How many GMs focus fire? Say in the surprise round 6 guards all open up full auto on one guy.

I don't- depending on how long the fight has gone on, and how smart is the enemy, I usually throw a die to decide whose attacked by who (also based on a situation)

For example, three people attack the group- and two acolytes are blocking them, each of the monsters will roll d2 and attack the designated target.

Finalattack said:

Well depends on the level of play and the opposition. When I use Horde rules it is essentially focus fire. If there are several tougher adversaries I usually spread it first as they assume they don't need to focus, but after the first round of extreme dodging they tend to focus fire more.

Since I roll one attack at the time I often adjust tactics according to hits, thus I don't get as much overkill.

The point is not to kill PCs, but to challenge them. However I don't play my NPCs for that purpose alone, thus they WILL react to incredible dodging or very dangerous PCs and focus fire when necessary.

But as a general rule? No. In a fair fight (6 vs 6 guards) if one side focus all fire on 1 and the others spread it out, the other team will have one certain casualty while the other will probably have 6 dead or incapacitated people.

Depends on the quality of opposition, and the actions of the players... Examples: Psyker starts burning down all the baddies, they're either gonna run or all set up to unload on him first. Cleric rallying the players and/or issuing some form of combat orders, either gets ignored or everyone starts taking shotss at the guy screaming at the top of his lungs.

I have done this in DW using corrupt gaurdsmen, but the character was of corse an astartes with power armour. This is a true risk anytime you enter a hostile area, I was in Iraq for 15 months myself. Typically the secondman in is the one in the greatest danger in a stack team, since the first one in is usually a surprise, the second one is not so much and is fired upon.

Nimon said:

Guardsmen vs SM? They are not dangerous except when they come in numbers less than a Magnitude 30 Horde (still not very dangerous then).

I think a RL equivalent would be if US marines was attacked by children with toy bow and arrows, with suction caps removed. So maybe a lucky shot could theoretically blind a marine, but generally they are not a threat since Lasguns do 1d10+3 vs 16+ damage reduction. Giving them the ability to do Fury will not help enough really.

PS your description sounds just like my experience from certain computer FPS games. Pointman runs past a window, second guy in squad gets shot by the enemy MG, rest of the squad takes cover and starts supressing window and/or flanking.