I agree, it is. Hence the point. I'm not trying to hurt that dude there (rational by RAW for having a primary target) I'm trying to blow up the chair (rationalization by RAD* for making dude secondary).

*Rules as desired. The "can't target a location because there are people" is stupid. AoE shouldn't care if there are people or why the "primary" target is the only one that gets the dodge.

GM's prerogative: when a rule causes something stupid to happen, ditch it for a better rule or simply adjudicate.

Hence why I'd do it in missions. It has to run by RAW, of course, but I'd be there explicitly to find the holes in RAW that cause things to fall apart.

Anybody still remember the SR3 Ares Great Dragon ATGM?
The single strongest Weapon in all of the books? 22D AV Damage.
-2 to Power per Meter from Point of Impact.
And available at character generation. With only 2d6 Scatter.
*sigh* i really liked that one . . GM won't let me near it again <.<

Just get an agent to edit out all of the people's before the image is send to your brain and tada no people in the room as far as you can see (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

This thread makes me want to cry. If you can't hit a barn door with an RPG, why would they get shaped charges as ammunition?

Also, apropos to scatter - we just fell back to the scatter table in the original Core. At least that made a modicum of sense.

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2011/03...rpg-7-launcher/

Don't get in a battle with people with heavy weapons, it's unhealthy.

In the comic books and anime that the SR4 writers used this as their reference this issue was never brought up. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

The combat rules are full of issues that make it clear that nobody involved in writing them had any experience or understanding as to how firearms/explosives/etc actually work. Unfortunately some of these are really hard to fix, this one isn't.

What we need are more authors and rules creators that have military experience.

Worked for Deadlands.

Yeah, no doubt...

More like: "Choose your battles carefully."

I think I mentioned hacking that 70-year old's CommLink while he's taking his Nieces to DisneyLand might be a bad idea...

Exactly.

Also I have to dispute the fact that you should need to buy another attachment to make something even remotely functional. It's like buying a pistol with no sites on it and being told "ÿou can get those separate, they're cheap". If it's so important to have an airburst link to make the weapon system accurate then it should be standard to the weapon. Also Rockets and launched grenades shouldn't even have scatter since they are impact detonated weapons. Scatter is designed to account for the bounce and roll of a thrown grenade or explosive before it detonates.

I'm surprised I didn't immediately comment about my buddy in The Sandbox who found out that the last thing you want to do is pick a fight with a tank.

He was driving said tank, BTW.

I agree. The reason people use grenade launcher and rocket launchers in real life is because they're very effective. If they weren't, people would realize that and just use other things. Airburst technology exists to make them even more deadly (or really to make cover less effective). If rocket launchers always scattered 4d6 meters from the target, people would simply switch to things like panther cannons and never even worry with rockets. The good news is you don't have to worry about the rocket blowing up your A-team van. The bad news is that you have to worry about the much more accurate panther cannon with ExEx rounds blowing up your A-team van.

Well from a simulationist standpoint the ability to hit targets is far too easy. Then again I don't think anyone wants their characters to be shooting for 20 minutes never hitting. As for rpg accuracy I am not sure exactly how to address this other than to look at it as every 2 net success you reduce the scatter by 1d6 meters or maybe reduce it by 2 meters for each net success. This makes it very hard to hit an individual target, but clusters of targets are just fine. You can always vary the accuracy depending on the distance and size of target. The goal with an RPG is not to hit a person, but to hit a group of people. That said is it is not too hard to hit a bus with one if you are close and aiming at the side. The stryker is about 7 meters long and the M-1 is about 10 meters long.

Let's face it an RPG is the equivalent to the Mortar rounds. Blast radius is 18 meters with fragmentation. Even if it hits within 14 meters you will tear a person up pretty badly if they aren't armored. If you hit within 8 meters a character with a high armor rating the person will be severely stunned and knocked to the ground in most instances. Average crowds each person takes up 10 sf, with packed crowds as high as 2sf. This means lobbing a mortar or rpg into the midst of people can be expected to wound or klll anywhere 100-500 people.

Except the combat manuals for RPG operators point out the vulnerable parts of the tanks, for example, for them to hit with a shaped charge, again I reiterate on my point. RL RPGs are rather precise, and they are a squad's main anti-vehicle weapons.

Right. Don't forget, those wide-area frag rockets won't be harming any vehicle that you'd *need* a rocket for in the first place, so they don't count.

And the rockets you do need for said vehicle have an absolute blast radius of 4 meters (beyond which their DV is 0). Their effective-against-soft-targets radius is 2 meters (8 DV) and effective-against-hard-targets is 1 meter (12 DV).

Hmm, one could change scatter depending on distance.
short distance:1d6
mdium distance:2d6
long distance:3d6
extreme distance:4d6

That sounds eminently reasonable... I like it...

It seems so obvious, now that you mention it.

"Scatter dice # = range modifier", that also factors in the use of image magnification to reduce (but not eliminate) scatter dice.

I read through the first page, and then skipped to the last post. I'm glad I did. This house-mod sounds eminently reasonable.

Ideally, the range penalties are supposed to already account for this. Since they don't… yeah. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

The underlying problem is that the people who get paid to write the rules don't have any idea what they are talking about, or any interest either. Details like anti-armor warheads only are armor penetrating if you HIT the target are clearly too complex for them to understand.

So they write dumb rules that don't work, then they clarify them with idiotic interpretations (no, of course you can't throw a grenade at a desk, are you crazy?), and instead of fixing the rules in revisions they write even more stupid versions.