Alternate Rapid Fire System

Anaximander · 07-26-2015, 01:05 PM

I've been working for a while on house rules to improve the speed and ease of gameplay for my sci fi campaign. So far I've done a lot to make character creation and character point management easier on my players, but there's a lot about the combat system I feel the need to improve on.

By far the biggest single time consumer at my game table is computing the outcome of a player's rapid fire attack. The process of first deciding how many shots to fire, adding the RoF bonus to attack, finding your margin of success, dividing that number by your weapon's Rcl, and then applying the number of hits as a penalty to the target's defense is frankly too much for some players to handle. For many, one player firing on full auto against one or more targets is a cue for them to go take a smoke or a **** break. My wife, for example, chooses for her character to not even carry a firearm in game in order to avoid having to ever roll such an attack. It can also a drag for the GM who might need to handle an entire platoon of bad guys armed with automatic weapons.

What I'm looking for ideally is a new system with the following features:
1. Shooters have the option between single-shot, short-burst, full auto, and suppression fire.
2. Multiple to-hit rolls won't be required against the same target.
3. Clear, concrete bonus and penalties are applied to skill, damage and defense rolls for the different options.

What alternate systems for rapid fire have been published? What systems have you used? How might I go about designing my own system? Thanks to everyone for all your help.

07-26-2015, 01:05 PM	#1
Anaximander Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Augusta, GA	Alternate Rapid Fire System I've been working for a while on house rules to improve the speed and ease of gameplay for my sci fi campaign. So far I've done a lot to make character creation and character point management easier on my players, but there's a lot about the combat system I feel the need to improve on. By far the biggest single time consumer at my game table is computing the outcome of a player's rapid fire attack. The process of first deciding how many shots to fire, adding the RoF bonus to attack, finding your margin of success, dividing that number by your weapon's Rcl, and then applying the number of hits as a penalty to the target's defense is frankly too much for some players to handle. For many, one player firing on full auto against one or more targets is a cue for them to go take a smoke or a **** break. My wife, for example, chooses for her character to not even carry a firearm in game in order to avoid having to ever roll such an attack. It can also a drag for the GM who might need to handle an entire platoon of bad guys armed with automatic weapons. What I'm looking for ideally is a new system with the following features: 1. Shooters have the option between single-shot, short-burst, full auto, and suppression fire. 2. Multiple to-hit rolls won't be required against the same target. 3. Clear, concrete bonus and penalties are applied to skill, damage and defense rolls for the different options. What alternate systems for rapid fire have been published? What systems have you used? How might I go about designing my own system? Thanks to everyone for all your help.