Explosives and Hand Grenades ?, Nothing new . . . Options

[thorya]

I'm sure this will not come as a surprise to most players that the explosives/hand grenades rules are crazy, but I thought this would be an interesting example.

Consider the M67 grenade, it is estimated to have a fatal range of 5m and serious injury range of 15m. It contains 0.18 kilos of explosives and is filled with Composition B. It's a fragmentation grenade, so based upon the rules for frag grenades, I will assume that +2 DV +5AP is added to the explosive damage value for this grenade.
Composition B is 60% RDX and 40% TNT.
TNT under the rules is a rating 4 explosives (finally got arsenal). RDX has 1.5x as much energy per mass so we'll assume that it's a rating 6 explosive. This means that the rating for the explosive charge is 5.2. With the 0.18 kilos of explosives in the grenade we get a explosion DV of 2.2, rounded to 2. We make it a frag grenade and we have a grenade that does 4 DV.
Even if we were to put the most powerful plastic explosives available (Rating 15) in instead, we're still looking at 6.36 DV for the explosion and 8 DV for the grenades. Even when they were making the (probably underpowered) grenades listed in the book they realized this was silly and made the grenades more powerful.

Does anyone else have a good fix to make explosives reasonable? Setting off a stick of dynamite on your hand does 2 DV?

I've considered using an alternative formula for explosives (since we already have to pull out the calculator for most of the square roots anyway)-
LN(rating of explosives)*10*sqrt(mass of explosives)

Edt: We've also considered using this formula:
Rating of explosives*sqrt(3+mass of explosives)

It bumps up those low explosive masses and makes grenades size explosives more reasonable and it's still easy to calculate the DV for one kilo (x2). But past about 10 kilos it doesn't have a huge impact, which is maybe a good thing.

It puts the explosives power into a more reasonable range for us (and closer to the power that grenades imply). I've also considered just throwing out their ratings and readjusting.

[Yerameyahu]

Yup, none of it makes sense. (Neither does the low price of grenades.)

I don't think there's any fix but to redo the whole formula and ratings from scratch. :/

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Problem is, if you increase the damage potential of the Grenades in game, to emulate the real world, you will also be emulating the real world with the number of people killed in game. A Game tends to suck when you are building a new character every other game session. If you like that, Play Twilight 2000 (Which is a fun game in itself, I admit).

IMO, Grenades work okay in game. They are deadly enough, if you can place them where you want them (don't get me started on the innaccuracies of Grenade/Rocket/Missile placement in game) without actually being as deadly as IRL.

Costs are another issue altogether.

[Summerstorm]

But when you are building explosives you add net hits to damage (Arsenal P 94 for example), do you not? That makes up for a lot (but not all) of the missing damage. And yeah, measuring in kilogramms is insane. (at the low end).

[thorya]

Problem is, if you increase the damage potential of the Grenades in game, to emulate the real world, you will also be emulating the real world with the number of people killed in game. A Game tends to suck when you are building a new character every other game session. If you like that, Play Twilight 2000 (Which is a fun game in itself, I admit).

IMO, Grenades work okay in game. They are deadly enough, if you can place them where you want them (don't get me started on the innaccuracies of Grenade/Rocket/Missile placement in game) without actually being as deadly as IRL.

Costs are another issue altogether.

I don't actually have a problem with grenades in game, especially if you use simplified Chunky Salsa Rules. I get that they are designed for game design and that if they functioned like real world ones, most players would kill themselves and everything else in one or two passes. It's the ineffectiveness of certain explosives and the fact that there is apparently no explosive that could be in a grenade to make them do as much damage as they do.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

I don't actually have a problem with grenades in game, especially if you use simplified Chunky Salsa Rules. I get that they are designed for game design and that if they functioned like real world ones, most players would kill themselves and everything else in one or two passes. It's the ineffectiveness of certain explosives and the fact that there is apparently no explosive that could be in a grenade to make them do as much damage as they do.

Yeah, we don't have any problems either.
And yeah, it is a small disconnect there. I just assume they weigh in a little more than the ones IRL. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Yerameyahu]

Adding net hits with Demo can quickly create its own craziness, though.

I'd prefer it if grenades *were* vastly deadlier, and correspondingly rare, expensive, and illegal.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Adding net hits with Demo can quickly create its own craziness, though.

I'd prefer it if grenades *were* vastly deadlier, and correspondingly rare, expensive, and illegal.

In that combincation, that would work too. Much like in Twilight 2000. You are not going to be chucking those around like candy.

Of course, Shadowrunners would STILL probably use them like candy, becuase they would be that much more effective. As it is, they are more of a nuissance factor unless you are really, really good with them; but they do not really Kill out beyond Touching/Primary impact zone, so... *shrug*

Though I think the Flash-Bang is pretty effective in game. As you can just get Close... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[NiL_FisK_Urd]

Adding net hits with Demo can quickly create its own craziness, though.

Yeah, because making demolitions is an extended test - take 5g of any explosives and then roll until you dont have any dice left (if you use decreasing dice pools)

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Yeah, because making demolitions is an extended test - take 5g of any explosives and then roll until you dont have any dice left (if you use decreasing dice pools)

Net Hits only count if they are above the Threshold, and once you have hit the Threshold, you stop rolling, so, hopefully your last roll garnered you some net hits. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

You do not "Just keep rolling because I have more dice to roll."

[thorya]

"net hits" on extended tests is just a whole other can of worms.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

"net hits" on extended tests is just a whole other can of worms.

True too... No need to get too involved with them, in my opinion.