The wookiee bowcaster

[MegaFehr]

One of my players have made a wookiee character for an upcoming campaign, and after reading up on their preferred weapon, I've come up with some questions?

The fire rate says "1" but the description indicates that you can fire the weapon more than once per round if you make a Strength check.
Now: is that strength check included in the MAP or is it a free action before the second shot? If it's not, then there isn't really a fire rate, since you could fire the weapon as many times as you wish as long as you keep making the strength checks.

The ammo. It's confusing. The whole quarrel thing first of all. Am I to assume that the 6 quarrels that the weapon has listed as ammo is like a "pack" that you insert into the weapon, which depletes after 6 shots?
If so then why do you need to make a strength check to fire a new shot?

It says in the Movie Trilogy sourcebook that Chewbacca has modified his weapon to be able to fire multiple shots each round without having to make a strength check, but in the stats for the weapon it has a fire rate of ½, meaning he could only fire the weapon every other round.
Does this mean that he can fire as many shots as he likes... every other round?

Can a bowcaster use a power pack instead of the Strength check / quarrel thing? Because the RaE Rulebook seems to indicate that is the case?
If so why would anyone use the quarrels since their much more difficult to use, have much less ammo (6, power pack has 50), and are much harder to obtain?

[Fallon Kell]

First of all, as I understand it, bow casters are fairly highly customized. Talk it out and come to an agreement with your player, and ignore any rules you don't like.

I think bowcasters have really punishing recoil. That could account for the strength check, despite having a magazine of whatever size you choose. That, or you may decide you want your player to have to use a lot of force to cycle the action. Either way.
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[vanir]

Bowcasters use both powerpacks and magazines. The quarrels are explosive projectiles without propulsion cartridges, the bowcaster's powerpack uses blaster-era technology to encase the quarrels in energy as an armour piercing projectile and propel them.

So you need both a quarrel magazine (6 shots), and a charged power pack (50 charges), to fire a bowcaster.

As ad hoc hypothesis you might allow the bowcaster to be fired like an oversized holdout blaster without quarrels, if it has a charged power pack but no quarrels. In this case I'd use low powered blaster qualities, it's the explosive quarrels which really bump the damage.

The Strength check/fire rate is probably related to recoil (the propulsion phase is probably a rail gun using magnetised crossbow arms...and I've been schooled here that railguns have fierce recoil when firing projectiles of any kind of noticable mass). But it also includes a manual action of cycling the action (I like the way Fallon put that), although the Strength check is more related to righting the gun whilst you're cycling it rather than the resistance of manual reloading. It's more about keeping the weapon steady, ie. handy whilst cycling the action and refiring.

This would make sense for both the normal fire rate of 1/1, requiring a Strength check to exceed. The Strength check would be free, each additional shot MAP'd as normal but any failed Str check means a wasted shot (goes high or wide, MAP for the shot still applies and a round is spent). You'd make the Str check as a free action when the actual shot is taken, following the first to determine whether you have to bother rolling a skill check to hit.
It also makes sense for Chewie's modified bowcaster, firing multiple shots as a semi-auto every other round but then the gun must be righted due to recoil. In the case of this bowcaster modification you would apply a Strength check to fire unlimited rate each round, rather than 1/2 rounds. The Strength check in this case would be a free action at the beginning of the round for each successive round the weapon is fired, rather than for each shot.

In effect, Chewie's modification just lowers the chances of individual shots going wide and ammo/MAPs being wasted. If he fails a Str check being at the start of a round I suppose he could drop the weapon and go brawling, since this is at the declaration phase, you'd know if you've righted the weapon successfully before you have to declare, so could drop it if not. With a standard bowcaster you're stuck if you fail a Strength check, shoot wide and have a quickly closing enemy, you're in the middle of the round sequence when you fail the check and have already declared.
If Chewie makes a single Str check, he knows each shot in the round is going to be valid. Gives more options and higher reliability of action, but doesn't really increase the qualities of the weapon per se.

This explanation does adhere to RAW and seems to satisfy action sequences logically. You should of course conclude whatever explanation works best for your game and players.

[jmanski]