Grenade launchers and the heavy weapons skill, Does this bother anyone else? Options

[Method]

This was part of the streamlining of SR4. In SR3 there were separate Heavy Weapons and Launch Weapons skills but you also had one skill for Firearms. Rolling Launch Weapons into Heavy Weapons in SR4 was probably intended to off set the splitting of Firearms into the various different skills. In other words they refocused the ranged combat skills to emphasize the kinds of small arms that are more prominent in the game and de-emphasize weapons that are (generally speaking) less used. The grenade launcher (which still sees a lot of use in most games) is just a casualty of that shift.

I would just split Hev Weapons in to Launch Weapons/Hev Weapons as has been suggested. I would say link Launch Weapons to Agility, just to keep things consistent.

[ARCANE]

For the problem of the attacker dodging the shot making it scatter it can be explained: Microgrenades - these usually explode on contact, so if you aim at someones head they dodge and it keeps going behind them. Or perhaps your attempt to compensate for thier erratic movement causes your shot to go wild.

With thrown grenades you have the erratic movement scenario (more likely?), or the defender manages to knock it away from themselves (kick etc) before it goes off. It is a game so there needs to be some compromise between reality and game mechanics :/ At least it's not DnD 4th ed where reality is more or less ignored now in favor of mechanics.

[Falconer]

As far as reaction roll against Grenades.

No reason for it to 'move' the blast at all... it just means you were effective at ducking behind desk, cover, using your armored jacket, etc. to deflect a portion of the hit. Seriously... when someone 'shoots' your character w/ an AR wide burst... do you 'move' the target... no you just avoid the brunt of the impact. I simply view the reduction as a part of the damage soak test.

There's no reason to give things freebie movement or the mystical ability to 'push' the grenade away from you.


Overall, given the limited items in the heavy weapons group... I'd be against this. Really, you have MG's, assault cannons, launchers, GL's and mortars. All of them are pretty rare... and not really worth their own singular skill.

Quite frankly, I have more issues w/ the automatics for every occassion in the small arms group than I do w/ the Heavy Weap/Gunnery side of things.

[Rystefn]

Pintle-mounts, however, DO count as vehicle-mounted weapons, and are exactly the same as firing from a tripod. Yes, by RAW, two different skills, and two different attributes. This is, simply put, stupid.

[Draco18s]

No reason for it to 'move' the blast at all... it just means you were effective at ducking behind desk, cover, using your armored jacket, etc. to deflect a portion of the hit. Seriously... when someone 'shoots' your character w/ an AR wide burst... do you 'move' the target... no you just avoid the brunt of the impact. I simply view the reduction as a part of the damage soak test.

Two characters standing in a blank white room with no cover.

One throws a sticky grenade at the feet of the other guy, intending for it to stick to the floor. He gets 6 successes, scatter is 1d6 - 6 = 0 meters. The 'nade goes where he wants it to (if there was no second person).

The other guy dodges, making no movement, and gets 4 successes. Scatter is now +4 meters.

The grenade rolls scatter distance and gets a 4. 4+4-6 = 2. The grenade lands 2 meters to the... (rolls a d6) left of the intended landing spot (in the thrower's perspective).

Hmm...

Something is not right here. Had there been no defender the 'nade would have landed perfectly on target, suddenly a defender jumping around causes it to land 6 feet to the left. Not "avoids 6 feet worth of damage," but actually 6 feet to the left. If there was a hypothetical third person in this scenario who would have been on the outside edge of the blast radius before the additional +4 meters of scatter, suddenly he's inside the radius and taking damage.

Reconcile that.

[Rystefn]

Yeah... house rule #1 in our game (aside from adjusting starting BP to be pro-level) was grenade rules. It lands where it lands. Thrower skill puts it where the thrower wants it. Everyone in the blast radius gets a reaction roll to avoid damage (throwing yourself behind a desk, etc.).

Eventually we came upon rockets, and the rules for those are even worse. It's nigh-impossible to actually hit something with a rocket launcher, even though the entire point is that they, you know, hit things... and don't require a huge amount of training to operate, either. Maybe Anniversary Edition changed it, but in the SR4 rules I have, rockets scatter 2d6m and you subtract 1m per net hit. Meaning that, on average, you must have 7 net hits on average to actually hit your target with a rocket. This requires a dice pool, on average, of 21 to hit an unmoving target at short range. Let's repeat that, for those of you who missed it: You must have a dice pool of 21 to reliably hit an unmoving target at close range.

[Draco18s]

And what's their blast radius? 4 meters? Deary me. You have to dead-hit stuff to actually do any damage at all!

[Method]

Yeah, the only thing I can think of is a difference in tactics. A tripod mounted MG is generally used to suppress an area on the battlefield (fire interdiction) whereas a vehicle mounted MG is mobile and can be used to engage other vehicles (in addition to fire interdiction).

But when you design a role playing game you have to draw lines, and sometimes those lines get silly.

Also on the subject of dodging grenades (or bullets for that matter): this is why I have always hated the use of the word "dodge" in SR. It creates stupid notions about how modern combat works. The Reaction (+Dodge) roll is supposed to represent tactical movement, avoiding enemy FOFs, use of cover (in a more abstract sense) and concealment, etc. Its about not being where the bullet goes (which is different than moving out of its way) and throwing yourself behind a dumpster (or whatever) when the grenade goes off. Its unfortunate that the mechanics involve increasing the Scatter. Basically the problem here is an interface between a mechanism thats designed to be abstract (Dodge) and a mechanic that is very concrete (Scatter). If you can, it helps to think of Scatter in abstract fashion as well.

[Rystefn]

Blast radius, of course, varies by what type of rocket you use. That, however, is neither here nor there. I have it on good authority that hitting a nonmoving target at a range of 100m is actually pretty trivial. So unless those infantry guys with like a day of training with the weapon all just happened to have Agility scores of around 20, something in the rules here is pretty screwy.

[Draco18s]

If you can, it helps to think of Scatter in abstract fashion as well.

Timmy, the 8 year old picks up his first grenade and throws it. He's not a very athletic kid, nor has he ever played baseball or any other sport. His Agility 3 is used to default, giving him 2 die on the throwing test.

Amazing! He rolls a 6 and gets a hit and doesn't roll any 1s. He's not trying to hit anyone with the grenade, so it's an uncontested roll. He is however trying to throw it in the trash barrel 6 feet in front of him.

However, he does have to deal with scatter, which is 1d6-1. Oh no, the die rolled a 5! And which direction, a 4. Hum...1 is out in front. 2 is the 2 o'clock position, 3 is the 4 o'clock and ah ha. 4 is 6 o'clock, directly behind little Timmy and 6 feet away.

Wait, what? I don't know about you, but every 8 year old I know can throw things in front of them. Hell, most two year olds can do that much. Things don't bounce that far, really. Heck, replace "grenade" here with "wad of paper" (which don't bounce and don't roll far) and get much the same results. Scatter should be to a ratio of the distance thrown, not some absolute value (look at rockets, firing one at your feet is more likely to blow up someone else than it is to hurt you).

Edit:
Imagine trying to play baseball. A baseball has roughly the same properties as a throwing grenade (wight, size, shape), but the strike-zone is one foot across. Anything but 0 scatter and it's a Ball.

[Method]

Scatter should be to a ratio of the distance thrown, not some absolute value.

So we basically agree, then.

And by the by, if you center the scatter diagram on the target (the trash can in this case) then the grenade landed 1m in front of little Timmy. If this were fired from a launcher, the grenade wouldn't even arm. I have seen young un-athletic children throw balls into the dirt right in front of themselves.

And little Timmy shouldn't be throwing grenades at stupid ranges like 6 meters unless he's behind a blast wall. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Edit: Oh, and like your idea of having scatter be based on range to target.

[Rystefn]

So we basically agree, then.

And by the by, if you center the scatter diagram on the target (the trash can in this case) then the grenade landed 1m in front of little Timmy. If this were fired from a launcher, the grenade wouldn't even arm. I have seen young un-athletic children throw balls into the dirt right in front of themselves.

And little Timmy shouldn't be throwing grenades at stupid ranges like 6 meters unless he's behind a blast wall. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

6 feet. That's 2 meters, give or take about six inches.

[Method]

Wait, feet? Ranges in SR are measured in meters. I didn't catch Draco18s' use of non-metric measurements. But my point stands I think.

[Muspellsheimr]

I have seen young un-athletic children drop balls into the dirt directly in front of them.

Barring severe physical disorders, any 6-year-old should be capable of tossing a ball ~2m.



While GMing, I had an instance of where the player, using a grenade launcher, firing downhill several meters, rolled rather well (several Net Hits). Guess where the grenade landed, prior to GM "this is fucking retarded" intervention?

Behind him.

Please note that the exact same thing can just as easily (if not even easier) happen with a fucking Sensor 6 Missile Launcher. Yes, a high-level military grade guided missile (the kind capable of navigating air ducts of a building) has a higher chance of misfiring into your feet than a thrown grenade.

[Method]

Plus the example plays to an extreme end of the system (the low end in this case). Its pretty common knowledge that the SR4 system does really stupid stuff at the extremes (very high and very low DPs). No it doesn't make sense, but its also not designed to represent 8 year olds throwing baseballs.

And I would point out that if you want grenades to be more accurate (i.e.- effective) at your table thats great. I am not defending the stupid scatter rules by any means. But remember that the opposition has grenades too, and there are always more of them than there are of you. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Method]

I have seen young un-athletic children drop balls into the dirt directly in front of them.

I have seen them thrown. And I've seen grown women do worse than that. Its pretty simple- late release from an overhand throw = in the dirt in front of you.

Oh look... heres a video (complete with shitty middle-school production).

[Muspellsheimr]

1) The ball still went a reasonable distance in front of the guy - 2m easily.
2) Such flukes are already covered in the rules, typically referred to as a (Critical) Glitch.

[Method]

Seriously? I'm not going to argue about whether kids are capable of throwing badly. Watch some fucking blooper reels and tell me dumb shit doesn't happen in real life. To restate my position:

1.) The scatter rules are stupid.
2.) If you try to think of them abstractly you won't be driven to madness by how stupid they are.
3.) If you don't like them, change them, but be prepared for NPC grenades to = TPK at your table.

Now, if you just want to argue about banal shit like kids throwing balls, have it at. I'm not interested.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

In SR3 there were separate Heavy Weapons and Launch Weapons skills but you also had one skill for Firearms. Rolling Launch Weapons into Heavy Weapons in SR4 was probably intended to off set the splitting of Firearms into the various different skills.

You mean SR2. In SR3, Firearms was split ridiculously into 5 (five!) skills.

And yeah, using the same rules as Indirect Area Combat Spells for Grenades/Rockets/Missiles is pretty much a given.

[StealthSigma]

The grenade launcher using the Heavy Weapons skill probably applies to launchers in the 25mm to 40mm caliber range like this or this. I think a more appropriate question would be why would an M307 (Auto Grenade Launcher) or M2 (Heavy Machine Gun) use different skills when mounted on a vehicle than they would when mounted on a tripod?

Well, here's the major difference between the two.

Freehanding it, you have as much movement as you want. Tripod, the weapon is now anchored to a single point which limits its movement. Also, just because it's on a mount doesn't mean you're sitting behind it firing. You could be in a vehicle cockpit using a computer interface to operate the gun.

I can see reasons why you could use the same weapon under different skills pending situation. I think the fixed point is probably one of the biggest reasons.

--

Reconcile that.

I changed the position of the grenade by observing it. Quantum physics ftl?

--

How about the fact that by scatter rules, you can fire a grenade launcher at someone and place yourself outside the blast radius, yet have the grenade land at your feet. Reconcile THAT.

I don't remember the exact situation. I just know that it's possible.

[Whipstitch]

It really bothers me that grenade launchers are grouped in with heavy weapons - their use is so different from the other weapons in the category that I find it rather ridiculous.

So don't think of the skill as applying one set of habits to a wide variety of weapons so much as having a set of aptitudes. After all, the Hardware, Medicine and Industrial Mechanic skills cover an enormous amount of territory and the Spellcasting skill works with any spell you care to learn, yet you hardly hear people make the same argument about them. In my opinion, we need less firearm skills, not more, since this is just a case of familiarity muddling people's expectations. From a purely gamist perspective, if you have 83 ways of killing a man that means you have a large number of redundant tricks up your sleeve, and in shadowrun players have to pay for each of them. I would just let it go.

[Draco18s]

How about the fact that by scatter rules, you can fire a grenade launcher at someone and place yourself outside the blast radius, yet have the grenade land at your feet. Reconcile THAT.

I don't remember the exact situation. I just know that it's possible.

By RAW that would require that scatter rolls near max and the defender won the test. In the RW that'd never happen (which I think prove my point, not yours).

Wait, feet? Ranges in SR are measured in meters. I didn't catch Draco18s' use of non-metric measurements. But my point stands I think.

I apologize for the use of "feet" rather than "meters," but I'm American.

[wind_in_the_ston...]

Yeah... house rule #1 in our game (aside from adjusting starting BP to be pro-level) was grenade rules. It lands where it lands. Thrower skill puts it where the thrower wants it. Everyone in the blast radius gets a reaction roll to avoid damage (throwing yourself behind a desk, etc.).

Eventually we came upon rockets, and the rules for those are even worse. It's nigh-impossible to actually hit something with a rocket launcher, even though the entire point is that they, you know, hit things... and don't require a huge amount of training to operate, either. Maybe Anniversary Edition changed it, but in the SR4 rules I have, rockets scatter 2d6m and you subtract 1m per net hit. Meaning that, on average, you must have 7 net hits on average to actually hit your target with a rocket. This requires a dice pool, on average, of 21 to hit an unmoving target at short range. Let's repeat that, for those of you who missed it: You must have a dice pool of 21 to reliably hit an unmoving target at close range.

Sure, but if you're launching at a Citymaster, three meters scatter doesn't matter a bit. Now if you're launching at a person, and you miss by a meter, your missile goes downrange by, oh, its range. Oh wait, no it doesn't - it dives from chest height, and hits the ground. No matter which direction it scattered in.

I was always under the impression that scatter was grenade bounce on the ground.Obviously, it's not. So why do you have two targeting rolls (one of them more random than the other) for launched grenades and missiles?

[Khyron]

Scatter could be seen as the target trying to bat the grenade out of the air and away from them (mental image of going to a grenade fight with a tennis racket), grenade bounce/roll, landing funny, ect.
But yes, they are unhappy rules in general.

[TheOneRonin]

So don't think of the skill as applying one set of habits to a wide variety of weapons so much as having a set of aptitudes. After all, the Hardware, Medicine and Industrial Mechanic skills cover an enormous amount of territory and the Spellcasting skill works with any spell you care to learn, yet you hardly hear people make the same argument about them. In my opinion, we need less firearm skills, not more, since this is just a case of familiarity muddling people's expectations. From a purely gamist perspective, if you have 83 ways of killing a man that means you have a large number of redundant tricks up your sleeve, and in shadowrun players have to pay for each of them. I would just let it go.

Agreed. And to channel an older but fairly recent thread, "How often do you find someone who has been trained to fire a Heavy Machine Gun, but has never been trained with any sort of grenade launcher or vice versa?" <paraphrased>