Accuracy is a luxury, but volume is a statistic. Suppressing Fire is the doctrine of "Denial by Density." It is the understanding that if you fill a corridor with enough superheated plasma or high-velocity tungsten, the enemy's tactical prowess becomes irrelevant.
To the Commission's actuaries, this is calculated as "Munition-to-Morale Efficiency." To the gangers of the Outer Sphere, it’s called "The Wall." Soldiers trained in this discipline don't just shoot to kill; they shoot to dictate reality. They define where an enemy is allowed to stand and where they will die. A Soldier spinning up a rotary cannon isn't just attacking; they are rewriting the physics of the room to say, "Nothing moves here."
Suppressing Fire Feature
You have a knack for using powerful weapons to harry your foes and hinder their movement, preventing them from operating at their peak. If you make an attack with a weapon that has the area trait (such as from the Area Fire or Auto-Fire actions), you use it in a manner that suppresses your targets. Enemies in the affected area who fail their save against your attack become suppressed until the start of your next turn. A suppressed target takes a –1 circumstance penalty on attack rolls and takes a –10-foot status penalty to its Speeds. Some soldier abilities and class feats interact further with the suppressed condition.
Non-Combat Applications
Crowd Control & Riot Dispersal: By using non-lethal ammunition (rubberized flechettes or sonic rounds), a Soldier can suppress a rioting mob without causing mass casualties. The psychological effect of the sheer noise and impact forces the crowd to slow down (-10 ft speed) and hesitate (-1 attack), breaking their momentum.
Industrial Clearing: In the dense fungal jungles of the Frontier or the crystal-choked mines of the Outer Sphere, Soldiers use suppressing fire to clear massive swathes of hazardous flora or fragile debris, cutting paths for exploration teams or mining skiffs.
Negotiation Leverage: "Spinning up" is a universal language. A Soldier suppressing a zone near a negotiation target (without hitting them) demonstrates the capacity for overwhelming violence. It effectively "suppresses" the target's willingness to haggle, granting bonuses to Intimidation or Coercion checks.
Societal Impact
The ubiquity of Suppressing Fire has fundamentally altered Starfall's economy. The cost of "one minute of silence"—a Soldier holding a trigger for sixty seconds—can exceed the monthly GDP of a small colony. This has led to the "Yom-per-Round" metric, where mercenary contracts explicitly stipulate how many seconds of suppression are included in the fee. It has also birthed a cottage industry of "Scavenger Guilds" who follow Soldier units specifically to collect the literal tons of spent brass and depleted energy cells left in their wake.
Adventure Hooks
The Silent Echo: A new, terrifying anomaly in Rift-Space dampens all kinetic energy. A Soldier PC finds their suppression tactics useless as bullets simply drop to the floor after ten feet. They must improvise, perhaps using flamethrowers or laser weaponry that bypasses the kinetic-dampening field.
The Golden Belt: A Soldier NPC is being hunted by the Ebon Syndicate not for a crime, but because they owe a massive debt for the unauthorized use of "Gold-Standard" ammunition during a firefight. They need the party's help to work off the debt before their legs are repossessed.
The Unflinching Swarm: The party encounters a hive-mind species that is immune to the psychological effects of suppression (fearless/mindless). The Soldier must learn to use Suppressing Fire not to scare them, but to break their limbs and mobility physically, shifting the description from "pinning them down" to "dismantling them in motion."
Suppressing Fire transforms the Soldier from a mere combatant into an architect of the battlefield, proving that in Starfall, space is not empty—it is simply waiting to be filled with lead.
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