the specific concept that comes to mind is the meat hammer

it fires 3 rounds per pull of the trigger, what happens if you load in say a blazer round, an execution round and a Hyper Density round?

does it simply gain all the properties? does it gain anything?

does it drop in damage? what does it lose?

has anyone found a way to handle double barreled weapons doing just this sort of thing?

Simple option: Do not allow mixing ammo.

Complex option: Number the three barrels. Have him say which ammo is in each.

For each hit (after the dodge roll), roll a d6. If you get a result of 4 or higher, subtract 3. That says which barrel fired the bullet that hit him, so apply the stats of that bullet to that hit. Tearing applies to all hits except blazer rounds.

That leaves two problematic types of ammo: Ammo that removes scatter and blazer rounds.

For ammo that removes scatter, the first time its barrel is rolled it hits. But, since it is a solid slug it can only hit once, so if its barrel comes up again it doesn't hit a second time.

For blazer rounds, treat them as a flame attack that occurs at the same time as the BS test (roll separate damage for each). If multiple blazers are loaded, the target only needs to make one AG test to avoid all of them (all barrels are pointed in the same direction), but separate tests to avoid catching fire. When their barrel is rolled for hits, nothing happens.

If you get a jam on the BS test, all bullets fail to fire. If you get a jam on one of the blazer rounds, only that round fails. Either way, the jam must be cleared before reloading.

Also Hyper-Density penetrators have this text:

Because of their great mass, they must be
propelled by a far more powerful explosive charge than a
normal round, and so are limited only to the sturdiest frearms
capable of handling them.

The Meat Hammer doesn't sound like the kind of weapon designed to handle the penetrators as it's a cheap gang weapon while they are very expensive ammo (80 thrones for the gun, 100 for each bullet). So banning them should be easily justifiable via fluff.

Chance Silas said:

In the case of your example, you would not be able to fire it on semi- or full-auto. Executioner rounds are specifically stated as only being able to be fired in single fire mode in their description. Also, aren't the Blazer rounds the "flame-thrower" rounds? You really want to semi-auto those and have them cook each other off in your hands?

I could see possibly doing something like this with a double-barrel, but still a little too much weirdness IMHO.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Brother Praetus said:

The Meat Hammer (IH pg 116) is a triple-barrelled shotgun.

I realise that I missed Executioner rounds in my rules. I'm going to suggest that they simply can't be used in a Meat Hammer because the firing of rounds from the other two barrels will screw up the executioners targeting.

Brother Praetus said:

Blazer rounds are Single Shot only ammunition.

in the meathammer example it seems the best course is to decrease the damage to the standard shotgun damage and apply all the effects of the ammunition to the damage, leaving the tearing quality on the weapon.

for double barreled shotgun example it appears the best course is to treat it as a semiauto shot, allowing multiple blazer rounds due to multiple barrels.

thanks for the input guys

Not sure if I got the question right, but in the case of S-A and normal kinds of ammo (manstopper, dum-dum) you only need to decide in which order bullets are fired and apply individual effects to individual bullets.

Friend of the Dork said:

heya good to see you mr friend.

yes the standard rules application for semiauto rates of fire are covered when utilizing multiple ammunition.

I was concerned with a double barrel shotgun firing both barrels, and the specific firearm example of the "meathammer" and as there is apparently no official rule that I have overlooked the simplest answer is the best when having to deal with special situations.

Chance Silas said:

Hmm well this is the classical case of new rules being made without regard for previous special weapons, or maybe the makers of IH love for making special rules for their guns. This special rule of clip 1=3 actual shots that uses single-shot rules really messes things up, and before there was only the choise of using inferno shells or normal shells.

It's easy and not unrealistic to state that the special choke setting on the meathammer means it can only fire normal shells as special shotgun rounds as that's what it's designed for. Or maybe that once you non-shot shells the meathammer loses it's special characteristics and simply becomes a unreliable inaccurate short-ranged shotgun with 3 shots.

The Hack Shotgun from the same book suffers the same potential problem. Other multiple barrel shotguns "solves" the problem by simply not allowing more than one shell to be shot at the same time, in fact not even in the same round!

A last option is to "translate" the ability into a semi-auto burst with 3 shots, and reduce damage to 1d10+4 per shell. Which of course means you might as well use a combat shotgun.

Friend of the Dork said:

The idea for multiple ammo types and full/semi-auto is simple. However, in execution it is going to require a lot of rolling and bookkeeping. Unless you hit with all shots fired, you can't guarantee that any specific bullet will hit the target, so deciding which hits will involve:

- First, see which bullets are fired from the burst. Their order in the clip decides this.

- Put those bullets into a table with 1-x, where x is the number of shots in the burst.

- Roll to see how many hits you get.

- For the first hit, roll a DX and look at the table to see which bullet hit. Since the same bullet can't hit twice, cross it off.

- Repeat the last step for all hits.

This will slow the game down far too much and, for semi/full auto bursts, I can't think of any reason where firing a mix of ammo in a single burst would be better than having the entire burst be the same ammo*. The Meat Hammer would have some gain because it fires 3 shells at once, but the more I think about it the more I think that allowing players to mix ammo in it is not worth the effort required to resolve its attacks.

*If one of the rounds is more effective against the target, you should use only that. If you are trying to save money, stick to the cheaper rounds.

So I suggest that the only effect the 3 shell rule on the meat hammer should have (apart from the stats in the weapon table) is that each shot fired costs 3 times the price that firing a regular shotgun would.

Chance Silas said:

I would treat a double barreled shotgun as twinlinked. 'Cause it is just that: Two shotguns firing at the same time.

Bilateralrope said:

There is no need for a table.

Here are the steps:

1. The player should always know in which order he has loaded the gun, such as 1 regular, 1 manstopper, 1 dum-dum in an Autopistol.

2. Roll the dice and determine DoS and hit location(s). Let's say we get 4 hits.

3. Apply each hit to the correct body part (this is already necessary by RAW).

4. For 4 hits you get body, body, arms, legs - now since you know the variation of round you hit 1 regular and 1 manstopper in body, 1 dum-dum in the arms and one regular in the legs. Apply damage.

Repeat as needed for total carnage. Of course any acolyte worth his salt would use a Fire Selector instead or switch magazines since there is no way you know which bullet will hit what part.

Friend of the Dork said:

Problem is, the roll only tells you that 4 of the 6 rounds hit. Which ones missed ?

Maybe your aim was wrong at first, but you corrected it during the burst. So the first two miss.

Maybe the guy dodged at the end of the burst, avoiding the last two.

Maybe his dodge was in the middle, so you missed some in the middle, but corrected your aim for the final shots.

Maybe it was a combination of the above.

Lets say that the first bullet is always the first hit. A munchkin can load the expensive rounds so that they are at the start of each full burst*, while the bullets at the end of the burst can be cheap ammunition with minimal disadvantage. On weapons where some of the shots will simply never hit (you need 9 DOS to hit all 10 shots on an autogun), replacing them comes with no disadvantage at all. But, by reducing the cost of the special ammo, you make it much easier to buy.

Any method of allocating bullets to hits other than purely random will have this problem. And when the cost of a bullet can range from 0.05 for a cheap one to 50 for a blessed bullet and bolts can range from 16 each to 250 each for psycannon bolts (IH page 191), it is a major way to reduce the cost of special ammo.

How do you justify the hit ordering never being anything other than one of 6* combinations ?

Because that it another assumption that is required with your system. Randomising it doesn't assume that the hits landed in the order the table states.

*I treat a left leg first hit as different to a right leg first hit.

If you allow mixing ammo, how do you treat ammo that alters the weapons reliability ?

For example, mixing void rounds (IH page 165) and regular ammo.

Apart from making special ammo cheaper (houseruling it directly would work better), what does mixing ammo in a clip add ?

- If you know what ammo is the best choice, only use that. A fire selector lets you have multiple specialities ready to use.

- If you don't, a general purpose ammo would do better than a mix.

- If the best ammo depends on hit location, mixing in a burst still doesn't help as you don't have control over which bullet goes where. Hit the target with the best overall choice*

- Mixing ammo with a single shot weapon is even worse because you can end up with the next bullet in each clip being a bad choice** even if other bullets in the clip are a good choice.

*Take a target with high AP on some areas, none on others. Pure manstoppers is a better choice than manstoppers/ dumdums because you can't ensure that the dumdums don't hit the armoured parts.

**Take a mix of dumdums/manstoppers and a fire selector. The targets are armoured, but the next bullet in each of your clips is a dumdum.

I see your points here. So yes then I agree not mixing ammo at all is the best course, tell the players to use different loads in different magazines for simplicity.