Autofire house rules for d20 Modern??

[Chainsaw Mage]

I was reading with some interest the "underpowered guns" thread. I like D20 Modern, overall, but I'm frustrated with the autofire rules. I picked up GURPS 4e, thinking, "Now THIS will be my system for modern games!" and found my eyes glazing over after reading 10 pages...waaaaaaay too rules-heavy for my liking. So I'm back to Modern, chastized.

So help me fix Modern's autofire rules. Here's my first idea:

Advanced Firearms Proficiency feat *automatically* gets you Burst Fire and Strafe. Three for one. So it goes.

What bugs me is the low reflex save to avoid autofire (DC 15), because a high-enough level character will *always* be leaping out of the way of autofire. I mean, I like cinematic as much as the next guy, but that's just plain dumbass. The other thing that bugs me is that autofire ignores armor (!)

How have you fixed this?

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

So far what seems to work for alot of people, and what has been working well for me, is to set the Reflex save DC as the attack roll. This seems to be pretty fair as the DC then becomes anything from 10 to, well, as high as it gets. A low level or untrained person using autofire may have a low save, 10-12 or so, while higher levels you can get 20s easily.

Makes it a far more useful ability, from what I've seen.

... I also played for an entire session with Autofire being a "Save for Half" attack. That was just a mistake on my part, as I was trying to do too many things at the same time, but it DID serve to whittle down the PCs hit points.

Mind you this was a Blood and Vigilance game, so one of the PCs has a 24 Con, DR 3/-, Fast Healing 2, and the other was jumping over cars ... so the mooks needed SOMETHING to make them sweat.

--fje

 

[Hunter Simon]

I also played for an entire session with Autofire being a "Save for Half" attack. That was just a mistake on my part

Hmmm...why do you consider that a mistake? Seems like a good rule to me...helps keep the autofire deadly and whatnot.

What about this business of autofire ignoring armor? If a guy is buck naked and another guy is wearing full tactical body armor, and both miss their Reflex save, they both take the same damage...grrrrr.......

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Hmmm...why do you consider that a mistake? Seems like a good rule to me...helps keep the autofire deadly and whatnot.

What about this business of autofire ignoring armor? If a guy is buck naked and another guy is wearing full tactical body armor, and both miss their Reflex save, they both take the same damage...grrrrr.......

If you don´t want to got the armor as damage reduction route (if you do; I would point you to the Unearthed Arcana way of doing it), use the nonproficient bonus of the armor as a bonus to the reflex save.
Another method would be give a cover bonus due to armor (which probably would be a bit higher then the nonproficient bonus, but would also take a little longer to figure out for each armor)

 

[S'mon]

Recoil: Recoil is per bullet fired in an attack action. If Recoil exceeds firer's STR it acts as a penalty to-hit, or on full auto 1 in 20 bullets automatically miss per point by which Recoil is exceeded. All else being equal, recoil is proportionate to average Damage. However larger guns have proportionately lower recoil effects. A character can Brace (taking a Move action) before firing, this reduces the Recoil of all shots fired by -1, minimum 1. SMGs and rifles without shoulder stocks cannot be Braced.

Pistol/Micro SMG Damage/Recoil
1d4,1d6 2
1d6+1,1d8 3
1d8+1,1d10 4
2d6 5

Heavy SMG/Rifle Damage/Recoil
1d4, 1d6 1
1d8,1d10 2
2d6 2
2d8 3
2d8+2 4

BF-Burst Fire: This is an Attack action, for Pistol and SMG weapons this is a minimum 3-round burst and a minimum 5-round burst for RIF weapons. Roll once to-hit per burst. Then on a hit roll a die equal to burst size to see how many rounds from the burst hit.

FA-Full Auto Spray Fire:
This is a Standard Action. Characters can fire full auto bursts of total Recoil up to twice their STR, or the weapon's magazine capacity, whichever is less - belt-fed weapons' max RoF may also limit this, eg an M60 LMG has a max RoF of 30/round including cooling time, a 7.62N electric minigun has a max RoF of 100/round.
Divide bullets equally amongst all targets in area (up to 4m x 8m long or wide). See how many bullets can hit from every 20 fired, by taking 20-the to-hit number, which is target AC-firer to-hit bonus, and convert to %. Then roll a d6 for each bullet that can hit, vs a single target usually each '5-6' hits. At point blank range (3m) or vs close group of targets each 4-6 hits, or into a packed crowd each 2-6 hits. For armour, roll its Cover % to see if bullet hits armour.

Example 1: Alan ATT +5, STR 15 shoots a burst of 15 rounds from a recoil-1 weapon at Brenda, AC 14. He hits on 9+, so 12 in 20 bullets, or 60%, can hit. 60% of 15 is 9, so roll 9 d6, each 5-6 hits her - he rolls 3 hits. Brenda has armour giving 50% cover, so roll % for each bullet to see if it hits her armour or a vulnerable spot.

Always round fractions down, and if the number of bullets that can hit is less than 1, all miss (no roll). Where 20-'to hit' is over 20, for high RoF weapons use the following table:

20-'to hit' % of bullets that can hit
20 5%
21 4%
22 3%
23 2%
24 1%
25 0%

Example 2: Alan is firing a 100 round burst from his AV6's minigun, +3 to hit, at a squad of enemy troops prone & sheltering behind rocks giving them net 95% cover, or +14 AC, for AC 24. 24-3 = 21, so 4% of shots can hit, he rolls 4 d6 and each 5-6 hits a random trooper.

Suppressive Fire: 4mx8m area, as full auto but hits are only on a '6'. Remaining bullets may hit anyone entering the area until firer's next action.

 

[S'mon]

Body Armor
Armor Type H/S* EB Cover AC Max Check Cover Damage
Bonus/% Dex Penalty Reduction
Heavy Leather/Padding S 50 +4/50% +6 - 1
Kevlar T-Shirt or Vest - Light S 290 +4/50% +6 - 3
Kevlar Armor Jacket – Light S 350 +6/65% +5 - 3
Kevlar Armor Jacket – Medium S 400 +6/65% +4 -1 4
Kevlar Armor Jacket – Heavy S 450 +6/65% +3 -2 5
Helmet (Steel) H 20 +1/10% - -1 for DR 2
Helmet (Nylon) S 100 +1/10% - -1 for DR 3+
Medium Jacket & Pants H 400 +9/80% +3 -4 4
Heavy Jacket & Pants H 600 +9/80% +2 -5 5
Combat Assault Suit (inc Helm) H 1500 +14/95% +1 -5 6

Attacks treat the armour as Cover - eg vest 50% cover (+4 AC), Metal Gear 90% cover (+10 AC); any hit that beats the Cover bonus bypassed the amour and ignores DR. A hit that does not beat the Cover bonus has struck the armour & DR applies.

 

[Aaron2]

What bugs me is the low reflex save to avoid autofire (DC 15), because a high-enough level character will *always* be leaping out of the way of autofire. I mean, I like cinematic as much as the next guy, but that's just plain dumbass. The other thing that bugs me is that autofire ignores armor (!)

I use the Players Roll All the Dice so I don't need to use Reflex for autofire anymore. Instead each players make a Defense roll against a set DC (set by the attacker's skill). This is mathematically equivalent to having the attacker roll to hit every party member but much faster especially since the players seem to end up on the receiving end more often than not. I still use Reflex saves for things like diving for cover or throwing back grenades.

Aaron

 

[Psion]

I ditch d20 modern burst and autofire rules entirely.

Instead, I use Dragonstar and Arsenal's rules. Namely

Burst fire: Anyone can do it; for each 5 by which you exceed the to hit roll, you get an extra hit. The feat gives you an extra hit for every 3 instead.

Spray: Uses to-hit rolls instead of reflex saves. Armor should count against spray fire.

 

[ledded]

Hmmm...why do you consider that a mistake? Seems like a good rule to me...helps keep the autofire deadly and whatnot.

Just how fast do you want to see your players grabbing that one level of fast for evasion?

What about this business of autofire ignoring armor? If a guy is buck naked and another guy is wearing full tactical body armor, and both miss their Reflex save, they both take the same damage...grrrrr.......

Yeah, that's always bothered me, plus the static save for autofire. In Modern we go by the books because I havent quite convinced everyone to change it yet, but in the WWII one-off campaign I do it a bit different; the DC is variable by attack roll, you can take Improved Autofire to add to your DC, and if you crit with an autofire attack you can still crit those in it, but have to confirm (for each) at a minus. Yeah, I know it sounds rough, but machine guns are nasty little beasties, and I too am running a WWII-supers game with Blood and Vigilance and while they are supers, I didnt want them to just laugh off 3 well-emplaced MG42's.

Anyway, that may be a bit much for some games, but for that WW2 supers game it has worked out so far.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Heh, exactly as Ledded pointed out. I had one player who asked me to build his PC. He's a martial artist whose most important feature is SPEED, but not to the insane levels the base BnV book has for "Super Speed". Instead I gave him the speed talent for Fast. The reason I NOTICED I'd been doing it wrong was he started whining and complaining that I'd given him "a measly 5' more movement, with all these area attacks I'D have taken EVASION".

So, yea. Everybody'd just dump a level into fast for free Evasion and there you'd be.

As well, I don't want my players laughing off machine guns too often. John Arm got pretty disgusting pretty quickly, though. I pretty much have to whittle him down, as nothing can force an MDT save without a crit (another reason I put in that rule).

Well ... there's that time that Doc Marten hit him with the ton of bricks ... but that was probably a one-timer as he was physically stuck to the demon at the time...

*grumble* And he saved.

--fje