(Or “the John Maclane” rule…)
I’ve been a shooter for a long time, in civilian, military, and other capacities. One thing that most RPGs don’t model well, more for game balance than anything else, is multiple shots from a handgun. This rule is presented for those GMs that want their Cortex-based game to have a more modern, gun-fu sort of flavor to it.
Much like burst fire, rapid fire lets the character blast off multiple rounds with a single die test. But whereas a burst fire/automatic weapon doesn’t require the character to pull the trigger multiple times, a semi-automatic or revolver does. When using RAPID FIRE, the character trades a skill step for a damage step — this represents multiple rounds fired at a single target. Additionally, any other actions taken that round — like, say, during rapid fire on a second target, suffer from the usual multiple actions step down from whatever number of steps were used on the initial attack.
Example: SGT Snuffy of the Metro Dade County Police is up against a pair of baddies who are heavily armed. He’s gotten initiative and doesn’t want to get stredded with their MP5 sub-guns. He pops off three rounds from his Bren Ten in rapid succession against the first target. The 10mm has a d6W damage (he’s using substandard ammo), so he wants to crank his damage +2 steps. He has a d10 Agility, so he rolls his agility as a d6 plus his excellent pistol skill of d8. He gets lucky and maxes the roll for 16. He now rolls a d10W for damage on the guy. Still worried about the next bad guy, he turns his attention to him and rapid fires again — he can only do a single step, since his second action starts with a d4 — so he rolls a d2+d8 on the next guy and gets lucky, just hitting, and rolls a d8W damage.
Had he chosen to roll for cover after the first rapid fire, he would have rolled a d4 agility plus his athletics…
This should give you the appropriate magazine-draining action that has been the norm in action movies since the ’80s.
The Black Campbell 
18 March, 2013 at 09:58
The issue that I see is one of optimization.
In the example given, the character would normally be rolling D10 + D6 on an attack, giving an expectation value on the attack (call it E_a) of 9 and a range of 2-16. His expected damage output would be (9 – expectation value of target defense, call it E_df ) / 2 in the form of wound and the same in the form of stun (remembering that stun damage is favored for the remainder), plus d6 weapon damage. (Expectation value 3.5, call it E_dm.) If we set the expectation value of the defense at Ed, that’s (E_a-E_df)/2 + E_dm wound plus (E_a-E_df)/2 stun damage. Subsequent attacks would be at ((e_a-n)-E_df)/2 + E_dm wound and ((e_a-n)-E_df)/2 stun, where n is the number of iterative attacks.
Under your proposed house rule, that equation shifts to ((e_a-r)-E_df)/2 + E_dm+r wound and ((e_a-r)-E_df)/2 stun for the first attack, and ((e_a-r-r_2)-E_df)/2 + E_dm+r_2 wound and ((e_a-r-r_2)-E_df)/2 for iterative attacks.
All of that is a long-winded way of saying that the character is trading a bit of stun damage for a bit of wound damage on the first action, but at the cost of fewer actions AND a lower likelihood of hitting at all. Given that a miss results in no damage whatsoever, the player would pretty much always be better off just rolling n attack rolls, rather than rolling 1 attack roll at -n to hit and +n to damage. There’s also the strategic issue that the first attack may drop the enemy, freeing up more actions for later. If you drop him with a rapid shot, you’ll never know if that was overkill.
18 March, 2013 at 10:41
All well and good, but most people aren’t doing math when they’re blazing away at the bad guys and screaming like a cheerleader.
I was originally toying with the idea that pistol shooters could gain the burst fire bonuses by giving up their other actions.
19 March, 2013 at 04:24
What effect do you gents feel it would have if you were to provide pistols with a rate of fire and allow up to that rate of fire in shots each turn as one action, if these rounds are all sent at the same target?
In other words:
– John chooses to fire 1 shot and it costs 1 action and no changes to his standard die pool for normal damage for his single shot
– John chooses rapid fire of an additional or several additional rounds up to his gun’s RoF at one target and it costs 1 action and no changes to his standard die pool for normal damage for each shot
– John chooses rapid fire of additional rounds as an equal number of additional actions at multiple targets for the standard penalty for performing additional actions, for normal damage for each shot
While this may shift game balance to a place where guns are more powerful in some situations, is the effect of that in a modern game problematic enough to prohibit? Are there effects beyond characters carrying fewer swords? Combats are shorter?
Would you consider this sort of change to be too unbalancing?
19 March, 2013 at 09:37
Interesting. Similar to an idea I was toying with for the old James Bond system. I think it models real life a bit better, but the main issue might be your heroes wind up being far too powerful in a firefight.