[Basic] RoF and Random Location

[jacobmuller]

I believe this was answered somewhere before but I can't find it.
You've elected the Target of Opportunity option, ie roll randomly for hit location, for a RoF# attack.
If you achieve multiple hits, do you roll hit location randomly for each hit or roll only once, and apply all the hits to the one location?

[lexington]

Originally Posted by jacobmuller

I believe this was answered somewhere before but I can't find it.
You've elected the Target of Opportunity option, ie roll randomly for hit location, for a RoF# attack.
If you achieve multiple hits, do you roll hit location randomly for each hit or roll only once, and apply all the hits to the one location?

I don't know if there's an official ruling but rolling a location for each hit is generally a better solution, otherwise the table gets RIDICULOUSLY swingy.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by lexington

I don't know if there's an official ruling but rolling a location for each hit is generally a better solution, otherwise the table gets RIDICULOUSLY swingy.

Either way can be a bit weird. Roll once, and you put a long machinegun burst through a guy's eye. Roll every bullet, and your three-round high cyclic burst puts one round in a guy's foot and the other in his forehead.

[jacobmuller]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Either way can be a bit weird. Roll once, and you put a long machinegun burst through a guy's eye. Roll every bullet, and your three-round high cyclic burst puts one round in a guy's foot and the other in his forehead.

Indeedy. So apply on a case by case basis, e.g. Aim a short burst, one location, Random long burst, random locations?
Or maybe I just need the Grand Unified Hit Location App:/

[lexington]

Originally Posted by jacobmuller

Indeedy. So apply on a case by case basis, e.g. Aim a short burst, one location, Random long burst, random locations?
Or maybe I just need the Grand Unified Hit Location App:/

Other than the G11 and the AN94 (both very rare) I doubt most guns can realistically be fired to get multiple hits on a location smaller than the torso unless you have the gun in a vice. Against very large targets, however, having everything hit one location would be sensible.

[Juca]

Well, is not that unreallistic, during combat, to hit very distant locations (more than one meter appart) with the same burst. Combat is chaotic, and at long ranges, if you trembler your gun even a little during the burst, the shots can go anywhere.

There is no official rule, but unless you are using one of the few weapons that fire "very rapid short bursts", I recommend simply rolling for each shot hit (an automated program helps immensely)

[Kromm]

Roll once per bullet for most weapons. Unless the gun is clamped in place and the target is similarly immobile, there's no good reason for bullets not to end up all over the place. A second is a long time: Between when the trigger is pulled at 0s and the last bullet in the burst leaves at 1s, the average man could cover his whole Move 5 . . . and may well be doing that, since turns are meant to happen simultaneously, with the combat sequence merely being an abstraction for handling that manageably. Setting aside that time-mesh consideration, there's also the fact that positional uncertainty equals space-mesh size, or ±1 yard in any direction available for movement; that's true even if the target is standing still from turn to turn and not using his Move. So don't worry about why you're hitting a foot, a hand, and the skull, say.

High-cyclic bursts use different rules: Treat each burst as a shot for hit location.

[jacobmuller]

<3 all three possible RoFs answered in one KQ:D {semi, full and burst)
Now that annoying little voice is saying What about Aimed?
eg if you Aim 3 shots at Torso or Hand or Eye... And an SF oddity, 20 rounds with Rcl1 at eye, hand or torso?
Is it: first shot* hits the Aim point, the rest are Random? (first burst* for high-cyclic rate)

[Kromm]

For simplicity's sake, if you actually select a hit location and attack at its penalty – rather than leave the matter to chance – then all hits strike that body part. Somebody aiming at, say, the skull is already rolling at -7, which will mean seven fewer hits at Rcl 1, three fewer hits at Rcl 2, two fewer hits at Rcl 3, etc.; that limits how unrealistic this ruling will seem in actual play. On a less meta level, the shooter is "aiming high" rather than spraying and praying, so it only makes sense that he hits high.

The more realistic alternative would be to develop location-specific tables and use them for all hits after the first . . . because there will always be some scatter, but if you're shooting for a foot or the face, the fact that you're aiming low or high should make a difference. In that case, if you opt not to pick a location, you waive the right to use those tables, because you aren't actually shooting CM, high, low, left, right, etc. but are spraying and praying. However, such tables would add undue complexity, especially when you consider that each body layout would need its own full set.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by lexington

Other than the G11 and the AN94 (both very rare) I doubt most guns can realistically be fired to get multiple hits on a location smaller than the torso unless you have the gun in a vice. Against very large targets, however, having everything hit one location would be sensible.

By that logic, if you can't realistically hit a -7 Skull like that, you can't realistically hit a person at -7 distance like that either. If so, RoF becomes more useless than in WoD.