Ok if the base difficulty is <p> on any ranged attack, I'm at a real loss to understand how I would generate two chaos symbols to make the malfunction of a Unreliable 2 weapon go into effect?

Most Unreliable weapons have the Reload property. If you fail to spend the maneuver to Reload, you gain a <P> when shooting it. As well, certain ranged attack actions have additional <P> modifiers.

Thanks for the answer, athlough I can't see that happening much.

For example, Execution Shot ... which the Roadwarden in the demo adventure has, costs an extra <P> to get an additional Melee Strike after the shooting attack. It got used as often as it could. That meant the shot, though, was firing with a <PP> difficulty.

I'd (personally) increase the difficulty on a long range shot by <P> generally. Also, if the target knows he's being targeted and is doing something about it, I'd use an opposed check which can often bring several <P>s to the pool. (Although you shouldn't really <P> in the pool; it's unhygienic.)

monkeylite said:

I wanna try and use this idea too, kind of like a full defence option, but am in two minds how to make it happen.

Spending a manuver to change the roll from unopposed to opposed is one option, but might mean this happens too easily (which might be fine for you Monkeylite from when you have mentioned this in other threads, but i want this to be the exception rather than the norm for combat rolls in my game).

Alternative is to allow it to replace a players action for the round (although manuvers can still be perfornmed) but there isn't anything in the rules about this and so it sets a precedent and is a house rule that steps away from the base game more so than the option above.

Third alternative (and my current favourite) is to allow this to happen via a use of the perform a stunt action, the only change from base game then is that this action is peformed when you are attacked/shot at, rather than during your normal turn in the initiative order.

monkeylite said:

I was thinking of something along these lines.