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Old 11-22-2019, 08:38 PM   #1
awesomenessofme1
 
Join Date: Mar 2016
Default Can you combine Rapid Fire and Area Effect

And if so, how does it work?
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Old 11-22-2019, 09:09 PM   #2
AlexanderHowl
 
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Default Re: Can you combine Rapid Fire and Area Effect

It is treated as a barrage of grenades or rockets. You would use the scatter rules as normal for misses, so you would probably end up doing a lot of collateral damage. If you are using a burning attack or an incendiary attack, you could create an inferno.

For example, let us consider a character with Burning Attack 12d (Accuracy+10, +50%; Area Effect, 4 yards, +100%; Increased Range, ×100, +60%; Rapid Fire 300, Selective Fire, +310%) [372]. If they succeed, they will hit their target with one of their 300 area attacks, plus one for every point of success, while the remainder will scatter according to their place in the attack. So, if they succeeded by ten, the first 11 would hit the target, the 12th would miss by one yard, the 13th by 2 yards, the 14th by 3 yards, etc. The direction would be random though. Since there are hundreds of fires forming within 300 yards of the target, everyone around the target will likely be burned to a crisp as well.
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Old 11-23-2019, 12:27 AM   #3
Ulzgoroth
 
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Default Re: Can you combine Rapid Fire and Area Effect

I believe you'll find that the scatter rules as written do not interact with the rapid fire rules, and there are no canonical rules for how to resolve 'misses' from a barrage of grenades, rockets, or other explosive/area of effect ranged attacks.
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Old 11-23-2019, 05:38 AM   #4
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Default Re: Can you combine Rapid Fire and Area Effect

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
I believe you'll find that the scatter rules as written do not interact with the rapid fire rules, and there are no canonical rules for how to resolve 'misses' from a barrage of grenades, rockets, or other explosive/area of effect ranged attacks.
This is true, but it does make sense to step each miss up by the weapon's/power's Rcl to work out how much each shot missed by. However, for high-velocity direct attacks using the normal scatter rules makes little sense anyway. For example, if you fire an autocannon at some target and miss, the shells aren't going to land all around it, as the rules on B414 suggest, but mostly just continue on downrange for hundreds or thousands of yards. GM rulings and common sense are required.
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Old 11-23-2019, 03:00 PM   #5
Plane
 
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Default Re: Can you combine Rapid Fire and Area Effect

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
I believe you'll find that the scatter rules as written do not interact with the rapid fire rules, and there are no canonical rules for how to resolve 'misses' from a barrage of grenades, rockets, or other explosive/area of effect ranged attacks.
B373 : get a bonus to hit based on number of shots
B374 : get more than one hit based on MoS and recoil (max hits = RoF)
B414 : missed shots miss MoF yards

This is compatible enough if you fail you roll, just figure out your RoF and that's how many rounds you shot, and use MoF to determine how many yards off the misses were.

The central problem we face here is that Rapid Fire results in some of your shots missing even when the attack DOESN'T miss. So you're left with them missing by 0 yards.

That seems simple enough to resolve: you would determine a separate MoF for successive shots equal to your skill minus multiples of recoil.

So for example, if you had a skill of 13, recoil 2, fired 4 shots, and rolled 10 to hit...

1st shot: MoS 3 (hit) in respect to 13-0*2 (13)
2nd shot: MoS 1 (hit) in respect to 13-1*2 (11)
3rd shot: MoF 1 (miss) in respect to 13-2*2 (9)
4th shot: MoF 3 (miss) in respect to 13-3*2 (7)

The 3rd shot had a MoF of 1, so it misses by 1 yard and targets one of the 6 adjacent hexes.
The 4th shot had a MoF of 3, so it misses by 3 yards.

That's roughly what happens right? Your roll has to beat your skill minus recoil-times-shots-preceding?
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Old 11-23-2019, 03:12 PM   #6
Ulzgoroth
 
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Default Re: Can you combine Rapid Fire and Area Effect

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Originally Posted by Plane View Post
B373 : get a bonus to hit based on number of shots
B374 : get more than one hit based on MoS and recoil (max hits = RoF)
B414 : missed shots miss MoF yards

This is compatible enough if you fail you roll, just figure out your RoF and that's how many rounds you shot, and use MoF to determine how many yards off the misses were.

The central problem we face here is that Rapid Fire results in some of your shots missing even when the attack DOESN'T miss. So you're left with them missing by 0 yards.

That seems simple enough to resolve: you would determine a separate MoF for successive shots equal to your skill minus multiples of recoil.

So for example, if you had a skill of 13, recoil 2, fired 4 shots, and rolled 10 to hit...

1st shot: MoS 3 (hit) in respect to 13-0*2 (13)
2nd shot: MoS 1 (hit) in respect to 13-1*2 (11)
3rd shot: MoF 1 (miss) in respect to 13-2*2 (9)
4th shot: MoF 3 (miss) in respect to 13-3*2 (7)

The 3rd shot had a MoF of 1, so it misses by 1 yard and targets one of the 6 adjacent hexes.
The 4th shot had a MoF of 3, so it misses by 3 yards.

That's roughly what happens right? Your roll has to beat your skill minus recoil-times-shots-preceding?
This is a thing you can make up, and it does make sense from the internal logic of the rapid fire rules.

I have two points to make about it though. First, as I already pointed out, this is not actually what the rules say. The rules don't say where those shots land at all. (Also, probably the most relevant rules for the surplus shots are Hitting the Wrong Target, BS389. Even applying that to excess shots fired in a basic single target rapid fire attack doesn't seem to be called for by the Basic Set though!)

Second, the 'successive shots miss by incremental distances' is not an accurate description of how weapons work in most circumstances. (Maybe if you're suffering uncontrolled barrel rise in an automatic small arm.) The internal logic of the rapid fire rules is nothing like how rapid fire actually works.
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Old 11-23-2019, 04:23 PM   #7
Plane
 
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Default Re: Can you combine Rapid Fire and Area Effect

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
The rules don't say where those shots land at all.
Well, they land MoF yards away, but you lack a MoF for your rapid-fire misses, so presumably they miss but land within the target's hex.

The RAW being overly generous is I think why you'd calculate MoF in respect to the lower effective skill you're basically rolling against (subtracting Recoil).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
Second, the 'successive shots miss by incremental distances' is not an accurate description of how weapons work in most circumstances. (Maybe if you're suffering uncontrolled barrel rise in an automatic small arm.) The internal logic of the rapid fire rules is nothing like how rapid fire actually works.
Incremental distances isn't really how bad aim works either, there should be a 1 in 6 chance of moving continuously in a line away from target, 1 in 6 directly back toward them, etc. Could just roll d6 each time to plot a random route the bullets take.
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Old 11-23-2019, 08:52 PM   #8
Ulzgoroth
 
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Default Re: Can you combine Rapid Fire and Area Effect

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Originally Posted by Plane View Post
Well, they land MoF yards away, but you lack a MoF for your rapid-fire misses, so presumably they miss but land within the target's hex.
That's a thing you could decide but it's not something the rules say. And frankly, going from 'this number doesn't exist and the conditions for using it don't apply' to 'so just use zero' is not really sensible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Plane View Post
Incremental distances isn't really how bad aim works either, there should be a 1 in 6 chance of moving continuously in a line away from target, 1 in 6 directly back toward them, etc. Could just roll d6 each time to plot a random route the bullets take.
Okay? I'm not sure a random walk (which would with some frequency loop back to being a hit after you already determined a miss) is a good idea, but whether it is or not that doesn't make it better to use the wrong representation of how automatic shots that don't hit the target are distributed.
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Old 11-24-2019, 12:17 AM   #9
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Default Re: Can you combine Rapid Fire and Area Effect

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Originally Posted by Plane View Post
Well, they land MoF yards away, but you lack a MoF for your rapid-fire misses, so presumably they miss but land within the target's hex.
It makes more sense to assume that they miss completely and end up out of the battlefield and consideration.
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Old 11-25-2019, 07:37 AM   #10
Gnome
 
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Default Re: Can you combine Rapid Fire and Area Effect

I would say there are good reasons to simply disallow the combination of Area Effect (or Explosion) and Rapid Fire. The Rapid Fire rules are a rough-and-ready way to represent a complex reality, but the model falls apart if you pick at it too much. If someone wants to have an auto-fire rocket launcher or something, represent it as either a single Area attack that does more damage, a Bombardment attack, or something else, but I would never want to use this particular combination of modifiers, as the total damage dealt becomes extremely high compared with the value of the attack.
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