I personally find Autofire more annoying.
A_C_XX__
____XE_C
Attacker (A) can hit enemy (E) but not hit Civilians (C), by targeting area (X) inculding the enemies square. The bullets just magically appear in those four squares and stop before exiting them.
That's how D20m works? :confused: Ya, I'm not sure exactly how that is suppose to "reflect action movies"? Here I was thinking I really should be giving D20m a chance by looking through it as opposed to thinking that the whole concept of guns in D&D wasn't
still busted.
On the subject of poorer aim with burst fire; It's an old saw in games with firearms, and making it harder to hit isn't actually strictly required for
balance. It is probably the quickest patch to do it, and because it's the most immediate place to do it it seems to be done a lot. In truth the objective of balance, in this instance, would be to encourage a mixture of semi-auto versus always using burst fire. There is an actual reason to use semi-auto versus burst fire, ammo conservation. So if you design the game so that ammo usage difference between semiauto and burstfire is important then presto,
balance.
Another way is Feng Shui's
balance, in that there is perfectly good reasons for switch to semiauto. When it's the coolest option to the players. Especially if you have Movie Magik Magazines™ that's all nice and balanced, in that you'll have a
player pleasing mix of semiauto and burstfire because each is a viable option.
P.S. Offhand making Burst Fire a Feat certainly sounds wack.
But such is the effect of trying to pound a square peg into a triangular hole....returning us to my previous stance of expecting poor results of trying to enact modern firearms in a D&D based system.