How to handle Rate of Fire

[Bren]

I still like power holsters.


And pictures of Qui-Gon Jinn meditating.

[Whill]

[garhkal]

Pity someone has not taken that screen cap and made one of those Motivational (or anti motivational) sayings to go with it.
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Fallon Kell]

[atgxtg]

[ZzaphodD]

Im thinking of allowing a 'fast fire' mode, which essentially will mean a 'double tap' for each fire action. However I dont like excessive dice rolling so instead Im thinking of using a 'fast fire' rule.

To beging with, what do we want to represent? Why do you fire several shots to beging with? A) To have an increased chance of hitting at least once? B) To do more damage?

If A, would that mean a bonus to hit(+1D)? What would the drawback be?
If B, would that mean a bonus to damage (+1D)? Again, what would the drawback be? Why wouldnt you always fire this way?

If A is true, then if you succeed really well wouldnt that mean that you hit twice making B true too? Ie a bonus to hit but if you roll a certain margin above the to-hit number then you get a 'double hit' and either rolls two damage rolls or get a damage bonus. Again, why wouldnt you always fire this way?
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My Biggest Beard Retard award goes to: The Admiral of course..

[Grimace]

[Fallon Kell]

[atgxtg]

[atgxtg]

[vanir]

I'm a bit of an old bugger and played this game 20yrs ago, I recently got a gaming group together for reminiscence and funzies and have got back into it, difference being at this stage in my life I've been a real world combatant and heavily involved with military technologies. In addition I'm a sci fi writer, hey it made sense to me.

So firstly let me state I fully support the contention that the Star Wars universe of technology should be as stated in the Players Handbook that it is firstly about epic story and entertaining scenes and secondly about explaining them with some sort of rationale which adequately preserves a suspension of disbelief for the audience.

I do use my real world knowledge of warbird avionics, physics and aeronautics, various combat arts and physical engagements during personal expansions of rule sets and in module construction.
Here is an interesting point however, back when I played the game 20yrs ago not much has changed about the way I logically thought things should work in the game.

So right off the bat most of you are going to be well right in every respect in what you say, about your game and your gaming style. Hey if it works and you love it, do it and as a GM enforce it if the players agree coming in. I think we should all be open for discussion and this is an integral element of RPG gaming, let's face it, and part of the fun.

But this is primarily a creative exercise.

Yes the kind of weapons described as blasters in the SW universe can most certainly provide kick, they are much closer to particle weapons by descriptions such as Cracken's Field Guide than they are traditional lasers in most sci fi. They release a gas which is energised by a radiation pulse and considering a heavy blaster pistol is some 60% more damaging than an advanced, futuristic slugthrower pistol (3Ddmg, equivalent to a .40cal say), you're talking quite some amount of Newtonian reaction going on in a very lightweight frame.

This is how I would explain why Han Solo's blaster visibly provides quite a powerful kick when he fires at the space slug tongue in ESB. Similarly why a stormtrooper blaster rifle is held with two hands and doesn't look like it lacks a bit of kick, but admitedly in the hands of a burly combatant it can be used accurately one-handed unlike the submachine gun it resembles. Well it's got about the same close quarters power as a heavy pistol in a much heavier frame, which absorbs some of the recoil.

So I'd say we're talking about less kick than an equivalent firearm but not none like a pure energy weapon such as a laser you usually find in sci fi.
Hence they are blaster weapons and not laser weapons, actually particle beam weapons firing streams of energised particles, hence ranges are also in metres rather than kilometres.
Bowcasters and the like of course take it to the next level and actually fire small explosive, energised warheads.

Technically particle weapons should do as much physical as energy damage but in the SW universe they are highly developed and cause neglible physical damage and extensive energy damage. Hey and lightsabres are just plain magic in terms of physics too.

Rate of fire is valid not just for recoil but also trigger mechanism, energy cell recovery rates, barrel heating, frame construction, (tibanna) gas delivery system, all weapons are a total package of compromises and utilitarian needs unless you're going to engineer them yourself from scratch and incorporate your wonts. In point of fact RPG are set up to do this very thing with customisable rule sets and engineering possibilities.
In our games characters frequently specialise in Advanced engineering skills from blaster technologies to starship engineering so they can run around later in massive fleet battles when I throw the entire Imperial Sourcebook at them (and others) with the full fury of a stubborn GM.

Repeater weapons are a special case introduced by the Kotor games, which I've adapted in which you can choose to either use traditional damage capabilities (6D/7D/8D for light/med/hvy repeaters) or you can elect to fire double bursts at targets within close proximity at -1D damage for each without penalty (ie. 5D/6D/7D respectively). So you can effectively mow down cannon fodder that try to rush you with only two or three separately aimed actions (double shots for each).

Some specialised assault rifles and riot guns also provide this facility, but these are really just repeater weapons with specialised names provided by the manufacturer.

Generally I adjudicate that a listed ROF relates to weapon overheat and power cell recovery rates and works as a limit for a particularly lightweight blaster rifle that does good damage for example.
Otherwise most blaster weapons will fire as often as you can point them and pull the trigger accurately in a 5sec round, whilst "wild shooting" will always be superfluous unless you take the extra action to select individually targeted shots.

In other words you can say, "I want to fire wildly five times but consciously pick a target only on the first shot" and the standard blaster pistol will do it, but four of those shots are just going aimlessly into the air, ground, your leg, wherever.

[garhkal]

[vanir]

Quite true, it's been so long since I saw the original series it's hard to remember. Of course I don't know anything about the proposed technology of these weapons but it appears this was another project written from the beginning as a screenplay rather than acutely developed in a book form and then transferred to screen.

In most sci fi books, if a gun is called a laser weapon it has no more recoil than shining a torch, and generally a range of beam cohesion that means the firer really has to think about where he points the thing before he pulls the trigger. Their damaging effects will also be described as very much like an industrial grade cutting laser.

In movies like BSG or SW however an explosive kind of damage looks more impressive for audiences. It simply doesn't need to make sense if it looks good, which is why the genre refers to these films as space-fantasy rather than sci-fi.

I mean at the end of the day however we explain it, we're just making it up.

[atgxtg]

You know, another way tohandle double-taps, "fast fire" would be to increase the MAP penalty, but allow the to shots to come off at the same "initiative count".

If it were -2D per shot, but you got two shots off at once, the increased MAPs would discourage over use of the option, but the abiity to get to or more shots off before the opponents next action might be occasionally worth it.

Just another way of handling it.

[vanir]

Hm yeah but what I was visualising for the repeaters was a full auto capability so that light repeaters are just a blaster rifle built for this (and subsequently heavier in design), the 6D damage is from the free double shot you're already getting by hitting once, provided by high rate of auto fire rather than higher power output on individual shots to start with.

So the player could elect to spray instead and the penalty for the first "additional shot" doing this came off damage instead of Blaster skill because of the nature of repeaters, so long as the next target stood immediately beside the first.
You could continue to spray, or concentrate on taking individuals down.

A handheld laser cannon for example we rule as a heavy weapon with 6D base damage, the repeater version of that is the medium repeat. Multiple crew heavy laser cannon (character scale) do 7D normally or 8D when heavier again as a repeater version like an E-Web (which requires a crew of 3).
Laser cannon are of course support and light artillery pieces, so anything bigger than a light repeater requires periodic Stamina rolls under certain conditions (sprinting across an open area to take some cover), so should only be carried by very strong or fit characters.