They should get a cognition roll to oppose the sniper's sneak. You should probably give the sniper a bonus considering the distance and time to prep. If they don't see the sniper, he can get a shot off before they know he's there, then start combat.
After the sniper starts attacking, I would give the heroes a cognition check every time the sniper fires to figure out where the sniper is, and they could spend an action to actively try to spot the sniper. I would give the sniper progressively more penalties, using the same initial hide roll (to save time rolling a lot of dice) unless the sniper managed to move to a different location(in which case I would roll the hide check again, with the bonuses for distance, but without the bonus for setup time). I would do this becasue while the sniper is shooting, he has to make himself more visible, there's the sound of the gunshot as well as smoke from the gun. If
the sniper is using a bow, he has to make himself even more open in order to get a shot, since more of a bow will be exposed when shooting, and it's easier to track the flight of an arrow.
Adam
James Killick <james.killick@btinternet.com> wrote:
Hello
I was wondering if anybody could offer me some advice on how to run a combat where the heroes come under fire from a single sniper. They are approaching across a plain while the sniper is embedded in a hill range up ahead, there is limited cover for the heroes.
I am quite a newcomer to the game and have only run the scenario in the back of the Marshall's handbook as well as a couple of shoot-outs just to get used to the rules with the players.
Any marshals run anything like this? Should the sniper get an automatic free action? How should I manage whether the heroes can actually see the sniper? Should I have them make a cognition roll before every action?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated, or a reference to the rules that I might have missed. I am playing the classic system.
Regards
James