Auto fire and spaces

[Draco Ferox]

Hello everyone, long time no see.

I was at work this morning when something occurred to me regarding the autofire rules. Currently, the LRB says that any shots on autofire that hit a space are wasted, but what about if there's a person behind/in front of where the shots would land/pass through? What happens? I'm tempted to rule that the shots are wasted anyway, but I wanted the opinions of more experienced players on what to do.

My one concern with letting the shots pass through the space is that you could simply declare the space between you and the intended target full of spaces that you're firing at, giving you a huge BS multiplier (auto fire BS = {(BS-range mod)/shots fired}x no. of targets) and virtually guaranteeing a hit. It's not a very honourable tactic, and I detest this sort of rules lawyering, it basically allows you to reliably hit single targets with a full burst of autofire, which when you think about the lethality of inquisitor's weapons, is a huge game breaker.

[Kaled]

I'm not particularly keen on the full-auto rules but I can say with certainty that no one would get away with the tactic you propose in any game that I'm GMing and I can't think of any GM who would allow it. Thus I think it's a non-issue.

As for resolving the effects of shots that miss - there's too much dice rolling anyway when you fire full-auto so I'd never add more unless there was some interesting plot reason to see what happens. E.g. If the guy the players are supposed to be protecting is in the line of fire, or if they're in a room filled with barrels of volatile fuel - in that case I might roll to see if he's hit to teach the players a lesson about indiscriminately shooting fully automatic weapons near things that don't react well to bullets.

[MarcoSkoll]

Currently, the LRB says that any shots on autofire that hit a space are wasted, but what about if there's a person behind/in front of where the shots would land/pass through?

As a GM, I might have anything of interest in the general area that was NOT part of the target group being at threat from shots that don't hit (either due to "hitting" a space or just generally missing).

So pretty much what Kaled said - no such shenanigans, but things that the player probably wants NOT to hit might be at risk.

Personally though, I'm still trying to contrive an alternative set of full-auto rules, because they've mostly sucked so far.