I like the idea of stray bullets when shooting into melee. If you miss because of the -20, then you randomly hit another target in melee. It works especially well for single shots. I don't like the alternate rule for FA and SA. Allocating each hit to another target seems too much. I like the idea of some/most of the bullets hitting the intended target, while a few strays might hit unintented targets.

Does anyone else use a rule for FA and SA in melee? If so, what is it?

I have the house rule that every bullet fired that DOES NOT hit the designated target has a 20% chance of hitting someone else withing the line of fire / in melee with the target. For exampe, if Joe fires a full auto burst at the big bad guy in melee with Jim. His weapon has a max rate of fire of six and Joe scores 3 DoS on his attack roll. Four bullets hit the big bad guy, but the two others Joe fired from his gun are still unaccounted for. Both of these bullets now have a 20% chance of hitting Jim, who may soon be not so happy about the fire "support" from his buddy...

P.S.: this is how our Missionary in RT almost lost his right leg to a Hellpistol shot from our Navigator while engaged in melee with a Rak'Gol Marauder.

Brother_Trahaerne said:

The trick here is to fire a weapon at your buddy when he's in a melee with an enemy and the chance to hit is < 20%. You now have a better chance of hitting the opponent than you do of hitting your buddy and with even more bullets since each round is considered individually (DoS doesn't matter)...

I call this a bad mechanical solution.

HappyDaze said:

Of course that wouldn't be in the spirit of the game. Because, unless you're meta-gaming, If you had <20% of hitting then you probably shouldn't shoot at all. If you did aim at your ally in order to hit your enemy with your crappy shot, the GM should cry foul.

Mostly, I'm just looking for ideas. The houserule works for me in the sense that most of your bullets hit if you role well and it also makes weapons that shoot out more bullets/shot more dangerous to use in melee combat. You'd always default to single fire or burst. I'd like to avoid extra dice rolling, though.

How about this?:

Just like Single shot, if you miss due to the -20, you hit your ally. technically the alternate rule in the book says missing by 1 DoS or less, but I want to keep it consistent with what I've written below.

Furthermore, if you hit, your ally takes hits that WOULD HAVE hit had there not been a -20 penalty.

For SA, a -20 represents 1 extra hit, so even though you hit your target, if you don't succeed with enough DoS to hit your target with all the bullets in your burst, you hit your ally (or another target in melee) with a stray bullet.

For FA, a -20 represents 2 hits.

In the scenario presented above Joe shoots a 6 shot full-auto burst at the Big Bad in melee with Jim and scores 3 degrees of success. This means 4 bullets hit the Big Bad. Had it not been for the -20 for shooting into melee, all 6 bullets would have hit the big bad. As a result, the remaining 2 bullets hit jim instead.

So the most bullets you can accidently hit your allies with is 2 - and only when using FA, or if you miss by 1 DoF when using SA.

Question: Would this rule apply to other enemies within melee distance of your original target? If yes, they get to hit more, regardless of how well they roll. If no, your players might start to complain about the friend seeking bullets they apparently keep buying.

HappyDaze said:

oh, totally missed Lecram's post... but the thing with the -20 range for friendly-fire sounds rather good

Reverend mort said:

To clarify, it would have to be two people in melee. Obviously, shooting at to enemies standing next to each other doesn't count. Even an enemy standing next to two other people in melee wouldn't count unless he was actively engaged in melee.

It would apply to anyone firing into melee, friend or foe. If there is more than two people in melee then, I guess, you'd have to roll randomly to see who the stray bullet hit. The intended target would be immune to stray bullets...otherwise they aren't stray bullets.

I see your point, that if Jim is in melee with 2 or more enemies, Joe can hit one enemy, and the "stray" bullets that didn't land on target have a greater chance of hitting enemies than allies. Does that make it unworkable?

I'm not married to the idea. I posted it to have it picked apart to find the flaws.

Lecram said:

Reverend mort said:

lol. True enough.

My issue with a critical fumble is that it hardly ever happens. My issue with the alternate rule in the book is if you shoot FA/SA into Melee it ALWAYS hits your ally. In fact, it's better to get less degrees of success so as not to kill your friend. If I get 4 degrees of success, 2 hit my ally and 2 hit the intented target.

I guess I'm looking for a method that is somewhere in between, where most hit your target with the chance of a stray(s).

The example I wrote above seems overly complicated to me the more that I think about it.

I'd thought of having your B/S bonus have something to play. Like a number of hits = to your B/S bonus hit your main target and the other hits get allocated to everyone, but you'd never have stray bullets because it's unlikely that you'd have more DoS/hits than your B/S bonus.

Here's another attempt at something less complicated:

Single Fire: Critical Fumbles = hitting unintended target

S/A: DoF are greater than the shooters B/S bonus = hitting unintended target

F/A: Same as S/A. If you want to make F/A more dangerous, then 2 bullets hit unintended targets.

THis way S/A and F/A are more dangerous than Single Fire and better Marksman have a lesser chance of accidently hitting random targets.

Thoughts?

Consider all of the melee combatants together as a single target.

Apply a base -20 to hit a melee.

Apply a size modifier based on the number of combatants in the melee.

Apply hits to random locations of random targets. Called Shots work as normal and allow you to better hit the target you intend to hit.

First of all, really like the ideas coming up here!

On the distinction between "engaged in melee" and "standing 1m apart from each other":

I would say that there IS a bigger chance of hitting the "wrong" target if two people are engaged in melee. One has to consider that these guys are probably constantly moving, dancing around each other, your ally moving in and out of your line of fire, etc ... thus increasing the chance of friendly fire dramatically.
Of course one could say that this is already taken into account by the initial -20 penalty to shoot into melee combat.

Given the case that you are shooting into a melee between one of your teammates and several baddies, I don't see a problem with randomly allocating hits that did not strike their intended target to both friend and foe. In game terms, I would even say that the participants of a melee may be treated as one single, big target. This may not even be that far fetched. In this case, you may even treat the two baddies as one target when firing in melee, giving the firer a bonus of +10 or something and sharing the hits between both of them. Any bullets that would miss the baddies would still have a chance of striking your ally.

**** it, HappyDaze, this was a classical hive mind situation we have right here ^^

@Leecram: Looks good, tbh. It's simple, effective and it doesn't make friendly fire a near certainty, and appropriately rewards high BS players by allowing them to casually fire into melee with little risk to their blade swinging friends.

@HappyDaze: while functional, I find that idea BRUTALLY harsh! That makes firing into melee more or less insanity for even the most skilled of shooters. Especially since Called shots is single shot, meaning that any player who focuses on automatic weapons will quickly become annoyed at melee players because they're either forced to risk friendly fire and lose target selection, OR reduce their output to -20 single shots. While the melee players will become annoyed because the heavy weapons guy keeps shooting them in the back or doing nothing, all while grumbling at them.

Reverend mort said:

I agree. This potentially makes the game frustrating for the players and all you get is a bit more 'realism'.

Simulationism does not necessarily make the game more enjoyable.