Another idea

[Daddicus]

My son and I were on a roll last night. Here's an idea for ranged combat:

Normally, you do all of these at once, each round:

• Declare cover
• Declare aimed, normal, or hasty
• Shoot

Instead, how about you choose one action per round:

• Increase cover by 1
• Increase cover by 2 (requires cover 1 or more)
• Increase cover by 3 (requires cover of 3 or more)
• Brace for shot (requires cover 1 or more)
• Declare aimed once
• Declare aimed a second time
• Shoot (requires aimed once)
• Shoot aimed (requires aimed twice)
• Shoot hasty

No penalty for cover. The artificial game construct of 1/2 cover is no longer needed. Having cover almost always makes the shooting easier (bracing yourself).

Use a cover die to track which cover step you are at.

 

[Timerover51]

My son and I were on a roll last night. Here's an idea for ranged combat:

Normally, you do all of these at once, each round:

• Declare cover
• Declare aimed, normal, or hasty
• Shoot

Instead, how about you choose one action per round:

• Increase cover by 1
• Increase cover by 2 (requires cover 1 or more)
• Increase cover by 3 (requires cover of 3 or more)
• Brace for shot (requires cover 1 or more)
• Declare aimed once
• Declare aimed a second time
• Shoot (requires aimed once)
• Shoot aimed (requires aimed twice)
• Shoot hasty

No penalty for cover. The artificial game construct of 1/2 cover is no longer needed. Having cover almost always makes the shooting easier (bracing yourself).

Use a cover die to track which cover step you are at.

Cover implies protection from enemy fire, so if you are taking cover behind a brick wall, there is a limit to the extent you can have cover and still shoot. Then to make it a bit more complicated, is the shooter right or left-handed, and how does that relate to the cover?

 

[Daddicus]

Actually, cover does make it easier to shoot. If I'm hunting and I happen to be next to a tree when I see my prey, I will always brace against it. Freehand is always more difficult. I almost added a negative when you don't have cover, but that would be complexity without depth.

Same thing for left/right-handed shooting: complexity added for little depth.

 

[Daddicus]

One more thing to add: "initiative" isn't needed. All actions are simultaneous.

But, tactics and leadership should mean something. My idea was to take all the leadership and spread it out amongst the other characters, one point at a time. Each point is an extra action at the start of the battle. Optional: leadership points can't be stacked until the whole party has received an equal number.

For tactics, same as leadership, except it only applies to other characters. (Or, maybe swap that idea with leadership?)

Anyhow, all leader and tactics points for the whole party would count, not just the highest one.

 

[Timerover51]

Actually, cover does make it easier to shoot. If I'm hunting and I happen to be next to a tree when I see my prey, I will always brace against it. Freehand is always more difficult. I almost added a negative when you don't have cover, but that would be complexity without depth.

Same thing for left/right-handed shooting: complexity added for little depth.

I understand that cover makes it easier to shoot when you can brace against something. What I was saying is that in order to shoot, you have to expose a certain amount of yourself which cannot be reduced without no longer being able to shoot.

If you are firing at an angle out of a window, you might be in perfect cover, but not able to engage the person charging the window that you can neither see nor engage, until suddenly a hand grenade comes through the window.

 

[Daddicus]

That's true. However, the space you need is the max of

• the distance between your eye and your outer extremity on that side of your head (or wherever your eyes are), or
• The width of your weapon in firing position.

Practically-speaking, it's actually that width or wider.

However, from a game perspective, there needs to be a tradeoff for choosing a high cover. In the 5.09 rules, that tradeoff is half the value. In this idea, the cost is the extra actions you take to get that cover.