That would be one of the more reasonable ways of going about it, as the majority of peole on earth aren't going to have the slightest idea of how to use automatic fire efficiently; kind of the differences in learning those skills from a hunting background as opposed to a military background. Though I think I would probably make autofire a "specialization" of either skill (with target numbers penalized if used without said specialization), rather than making it a separate skill entirely. Obviously, a Machine Gun skill would include it by default. Sniping could be another type of "specialization".

In my opinion, shotguns absolutely do not belong in the same skill group as rifles or SMGs. They may be long arms, but there is a very distinct difference in how shotguns are employed that training with other weapon types would not cover, both from hunting and tactical points of view. Shotguns should have their own skill.

There's really not much difference between using a slug gun (as opposed to a shotgun) and a rifle. In that case, I would allow the non-defaulted use of the Rifle skill, as what you're using technically is a rifle, and you're using it under very similar circumstances to a rifle. But, obviously, that's not what I had in mind.

There's a right huge difference between the kind of shooting one learns to do with a shotgun from a hunting background than the kind of shooting one learns with a rifle under pretty much any circumstances. Most of which has to do with speed of identification and engagement and leading moving targets. You learn those skills much sooner and at a faster pace shotgunning than one would when learning rifles and other long arms, if they find it necessary at all. As far as military training goes, there's really not much that would be different, other than the use of specialized munitions that simply aren't available in a rifle format, and special circumstances.

It's said that a shotgunner often makes for an excellent rifleman, while a rifleman often makes for a shitty shotgunner.

...and a fat guy makes a good pistol shooter.

This is SR, though - why treat shotgun as a separate skill when 90% of people with the skill will NOT have learned it as part of a hunting background?

Whether or not it's SR really doesn't matter. It's a different set of skills and, IMO, it's the right thing to do. Non combat-oriented characters (especially those from countries with heavy restrictions on firearms) might be more likely to learn shotgunning skills far before they would learn any skills specific to riflecraft.

I guess "shotgun" could also be a "specialization" of the Rifle skill, like "autofire" and "long range riflecraft", though that's kind of a backward way of dealing with it. Maybe I'm just not a huge fan of generalizing skills that much. Maybe it shouldn't matter at all.

This is an interesting idea, but if you're going that route then it should be a general rule for all skills. In fact I'd actually lower the maximum ranks you can get before having to specialize to 4; after that point you're mostly spending karma to develop your own personal "style" rather than proficiency, so at that point it would be an interesting twist to force people to specialize. That should be an optional rule, however, as it increases the bookkeepping for a not-really-necessary reason.

I like your skill deliniations. However I still think there should be a Str-based weapons skill, just to keep trolls and orks from getting screwed over. So, I like the idea of yours + Heavy Weapons.

OH, and one more thing: "Line of Sight" should probably have a range modifier set of its own, so casters, for example, actually have to deal with range penalties when casting a spell, and everyone has to deal with range penalties for Perception tests.

You make a good point. I suppose 4 makes a much better breaking point than 6. But I don't suppose that's a discussion for this thread.


As for STR based firearms, I don't get it. I understand the game balance issue, but I just don't see STR being a factor in using ANY firearm, short of making easier to carry/hold some of the heavier ones. Leave the STR linked skills tied to melee weapons. QCK and INT only for firearms.

As for line of sight, yeah, I toyed around with have weapon independant visual range target # modifiers, but it just added too much complexity and number crunching. That, and it made the TNs skyrocket. It might just be simpler to impose a flat TN modifier if a target is over X numbers of meters away and the shooter doesn't have a scope or any type of visual magnification.

I like this idea

Don't forget, most orks and trolls will get recoil modifiers due to STR which will even things out a bit.

I do like your firearms categorisations as well.

The 2nd Ed. Grimoire has such a table for spellcasting which I still use and also apply to perception. It makes goggles and binoculars useful.

Other points:
If the 'ammo swapping within the same weapon class' rules are dropped hold-outs and light pistols can be combined. Weapon class would then only pertain to range categories while weapons should be assigned calibres.

SMG's are penalised if fired 1 handed (or only pistols can be fired simultaneously).

Use the Shadowland(?) rules for autofire where recoil compensation isn't a TN modifier but determines the base number of rounds on target. Extra succeses can be used for staging or extra rounds on target.

Perhaps a bit too radical but you could look at SR1 power levels for small arms which range from 3 or 4 to 6. While armour ratings would have to be revised it would make the soak roll a little more pertinent where a character has light or no armour. Multiple rounds would add 1 to power and wound category for every 3 fired (double tap would add 1 to power). With SR2/3 power starts at 6 and manipulation spells seem to suffer in comparison.

Yeah. That's not really how it works, at least not in my experience. But I guess it's the best example I've seen of dealing with the problem (or at least what I perceive as such) so far.

Generally, what you tend to learn first in shotgunning is how to engage fast moving targets at relatively short range. That applies to both hunting and military/tactical training. In riflecraft, you learn in pretty much the exact opposite fashion. Slow moving targets at relatively long range first. The skills you learn in shotgunning can be applied to certain "advanced" rifle skills, such as CQB/CRE. But the skills you learn first in riflecraft really don't apply much to shotgunning, as there are extremely few circumstances in which you'd bother to engage any target with a shotgun beyond, say, 100 meters. In other words, people tend to learn shotgunning from the inside out and riflecraft from the outside in (or further out).

Also, in shotgunning, you don't deal with ballistics as point travelling in an arc as you would in riflecraft, but rather as a cone (again, slug guns have more in common with rifles than shotguns). So you tend to think about how to engage the target differently. That is, you think about it a lot less when shotgunning than you tend to in riflecraft, especially at longer ranges (sniping and such).

Anyway, "longarms" as a general skill kind of bothers me as there are longarms whose skills sets don't necessarily relate well to each other, especially at the lower levels. But that's just me.

The thing about how you learned in the military is that you were concentrating on assault rifles and machine guns, which are taught differently than general riflecraft is otherwise (how I learned it from a hunting background). With assault rifles, you learn both short range techniques that would apply more to submachine guns and mid-range techniques that apply to rifles. Marrying the two techniques into one weapon was the entire conception behind the assault rifle. It is a more generalized skill set than people tend to learn otherwise.

To be fair, I didn't say that you don't spend any time at all engaging moving targets in rifle training (I get my practice on gophers). But I would like to have a better idea of how much time you spent on engaging moving targets and at what ranges this training took place from a military standpoint. My guess is that when you're learning techniques that are more akin to submachine gun skills than riflecraft, close range engagement and the ability to engage fast moving targets at short range are likely to be taught a lot sooner and more intensely than they are otherwise.

Well, in respect to riflecraft, yes. I would agree. In shotgunning, you really don't tend to think about it much other than, "gee, out that far, my pattern is going to be way too big to do much of anything."

I guess my example on this point had more to do with the generalized skill being called "rifles" rather than "longarms". I didn't think riflecraft should be that generalized.

That's true. But that kind of thing I would associate more with very low skill levels (1-2). They're even things that can be taught without real application (i.e. sitting in your living room). By the time you get to be at an "average" level, you're likely to have that down to the subconscious. Learning how to handle the weapon does come first. But learning how to engage the target, being conscious of what's beyond it, and how you are likely to affect it are the important parts.

Hell, I've really taken this too far. It's really not that big of a deal. Just wanted to voice my concerns.

Good point. I never did sniper/DM school, so I suppose I never really learned any of the kind of riflecraft that most hunters learn. Got any way to summerize what I missed out on and what separates "riflecraft" from "SMG/ARcraft"?

ARM was really only a few weeks, and we shot at moving, man-sized silhouettes at short-medium range (50m - 200m). However, I don't think these qualified as "fast-moving" targets. It was certainly nothing like trying to take a flying duck with your 12-guage. Human beings don't tend to move that fast across your line of fire during an engagement, so I don't suppose those skills were a part of the curriculum.

Again, what's the difference between riflecraft and SMG skills. Apparently, I've been ignorant about this my whole life. Then again, maybe if I actually had the patience to hunt when I was a kid, I'd probably know.

That low, eh? Maybe I just overestimate my shooting skill. I suppose my limited experience is the culprit here. I suppose when I think about these skills, I develop a sort of "range mentality". Here is the idea. I can take somone who's never fired a firearm in their life, then spend a few weeks with them on the range shooting an M-16, then after that, if they aren't complete idiots, they can pick up a 12-guage pump action, 30-06 bolt action, or .308 semi-auto and once the learn how it feeds, they should have the same ability to knock down targets as they did with the M-16. At the very least, that's how it's worked for me. I will say, however, I've never had to use anything in combat other what I've trained with.

Indeed. And they are all very valid. Apparenlty my experience is severely limited when it comes to the skillsets applicable to different firearms. And that's why we have these boards...to educate dumbasses like me.

Generally, what you would learn during assault rifle training would probably represent the best all-around firearms skill for a shadowrunner to have, as it covers close range and medium range engagement as well as automatic fire. That should make it relatively easy to default to similar tasks with different firearms, such as submachine guns and general rifle.

About the only things that appear to me to be left out in assault rifle training are the things that you would apply in especially long range engagements. Far more in depth training regarding ballistics and environmental factors that affect long range ballistics, as well as the use and maintenance of magnifying optics (manual rangefinding and such). In other words, pretty near all of Chapter 3 of US Army Field Manual 23-10 (as well as a few other bits and pieces regarding marksmanship and equipment).

Most of the problems I have with these very generalized classifications comes from the other direction. While assault rifle training would cover most of the bases, other training may not cover the first thing about the judicious use of automatic fire, close range engagement, or long range engagement. To me, a "Rifle" skill would have very little to do with close range engagement and six pounds of dick to do with automatic fire (battle rifles would use the "Assault Rifles" skill). A "Shotgun" skill would have absolutely nothing to do with long range engagement and only under very specialized circumstances, automatic fire.

The use of automatic fire is not rocket science, but it takes some getting used to in order to keep yourself from using it excessively and in situations that don't call for it, which is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 85% of all ground combat situations. Case in point: Vietnam. The whole reason why the M16A2 was limited to 3-round burst fire. A mechanical solution to a simple lack of training. When people "go Rambo", they don't tend to hit a god damn thing they meant to. When they control themselves, autofire can get very nasty. Of course combat in SR, especially full autofire, tends to be ruthlessly efficient, so that hardly matters from the point of view of application in the game... Bah.

Bit of a left turn here...

I guess what I'm getting at is that the application dictates the skill used rather than the "weapon class". A person could use a slug-loaded shotgun with the "Rifle" skill without penalty. Or a submachine gun with the "Assault Rifle" skill. Or vice versa, so long as they weren't attempting to engage anything beyond 200m. So something like...

Pistols (Automatic)
Shotguns (Automatic)
Submachine Guns
Assault Rifles
Rifles (Long Range)
Machine Guns
Launch Weapons

Basically the only thing that would change from canon is how defaulting works.

Yeah, but the minute they try to knock something over at (gee... that black speck? what is that? it's pretty far out there... how far is that?) with only iron sights or a red dot, they're going to run into trouble. Different skills and equipment.

If you come at it from the other direction, teaching them on a range with the .30-06 bolt or .308 first, then you send them into a stressful, close quarters environment with an assault rifle, they're likely to end up blazing away, with target discipline turning to shit in about a minute and a half, shooting in the general direction of things they didn't have the skills to identify first because everything is happening so fast.

Well, I don't know how limited your experience is. You seem to be coming at it from the opposite direction of me. My experience with automatic firearms is sadly limited, but I have made it my business to learn how to operate with them, even if what I have is limited to semi-auto. And I do tend to hunt a bit, so there's that...

But what I'm getting really rusty at, what with not really having the opportunity to sit down and play SR anymore, is how to apply the things I've learned to the game in a practical, useful manner. I do tend to overanalyze these things, obviously. So in that respect, I'm as big of a dumbass as anyone else.

Ahhhh...VERY good point. The only time I ever engaged targets out past about 300M was on the M-60 range. And of course, long range rifle shooting has about as much in common with machinegunning as apples have in common with buicks.

"6 pounds of dick..." That is priceless! I gotta add that to my vocabulary.

The rest of the above is spot on. You better be careful...if you continue being right, people are gonna start expecting that of you all the time.

I think you can compress those skills a bit more, and maybe come from an application standpoint rather than a weapon class standpoint.

How about:
Format = Skill (Specializations)

CQB (Pistols, Shoulder Fired, Automatic fire)
Shotguns (Automatic Fire, Shot Rounds)
Riflecraft (Specific Weapon)
Launch Weapons
Gunnery (Machine Guns, Specific Weapon System)

Basically, CQB would incompass pretty much all uses of your handguns, close quarter and short range uses of Shotguns/Carbines/SMGs/Assault Rifles/Battle Rifles, and automatic fire from said weapon systems.

Shotguns would cover...well...shotguns being used in CQB and just about any other circumstance under which one would use a shotgun. Little bit of overlap here, but that is to be expected, I suppose. Also, you learn how to better engage targets using various types of shot ammunition.

Riflecraft will include all of your medium and long range, single shot, target engagement. This is the skill you would use when trying to hit that corporate sentry from 400 meters away with your 6.8 SPC Assault Rifle. A good rule of thumb here is engaging any target that is so far away as to appear smaller than your weapon's front sisight post will require the use of this skill.

Launch Weapons...duh.

Gunnery apparently means something different for me than it does to anyone else. Here are the practical experiences I have with what I consider would fall under Gunnery:

Suppressive fire/group target engagement w/M-60 from prone or on tripod.
Suppressive fire/target enegagement w/M2 .50 cal from Hummvee turret.
Suppressive fire/target enegagement w/Mk 19 40mm grenade launcher.
Suppressive fire/target enegagement w/25mm main gun on Bradley IFV.
Suppressive fire/target enegagement w/7.62mm coax on Bradley IFV.

While all slightly different weapon systems, they we pretty much all used the same way, at least the way I was trained.

You know what? To hell with this. It's too complicated and requires too much input from the GM. Why do I always try to make things so complicated???

Indeed. So how do we better represent that in SR?

Yeah...there is something to be said for familiaty with rules and actual game flow. Still, maybe someone will get inspired by this mish-mash of info and put it all into a concise, simple game mechanic. Kage, you up for that?

Killjoy.

Heh. One *does* wonder how Firearms managed to become like two dozen different skills, yet Computers or Biotech still remain basically single skills (with that *weird* nonsensical differentiation between Electronics, Electronics B/R and Computer B/R).

I think Computer belongs as one skill. It's not all that often that you find someone that can only, for example, admin a server and nothing else. I've found that people who are good at one aspect of computers tend to have a solid knowledge of all aspects.

Biotech is one skill because it is used, in typical SR games, for exactly ONE reason and that is first aid. I'll also note that if you read the medical rules in SR closely, you get the hint that they intended for you to take specialties(In various types of surgeries) and that you needed them to perform certain operations. This was never made very clear and honestly everyone ignores this.

---

If you want few skills

The default assumption in SR is that you are specialized in one aspect of a skill(Obviously, skills would need to ALL be broad skills for this to work). You are considered to be defaulting(Or just some TN mod, the point is that you aren't as good outside of your specialty) any time you do something outside of this UNLESS you buy a speciality. Thereafter, you can instead opt to roll your specialty ranks for that for no TN mod. Also, you'd start off by buying new specialties at a rank equal to your original skill. If you want to JUST be good at one thing, you can do the specialty rules as usual or something. I'm really tired and just rambling ATM.

The idea here is that instead of having Rifles, Shotguns, and Assault Rifles, you'd have Long Arms(6) and say your initial skill is in assault rifles. Then you'd later decide "I want to wield shotguns effectively too", so you'd pick up a specialty in shotguns at specialization costs.

I think I'm getting my point across. You start off specialized, then you choose to take more specialties. Got it? We'd probably merge some skills, maybe lower karma costs some across the board.

I disagree. I know power users who can't program to save their lives. I know sysadmins who don't know how to program their way out of a box in anything but scripting languages. I know programmers/CS professors whose explanation for why they put an unsecured wireless access point in their office when being questioned because someone had used it to anonymously distribute hacked software was "I didn't think anyone would do anything like that". I know people who sling assembly who don't necessarily recognize the sudo command on sight.

There's a lot to computers, and while proficiency in one area generally translates into basic competency most other places, it doesn't necessarily translate into anything like proficiency.

~J

Indeed. Ask me about protocols, no matter how obscure... and I know it. Networking is in me. Ask me to program, though, and... well, you're on your own. I dabble in Python & Perl, but... I hate coding. Networking, and securing those networks, has always been my only "Skill". Is this a specialization, or is it how most people work?

I'd disagree, at least partially. To me it means "harder to resist". My point was that since the opinion seemed to be that an assault rifle and a heavy pistol would be similarly effective against an unarmoured opponent but that the rifle would shine against an armoured one, that the difference might be better reflected by armour reduction (for which there is a precedent, albeit only the one I think) than by amendments to the power or damage level.

Seconded. My system has 'Heavy' Pistols at 7-9M, with Assault Rifles at 9-12M. They deal roughly the same wound in the end, but Assault Rifles both have higher armour penetration, AND much better range.

Edit: And, of course, an Assault Rifle at 9-12M deals more damage in Burst/Full Auto; just talking about single rounds, here.