Recoil question.

[Boge]

So, this whole time my group has been playing what I think is 3rd edition rulings on recoil.

Every shot you take, your next shot will be reduced by the recoil of the gun regardless if it's another turn.

For instance, I fire my .40 calibur twice on one round. First shot is at gun skill level, second is -2. On the next round if I want to fire it again, I'm firing at -4. This doesn't clear until I don't fire that gun for a round. Even if I just fired once per turn, without clearing it (not firing it for a turn), the recoil would still add up the way we've been playing. Is that 3rd edition rules?

4th edition rules got rid of that and recoil only applies when firing multiple shots on the same round now? So it clears each round?

[Refplace]

Yep, I made the same mistake myself.
I take it to mean Fourth Edition is letting you use a Free Action to readjust your pointing at the end of your round. Old way you needed to take a moment out.

[Phantasm]

4e Rcl is more of a "Minutes of Separation" deal than accounting for "felt recoil". I think they only kept the name because "MoS" generally means "Margin of Success" and they didn't want to confuse folks even more. It's not the same general effect, but makes for smoother play, as the Rcl number helps tell how many shots hit from how many got fired.

Allow me to demonstrate:
Let's start with a rifle with Rcl 3 and RoF 10. Let's give our shooter a Guns (Rifle) skill of 14, and balance out the Acc and RoF bonuses and the Range penalty for an effective skill 14. He rolls a 10, giving him a MoS 4. A success lands him 1 shot regardless, then he adds an additional shot for every MoS/Rcl, rounded down, for a second hit. Yeah, he ends up wasting 8 of those bullets, but he lands 2 hits.

In 3e, assuming that was a -2 or -3 Rcl, he'd have to roll each shot individually. Nothing wrong with rolling a ton of dice, but the penalties were cumulative and that ended up with most of his shots missing anyway. A lot of rolling for very few hits.

Personally, I find the 4e version quicker and easier to handle. Roll once, that tells you how many hits you landed. (And I've had folks land all six blaster bolts when dual-wielding heavy pistols.... that hurt our Sith Lord...)



You'll notice that 3e Rcl is always a negative number (or at most a 0 for recoilless), while 4e Rcl is always a positive with a minimum of 1 for recoilless. The change in notation didn't tell you there was a rule change somewhere?

[Boge]

Wow. I can't believe we've been doing it wrong all this time.