Forum

OK I see what you're saying now but I don't know how it's relevant to anything; from a mechanics perspective, reducing a die to F is exactly the same as not having the die in the first place. As far as I know there's no difference between "if you don't have the skill" vs "if your skill or attribute die is reduced to F"

Hmm, I always took the "can" in the rule book as an option, but if you decided to not use the ammo dice it was a single shot expending a single round with no bonuses other than standard skill roll. For example; if I have an M9, I can choose to fire a single aimed shot on a combat turn or fire a volley of shots using the RoF so could choose 1 or 2 ammo dice and follow those rules. Could be doing it wrong but I like doing it like that.

P.61 of the rulebook:

AMMO DICE: Firearms give you ammo dice to add to your skill roll. Six such tan colored D6s are included in this boxed set. You can add as many ammo dice to your attack as you like, from a minimum of one up to the rate of fire (RoF) rating of your weapon.

(Emphasis added by me)

You always have to add at least one Ammo die.

In the upcoming beta, there will be a small change to how ammo dice works and also there will be some sort of single shot option. Personally I don't think the single shot option will use ammo dice (we will see shortly).

Cool, that makes a lot of sense for sniper/hunting style weapons (I want to say "Bolt action" but obv a lot of sniper rifles aren't bolt action any more)

Having said that, the abstraction of combat rounds means more time passes than you think; I've been watching a lot of Escape from Tarkov lately and even "slow" firing guns like pump action shotguns and bolt action rifles will get 3-4 shots off in the course of 6 or so seconds - and need to shoot that many in that timeframe to get hits on target, which I think the ammo mechanic reflects nicely - it shows off how chaotic actual combat is, and how many rounds get put downrange in the heat of the moment - IRL and in games.

That's exactly it. When someone's shooting back, you pull the trigger as many times as it takes to hit or give up.

Just as important, if your characters were military, this is the doctrine that was probably (some variance depending on nation) drilled into their heads from day one. Fire superiority. Even in somewhat different circumstances it would be hard for a lot of people to unlearn that.

As for the "do dice even exist" metaphysics discussion: there's one place I can think of where it matters, which is mishaps. If you do not have the relevant skill at all, then rolling a single mishap result counts as a mishap. If you do have the skill, though, and the die was simply modified out of existence, then you still need to roll 2 mishap results to get hosed.

It's all good, I still do not read that as a you MUST use ammo dice. I interpret the "You can add as many ammo dice to your attack as you like ..." as an option, but if you do choose to, you must use a minimum of one and up to the RoF.

I like my interpretation of how that reads. To each their own. My interpretation works better for how we play.

As for training, Marines train to fire single shots or short controlled bursts. You only go spray and pray in what we call "Final Protective Fire" which is when you are being overrun so it's all or nothing. LOL

And when the Marine misses and the target is shooting back, the Marines just goes, "Oh well, I missed, I guess I can't shoot at him anymore"? When you miss, you shoot again.

And when the Marine misses and the target is shooting back, the Marines just goes, "Oh well, I missed, I guess I can't shoot at him anymore"? When you miss, you shoot again.

I get what you're saying, but I can think of situations where the opposite is true. The ammo dice make sense in a situation where
1) You are in close proximity of the enemy and vulnerable (higher stakes situation)
2) Returning fire when enemy initiates fire contact (should be standard drill for most armed forces)
3) You are providing suppressing fire/trying to achieve fire superiority.
But they do not make sense in a situation where
1) You are initiating the fire contact with enemy (be it whatever context, but you just want to try and pop one guy and bugger off - hit and run tactics while saving ammo)
2) You are at longer range/in cover and can dictate the pace of the battle
3) Squad/team is providing line fire (not certain on the term, but in infantry tactics when the whole unit is popping off shots one by one after initial contact in order to keep the enemies heads down without going red on ammo in a second)

That being said, anyone can interpret the rules how they want, but if anything I think the ability to be limited to a single shot could be tied to the coolness under fire check in order to nerf the benefits of not straight up wasting your ammo. And for single shot weapons dividing the ammo dice up or something along those lines would make sense for me, if anything panicking with a bolt action or similar weapon would make your fire rate slower rather than faster.