Heavily influenced by paintball, Gears of War, and GTA IV; I've been wondering how to deal with blind firing .

An Acolyte behind cover exposes only one arm (or perhaps two if it's a basic weapon, isn't compact, and s/he doesn't have a recoil glove) to shoot at their target, rather than exposing their head and possibly their body in order to fire around cover.

Currently I'm thinking that no positive modifiers should be made for short range (although long range still applies), and the shooter takes a -30 penalty to hit just as if they were the victim of suppressing fire. While semi- and fully-automatic shooting would be fine, aiming and using suppressing fire would not since you can't "focus" your attention enough while behind cover to see your opponent/fire corridor.

What are your thoughts? Would you omit blind-firing all together? Do you have any ideas for different rules? Can you spot a way this idea could be exploited? Would it be unbalanced when used in conjuction with grenades or flamers?

I could see it be a little unbalanced with flamers. What I do, is simply allow them to do it with whatever weapon firing whatever rate of fire, and slap a -30 on it. -60 if they just got into combat and don't even know where the enemy are.

Perhaps the fix for flamers, then, would be to apply modifiers as if the user was untrained so that the wielder's target gets a bonus to their Agility check in order to avoid the flames?

By my understanding suppressing fire was blind-firing: you're saturating an area with fire without aiming for hits, which is something you can do from the relative safety of cover. You're just putting enough lead/lasbolts/etc in the air to pin people. In effect you're taking a -40 to hit (which is somewhat negated by the +20 for full auto).

For blind-firing full auto and going for hits ("I think there's a guy next to that statue, I'm shooting there") I'd go with a total of -10 to hit (-30 for your rules for blind-firing, +20 for full auto), but you can't sweep your hits to additional targets. I'd also consider mucking about with shortening ranges, but that'd just make the rules cumbersome.

As for flamers, they were very effective when blind-fired in GoW 2. I'm with you on this one, though it wouldn't help if there was nowhere to dodge to. Which'd make flamers even more useful in tight quarters.

My Tech-priest figured out that she could be almost impossible to hit in combat when she uses her gun mechandrite to poke around corners and shoot, and her optical mechandrite to poke around the corner to aim.

But then again my players always were unconventional... One of them, inspired by WWI assault troops, has taken to running around with nothing but a sword and a sack of grenades. I let him dual-wield the sword and grenades with appropriate penalties since it isn't to overpowered, and it is hilarious.

Snidesworth said:

That's not what I meant about blind firing (see the wiki link in the opening post). I'm not talking about shooting up an area rather than a person (perforating a table that you've seen a ganger dive behind for instance, that's already dealt with in the rules I think ); I mean shooting around a corner without poking your head around it.

Blind firing is shooting without looking. Suppressing fire is filling a corridor with bullets (or whatever) so that your enemy keeps his head down. They're not really the same thing.

I would think that you'd have to have a relatively clear view of a given area to use suppressing fire in it. Suppressing fire around a corner doesn't do much good as you have no real idea of where you're aiming or even if there is still anyone on the other side. In games like Gears of War you can actually see what you're shooting at when "blind" firing, but in reality (and to any Acolytes attempting it) you wouldn't be able to see anything in your fire corridor at all.

Texas_Ben said:

That's just fantastic. He sounds like the kind of soldier who would be seen walking out of an inferno, lho-stick in his mouth and a bloodied cutlas in his hand.

Why not try something simple?

Perhaps just reduce the range by a given amount, perhaps by a factor of 5.

Example: Autogun (Range 90) has a range of only 18 when blind fired. This massivly reduces its accurracy at range (Its max range is now much lower, smaller even than that of the weapon itself.) and keeps the benefits of short, (Pointing an autopistol round the cover someone else is hiding behind... Not much chance of them surviving unscathed!)

Well thats how I would do it, I just hope none of my players try it...