Shadowrun - Personal Edition

[Saeviomagy]

Our houserules document is pages upon pages long (all for 3rd ed). We never really tried to fix decking, but we did a decent job on rigging (although it was half unfinished).

One of the best rules we used was that dice ALWAYS explode, and for every multiple of 6 above a target number you get, you get an extra success.

That means it's possible to get more successes than dice rolled, which IMO is a good thing.

Oh, and henry: If the TN's are THAT bad in a firefight, then the PC's without a chance of hitting should be doing their best to improve their chances. Lighting up the bad guys, clearing smoke, moving closer, that kind of stuff.

I once had a firefight where the PC's were frantically defending a lightswitch, because the party all had vision augmentation and most of the bad guys didn't, and if that lightswitch got flipped, they were all in big trouble.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

I once had a firefight where the PC's were frantically defending a lightswitch, because the party all had vision augmentation and most of the bad guys didn't, and if that lightswitch got flipped, they were all in big trouble.

Now THAT is a great scene...got to keep it in mind for some dvious little firefight someday.

 

[Vocenoctum]

We mostly went by the rulebook really, just too lazy to type up a lot of rules and the GM was a "by the book only" type.

For my game, I mostly added stuff, like Blood Charms and such. When I had to move, I never did put my SR site back up, since I haven't been inspired enough to add to it in years.

Oh, I did have a Wraith that was pretty central to a game, and had some house rules for spirits, I wonder where I put them...


And I had Beetle Fleshform's with wraiths transposed into their bodies, so I could have a big monster bug that was intelligent. Sort of replaced Mi Go in a couple adventures.

 

[cmanos]

Oh my gods......considering a friend of mine pretty much totally rewrote the system......

 

[Staffan]

Hmmm...I don't know where you got the idea that the advantage of autofire (note: I'm talking about full autofire here, not a sequence of bursts) is that it gives a larger chance of hitting someone?

I'm not saying it increases your chance of hitting a *lot* - especially not compared to the wasted ammo. But you can use it to "sweep" in an opponent's general direction, which ought to provide at least a small increase in hitting chance. But saying that increasing the chance of hitting is probably a bit too strong, yes.

But if there are also rules for getting a better chance to hit from a short controlled burst, I'm OK with that.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

In your games, did the people without the image-enhancing equipment, etc. just not even TRY to fire? It's something that's bugged me ever since I was reading SR2 years ago, and it seemed to get worse in 3, as you noted.

At times when direct fire is impractical, indirect fire is often very useful.

Grenade launchers, in other words, are your friend. Seriously; you can inflict damage (and modifiers!) without having to get really close. They're useful for the non-gun bunny to carry, as accuracy is less important, and you can also launch smoke, starshells, etc. Granted, getting them can be a problem. But once you have them, they're quite useful. The OICW was going to include one for just this reason.

There are other methods of indirect fire, too. Physical spells can be quite useful for that. My GM tossed a metal storm spell in my general vicinity when my character was nearly impossible to shoot, and it was a pain. Spirits can be whistled up to either cover or conceal your advance or affect your opponents negatively.

Also, if you can localize the opponent (i.e. know where he's firing from, even if behind cover), so-so suppressing fire rules were added in SR2 and SR3 to aid in keeping the target pinned, at the risk of perforation. That lets another character (preferably the troll with the axe or bayoneted rifle) close and gut the offending opponent.

Of course, with all those options, recovering from being in a good ambush is really hard. The ambush was my group's preferred combat style. We'd rather shoot first than be shot at, as healing is hard, and the Death Spiral sucks.

Brad

 

[Vocenoctum]

I'm not saying it increases your chance of hitting a *lot* - especially not compared to the wasted ammo. But you can use it to "sweep" in an opponent's general direction, which ought to provide at least a small increase in hitting chance. But saying that increasing the chance of hitting is probably a bit too strong, yes.

But if there are also rules for getting a better chance to hit from a short controlled burst, I'm OK with that.

SR's problem is that with full auto fire, it's all or nothing. No chance of a glancing blow from a single round or anything.
Tactical doctrine has changed from volume of fire to concentrated bursts, but that's still about increasing hits.

In SR, depending on recoil, autofire makes it less likely to get any hit at all.

They have searching fire as an optional rule, which does increase the chance of hitting, but then never takes into account more than 1 bullet hitting. As well, Recoil still counts, so it makes it harder to hit.

But, it's just a game, so it's okay.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

I changed the fumble rule to "more than half 1s." (Once you hit skill level 4, which isn't all that impressive, really, the odd under the RAW of fumbling are 1295:1 against. And that's not counting any dice pools. Why bother to have a fumble rule?)

I also had a rule that utilizing vision magnification required one action per step of improvement. (You could do other things during the action ... the cost was basically just a delay of full effect.)

I had a few other house rules -- surprisingly few, really -- but I can't remember them. It's been a few years.

 

[Steverooo]

I once had a firefight where the PC's were frantically defending a lightswitch, because the party all had vision augmentation and most of the bad guys didn't, and if that lightswitch got flipped, they were all in big trouble.

So y'FRAG the switch (and/or the lights), and keep RUNNIN'!

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Oh, I did have a Wraith that was pretty central to a game, and had some house rules for spirits, I wonder where I put them...

Would that be a Wraith from the WW game, by the way?