Even though I don't post in these forums I read them often, mainly to assist me on ideas and for rule clarifications. I am starting a new campaign and in that group I know I'm getting a PC that will be using autofire and jury-rigged. I haven't had to GM yet for a player using autofire nor have I used an NPC that did as well, however I have read these forums enough to know that many people here view autofire as maybe being broken. That being said I am trying to avoid a situation where a player creates a character using autofire and jury-rigged then becomes upset because I alter the rules concerning its use after the campaign has started.

That being said I have thought long and hard on how or even if I should house rule this. I have read just about every post concerning this subject and to many posters credit a lot of fair arguments and suggestions have been made. I'm making this post to share my idea on how to handle it, I haven't seen any house rulings resembling this and if there are and I missed it I apologize.

My solution: Allow jury-rigged to work as intended, 1 advantage would activate the autofire weapon quality. However, everytime the PC or NPC activates the autofire weapon quality it cancels a success that was rolled. Thus reducing the subsequent hits damage and total number of times it could be activated.

Example: PC shoots NPC using autofire and jury-rigged, his roll nets a result that equals 1 success and 4 advantage. Under this ruling he would only be able to activate autofire once even though he has more than enough advantage to do so multiple times. In the same scenario if the PC had net 4 successes and 4 advantage he could have activated autofire 4 times but even then the damage between the first hit and the subsequent hits would be diminished.

I think this solution does a few things. First it better reflects how hard it should be to repeatedly hit a target. Second it tones down how out of hand the autofire quality can get and third even if you do manage to get a lot of hits those subsequent hits will have their damage reduced even if it is minor.

I'm not sure I'd reduce damage for each hit, though capping the number of extra hits to the number of successes could work. Mathematically, the dice tend towards Failure + Advantage, or Success + Threat. Basically, every face that has a success doesn't have advantage, and vice versa. So the more advantages you get, the fewer successes you are likely to get. By maxing the number of extra hits to successes, it becomes a self-regulating mechanic already, so reducing damage for each extra hit becomes unnecessary.

The odds become slim then that the PC will roll a lot of successes and a lot of advantages...but if they do make such an awesome roll, do you really want to take the joy out of that 1/1000 chance roll?

Personally I'd just let Jury-Rig count for the first trigger and make additional triggers cost the normal amount of advantage. That would be simplest while still giving the PC some value.

If a player were to have a 1/1000 chance roll like you suggested the tweak I made wouldn't in my opinion limit the joy from getting a great roll. It simply would limit the extent to how great the result is. Getting 4 extra hits in my book is still pretty awesome.

This way if a player were to net just 1 success (which means you narrowly hit the target) he wouldn't be rewarded with an insane number of extra hits rewarded from AF/JR. It also makes the extra advantage gained useful in some other manner.

games been out for quite a while no erratra has been made so auto fire can be concluded to be working as intended, messing with it is just boning your pc for no reason and making your game less fun. Instead try creating a nemesis/rival who has autofire and balance the scales

2 hours ago, Reno Shiv said:

Even though I don't post in these forums I read them often, mainly to assist me on ideas and for rule clarifications. I am starting a new campaign and in that group I know I'm getting a PC that will be using autofire and jury-rigged.

Lotsa ideas about it here. I agree it needs polish and boundaries. I don't get overly concerned with PCs using it, but it's nigh on impossible to use it against them without sweeping the deck.

9 minutes ago, amrothe said:

games been out for quite a while no erratra has been made so auto fire can be concluded to be working as intended, messing with it is just boning your pc for no reason and making your game less fun. Instead try creating a nemesis/rival who has autofire and balance the scales

I toyed with that idea and alot of people have argued well in favor for things along those lines, but in my opinion I feel others in the group that don't want that in their build end up getting punished because of 1 PC that does.

3 hours ago, Reno Shiv said:

My solution: Allow jury-rigged to work as intended, 1 advantage would activate the autofire weapon quality. However, everytime the PC or NPC activates the autofire weapon quality it cancels a success that was rolled. Thus reducing the subsequent hits damage and total number of times it could be activated.

Example: PC shoots NPC using autofire and jury-rigged, his roll nets a result that equals 1 success and 4 advantage. Under this ruling he would only be able to activate autofire once even though he has more than enough advantage to do so multiple times. In the same scenario if the PC had net 4 successes and 4 advantage he could have activated autofire 4 times but even then the damage between the first hit and the subsequent hits would be diminished.

I think this solution does a few things. First it better reflects how hard it should be to repeatedly hit a target. Second it tones down how out of hand the autofire quality can get and third even if you do manage to get a lot of hits those subsequent hits will have their damage reduced even if it is minor.

Obviously I like this one, because I suggested nearly the same. I just just a little more practical and drastic and canceled downright one success per autofire activation and thus reduced the damage of all his by the amount of extra hits generated. This is basically a soft damage cap for autofire.

With that said, we play with standard autofire, alas no player tried to jury rig those weapons so far, everyone has different and maybe even more OP preferences, my hotshot prefers to bring gunnery weapons, the astromech has explosives, the murder bot has disrupters and thermal detonators, the face is just pure awesome and the force users have extreme utility based on their lightsabers and force powers.

2 hours ago, Reno Shiv said:

If a player were to have a 1/1000 chance roll like you suggested the tweak I made wouldn't in my opinion limit the joy from getting a great roll.

It most certainly could. Each time you take away damage, the target's soak plays more of a role. Let's say the PC got four successes, and the advantage to use it. So four hits against, say, Soak 5, with a base damage of 9 (which would have been 13 points per RAW), means a net damage of 9 per hit, which, after soak, is barely enough to take out a couple of stormtroopers in a minion group. And that's from an awesome roll that should at least wipe out a minion group.

2 hours ago, whafrog said:

It most certainly could. Each time you take away damage, the target's soak plays more of a role. Let's say the PC got four successes, and the advantage to use it. So four hits against, say, Soak 5, with a base damage of 9 (which would have been 13 points per RAW), means a net damage of 9 per hit, which, after soak, is barely enough to take out a couple of stormtroopers in a minion group. And that's from an awesome roll that should at least wipe out a minion group.

Let's check,

roll = 4 hits and 4 advantages against a minion group using a HBR (Stormtroopers) Soak is 5 and WT is 5

first hit = 10+4 successes for 14 damage. 14-5 for soak = 9

second hit = 10+3 successes for 13 damage. 13-5 for soak = 8

third hit = 10+2 successes for 12 damage. 12-5 for soak = 7

fourth hit = 10+1 success for 11 damage. 11-5 for soak = 6

your net damage from those 4 hits = 30 damage that is more than enough to take down a minion group of STs.

In that scenario a player would have eliminated a 5 minion group of STs. When you factor mod attachments,aiming and other talents you can enter the realm of WTF, and that goes both ways because what is good for the PCs is also good for the NPCs. A good roll whether using this tweak or not will still have amazing results. Lets not forget too that the player with AF/JR is not likely to be playing by himself, other players might like to get a chance to see some smoke coming out of their barrels every now and then. It's not fun watching your teammate kill everything while you stand by and just watch all the time.

I can see how a character that is new might have trouble taking down a minion group like above but then again he's new and that's why you have partners, to give you a helping hand. However after 6 sessions or so even a PC without JR will still be able to attain multiple hits using Aim, Attachments, and Talents.

I found the simplest solution was to just view all advantages spent on auto-fire in a single attack as being a single advantage cost, and apply the reduction for Jury Rigged only once . So the second hit would only cost a single advantage, but the third and subsequent hits would cost 2 as normal. That way there's still some benefit to applying Jury Rigged to that particular quality without allowing the weapon to mow down half a squad in a single attack.

5 hours ago, Vorzakk said:

I found the simplest solution was to just view all advantages spent on auto-fire in a single attack as being a single advantage cost, and apply the reduction for Jury Rigged only once . So the second hit would only cost a single advantage, but the third and subsequent hits would cost 2 as normal. That way there's still some benefit to applying Jury Rigged to that particular quality without allowing the weapon to mow down half a squad in a single attack.

That is a nice one as it is similar in power level to the other options from jury rigged, if you rolls are good and the enemies have lots of soak, for example because you have 4 ranks of true aim and you are fighting dark troopers, you might actually increase damage over decrease autofire costs, but if you are fresh character, you definitely want to tune your rifle for that cheap extra hit.

Personally the easiest way to hit people over restricted weapons is use the narrative against them. People with lightsabers and heavy machine guns rapidly become a target in the rim. thus giving those members of party the heads up

If the campiagn is about reducing the empire to bloodied chunks this is less important, AOR and FND have different expectations to a gangsta style edge campaign., but establishing the power level of the campaign in session zero is important. Saying no to certain items is fine if that focusing can provide a more refined experience.

After all, the heavy gunner can't be bent out of shape if it's clarrified; at the start of the session that autofire weapons are just off the table. Get creative; we almost never see any low life scum using autofire weaponry, there must be a reason for that.