[sothach]

The descriptive text for the firing selection change gun mod on page 151 of Arsenal says "This modification is not available for weapons using unusual loading mechanisms or exotic ammunition, like the Sakura Fubuki or Pain Inducer." This strikes me as a bit vague, and so when one of my players came to me with a character who dual wields Eichiro Hatamoto IIs which are modded to have extended clips and firing selection changes (so he can fire four bullets per action phase instead of just 2), I checked out what sort of loading mechanism the Eichiro Hatamoto II has.

Apparently these guns have an internal magazine, and you can load a number of bullets equal to your Agility score as a complex action. This leads me to believe that the character is loading the bullets one at a time, so my question is: Does the internal magazine of the Eichiro Hatamoto II count as an unusual loading mechanism as defined by the firing selection change text?

[Michael Chandra]

You're not loading the rounds into an Internal Magazine when it's fired, it's simply a weapon where you have to manually reload the bullets yourself.

[sothach]

Well the gun in question usually only holds one bullet at a time, so you would have to manually put the bullets in each time it's fired, wouldn't you?

[Michael Chandra]

Not if you extend their internal magazine. However, I think the GM decides whether that's even an option, since it's not a clip sticking out of the gun but an internal thing. These guns likely simply only have a chamber that you can put a round in, so you cannot Extend their ammo size.

By the way, since it says Extended Clip, it basically needs GM approval on any weapon that doesn't use a Clip but a Barrel (hell no) or Internal Magazine (depends on the weapon). Now Additional Clip can easily be argued to fit with Extended Drums (and in fact there is a gun in the German Arsenal with 2 Drums.) But even that would likely not work with Internal Magazines, Barrels and such.

Why does he want Firing Selection Chance by the way? To fire Short Bursts with 2 bullets per Burst?

[sothach]

He wants it because without modifications, it is a Single Shot weapon. He wants to upgrade it to a Semi-Automatic so that he can fire them more than once per action phase.

Thank you for the advice so far, by the way, I appreciate it.