Spray and pray: spreading autofire?

[SaintHax]

Can you spread an autofire attack? I have a ninja character in a dark champions campaign that can autofire 5x shurikens. What I'd like to do is represent filling the hex, or getting a +3 to OCV and only a max of 2 hits.

 

I've never liked the idea that if I pop off a burst fire, my chances of hitting once is no better than a single shot. Is there a rule I'm over looking?

[Eosin]

Re: Spray and pray: spreading autofire?

 

I have never seen that as an official ruling but it sure seems reasonable to me. I might step it off just a tad ~ 2-shot AF with +2 to hit.

[Armitage]

Re: Spray and pray: spreading autofire?

 

The Ultimate Skill has a new Autofire Skill, Precise Sprayfire.

+1 OCV for every 2 shots fired, rounded down, i.e. 2-3 shots, +1 OCV; 4-5 shots, +2 OCV; 6-7 shots, +3 OCV, etc.

But you can only hit once.

I was thinking of houseruling it to half the shots fired, rounded down. So 5 shots would give +2 OCV with a maximum of 2 hits, 10 shots would give +5 OCV with a maximum of 5 hits, and so on.

 

Someone a while ago also posted a house rule for spreading autofire, based on the normal spreading rules. +1 OCV for every shot lost to spread the attack. So with a 5 shot autofire you could get +1 OCV with up to 4 shots hitting, +2 OCV with 3 hits, +3 OCV with 2 hits, or +4 OCV with only 1 shot able to hit.

[Vassoom]

Re: Spray and pray: spreading autofire?

 

The Ultimate Skill has a new Autofire Skill, Precise Sprayfire.

 

+1 OCV for every 2 shots fired, rounded down, i.e. 2-3 shots, +1 OCV; 4-5 shots, +2 OCV; 6-7 shots, +3 OCV, etc.

But you can only hit once.

 

I was thinking of houseruling it to half the shots fired, rounded down. So 5 shots would give +2 OCV with a maximum of 2 hits, 10 shots would give +5 OCV with a maximum of 5 hits, and so on.

 

Someone a while ago also posted a house rule for spreading autofire, based on the normal spreading rules. +1 OCV for every shot lost to spread the attack. So with a 5 shot autofire you could get +1 OCV with up to 4 shots hitting, +2 OCV with 3 hits, +3 OCV with 2 hits, or +4 OCV with only 1 shot able to hit.

Personally, I prefer the Ultimate Skill version to either of those two house rules.

 

Autofire already has an enormous built in advantage that if you roll well on your Attack Roll, you get multiple hits with one Attack Roll. I feel this accurately represents the skill of the shooter...e.g., a less skilled shooter will quickly drift off target due to recoil and/or lift, whereas a skilled shooter (with a higher OCV) will be able to keep the weapon on target and score multiple hits.

 

Remember, +2 OCV is HUGE. All things being equal (ex: 8 OCV vs 8 DCV, for an 11- success), +2 OCV takes your 11- (62.5% chance of success) up to a 13- (83.8% chance of success), for an increase of 21.3% to the success rate! And you want to allow multiple hits in addition?!?

 

I agree with the Ultimate Skill ruling that if you want to spread the shots around the hex to try and increase your chance to hit once, then you would only get to hit once. I also feel that the ability to do so would properly be reflected as a learned/practiced skill, i.e. it would be a skill that costs points rather than a maneuver that anyone could successfully pull off.

 

The standard maneuvers "Blazing Away" and "Suppression Fire" adequately cover other aspects of "spray and pray".

 

Ask yourself this question: If I'm a player and have an Autofire weapon, when would I not take +5 OCV with up to 5 hits (your proposed house rule), or +3 OCV with up to 2 hits (other person's house rule)? I'll bet the answer is that you would almost always take that, which proves that it is far too generous a ruling.

 

Once you start allowing Autofire attacks with significant plusses to OCV and multiple hits, it completely breaks the balance of the Advantage, IMHO, and makes it far too potent.

 

- Vassoom

[ghost-angel]

Re: Spray and pray: spreading autofire?

 

You may use an Autofire attack to attack as many targets as you have Autofire. They must be in consecutive hexes however, you cannot skip a hex.

 

see Autofire Against Multiple Targets

5ER p376-377

Combat Handbook p41

 

and as mentioned Blazing Away and Suppression Fire are also good methods of simulating "spray and pray."

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Spray and pray: spreading autofire?

 

 

Once you start allowing Autofire attacks with significant plusses to OCV and multiple hits, it completely breaks the balance of the Advantage, IMHO, and makes it far too potent.

 

It does however, allow high ROF autofire attacks to function in a more realistic (if unbalanced for the cost) fashion. Right now a AF20 attack has very few advantages over an AF5 one when fired at a single target.

[Vassoom]

Re: Spray and pray: spreading autofire?

 

Once you start allowing Autofire attacks with significant plusses to OCV and multiple hits' date=' it completely breaks the balance of the Advantage, IMHO, and makes it far too potent.[/quote']It does however, allow high ROF autofire attacks to function in a more realistic (if unbalanced for the cost) fashion. Right now a AF20 attack has very few advantages over an AF5 one when fired at a single target.

Perhaps.

 

But that's a bit of a leap from the OP asking how best to model the advantage of throwing a handful of shuriken to better simulating AF20 weapons.

 

I would also argue that a more "realistic" build for a minigun or any weapons in a similar class of AF20-type heavy weaponry would probably be better constructed as an attack using Non-Selective AoE Line with AF5 or AF10, not a "normal" AF20 attack that requires you to hit a target's DCV.

 

In my opinion, since Dark Champions tends to be on the lower end of the HERO power scale (although naturally Your Actual Mileage May Vary), allowing AF attacks to be spread for significant plusses to OCV and still retaining multiple AF hits risks unleashing some seriously unbalanced attacks. But of course, it all depends on your campaign.

 

- Vassoom

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Spray and pray: spreading autofire?

 

Perhaps.

 

But that's a bit of a leap from the OP asking how best to model the advantage of throwing a handful of shuriken to better simulating AF20 weapons.

 

I would also argue that a more "realistic" build for a minigun or any weapons in a similar class of AF20-type heavy weaponry would probably be better constructed as an attack using Non-Selective AoE Line with AF5 or AF10, not a "normal" AF20 attack that requires you to hit a target's DCV.

 

In my opinion, since Dark Champions tends to be on the lower end of the HERO power scale (although naturally Your Actual Mileage May Vary), allowing AF attacks to be spread for significant plusses to OCV and still retaining multiple AF hits risks unleashing some seriously unbalanced attacks. But of course, it all depends on your campaign.

 

- Vassoom

 

For a lower powered game I think the above skill would work just fine. For most of my weapon heavy heroic games I use a number of houserules because I like my guns to work slighly differently than the default. Not radical changes, mostly just slight tweaks to various combat maneuvers.

I use the Supression Fire mechanic a LOT, and have ruled that increased ROF AF attacks can "overlap" effected hexes, so an AF20 minigun suppressing a single hex could hit every target with up to 4 shots per segment. I also do a progressive bonus for concentrating AF on a single target for accuracy... I've tweaked it around bhefore, but my current incarnation is that +1 ocv reduces potential hits by one, taken from #2 onward... So (Figure a 3 ocv opponent vs a 3 DCV...basic 11-) if you took a +3 OCV bonus, you'd hit on a 14- instead, but you'd have to roll low enough for 4 hits (-8, or rolling a 6) to gain an additional hit. It allows really high ROF guns to be scary effective, but seems to work out OK....It brings the fear of gatling guns truely to the fore. My modern and futuristic games tend to be fairly dangerous, I should probably note. I never had trouble convincing my players to play "realistically"... you could get lucky, but continued risk taking usually led to critically injured characters.