to mention how deafening all of these fire fights would be.

haha, yeah. nobody ever considers that.

say again?

Erratta, good. That was one I thought should apply but didn't see.

Now does TN8 still apply for defaulting using suppressive fire? As in can't defualt. Don't see why not.

How about defaulting from chipped skill? I'm guessing that is ok.

I am getting ready to make them make a weapon check to reload. One guy will probably end up reloading all the ARs for the party.

only very slightly. anybody who's watched Heat can operate a gun. they won't be able to maintain it, but they'll certainly be able to point it in the right direction, hold down the trigger, and reasonably expect bullets to come out.

I'm sure it's been done in lots of movies, but there was a scene from one - or maybe it was a book - where the gun-savvy character says to the non-savvy one something like "this is the safety. Push that across, point the gun at the bad guy, pull the trigger until you run out of bullets."

Almost started another topic to discuss when it is appropriate to enforce the defaulting limit, but I'll remind people in this situation they had a visibility modifier and the suppressive fire modifier that put the TN to 8.

Let them default? By the book, no.

[edit] Oops, btb, Yes. Unless I have the gangers dive below the water level seeking some cover.

tisoz, visibility modifiers don't apply to suppressive fire.

The TN limit is there to stop Cletus the Slack Jawed Yokel from defaulting Surgery to Intelligence and rolling a freak 30, masterfully performing a quadruple bypass in 48.3 seconds.

Like unfortunately far too much of SR canon, it makes sense sometimes and causes ridiculous problems moretimes.

Dunno ... I've never had my leg blown off.

I don't think there should be an arbitrary TN limit that precludes defaulting. As you say, defaulting alone incurs a (pretty hefty) TN penalty in and of itself, which added on to the normal penalties pretty much limits the chances of success anyway.

I don't (usually) use that particular rule in my games.

This is a situation in which the SR mechanics are very close to real life. When using automatic weapons in a narrow, enclosed space, those that shoot the firstest, with the mostest, win (allowing for the possibility of extraordinary circumstances).

one man with a machinegun and loads of bullets can take out a army if said army cant find cover or in some other way get out of range.

one man with a machine gun will die if everyone in said army simply shot at him once if he doesn't find cover or in some other way get out of range.

Indeed. For that to work you need a chokepoint. Thermopylae, anyone?

~J

I somehow think that the other guy won't be taking much better aim after taking a bullet.

~J

Or rather as we're talking about surpressive fire, after he's taken a lot of bullets.

Chances are he won't even feel it until it's all over. Unless that shot is instantly fatal, you're looking at either two dead or one dead and one wounded.

I suppose the downside to suppressive fire is that you burn clips of ammo fast. How many did they have left before they actually got to the complex? Also, even though it is not covered so much in the random encounter rules of SR, you could notably increase the number of encounter checks.

Or to teach them some restraint, have one of their next encounters use a grenade on them Sewers make great reflectors for grenade damage.

Restraint? They acted entirely appropriately for the situation.

~J

Firing a HMG in a sewer would be fun, though, apart from the noise problems that were mentioned. With that, 6 rounds might be quite sufficient for killing every motherfucker in the sewer. Those not in the same, straight corridor would get a heart attack. How and why you'd have a HMG in a sewer, I don't know, but it would be fun.

Defaulting definitely should count, though. It's certainly possible to fire dozens of rounds in a 2 x 2 meter corridor without killing any of the 6 people in it. If you've never fired guns before, some of the shots fired won't go very far into the corridor, and the rest might skip off the walls and otherwise cover the unpopulated spots of the corridor. There are still great possibilities in missing with suppressive fire IRL.

Although the defaulting modifier of +2 between a SMG and an AR when using suppressive fire indoors at rather close ranges is rather silly, but that's a problem of the fragmented firearm skills, not of suppressive fire.

Oddly last weekend we had the whole supressive fire thing play out with 1 against 8. He was in fact using an Ares HVAR against a bunch of gangers. He was shooting over 4 meters and got 7 out of 8 before getting shot to death. 200 rnds of ammo expended. It was quite a sight.

Austere Emancipator mentions that some of the enemy is behind others, you don’t need to com up with any strange rules involving shooting threw previous targets to get to them (Barrier ratings of bodies), the list of modifiers to the attack roll includes the target's cover. That should be considered.

Also I would rule that you can’t injure more people than you have bullets, that would require considering the Barrier rating of the body and by the time you consider a metahumon’s mass and twice there ballistic armor (has to get out the other side) it will be a rare occurrence at best

tisoz gave this list for things that would stop an unskilled gunman from using a weapon in adverse circumstances “Charging bolts, selector switches, safeties. A little more than point and shoot.”

As far as I can see there is nothing on that list that is easier when trying to put a single round in somebody’s chest than streaming the bullets out at somebody that is behind cover, or that is harder if the weapon lacks recoil compensation.

The strange thing about suppressive fire is it needs 6 rounds, when I was watching band of brothers they used suppressive fire with bolt action rifles. Now assuming the target is only moving threw one targeted square what dose it mater how many other targeted squares there are if each on only has one round in it.

Edward

In BoB they have semi-automatic rifles, M1 Garands, as well as M1 Carbines if you wish to call the latter "rifle".

The difference is that in military engagements the whole infantry formations are doing suppressive fire, and that IRL you can squeeze off a lot more than 2 rounds with semi-automatic weapons in 3 seconds -- and you can certainly squeeze off a lot more than 10 rounds with fully automatic weapons. When even just 4 guys are all firing an 8-round clip in 3 seconds, that amounts to quite a lot of bullets occupying the targeted area. Calling 2 or 3 rounds fired in 3 seconds "suppressive fire" would be a bit misleading.

Note that the US was the only power during WW2 to issue semi-automatic rifles to everyone, this tended to make US infantry formations comparatively very firepower heavy compared to the infantry of other nations.

Supressive fire supresses through psycological effect, not by how many bullets are in the area. Snipers are famous for 'supressing' large groups of soldiers with 'only 2-3 bullets'... It's the feat of being hit that supresses. If I can convince you that you will be hit while firing only a few bullets then fine, hundreds of bullets hitting 'way over there' are unlikely to supress...

The idea of being suppressed doesn't actually have a lot to do with the rules mechanics of Suppressive Fire in SR, though. In SR, suppressive fire is quite specifically about filling an area with bullets.

And while a sniper might be capable of keeping an infantry squad pinned down with only a few shots, I was under the impression that that's not actually referred to as suppressive fire in common use.

To my knowledge, it isn't. It's suppression, but that's a bit different.

Anyway, SR's suppressing fire really isn't suppressing fire, and I've never seen any satisfying mechanic for real suppressing fire in any system.

Sorry if I wasn't being clear, but my message was actually more in reply to Fortune's message about being able to fire a HMG in a general direction even without ever being trained with one. I have fired a HMG, and was just commenting that that would be an extrordinarily fun weapon to cover a sewer corridor with.

In case you didn't notice, I already commented on your group's actions in the 3rd message of this thread, and made note of their weaponry and lack of skill to use those weapons.