RAW

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AUTO-FIRE:

A weapon with Auto-fire can be set to shoot in rapid succession and potentially spray an area with bolts, flechettes, slugs, or other types of projectiles. The advantage in using Auto-fire is that it has the chance to hit multiple targets or hit a single target multiple times.

Attacking with a weapon on Auto-fire is generally less accurate and the attacker must increase the difficulty of the attack check by one. The user may choose to not use the Auto-fire quality on a weapon; in this case, he cannot trigger the quality but also does not suffer the aforementioned penalty.

If the attack hits, the attacker can trigger Auto-fire by spending two Advantage. Auto-fire can be triggered multiple times.

Each time the attacker triggers auto-fire, it deals an additional hit to the target. Each of these counts as an additional hit from that weapon, and each hit deals base damage plus the number of uncanceled Success on the check.

These additional hits can be allocated to the target, or to other targets within range of the weapon. If the attacker wishes to hit multiple targets, he must decide to do so before making the check. Furthermore, if he wishes to hit multiple targets, his initial target must always be the target with the highest difficulty and highest defense (if this is two separate targets, the GM chooses which target is his initial target). The initial hit must always be against the initial target, subsequent hits generated can be allocated to any of the other designated targets.

Auto-fire weapons can also activate one Critical Injury for each hit generated on the attack per the normal cost; the Critical must target the target of the specific hit.

Giant IMO tag for all of this

Combat is hard and shouldn't be unbalanced by one skill or combination of skills. Autofire is one of the bits I've always felt that breaks the game and needs a nerf. Its to easily exploited and influences the game in ways that I feel that weren't intended.

I know a bunch of people have the solution of ascending advantages for every hit but I have another idea that I think makes narrative sense.

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Attacking with a weapon on Auto-fire is generally less accurate and the attacker must increase the difficulty of the attack check by one. upgrade difficulty for each additional hit desired. You must declare number of shots before the roll.

The user may choose to not use the Auto-fire quality on a weapon; in this case, he cannot trigger the quality but also does not suffer the aforementioned penalty.

If the attack hits, the attacker can trigger Auto-fire by spending two Advantage. Auto-fire can be triggered multiple times. Upon successful activation all targets are hit. If the attack fails the primary shot misses but the Attacker can still activate additional hits by spending 3 Advantages. This can be done multiple times.

Narratively I like declaring the amount of time you will shot before the roll. Your character should know how many shots they are going to attempt. I see the RAW working out as a "Spray and Pray Approach" but doesn't take into account all of the missed shots. Basically, I hold the trigger and every shot hits a target until i decide to stop.

With the upgrade approach, the character must weigh the Risk/Reward of taking multiple shots and balance that with their skill and the bonuses from party and gear. You can hit multiple targets but every target makes the entire action more difficult and introduces the cause of something unfortunate happening (blaster runs out of ammo, explodes, takes damage, teammate struck, falling prone, losing cover, attracting attention etc) but, if successful, the pay off is still substantial.

Adding the 3 advantage fallback is stolen from blast and I think it works well here as well. It's totally plausible that you miss your first target but subsequent targets could be hit.

Overall I think this really fixes the main problem of auto-fire, it can be easily and predictably exploited to cause massive damage with little or no risk to the character every single turn. This method will introduce risk for "Spraying and Praying" and let players decide how much risk to take for that super sweet multishot killing spree.

Lemme know what you think!

Query: If a hypothetical assassin droid were to obtain the knowledge of the "Rain of Death" talent, how would your posited houserule interact with such a droid?

( Rain of Death is found in Dangerous Covenants, under the Heavy specialization)

I just use total number of shots possible with an unsupported weapon = PC Brawn. Elegant imo and can't remember whose idea it was on these forums but I stole it and I like it. I had considered the ascending order thing as well, but in the end I like the Brawn thingy. Vehicle mounted weapons, game on, if you're dumb enough to stand in front of an A-10 you should be dead.

7 minutes ago, awayputurwpn said:

Query: If a hypothetical assassin droid were to obtain the knowledge of the "Rain of Death" talent, how would your posited houserule interact with such a droid?

( Rain of Death is found in Dangerous Covenants, under the Heavy specialization)

maybe gets a free upgrade?

3 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

I just use total number of shots possible with an unsupported weapon = PC Brawn. Elegant imo and can't remember whose idea it was on these forums but I stole it and I like it. I had considered the ascending order thing as well, but in the end I like the Brawn thingy. Vehicle mounted weapons, game on, if you're dumb enough to stand in front of an A-10 you should be dead.

Yeap, seen that too. Falls into my 'No- risk for big reward" bin

Neh...doesn't do it for me. To war-gamey. If the problem is exploits, then fix the exploits directly. Don't bog down the game in pedantic mechanical procedures.

I think stacking Despairs is just too punitive imo. It also doesn't synergize well with 2 weapon combat. How about add a purple for every additional target group beyond one? Honestly just going for the double tap on most targets with a HBR is likely going to mean death to a single target anyway, instead of going for lots shots, you'll pile on crits, and a single upgrade will actually be less of an impediment than an additional purple die.

The way we do it is Mods and Jury Rigging etc. that lower the Activation cost only affect the first instance of Auto-Fire after that the we use the unmodified number of Advantages to activate. It's simple and doesn't nerf Auto-Fire but keeps it from getting out of hand.
We are also pretty strict on calling shots prior to rolling so no "I shoot him till he's dead and move on" now it's I shoot A once then B once etc. with any additional activation not specified gets lost.

I allow only one hit per target per attack. In my games, Auto-Fire is for spreading damage around while Linked is for hitting the same target multiple times.

2 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

I allow only one hit per target per attack. In my games, Auto-Fire is for spreading damage around while Linked is for hitting the same target multiple times.

That's not a bad house rule! It puts Two-Weapon Fighting back in the game as well, in terms of a viable alternative means of dealing damage (since it also is normally limited to one target).

2 hours ago, awayputurwpn said:

2 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

I allow only one hit per target per attack. In my games, Auto-Fire is for spreading damage around while Linked is for hitting the same target multiple times.

That's not a bad house rule! It puts Two-Weapon Fighting back in the game as well, in terms of a viable alternative means of dealing damage (since it also is normally limited to one target).

Gosh, I think that's lovely. I personally don't think Autofire needs nerfing at all but I really like this as a general rule.

1 minute ago, SanguineAngel said:

Gosh, I think that's lovely. I personally don't think Autofire needs nerfing at all but I really like this as a general rule.

I agree with this up to the point where you can use jury rigged with it.

All of these are really good suggestions but they lack the risk/reward aspect. They still have the problem of allowing massive damage turn after turn with no repercussions.

Its doesnt work Narratively in my mind. I guy can't just step out with a big gun and now down the competition without exposing himself to attack, endangering is comrades, or risk damaging his gear.

4 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

I allow only one hit per target per attack. In my games, Auto-Fire is for spreading damage around while Linked is for hitting the same target multiple times.

The only drawback I see to this is the lack of linked weapons. For example I've had the idea of having a rifle with linked 2 to more accurately model a 3 round burst. Unfortunately, outside of the GM making something up, that's not really available in a rifle. It's not much of a concern as long as the GM is open to things like that, but does require some pre-discussion in a new game.

1 hour ago, SkyJedi said:

All of these are really good suggestions but they lack the risk/reward aspect. They still have the problem of allowing massive damage turn after turn with no repercussions.

Its doesnt work Narratively in my mind. I guy can't just step out with a big gun and now down the competition without exposing himself to attack, endangering is comrades, or risk damaging his gear.

Increasing Difficulty is increasing risk. You have to increase your Difficulty, and hope for 2 Advantage, to use autofire.

Just now, awayputurwpn said:

Increasing Difficulty is increasing risk. You have to increase your Difficulty, and hope for 2 Advantage, to use autofire.

The only risk in increasing difficulty is failing to hit, which is no different than any other attack. My point is the benefit provided by Auto-fire needs to have more risk than that

33 minutes ago, SkyJedi said:

The only risk in increasing difficulty is failing to hit, which is no different than any other attack. My point is the benefit provided by Auto-fire needs to have more risk than that

Statistically, it's actually Threat that you're risking, more than Failure. 4 of the sides on the Difficulty die have Threat, vs 3 sides with Difficulty present. And there's 6 total Threat symbols on the die, while there are only 4 failure symbols.

4 minutes ago, awayputurwpn said:

Statistically, it's actually Threat that you're risking, more than Failure. 4 of the sides on the Difficulty die have Threat, vs 3 sides with Difficulty present. And there's 6 total Threat symbols on the die, while there are only 4 failure symbols.

but those numbers don't change if you trigger auto-fire more than once. So Risk of shooting once = risk of shooting 5 times. Which i see as the main problem, damage ramps up dramatically but the risk doesnt

2 minutes ago, SkyJedi said:

but those numbers don't change if you trigger auto-fire more than once. So Risk of shooting once = risk of shooting 5 times

So it should be more risky simply because of the potential damage?

Firing an automatic rifle into a group of enemies needs to be inherently more dangerous to me than firing at them with a semiauto handgun, simply because it's more dangerous to them? Not all weapons are created equal, nor does their usage need to be equitable across the board.

To me, that's kinda the name of the game of autofire. You pay for it in a number of possible ways: weapon cost & rarity, in encumbrance (affecting not only how much you can carry, but how easy a weapon is to conceal), in weapon licensing and restriction issues, in social & societal situations, weapon customization potential. But the trade off is a powerful weapon.

More chance of threat = more risk. For example, with a single Threat any PC engaging in combat can have a prior Maneuver ended until they perform it again, which typically after shooting most PCs have no more Maneuvers, so if they were counting on those ranks of Side Step to help keep them safe, or the cover they ducked behind, those went bye bye, that's pretty risky. 2 Threat and the opponent can add a Setback to that PC, give themselves a Boost, or immediately perform a free Maneuver. Definitely an elevation of risk with those options. 3 Threat and the PC falls prone, not good if there are melee adversaries close by, or the big narrative one 'give the bad guys a significant advantage', oopsie, hit the blast door control now you're alone separated from your group with all the baddies, well played Joe Gun. I don't accept there is not more risk with only more purple dice, that's simply.....'inaccurate'......

32 minutes ago, awayputurwpn said:

So it should be more risky simply because of the potential damage?

Not exactly. If you think about it narratively your character aims and fires every time autofire is triggered. Each shot takes some amount of time. That leaves him exposed for long periods of time every shot. Every shot should have a chance of missing. Every shot should have a chance of something going wrong with the weapon.

The trade off is you can do massive damage

2 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

I don't accept there is not more risk with only more purple dice, that's simply.....'inaccurate'......

Not really what I was trying to say, I said that the risk for shooting once was the same risk as shooting 10 times. I feel the risk should scale with the amount of times you trigger autofire

Sorry, but you're punishing being successful and advanced too much with this rule. The better someone becomes with their Skill and Stat and Talents the more they're punished if they try to excel with those abilities. Plus what military would buy a machine gun that has a default of an at least 8% chance of jamming every time you pull the trigger that only gets worse, answer is none.

5 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

Sorry, but you're punishing being successful and advanced too much with this rule. The better someone becomes with their Skill and Stat and Talents the more they're punished if they try to excel with those abilities. Plus what military would buy a machine gun that has a default of an at least 8% chance of jamming every time you pull the trigger that only gets worse, answer is none.

I get you like exploiting autofire, but I don't think that triggering it multiple times every single turn is how it was intended. I'm not trying to tell you how to play, to each is own. I'm just a suggestion to people who might want something more than spray and pray encounters

I have my option in place that caps total number of shots so it isn't like I allow autofire unchecked. I get that you're upset people aren't agreeing with you so I'm out.

Not upset, just discussing an idea. Have a good day ?