Grenade Scatter Discussion, split from Commonly Overlooked Rules thread Options

[Muspellsheimr]

Actually, it was the FAQ.

Isn't tossing a grenade on the ground by someone's feet (a Success Test) easier than trying to hit them directly with a grenade (an Opposed Test)? Does everyone caught in the blast get a chance to dodge/react?

If the intent is to catch a target in the blast radius, then it should be an Opposed Test, whether the grenade is actually thrown at the target or thrown a few meters away.

If the intent is to catch a group of targets in the blast radius, the attacker still picks one as the primary target. The Opposed Test is made between the attacker and that target only, with scatter determined accordingly. Any targets caught in the blast radius make Damage Resistance Tests as normal.

Yet another reason the FAQ is a piece of shit. I have said it before, & will say it again - in my games, the FAQ does not exist.

[eidolon]

I agree that if you're tossing a grenade into a group that knows you're there and attacking them, then the opfor should get dodge rolls and the like (if they were throwing grenades at you, you'd damn sure want a dodge roll, right?), making it an opposed roll, but I don't see as that's the same as "you can't throw a grenade at a point in space".

[Draco18s]

I agree that if you're tossing a grenade into a group that knows you're there and attacking them, then the opfor should get dodge rolls and the like (if they were throwing grenades at you, you'd damn sure want a dodge roll, right?), making it an opposed roll, but I don't see as that's the same as "you can't throw a grenade at a point in space".

Right. Which is why I'm going to start making my primary targets furniture. If a secondary target can't move the blast radius (even when the primary target it dodging) then screw it. Make them ALL secondary targets. If the devs don't like it rewrite the damn rules such that people inside the blast radius (all of them) get a dodge check to move [hits] meters away from the grenade. As an adendum, I would add in scatter after said check. Airburst would come in after it too--the "targets" don't know if it's airburst or not (at least, not the first time--GM discretion?), so the dodgees would dodge away from where they think the grenade is going, then it has a slightly different course. Personally, I'd say 1d6 for direction (or whatever) and 1d6 minus 2-ish "innacuracy/scatter" except for timed grenades, which have the usual 2d6-hits.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Tymeaus. You need to go to the SR4 page and download the SR4a changes PDF.
Airburst is no longer that usefull. It's now 2d6, -1 per hit flat for everything.

Even Still.. Much better than that 4d6, -1 meter/Hit craziness that is the new scatter rules for rockets... So on average (7 Meter Deviation, -1 for the Net Hit = 6 Meters away when it blows)... it still inflicts a whopping 10p in fragmentation damage... a lot of mayhem there, for being as far away as it is...

[blindfox]

well, 6 meters from a rocket blast can still be havoc, depending on the payload. for example, an RPG 7 can punch through some decent armor and has a blast radius of about 5 meters. the blast, though is not the RPG 7's main cause for concern as the fragmentation can take a man's limbs off from as far as 7 to 10 meters even from a right angle from the point of impact. (of course, there's a lot of room in between those fragments and a chunk that'll take off an army has to be about the size of a golf ball or an apricot) then there are the heavier rockets. the kinds that rip a guy's 13'x15' housing unit into strips of tin foil and burned gear.
as far as the rules concerning the targets damage in relation to the proximity of the blast radius it would depend on the payload of the round. as for scatter, i've seen RPG 7's skip but not other rockets so much (except that damned LAW) and the RPG can have a dramatic skip. i could give a grisly account proving the point, but suffice to say it happens. (but no, it wouldnt skip backwards at the grenadier)

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

well, 6 meters from a rocket blast can still be havoc, depending on the payload. for example, an RPG 7 can punch through some decent armor and has a blast radius of about 5 meters. the blast, though is not the RPG 7's main cause for concern as the fragmentation can take a man's limbs off from as far as 7 to 10 meters even from a right angle from the point of impact. (of course, there's a lot of room in between those fragments and a chunk that'll take off an army has to be about the size of a golf ball or an apricot) then there are the heavier rockets. the kinds that rip a guy's 13'x15' housing unit into strips of tin foil and burned gear.
as far as the rules concerning the targets damage in relation to the proximity of the blast radius it would depend on the payload of the round. as for scatter, i've seen RPG 7's skip but not other rockets so much (except that damned LAW) and the RPG can have a dramatic skip. i could give a grisly account proving the point, but suffice to say it happens. (but no, it wouldnt skip backwards at the grenadier)

It MIGHT rebound, though it is highly unlikely... Saw A LAW Rocket Skip at a right angle to the intended course of trajectory once... Brutal

[Draco18s]

Even Still.. Much better than that 4d6, -1 meter/Hit craziness that is the new scatter rules for rockets... So on average (7 Meter Deviation, -1 for the Net Hit = 6 Meters away when it blows)... it still inflicts a whopping 10p in fragmentation damage... a lot of mayhem there, for being as far away as it is...

That's a frag rocket. An anti-vehicular rocket will do -8P at 6m. That's negative 8, as in 2 meters beyond the edge of the blast. A high explosive rocket will be doing a measly 2P damage.

[kzt]

That's a frag rocket. An anti-vehicular rocket will do -8P at 6m. That's negative 8, as in 2 meters beyond the edge of the blast. A high explosive rocket will be doing a measly 2P damage.

And, realistically, an AV rocket should do essentially nothing to an armored vehicle is doesn't actually hit.

[blindfox]

are there any vehicles in which any crew member is unarmored? that is to say, standing up out of a hatch or a section where no armor is present, like a gunport? shrapnel can sometimes (though remotely) sneak its way into these holes. the second example though can get pretty dicey as any war movie can prove.
the way i see it to find out if such a person is hit, the gm rolls to see if shrap hits the guy (with a hell of a modified TN) then applying damage. the concussive wave can do lots of damage to someone outside of the armor, but the most concern for the guy in the gunport example is shrapnel.
there's more to consider to this question as concerns the effects of the concussive blast alone to those inside a vehicle that is not completely buttoned-up but i wouldnt really bother applying it to the game. too many dice and too much stalling of the game.

[Draco18s]

And, realistically, an AV rocket should do essentially nothing to an armored vehicle is doesn't actually hit.

Very true. But they should be hitting. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Muspellsheimr]

And, realistically, an AV rocket should do essentially nothing to an armored vehicle is doesn't actually hit.

And, realistically, an AV rocket can hit it's target.

Realistically, there are guided missiles capable of navigating air-conditioning ducts to strike a nickle.

RAW, however, the best guided system out there (sensor 6) will require, on average, eight Net Hits to strike a vehicle-sized target, without any form of concealment or cover.

Also keep in mind that a dice pool of 24 will give you ~60% chance of 8 or more Hits (not even Net Hits) - twice what an unaugmented (aka modern) world-class heavy-weapons specialist is capable of achieving.

[kzt]

And, realistically, an AV rocket can hit it's target.

Realistically, there are guided missiles capable of navigating air-conditioning ducts to strike a nickle.

RAW, however, the best guided system out there (sensor 6) will require, on average, eight Net Hits to strike a vehicle-sized target, without any form of concealment or cover.

Also keep in mind that a dice pool of 24 will give you ~60% chance of 8 or more Hits (not even Net Hits) - twice what an unaugmented (aka modern) world-class heavy-weapons specialist is capable of achieving.

That's about par for the "weapon experts" who write the combat rules for SR without ever having anyone with a clue review them first. Did they fix it so missiles are now more accurate than rockets?

[Muspellsheimr]

Missiles have always been more accurate than rockets in SR4, not just SR4A. They subtract their Sensor rating from the Scatter roll.

So, high-grade milspec missiles (Sensor Rating 6) had a scatter of 2d6 - 6 - Net Hits (or an average of 1 - Net Hits, or your going to hit your target).

They now have a scatter of 4d6 - 6 - Net Hits (or an average of 8 - Net Hits, or your going to fucking miss).

[Inane Imp]

I've been following this discussion from the start and none of the posts so far have satisified me, either in fixing scatter or in explaining why net hits do not improve damage. Take the example of somebody firing a HEPD (High Explosive Point Detonating) Minigrenade from an underbarrel GL. Why does it do exactly the same amount of damage if you hit the target in the head with the minigrenade as if you hit him in the toe? Its illogical and as such I feel that net hits should increase damage. However, this is a farcical situation, as either way with a properly functioning munition an unaugmented human should be dead.

Instead consider the case of vehicle. Johnie Merc is firing an RPG-XX at a MBT. He is in front of the tank firing from an elevated position (say 45 degrees declination) assuming he hits (large assumption I know) either he can hit the tanks heavy frontal armour or he could hit the tanks thin top armour, net hits should represent getting a better hit and therefore increase damage.

So, if - like in every other roll in SR4/A - we have net hits increasing damage, how do we determine scatter? Ordnance scatters if the firer MISSES. Roll the number of dice as detailed in BBB and determine the point of impact, apply GM fiat to any illogical results (to save determining a detailed and complicated set of rules to model all possible ways an explosive can scatter). To determine range from the impact point EVERYBODY gets to roll REA and add NET hits to their distance from the impact point. You'll notice that if your firing at a character they roll this REA as part of the opposed test, so if you missed they have net hits to get them out of danger. (If anybody is on Full Defense they get to roll REA+ (Dodge or Gym) as normal).

I am aware that this makes Frag/EX Grenades more powerful. This must be offset with good GMing. Grenades are loud, grenades are scary, grenades are unusual, grenades indicate a well equipped enemy. Security forces should treat them as such. Having a Lone Star patrol vehicle taken out by a grenade is reason for a)innocent bystanders to make 911 calls detailing what just happened b)Lone Star to send in OVERWHELMING firepower, this isn't just some punks who pulled their 9s and went toe-toe with the 5 O its something altogether different.

As an aside, disabling the 'safety distance' is stupid. This 'safety distance' is not only there to stop you firing a grenade and having it explode in your face, but also as the arming mechanism. Most modern military (ok, NATO) ordnance has two arming safeties designed to stop the ordnance going BOOM! through an accident when it is being handled. The safeties most often used on rifled projectiles (whether 40mm grenades, or 5" shells) is a gyroscopic safety (it must rotate x amounts of times at sufficient force before it is armed) and a second kinetic safety that is armed when the round is fired (the force of firing arms it) this is so that the rounds do not explode without being fired (generally considered by the military to be a bad thing) or exposed to the risks of sympathetic detonation. As such disarming either of these safeties significantly increases the risk of something nasty happening (much like if one where handling a detonator alone) and as such I'd rule they'd have to take a Agility test every time they handled the round, a Glitch makes the round unservicable and a critical glitch it goes boom (at point blank range).

Second aside, the example of "opening the door, lobbing grenade in without looking, closing door, waiting for bang, opening door, shooting anything still moving" is an example of indirect fire. And should be treated under those rules.

Third aside, being required to fire at characters as opposed to objects or points in space is ridiculous because that is precisely what explosive ordnance is designed to do. Take the example of a guy hiding behind a tree - you know he is there, you saw him duck behind the tree, but you can't see him now do you a) take all the negative modifiers for blind fire and cover for firing the grenade at him or do you b) fire the grenade at the ground 1 m back from and to the right of the tree, a direction in which he has no cover? People, you go with B because either he eats the grenade or he dodges out from cover and you shoot him. Perfect tactical use of a grenade.

On missiles and sensor rating, I'd tend to add missiles sensor rating as a dice-pool bonus to the attack test and the rating of any soft-kill (Chaff, Flares, Jamming - well except for home-on-jam missiles anyway) anti missile systems as a dice pool to the attack test. So if your in a Cessna and somebody fires a Sidewinder at you, chances are its going to be nasty. Whereas, in your state of the art go-fast Jet, the dice pools of you defensive gear and their sensors should cancel each other out. Again, this makes missiles more accurate and therefore morepower and GMs need to be on top of that. If somebody is firing an anti-radiation missile at a player and that player is not radiating anything do things like apply the Sensor rating as a negative modifier to the attack test as the missile searches for a valid target. Or in the case of radar guided munitions apply negative modifiers if the target is in 'clutter' (buildings, trees, hills, rain, heavy sea-state) as this complicates the missiles targetting solution.

Imp

[Muspellsheimr]

The best house-rule to fix grenades I have seen (my personal, slightly modified, version of others rules) is to remove scatter entirely, excepting on a Glitch.

The attacker decides a location (not a target) to place the grenade/rocket & makes a single attack test, to be opposed by each target separately.

Each target that would be caught in the blast radius makes a defense test against the attackers roll. For each Net Hit, reduce or increase the damage by 1m, as appropriate (attacker wins - increase, defender wins - decrease). If this would 'move' a target to the center of the blast, each Net Hit of the attacker beyond that point instead increases the DV by +1.


For example; Player A lobs a high-explosive grenade into a room, scoring 3 Hits on the attack test.

In this room, there are 3 targets within the blast radius - Grunt X is 1m from the grenade, Grunt Y & Z are both 3m away.

Grunt X, Y, & Z make defense tests (at -2 for defending against an area attack), scoring 1 Hit, 3 Hits, & 5 Hits, respectfully.

Player A has 2 Net Hits over Grunt X. One applies for 'moving' Grunt X 1m closer to the grenade, for a range of 0m. All remaining Net Hits increase the grenades DV, for a total of 11P (10 + 1).

Player A has 0 Net Hits over Grunt Y, so Grunt Y is not 'moved', remaining 3m from the grenade & resisting 4P.

Grunt Z managed to achieve 2 Net Hits over Player A, 'moving' him 2m further away from the grenade, placing him outside the blast radius entirely.


Please note, Grunt X, Y, & Z do not actually move - this is only for determining the effective distance from the grenade for purposes of damage.


As Inane Imp has suggested, Missiles & Airburst Grenades add their Sensor rating to the attack test, not to reducing scatter - again, scatter only applies if the attacker Glitch's. The scatter table still needs to be revised - SR4 is good enough, so go with that.

[Stahlseele]

Instead consider the case of vehicle. Johnie Merc is firing an RPG-XX at a MBT. He is in front of the tank firing from an elevated position (say 45 degrees declination) assuming he hits (large assumption I know) either he can hit the tanks heavy frontal armour or he could hit the tanks thin top armour, net hits should represent getting a better hit and therefore increase damage.

one little problem.
no hit-locations, armor on vehicles is as per the rules on all parts equally strong.
aside MAYBE for tires and windows.
same with living targets.
if the explosion of such a grenade goes off, it does not really matter all that much wheter or not i have hit your toes or your nose.
you are so dead. but you get to resist with all of your armor, no matter if i shoot at your heavyly padded behind or your eyes . .

[Inane Imp]

Stahlseele,
I'm aware that there is no hit location in SR4 and instead have always taken net hits to represent hit a better location/finding a weak point in the armour. Thus a critical success killing the target in one shot is usually RP'd as a head shot. However if we follow your logic that since there are no hit locations and you always get to resist with full armour how do you explain the increase in net hits for regular shooting? The way I see it, its either both or neither.

And Muspellheimer, that's what I was trying to get at but hadn't quite worked it out that well myself. I'd use the one you'd describe by preference. Its simple and covers almost everything neatly. Not perfect, but an improvement and I suspect trying to 'improve' further would just result in complications.

Imp

[Stahlseele]

Pretty much the same way you do.
Even if you get shot in the head, you get to resist with full armor, if the shootist does not use aimed shot.
But with grenades, i just don't see an explosive that can kill you on your feet doing more damage to you on your head.
Dead is dead, there are no pills for that O.o

[Inane Imp]

Unfortunately, there are different types of dead (as farcical a statement as that is, in SR its true).

There is dead right now (because the damage took you past your Physical Track and overflow amount) and dead in a couple of combat turns, or not if your colleagues get to you (but suddenly you can get those Cyberlegs you always wanted). Thats the difference a couple of extra damage from net hits can mean. RAW you cannot outright kill an average joe (Body 2) who was at range 0 when a HE grenade goes off even assuming he got no hits on his soak roll (10DV vs 9 Physical Damage track + 2 overflow). Yes, he's rapidly bleeding out and good luck trying to stabilise him, but its technically doable (and he'll almost certainly need to regrow his legs). Whereas just 1 more net hit and he's Dead, no recourse and your picking pieces of him out of your hair.

Its the difference between being a body with no legs and being legs with no body.

The same is true in the case of a tank, just beating the damage track on a vehicle results in it becoming completely unservicable, critically doing so and the GM is thinking about things like the ammunition going up and people finding the turret 50m down the road.

Its the difference between being a smoking wreck or being a fireball.

Imp

[Falconer]

I don't understand the push by some to remove scatter altogether. Some weapons have blast effects, they don't need to be spot on, and they aren't designed w/ that level of precision.

Grenades have a very elegant degradation effect due to range. And for demolitions purposes (EG: taking the time to carefully preplace them and such) I have no issues w/ allowing their damage to go up. But their damage is pretty overwhelming, and scatter is one of the few ways to keep it balanced. Not only that, but you can fire/throw 2 grenades a round in many cases!!! (try pulling off an equivalent high force fireball twice a round... willie pete grenades blow the socks off anything mages can even try).

One thing to keep in mind w/ frags though is that they only suffer -1d/m which is a drawback in many cases (allies 8m away from intended targets) though they're also flechette so give that +5 AP bonus to everyone (meaning they're stun damage a lot of the time).

Quite frankly... I look at this from two sides.
First side: if I use the grenade on them.
Second side: if they use the grenade on me!

Eliminating scatter is way too powerfull especially for use against players. And I don't subscribe to the school that players are intrinsically special and get special treatment. Turnabout is fair play (if they do it, then the NPC's can do it... great way to limit people who push abusive rules situations).

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

And, realistically, an AV rocket should do essentially nothing to an armored vehicle is doesn't actually hit.

Bingo... There you go...

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

I don't understand the push by some to remove scatter altogether. Some weapons have blast effects, they don't need to be spot on, and they aren't designed w/ that level of precision.

Grenades have a very elegant degradation effect due to range. And for demolitions purposes (EG: taking the time to carefully preplace them and such) I have no issues w/ allowing their damage to go up. But their damage is pretty overwhelming, and scatter is one of the few ways to keep it balanced. Not only that, but you can fire/throw 2 grenades a round in many cases!!! (try pulling off an equivalent high force fireball twice a round... willie pete grenades blow the socks off anything mages can even try).

One thing to keep in mind w/ frags though is that they only suffer -1d/m which is a drawback in many cases (allies 8m away from intended targets) though they're also flechette so give that +5 AP bonus to everyone (meaning they're stun damage a lot of the time).

Quite frankly... I look at this from two sides.
First side: if I use the grenade on them.
Second side: if they use the grenade on me!

Eliminating scatter is way too powerfull especially for use against players. And I don't subscribe to the school that players are intrinsically special and get special treatment. Turnabout is fair play (if they do it, then the NPC's can do it... great way to limit people who push abusive rules situations).

You know, that was well put... I had never approaced it from the other side, but I can agree with the sentiment...

[Draco18s]

Quite frankly... I look at this from two sides.
First side: if I use the grenade on them.
Second side: if they use the grenade on me!

I see it both ways too. Though I have a third side: Realism. It's silly that AV rockets never hit.

[kzt]

SR makes grenades very easy to obtain, and very cheap. They shouldn't be, particularly with SR charging about $10 per bullet. Second, glitches with grenades should be very exciting. "You pulled the pin and oops, it bounces off your toes. That was you action, Jack what does your character do?"

Scatter prevents you from doing reasonable things with them. For example, a mediocre guy with a GL can put a grenade through a window at 150 meters. Not in SR using scatter. You have to be the world champion GL god on a lucky day.

[Muspellsheimr]

$10 per bullet? Where the hell did you get that from?

SR4 charges 35 for a fragmentation grenade, & 2 for a bullet; although perhaps not a realistically large difference, it is significant.