So I'm a veteran player of Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, and Mutant Chronicles - go figure right?! Anyways - some games handle Stay Fire well while other not so well - today I present my revisions to the Stray Shot rules found in the CORE Book...

Stray Shots

Vanilla: GMs keen on reinforcing the merciless nature of the 41st Millennium can rule that if a character shooting into a melee combat misses his target by a small margin (one degree of failure), the attack instead hits another target engaged in the same melee. The GM might also rule that anyone shooting into a melee combat with a Semi-Auto Burst or Full Auto Burst must allocate multiple hits to different targets engaged in the melee.

Revised: After the intended target is hit and that is resolved – next take the damage of all the remainging “shots” fired and roll / add them up. Take that total number and as GM roll percentile – for every Success scored by the GM apply 1 hit to an adjacent target. If multiple targets are present around the intended primary – roll randomly to determine who got hit by these stray shots…

BREAKDOWN / Example:

Say a Player is firing a group of shots – say x5 (shots) at an intended primary target who is surrounded by 2 foes and 1 ally!

Player firing hits with only 1 Shot out of the 5 – leaving 4 errant shots to determine.

Roll the total damage for all those stray shots – then roll percentile under that tallied value.

Gun Example = D10+3 per Shot

Say I roll; Rolling 4d10 + 12 ( 2 + 2 + 3 + 2 ) + 12 = 21 – now I have to Roll under 21 – by this low number at maximum this will only result in one single stray shot being able to actually hit anyone surrounding that primary intended character… FIN

The DoS applied 1 shot to any of those surrounding persons around out primary intended target herein!

2 foes and 1 ally – so I roll d10

1, 2, 3 = friend/ ally (gave benefit here to player)

4, 5,6, 7 = Foe A

8, 9, 10 = Foe B

Note: To close out – I would not apply situational modifiers to that tallied roll (for total damage) for things like Range, Visibility, Cover, Etc… In addition I would not apply modifiers due to weapon customizations (i.e. mods) or firing mode (burst vs auto) to this stray shot roll.

FIN

Advise - do you see a way to abuse this house rule - is it even good?

Morbid

Edited February 18, 2016 by MorbidDon

I don't think that's necessary.

When I play, I give the penalty for shooting in melee.

If the player fails by a number of degrees of failure equal to the penalty (2 for -20, for example), i consider that he touches the melee and allocate randomly the hits between the other person present in melee.