Reload Mechanics

[silva]

@Blade,

I would use the average of gymnastics and firearms (ie: 4, if you got Gym 6 and Arms 4). Then evaluate the roll through a "success at a cost" lens (thus declaring you hit the maneuver but ammo emptied, if the roll missed the target by a little margin).

Voi-la! Abstract ammo with maneuvers on one roll.

[Stubbazubba]

Ammo rolls are nice from a strictly gameplay perspective, but they're a seriously dissociated mechanic. The first time someone loads up their revolver and discovers that it's empty after taking a single shot things get weird. I suppose you could include a passage about it also including things like your gun jamming, but then you've got wacky weapons that seem weirdly unreliable, which could play against the theme of the game.

I figure that if you make the issue rare enough such that it's a fumble, it can cover jams, misfires, and running out of ammo, depending on what feels right in the combat. Reloading could then be handwaved as typically a free action such that if the bad roll comes up early in combat, that's a jam. If it comes up late, that's needing to actually spend an action to reload just because maybe you fumbled the magazine.

As a corollary, ammo then becomes measurable just in per-combat rather than explicit bullets or magazines, with a single post-combat depletion roll that is penalized for each battle (failing it means you're now out of ammo).

Features of a class might include fire discipline, allowing a bonus to that post-combat roll but still keeping the possibilities of misfire and jams.

I like where this is going, but I'd make it even simpler: by default the fumble is out of ammo, but if you roll a fumble within 2 rounds of reloading, it's a jam instead. When you fumble, you can spend your turn fixing it/reloading or try something else. You have ammo units that deplete per reload (but not per jam), so you don't have to remember to do an extra accounting phase after the fight. You still add your "good with guns" stat to the roll, since your skill with the weapon avoids improper use which causes jams just as much as it reduces the amount of ammo you use per "attack."

I guess that's not much different from just ignoring the fumble the first 2 rounds after reloading, but whatever.

[Omegonthesane]

If it's not on the character sheet, then why would you assume the character has the ability? Whirlwind Attacking is extremely hard to pull off properly, an amateur trying it would likely faceplant. Likewise an amateur character might go in intending to use short controlled bursts and reload after every room, only to get sloppy and/or get spooked as required to justify failing ammo rolls because they haven't spent character resources on "is good with a gun".

I'm a Shadowrun player, not a D&D player.
If a player wants his character to slide down the stair's railing while shooting everyone, I don't need him to have the "slide shoot" feat, I have him roll Gymnastic to check if he can slide correctly, and then roll his Pistol skill with a negative modifier that represents the fact that it's extremely hard to hit anything while sliding down a railing.

So if we apply the same mechanism to the ammo roll, it would mean rolling the "combat discipline" skill, with modifiers for the stress, the situation and a threshold that depends on the size of the clip/magazine and using the result to say if there are bullets left or not.

That could be acceptable, but would require an additional dice roll for each shoot action, which would slow down a game that already has too many dice rolls.

If Slide Shoot was a maneuver that was expected to be repeatedly performed I'd want there to be a hard and fast rule when the book is printed, rather than a GM rectal extraction. You might rule that way; another GM might rule "no, only a retard would expect that to hit anything"; a third might decide that realism left the window ages ago and decide this is a normal Move action and Shoot Everyone action.

You clearly understand that adding rolls has a cost. Thus, surely you can at least see the benefits of deciding "instead of needing to pass a bunch more rolls, you either have the ability to Whirlwind Attack or you don't". However, this is becoming a tangent - the core point was that you shouldn't just be able to declare arbitrarily that you do X, Y, and Z that overwrites the core mechanics.

Your problem appears to be that people should be able to be disciplined enough to never empty their clip on round 1, and that better soldiers should be more likely to have bullets left after round 2. This seems adequately satisfied by the existing proposal of linking the ammo roll to the attack roll. In Shadowrun mechanics, each weapon could have a Reload threshold, and if you roll fewer hits than the Reload threshold and you've not reloaded since the last time you fired then click, click, click, clip's empty. Then maybe you could get a bunch of bonus dice if you decide to empty the clip on the first or second round of firing, when there's definitely bullets left.

(Disclaimer, this ruling is almost certainly full of more holes than the Tory economic narrative)

[OgreBattle]

I don't have a problem with characters getting bonuses to their ammo checks for being more skilled. In fact, I think that's exactly what should happen.

-Username17

I could see reloading in After Sundown as a Combat roll modified by the weapon you're using.

[TheFlatline]

If you're going for a more blood opera vibe you could probably go the reverse and give a benefit to running out of ammo, as in the genre running out of bullets is almost a beat in the action.

Unless you're doing a full auto or single shot or something similar to that, on a successful hit, you can choose to have your weapon empty and need reloading, which takes x time or whatever. For doing that, you get a bonus. Damage bonus, the ability to heal a little, improve your AC, whatever.

Similarly, you can choose to return suppressive fire when attacked, running your gun out of ammo mid-action, in order to receive an AC bonus or combat modifier making you harder to hit.

[Meikle641]

Had some thoughts about the topic while at work. I admit, the topic has some potential after the initial reaction of "Wat".

So in the first round with a fresh magazine there's no need to roll. Afterwards you roll 1d10 after every attack, rolls 2+ mean you still have ammunition. Each successful ammo roll adds +1 to the DC roll until the character inevitably rolls under it.

Full auto and certain effects (such as specific spells) add +4 to the DC; some weapons might have a higher DC as well (revolvers, for instance).

Weapon qualities like large magazines or linked ammunition have a -2 or -4 modifier to the DC respectively.

Not too big on good things being a negative modifier, but having all rolls operate on the same "higher = better" approach seems best.

I'm guessing that single-shot weapons simply fail the ammunition roll or something by default?

[silva]

So in the first round with a fresh magazine there's no need to roll. Afterwards you roll 1d10 after every attack, rolls 2+ mean you still have ammunition. Each successful ammo roll adds +1 to the DC roll until the character inevitably rolls under it.

Full auto and certain effects (such as specific spells) add +4 to the DC; some weapons might have a higher DC as well (revolvers, for instance).

Weapon qualities like large magazines or linked ammunition have a -2 or -4 modifier to the DC respectively.

Huh... I think the point of the OP was to simplify things. At this point you already complicated it.

[Stubbazubba]

Silva's right. If you're adding +1 to the DC every ammo roll, then you're already doing all the bookkeeping of just counting ammo, so you should just do that and not take the extra time to roll on top of it.

[Omegonthesane]

Silva's right. If you're adding +1 to the DC every ammo roll, then you're already doing all the bookkeeping of just counting ammo, so you should just do that and not take the extra time to roll on top of it.

I hate to agree with the shill, but this is actually correct if cutting down on accounting is the only goal. Of course, counting 3 or 5 or 10 steps from full to empty is less detail than counting rounds with most automatic weapons. If - I dunno - a Gatling gun eats ammunition far faster than is remotely reasonable in the story, it can just have a smaller number of attacks between reloads to represent this.

Now I think of it, though, ammo rolls have a benefit in terms of genre emulation - you don't act like you know exactly how many shots you have, because you don't know exactly how many shots you have. Like how so much of the design work for Doubt was wasted on trying to work out methods by which the players could not know if their powers worked rather than just saying "by the nature of the thing you cannot IC demonstrate beyond all reasonable doubt that your abilities work, even if you can get a preponderance of the evidence".

[kzt]

The idea that comes to mind is ignoring ammo until it's narratively important, than have the person in question roll their weapon as a skill vs some sort of target number. So people with more skill have this happen less often. Skill also changes how fast you can reload. I've seen people who are absurdly fast.

I can't think of two many situations in the SR games I played that people needed to reload, and none where it really mattered.

Story time: I know a Ranger who mentioned that on the first night of Afghanistan he carried 12 mags, plus the one in the gun. By his 10th deployment or so in 2009 in Iraq he carried 4 mags plus the one in his gun and had never needed to load the 4th magazine on his vest. So yeah, people who do this stuff daily tend to understand how to not screw it up.

[fectin]

1/2 round:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLk1v5bSFPw

[virgil]

Presuming you're using the d20 base rules as your starting point, what is an ideal ammo mechanic in this instance? Having a separate die roll seems ill-advised because three die rolls per attack (attack, damage, ammo) is generally accepted to be too much.

What if a natural 1 through X (number undecided) on your attack roll threatened a "run out of ammo", followed by a confirmation roll? If the confirmation check misses the target, then you find yourself needing to reload. The confirmation check ties martial skill to how often you need to reload (eg. Cyril Figgis), and the gun capacity could be represented by either a modifier to the confirmation check or the 'threat' range itself.

[hyzmarca]

For an ultra-cinematic game, how about reloading as a recharge mecanic?

Basically, your weapons have infinite ammo, unless you use a special move.

After you use a special move, your weapon is emptied and you have to reload.

And you'll want to use special moves, because they're more powerful than standard attacks, more useful, and they look really cool.

And as the characters level up, they'll be able to chain together special moves and use the whole chain before reloading.

So, for example, if I'm hiding behind a concrete barrier in a firefight with two capos with assault rifles. I can stay behind cover and shoot at them all I want, but that's not going to end well for me because I only have a pistol and they're advancing on my position. So instead I use the special move called Kick 'em Low & Shoot 'em High, I leap over the barricade, rush the closest enemy, kick him as hard as I can between his legs, and shoot him in the head point blank while he's stunned. So he's dead. But now I'm standing in the open with an empty weapon and there is a guy with an assault rifle right beside me.

A few levels later, the same thing happens. But this time I can chain it with Bullet Parry and when the second guy shoots, I shoot his bullets out of the air, retreat, and reload.

[Josh_Kablack]

Presuming you're using the d20 base rules as your starting point, what is an ideal ammo mechanic in this instance?

Without knowing anything else, I would go with no-one ever runs out unlimited ammo. Because my personal d20 tabletop experience has shown that at-will powers are the least confusing to players and therefore waste the least table time on rule explanations and arguments.

If that doesn't feel right to you, and you want people to either spend rounds reloading or have to use non-shooty fightin' sometimes, I would make the crazy addition of attacks / maneuvers / spells which added the "out of ammo" condition to their targets. That lets you have the simplicity of "it's at will, don't track anything" with the conditional of "now your are out of ammo". But it's also right out of the 4e design school, so I expect to be mocked for even suggesting it here.

[OgreBattle]

Presuming you're using the d20 base rules as your starting point, what is an ideal ammo mechanic in this instance? Having a separate die roll seems ill-advised because three die rolls per attack (attack, damage, ammo) is generally accepted to be too much.

What if a natural 1 through X (number undecided) on your attack roll threatened a "run out of ammo", followed by a confirmation roll? If the confirmation check misses the target, then you find yourself needing to reload. The confirmation check ties martial skill to how often you need to reload (eg. Cyril Figgis), and the gun capacity could be represented by either a modifier to the confirmation check or the 'threat' range itself.

It depends on how often you want ammo rolls to come up. A natural 1 for reloading means every 20 rolls, so if you have a party of 5 rolling a d20 each round, in 4 rounds somebody makes a reload check... but that also means you only reload when you miss.

You could go for "a natural 20 or 1", so reloading checks occur for a party of 5 every 2 rounds. That sounds like a good ratio to me, and can open up some narrative fun like "the five dudes fire at the tyranid swarm, in the second round one of them needs to reload instead of fire so a hormagaunt makes it to melee range!"

[virgil]

It depends on how often you want ammo rolls to come up. A natural 1 for reloading means every 20 rolls, so if you have a party of 5 rolling a d20 each round, in 4 rounds somebody makes a reload check... but that also means you only reload when you miss.

It's not actually reloading every 20 rolls, but roughly having a 2-in-3 chance of having to reload over the span of 20 rolls; even more shots if there's a subsequent ammo check tied to the natural 1, especially if tied to skill. For someone with a six-shooter, that's going to be downright weird.

Here are some preliminary assumptions...

• A natural 1 through X on the attack roll is a "reload result"
• You cannot get a reload result on the first attack of a firearm since it's been reloaded
• A reload result means the firearm reveals itself to be empty on that attack (auto-miss)
• Special equipment, skill checks/ranks, or character traits can permit the gun to still fire on a reload result and the character just now knows the gun is empty
• You want a gun to have a ~95% chance of needing a reload after a number of attacks equal to its ammo capacity

Our first sample gun is a standard six-shot revolver. You then need a reload threat on a natural 1 through 8. If you have something like a Glock 17 (17 shot magazine), then the reload result range is 1 through 3. If you want to tie skill into this by making the reload result require a confirmation roll; then you need to expand the threat range and/or include a penalty on the confirmation roll. You would also want to set a baseline skill level for the statistics to compare to; such as setting the 95% reload rate after [clip size] shots from a trained marksman.