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Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun _ How big an explosion have you gotten?

Posted by: Dawnshadow May 8 2006, 11:19 PM

Something came up last game that got me wondering..

How big an explosion have people gotten with secondary affects cooking off ammo?

Ours was a recent addition.. elf with lots and lots of speed, an assault rifle (Ares Alpha) and WP grenades in the launcher. He got splashed by one.

The secondary affects cooked off:

2 assault rifle APDS, 2 assault rifle EX-explosive, 3 heavy pistol, 3 concussion grenades, 6 defensive grenades, and 3 offensive grenades.

Spending all his karma on the soak rolls, he took 56 physical and 9 stun. Everyone else was far enough away and wearing armour, so the grenades didn't hurt so much. Very localized, very intense, explosion.

I think he also took a light wound from the WP too.. but that's gotten lost in the horror as we realized the secondary affects. Which was brought on by me asking if the mage that got cooked had any foci.

Posted by: mmu1 May 8 2006, 11:53 PM

Can we bring up examples of the reverse of the situation you describe?

If yes, then I had a character spend... I forget, either 3 or 4 rounds engulfed by a fire elemental, without any of his 12-15 IPE grenades cooking off.

Though I'm not entirely sure how we were handling it rules-wise at the time.

Oh, and another character of mine managed to talk his way out of the clutches of an insect shaman by threatening to suicide and "take you all with me" using a grenade launcher, setting off thermite charges, lots of IPE explosives, and a brace of WP grenades in the process.

I'm sort of due for a cook-off, aren't I?

Posted by: Austere Emancipator May 8 2006, 11:57 PM

I have never used those rules as a GM. IRL, though, I've witnessed a few cartridges flaming out, after a minute or something in a campfire.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin May 9 2006, 12:42 AM

Well, I think that it depends on whether you want to be t3h cannon or t3h r34l.

If you want to be t3h cannon all kinds of explosives and ammunition are incredibly unsafe and explode at the slightest excuse. I guess it's a funny way to make the players feel stupid for taking all EX EX ammo instead of regular.

If you want to be t3h r34l it's probably generally not okay for everything to go off like that. My understanding is that most munitions are designed to be pretty stable and, as the previous poster pointed out, you might need a few minutes in a campfire to cook something off.

Usually when GMing I was more t3h r34l just so that was easier *and* more realistic. However, I guess if you want a more raucous game with people exploding in fleshtone mushroom clouds you could be cannon and have people regret carrying anything other than regular ammo and smoke grenades.

Posted by: Austere Emancipator May 9 2006, 01:01 AM

It might have been less than a minute. I was slightly more concerned with getting the fuck away in case hot metal shrapnel comes my way than taking time.

I think I'm unable to enjoy the mushroom cloud approach because too many times I've had to explain that's not how it actually works. One day, as a cathartic experience, I might have to run a totally ridiculous game, something like strictly canon D20 Modern.

Posted by: LilithTaveril May 9 2006, 01:10 AM

White phosphorous grenade into the back of the party's getaway vehicle. It was loaded with enough EX-EX to make a tank nervous. And we were parked in front of the major gas company for the town. People in the nearby city got a nice Fourth of July show.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin May 9 2006, 03:11 AM

QUOTE (Austere Emancipator)

I think I'm unable to enjoy the mushroom cloud approach because too many times I've had to explain that's not how it actually works. One day, as a cathartic experience, I might have to run a totally ridiculous game, something like strictly canon D20 Modern.

I think it would be easier to swallow if you imagined everything looking like a 1970s Hong Kong blood opera.

Come to think of it, grenades and EX EX rounds "automatically" cooking off and obliterating whoever was carrying them could really impact the strategy you use in firefights. The importance of sending a launch grenade into the middle of an enemy squad would be less than the importance of simply hitting their own grenadier with 10 grenades with a fire attack so that he "automatically" lands 10 grenades in their vicinity.

See what I'm saying? I think that the cook off rules would make setting the guy with grenades on fire the big priority of most combats, which would definitely make for a sillier, cartoony feel.

Posted by: James McMurray May 9 2006, 03:29 AM

Or less people carrying grenades, which is what it did in our groups. The SR4 rules for cooking off are a lot better. By that I mean they leave it almost totally up to the GM to decide when and if it happens.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin May 9 2006, 03:35 AM

QUOTE (James McMurray)

As a GM, I'd really feel a lot more comfortable with a specific rule for that since the cookoff basically means instant death for the grenadier. I'd really want that one to be clear cut rather than my just shrugging and deciding that the grenadier dies for the sake of happy players.

Posted by: mfb May 9 2006, 03:38 AM

no kidding. way too much room for "lol u diie!!1!!!!!1111!!1" in there. or, rather, it's either instagib or it never happens at all. giving the GM a tool that allows him to just squash people is pointless. he can already do that. putting rules in for it is gratuitous and prone to abuse.

Posted by: Kremlin KOA May 9 2006, 03:42 AM

WR what GM have you been aroind that decided EXEX cooks and regular ammo doesn't?

DOes this GM believe tat regular ammo contains no explosives?

Did you lynch the GM?

Posted by: James McMurray May 9 2006, 03:45 AM

Ah, the perils of playing in a game where you can't trust your GM. Lucky me!

Posted by: Wounded Ronin May 9 2006, 03:46 AM

QUOTE (Kremlin KOA)

WR what GM have you been aroind that decided EXEX cooks and regular ammo doesn't?

DOes this GM believe tat regular ammo contains no explosives?

Did you lynch the GM?

I remember reading in the description of EX EX that they're prone to "cooking off". I think the idea is that since EX EX bullets actually explode the bullets themselves (rather than the powder in the casing) detonate all over your surface and give you damage. OTOH since regular = FMJ the actual bullets don't do that.

Posted by: DrowVampyre May 9 2006, 04:02 AM

I think the rule with EX-Ex is only for misfires though. Which still makes no sense - how does a bullet packed with a little bit of explosive tend to cook off on a misfire while a 40mm launched grenade doesn't?

Posted by: Wounded Ronin May 9 2006, 04:19 AM

Well, yeah, it's just more of the firearms rules not making sense. I mean, that's pratically what treating EX EX and regular ammo so differently amounts to.

Posted by: toturi May 9 2006, 04:22 AM

Not too sure about SR4, but in SR3, cooking off and secondary explosions are up to GM discretion. So he can be as real/unreal as he wants. SR3 does not have a rule that decides cook off.

Posted by: warrior_allanon May 9 2006, 05:09 AM

Personally, one of my characters went supernova when he was engulfed by a fire elemental and was carrying several hundred rounds of EX Explosive ammo, and a half dozen WP grenades. He was standing in a pile of ghoul bodies all wearing WP grenades. 1 white phosphorus grenade on his harness finally cooked off after the second round of being engulfed and set off the rest of the grenades on his harness, the bullets, and all the grenades on the 50 or so ghoul bodies he was standing in the midst of.

viola, super nova

Posted by: Kremlin KOA May 9 2006, 05:16 AM

ooky
look into mercury exploding ammo IRL

Posted by: James McMurray May 9 2006, 06:24 AM

That'll teach you to get rid of your necklace of fireballs at the first sign of a fire elemental.

Posted by: nick012000 May 10 2006, 01:22 AM

Once my shadowrun group blew up a corporate hit team when the mage in out team hit them with a Ball Lightning, if memory serves. The resulting explosion took out several wall of the apartment building we were hiding in, and we then proceeded to hafve the other street sam cut out a hole in one of the weakened wall with her assault rifle on full auto for us to escape.

Posted by: Tiralee May 10 2006, 11:51 PM

From the latest horror-fest that is my current group of players...

They'd screwed up, got their ugly mugs on camera (long story - I set them up the bomb) and were finding that people were asking how their film careers were going. WTF?

Seems some enterprising Sim-sense company had been cutting and pasting the best of their efforts into movies like "Cops Vs Shadowrunners - No one Survives"

So they bust in, A-team style, and manage to survive. Through no luck of their own.

Finally, they decide to leave a present for the incoming Security team (The land-based one, having taken out two Yellowjackets and a Hugh's Stallion/Gunship) so they packed the barely-functional landrover with 28 kg of C8 (Down from ~100kg), set up a camera phone and drove off in purloined vehicles.

When the l33t-ass security team arrived (Use the Ork Merc Stats, heavy weapons, plus a couple of Shamen and bound Elementals) the Dwarven Demo expert fingered the trigger and I worked out what damage it did.

Ok - Dwarven Skill in things that go Bang: 7.
Garage that they'd parked the van in - Hardened.
Garage ALSO held a storage bay for Steel-lynx security drones.
-Including Ammo.
-Including Fuel. (Rough Guesstimate, 25 kL. What? 25000 litres is small-fry volume)
-Including a couple propane bottles for welding.

The bastard (GM = me) secretly rolled more 6's than humanly possible.

Result - I worked it out to about 30D damage (Wasn't going to be bothered with the Navel codes) to almost 250 metres - The garage focussed a lot of the blast before it went up. After that, the damage trailed off according to the normal rules.

Team: So, did we slow them down?
GM: Uh. Yah. Really.
Team: Sweet- Perception rolls?
GM: - You easily see a bright flash of light in the far distance. In about a minute, you'll here this ear-splitting squeal of an expolsion and feel something born of a furnace lick your face.
Team: Uh, say what?
GM: You live. They don't.
Team: Yay!

-Tir

Posted by: Wounded Ronin May 11 2006, 12:23 AM

You have no chance to survive make your time...

Posted by: Laser May 11 2006, 12:55 AM

Well... I wasn't the subject exploding, but I was indirectly party to the cause of the explosion...

There was this gun shop owned by one of the other PCs, though he happened to be working at cross purposes to a different group at the time (unknown to him). A representative of the other group came by to interrogate him about some, shall we say, vigorous recruiting (we're not sure which company the scientist originally worked for, but both were paying well to get him) he had been doing a few nights before. Being more munch than smart, he somewhat rudely blew the guy off, after telling him at least two outright lies.

Now, the guy who was asking the questions was a mage, a vindictive combat monster and compulsive pyromaniac on top of that (in addition to being a fanatic Zoroastrian and having about 10 other flaws. Strangely enough, it didn't come off as munchy so much as one of the most hilarious character concepts I've seen played). He didn't take kindly to being insulted so much, so when he got to the other side of the street he dropped a maxed fireball into the poor guy's shop. All of the ammo, grenades, rockets etc. cooked off, seriously damaging about half of a city block.