It is finally necessary to address rapid fire weapons. An ideal treatment of rapid fire would be simple and provide results that are interesting and at least somewhat realistic.

There are a few ways of handling rapid fire weapons in Fudge:

  • Ignore it
  • Roll for each shot
  • Abstract it as higher ODF
  • Treat it like GURPS
  • Tie number of hits to margin of success in a different manner

Ignore Option

This is certainly simple but not fully satisfying. It is what I have been doing so far. It think rapid fire is more than a “nice to have” feature. It is fairly important for Psi-Wars, so ignoring it isn’t a solution.

Rolling for Days

No!

Increase ODF

Look, an actual solution!

It takes slightly more work to decide how much to increase the ODF, but it is simple in play. If you keep track of shots, you may want to make a note of ODF at different numbers of shots.

The main problem with this approach is that it doesn’t take armor into account. Realistically, armor should protect against each shot unless it gets damaged.

GURPS-Like Margin of Success

This should work. It would require using alternate attack and defense, but that is standard for ranged combat in Fudge. It might make sense to half recoil and double the number of shots dodge per MoS due to 4dF vs 3d6, but that may simply over complicate things.

This solution does raise a question. Since Fudge damage is influenced by margin of success, should recoil affect the MoS and thus damage for successive hits?

Other Margin of Success Variants

Default Fudge

Default Fudge suggests basing the number of shots hitting using the following guidelines:

  • +8: all shots hit
  • +4: approximately half shots hit
  • +2: approximately a quarter shots hit
  • +1: a graze (only one or two shots hit)
    • Grazes normally have specific damage maxima. Is this supposed to replace that?

If no armor or other factors affect the damage, simply add a large number to the ODF. How much? It doesn’t say. It merely states “this is going to Incapacitate anyone, at the very least.”

If armor does affect the damage, adding this (unspecified) bonus to damage doesn’t make sense. The armor can provide protection against each shot. What guidance does Fudge give? “The GM needs to fudge some medium result: give a slight damage bonus if more projectiles hit the target.”

Weapons and Armor in Fudge

Weapons and Armor in Fudge has a few options. It also specifies that semi-automatic weapon shots should be resolved separately instead of being treated like automatic weapons.

Roll for Each

It elaborates why this doesn’t work well.

Assume All Shots Hit or Miss

It is easy but not realistic. It doesn’t say how to resolve the damage.

Random Hits

Roll to hit at +1. If you hit, roll a d% to determine the percentage of shots that hit. Alternatively use 4dF with each non blank resulting in +25% of the shots hitting. All blanks mean one hits.

Relative Degree

Give a bonus based on the number of shots fired “+ 1 bonus to hit for every three (or five, or whatever) …” If the attack would hit, use the relative degree to determine how many shots hit. How? “Whatever,” I guess.

It also suggests assigning a cumulative -1 penalty to damage for each successive shot that hits to compensate for the fact that “this [way of handling rapid fire] turns good hits into ridiculously good hits, while not helping bad hits very much.”

Spray Fire

This is more of way to handle covering an area with fire rather than trying to shoot an individual target. It suggests attacking everyone in the area with a skill level based on the number of shots fired:

  • 2-4: Poor
  • 5-8: Mediocre
  • 9-15: Fair
  • 16-25: Good
  • 26+: Great

It also suggests the possibility of allowing multiple shots to hit the same character in the area by rolling at a -1 penalty for a second hit and -2 for a third.

Conclusion

I am not sure the best way to handle rapid fire at this point. I know some ways not to handle it, but choosing an option will require more thought and testing.