Forum

So to my surprise there's no rules for shooting into combat, even for incenerators. So I came up with the following for my session (it hasn't come into play yet) :

If you are shooting at a target that is engaged with a friendly
If your Ranged Combat roll has no successes but you do roll a panic result
Roll another Ranged Combat roll with all the same modifiers and stress dice against the engaged friendly
Resolve any Panic roll if required (this may cancel the second attack roll if a result of 10+ rolled on the Panic Roll table)
If this second roll results in a success, apply it to the friendly

If there are multiple friendlies engaged with the target, in Step 4 randomly determine which friendly is hit.

What do people think ?

Yeah, that might work, but personally, for Alien RPG, I prefer something a little more rules-light. I tend to just roll a "catastrophe roll" when things like this come up: I grab a number of Stress Dice -- say, 3 if the danger is low, more the higher it is -- and if I roll 2 Facehuggers something bad happens.

But yeah, the your system is cool.

In T2K, you roll 2d6 (if you miss) to see if you hit a (random if more than one) friend. One success means a hit, two success means +1 damage.

They also have to make a CUF check to avoid being suppressed (regardless if the friend was hit or not).

I'll be honest, its never happened in my game so far, but I'm with the other guys on the "keep it fast and simple" approach, and its sort of built into the system already. Firing wildly into combat is similar to a burst of full auto fire, and characters take Stress if they're attacked by their own crewmates.

If someone fires into combat where there are friendlies, I'd just apply the Stress & Panic rules. Both shooter and those in line of fire get their Stress increased by 1 before the Ranged Combat roll is made. Stress and Panic can handle the rest.

How about I simplify it down to :

If you are shooting at a target that is engaged with one or more friendlies:
If your Ranged Combat roll has at least one success and two or more panic results on the stress dice, roll for panic. If your panic roll does not rule out the attack, resolve your damage against the target and then do the same damage to an engaged friendly
If your Ranged Combat roll has at no successes and two or more panic results on the stress dice, roll for panic. If your panic roll does not rule out the attack resolve your damage against an engaged friendly
In either case, both the shooter and the struck friendly receive 1 stress

If there are multiple friendlies engaged with the target, roll randomly determine which friendly is hit.

Combining bits from everyone and trying to streamline it:

1. Add 1 Stress to the Shooter and everyone in range of the friendly fire.
2. Make the Ranged Attack roll. If the roll hits, apply damage to the intended target.
3. Check for Facehuggers on the Attack Roll. The first triggers a Panic Roll.
4. If your Ranged Attack roll missed, every Facehugger after that first one is a hit on a friendly - divide these amongst the friendlies by whatever means makes sense. (The GM could also "steal" a Facehugger result to hit a vital system or something dangerously explosive in the environment....hopefully not the atmospheric processor...)

This doesn't penalise the shooter if they made their roll, but it comes with more risk of damaging a friendly target the more stressed you are.

Obviously, this assumes you are firing multiple rounds or using an indiscriminate weapon like a flamethrower. If you only fire one or two rounds, you might want to cap the number of friendly hits accordingly.

I was faced with this particular situation last weekend, with Holroyd-the-android using a incinerator on a bound-up friendly, no less. This meant I had to come up with a mechanic that didn't involve Stress. I went with 1s on base dice simulating the "unwanted result", functioning as usual for damage calculation. Stunts could be used to mitigate the effect.