I've seen a few comments in the "Search" about barrage being a bit useless, unless you're a sniper or man-cannon. I was thinking of a house rule where barrage adds a boost dice per rank when using auto-fire.

Any thoughts or comments on how you handle Barrage in your group?

It makes sense to also allow it to be used in starship scale combat when manning the guns. Close range in starship scale is roughly extreme range in personal scale.

It's not useless; it's situational (like a good many talents in this game). If it needs fixing, though, yeah sure that sounds like a good alteration.

Depends how you plan your fights - it was quite useful for the merc in our group. If you're a GM - plan a combat somewhere else than inside short/medium distances. If you're a player - ask your GM to do so. And try to plan shootouts yourself (in game) that give you an edge over your opponents.

The Merc in my group has frequently made use of this, as he oftens takes a sniper or flank position for the group, putting him at Long range to the enemy. He also modded his rifle to work with his tactics, using Marksman's Barrel to allow Extreme range and the Telescopic Optical Sight so shots at range aren't so difficult.

So, I agree that it's situational but still good, if the player plays toward it and the GM gives some opportunity for it.

The problem with Barrage isn't so much that it's not useful, it's that it's not inheariently useful to the trees that have it or with game design. When I think of a bodyguard, I think of someone who stands next to a target to take the hits and fights a protective battle. IRL, a guy with a pistol under his jacket or uzi in his suitcase. I don't picture a guy shooting heavy weapons from long range. It's also hard to shoot long range when you're having a running gun battle across a Star Distroyer. Barrage would've been better on Assassin or Sharpshooter type trees, the ones where they have a reason to have a sniper rifle at long range.

As for OP's suggestion to add boost dice to auto-fire rolls, I can't say I'm a fan of this. I'm sure we can all agree that auto-fire is already a pretty good ability. That's before you add the Jury Rigged ability to reduce the cost to 1 advantage or the Rain of Death ability to ignore increasing the difficulty. The former, some might not consider an issue because you need at least two trees to have both Jury Rigged and Barrage. The later however both appear on the Heavy tree. Adding a boost die while ignoring the difficulty increase while being able to carry a heavier gun than most means that it's a VERY strong combination. A combination I wouldn't want in my games.

As for how we played with Barrage, when I played a sniper I whished I had access to Barrage but my build didn't have room for another tree beyond Sharpshooter and Big Game Hunter, both of which I could see having Barrage. The Bodyguard we had in our group all but ignored he had it, but that was mostly because he forgot about half of his talents anyway.

For a player to have good use out of barrage, they need to plan ahead. They need to plan out ways for their character to be able to shoot from long range. For example, whenever the thought of combat came up, my sniper was always running away from the rest of the party to set up a sniper position. That way, if combat happened, he was in position to provide covering fire at long or extreme range. Kept him alive and gave our enemies from being able to engage, since a lot of folks just can't shoot out to extreme range.

If a player has barrage and wants to use it, the GM should be aware of this while designing adventures. If every adventure involves running around starships or bases, there is little need to go beyond short range. Afterall, narrow corridores make it hard to snipe. The GM should provide oppertunities for the players to engage the enemy from longer ranges so that they can use their cool long range talents.

While I agree with most of what Jamwes said, there are different kinds of bodyguards. The typical one, as he points out, is the one that's always right next to his client, often with concealed arms. This is where talents like Bodyguard come in.

However, some bodyguards might take a "protect from afar" approach. This would be those who wish to remain unseen, silent protectors; those who don't want to alert an enemy to their presence, or to interfere with what activities their protectee is engaged in. That kind might take up distance/sniper positions and make good use of barrage.

Also, if you get a lead on your enemy in a chase, or if you're the rearguard and your party is retreating toward you, you might be at long range.

That all to say, there are times when a bodyguar would sensibly use Barrage. However, Jamwes is right in that you have to plan for it, and that may not be typical bodyguard activity.

I usually have pre-game chats with the group to give them some RP tips or suggestions based on how the last session went. I will encourage them to consider their talents more and look for opportunities to use them better. The Barrage player could do some planning to get into a good position before the battle. Thanks all!