Demolitions help, Practical uses for the skill Options

[Tyro]

The Arsenal advanced rules for Demolitions can be very confusing, but also very handy. What are some simple, easy to grasp things you can do using those rules?

[Tanegar]

At its most basic, you can make a door where none exists. Holed up in a building with SWAT teams covering every exit? Make a new exit! Potentially even more useful if the building adjoins another: blow through the common wall and flank the fuzz without ever exposing yourselves to fire. Blowing bridges is handy if you need to create an impassable obstacle, though it's kind of high-profile.

[Yerameyahu]

You mean, you can make none exist where a door does. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Har har!

… Yeah, so breaching is fun, and you don't need a key.

[Summerstorm]

Booby-Traps (hehe.. boobies).

But yeah: Breaching rules are good (The DV-Multiplyers are really needed if you don't want to haul around hundreds of kilos of C4 to make a dent in a wall).
Also building and cooking your own stuff. Some ideas for when your the shit you are carrying blows up.

So well: What can you do?

You can make a cheap Ultra-bomb for example.

Let's say you have plans +1, good tools +1, Logic 4 and Demolitions (IED) 6 (+2)
First you cook up ANFO for 50 bucks per kilo. say... half a ton, 500 kg. (May take a while)

Then you build it into a car bomb (Use a cheap, or stolen van):
Options:
Better Blast Radius = -1/2 DV per Meter Threshold +4
Improved Armor Piercing ... say -20 AP, want to be thorough (yeah they forgot to limit it???) = +40
= Threshold 52, Interval: 215 minutes
We roll about 14 dice ~4,6 hits that's about 40.5 working hours to get the car ready.
One last roll i presume (For enhancement of the charge.. rules don't make sense otherwise), say 5 hits. DV=+5

So we have a rolling bomb with:
72DV, -1/2 per meter, AP -20.

Which means it has killing potential out to about 120 meter radius and rips through standard walls to about the same range.
Total cost: 25000 NY and a weeks work (and a stolen van). Welcome on the most wanted list...

[Yerameyahu]

Yeah, be careful with the advanced demo rules. They have some un-fixed corner cases in there that the GM has to remember to say 'no' to. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Summerstorm]

Ah crap... now i wanted to see what we can make happen with BIG explosions (If Money is not a concern) INSANITY, MAN.
Ok, we have the best bomb-maker of the world:

He has got enhanced Logic 8, Demolitions 6 (IED) +2, Virtual Reality Plans +2, and best tools +1, Edge: 6
Also he paid 200.000 of his starting money for 133.33 KG Rating 15 Foam explosive (or plastic availability 16, instead of 12... weird no matter which)
Ok, Better Blast radius: -1/2 per meter
Improved Armor Piercing: We make it -40 AP this time. Ignored even Hardened Materiel and even the most cybered up+enchanted trolls.
+ Incendiary Effect
Threshold: 94, 420 minutes
He works about 104 Hours, say 10 hours a day= 10 days and rolls his roll. for enhanced DV. Edge this time: ~ 12 hits. DV=+12
End DV is (root(133.33)*15)+12=185
AP -40, -1/2 DV/meter
Absolut destruction out to about 340 meters radius.

That is an area of 363168 qm² totally flattened if i haven't crapped up on my calculations. That is about 36 hectar (about 90 acres). About the size of 45 soccer-fields.

Now you can take this TINY bomb and have it in the sidecar of your motorcycle and connect it with a radiosignal with your heart... if someone kills you NOBODY gets out alive. (No i totally didn't steal it... especially not from Snowcrash... wait... crap)

Ah, and i know my calculations are not right, they assume not more stacking armor than 40... but multiple walls wear the explosion down... ah well. Also: Limiting the -AP of a bomb really should be in the rules.

EDIT: Ah and just checked real quick... for the same price you can make a similar bomb (even slightly more powerful) with ANFO in your basement. But the resulting Bomb will weigh about 4 tons *g*.

[Tyro]

What are some good, basic houserules to make the demo rules make more sense? I'm looking for something to put in my houserule document, so please be thorough and explain your reasoning.

[kzt]

The key element is that blast damaged doesn't drop in a linear fashion like the game shows. It's essentially an asymptotic curve, with crazy huge damage really close, serious damage close and minor damage going out a LONG way.

See the blast pressure chart (figure 3) at http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/navy/docs/e...ds/Warheads.htm

Notice that the 1kg charge shown as the reference inflicts many thousands of PSI at essentially contact distance and 1 PSI at 10 meters, and .2 PSI at 50 meters.

In terms of making quick easy to use rules that's not easy. Mostly because using explosives has a lot of subtlety and really requires someone who has a decent amount of hands-on experience or access to a lot of fairly closely held data to write.

[CanRay]

Disarming bombs can come in handy as well.

Especially if you're faced with a magically enhanced nuke on a fault line.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

Check my sig. I've made a little .jar that calculate the amount of explosives you need given the rating and radius of the explosion you want.

[Tyro]

I'd really, really like better explosives rules (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

[The Grue Master]

One of the key advantages of Arsenal's rules is the introduction of a bombmaker's role. Demolitions tests are not made when applying an explosive but rather when creating. One final test is made to 'activate' the bomb, but this is an agility + demo test checking for critical glitches while applying the detonator. This lets a 'smarter' runner churn out compact and relatively harmless breaching/cratering explosives for his running team, without requiring him to be there/constructing it on the fly. My bombmakers generally write down their preferred bombs and produce a few based on the run they're undertaking, then they make a test, hand out the goodies (armed or disarmed) and the other runners set off to accomplish whatever.

[Fatum]

I'd really, really like better explosives rules (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

You see, this becomes a question of rules complexity vs the amount of sense they make. Unless you want to turn your game into GURPS with players and the GM turning into Calculus 3 class, solving differential equations together throughout the session, you don't really want complex, more realistic explosive rules. :ь

[Tyro]

You see, this becomes a question of rules complexity vs the amount of sense they make. Unless you want to turn your game into GURPS with players and the GM turning into Calculus 3 class, solving differential equations together throughout the session, you don't really want complex, more realistic explosive rules. :ь

I said better, not more realistic (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

The original point of this thread was asking for premade recipes with page references which I could use until I got a better grasp on the mechanics.

[Sengir]

What are some good, basic houserules to make the demo rules make more sense? I'm looking for something to put in my houserule document, so please be thorough and explain your reasoning.

Use explosives in 100g increments instead of kilos (in other words, divide all weights by ten).

[Tyro]

Use explosives in 100g increments instead of kilos (in other words, divide all weights by ten).

Makes sense to me. Reasoning?

[The Grue Master]

My favourite recipe:

1 kilo of rating 15 plastic explosive (avail of 16F) with a timed detonator (personal preference, arguably unhackable) will produce a three square meter hole in a barrier with an armor of 16 and a structure of 13. The explosive must be placed up the wall (using CleenTac or something similar) and still requires a poor man's demo test to use (insert detonator using agility + demolitions) but is generally quite safe. Timer lengths of 3-6 seconds are generally preferred.

The basic formula for calculating boom on an elevated explosive: (Arsenal p.90)
Rating * 3 = DV
DV - (1/4 Armor Rating) = Modified DV
Modified DV / Structure = Size Of Hole (in square meters)

I like this formula because it involves very few rolls. It is also cheap and lightweight (the final cost being 635Y per unit).

[Blastula]

Disarming bombs can come in handy as well.

Especially if you're faced with a magically enhanced nuke on a fault line.

I'd name my town on the resulting oceanfront property Lutherville. Or maybe Otisburg.

[last_of_the_grea...]

Personally I think the best use of explosives is to blow $h!t up! It's even more fun when you get creative. "Hey, want to try this new candy bar?" Just don't tell the guy that when a critical mass of the candy explosive hits his stomach acid: boom!

[CanRay]

Blow stuff up, make it burn real fast, shaped charges to blow things in only one direction, implosions...

[Sengir]

Makes sense to me. Reasoning?

Just use Brazilian_Shinobi's handy calculator to calculate how much standard commercial explosives (rating 3) you'd need to blast an average door (Arm 4, Barrier 5) you'd have in your house. Better bring an army of mules if you plan to blow up something big (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Saint Sithney]

Ok, we have the best bomb-maker of the world:

He has got enhanced Logic 8, Demolitions 6 (IED) +2, Virtual Reality Plans +2, and best tools +1, Edge: 6

You forgot PuSHeD and Neocortical Nanites, possibly even Math SPU (since it's basically just applied physics here.)
Homey can have half again that dice load with proper headware. An adept with an Aptitude can crank out a bunch more dice on top of that. You could even take a Pixie, surge it out and then have it possessed by a giant cheese ghost if you want to get ridiculous.. barring that..

We've got, 10 skill + 9 logic + 2 spec + 3 nanites + 1 PuSHeD + 2 Math SPU + 1 encephalon + 2 AR plans +1 tools = 31 dice + ~21 dice on the edge reroll. Say 17 hits total? Enough to turn a kilo of commercial explosives into a tank-buster. Logic is a magical thing.

[Dumori]

Demolitions makes your logic monkey. Godly with set-up time. Though not as "deadly" as Batman is when he gets set-up time

[CanRay]

And when you have to rush, well, "P for Plenty".

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

Just use Brazilian_Shinobi's handy calculator to calculate how much standard commercial explosives (rating 3) you'd need to blast an average door (Arm 4, Barrier 5) you'd have in your house. Better bring an army of mules if you plan to blow up something big (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Well, this would be if you really wanted to vaporize the door. If you just want to make a whole through it (like blowing up the lock), it kinda makes sense.
One thing I've notice though is that the explosives rules are just like Newton's Mechanics Laws and Einstein's revised Mechanic Laws, for the average stuff, it works great (Newton's), for the really big or the really small stuff the rules start to look funny and you need a new set of them (just like Einstein's for massive mass and microscopic mass).