Grenades and Missiles, Underpowered? Options

[Tashiro]

Yeah, thats so often the case with changing rules.
"Hey, I don't do any damage to the players, lets spice it up."
"What do you mean, you are all dead?!"

Reminds me of one funny thing. (Not SR)
GM: How much damage did you take at all?
Me: Around 8.
GM: Man, I should have not allowed you to pick up your armor. Was no challange that way.
Me: Then I would be dead.
GM: What!?
Me: Wel. Every attack 4 points more damage would mean at around 40 Damage. I got 25 hitpoints...
GM: But the rest could have help.
The Rest: unconcious/no weapon/no more spells etc...

The point is, increasing the damage by 20% of the base weapon damage does not translate into the players taking 20% more damage. It can translate into players taking 150% more damage...
@Tashiro

So body 3 + armor 5 +mystic armor 6? = 14 dice to soak, making it 5 hits, reducing the granade to 5 Damage. Not nothing I say. Yes, if the grande lands several m away, and you are in the open, yes now it is not a problem. But hell, with that you are able to make a picknick in suppressing fire...

Don't forget spending Edge to re-roll failed dice. Or, depending on the pool, adding it to bounce 6's. In general, 10P will usually be reduced to 2P or so for them. That's if it is ground 0. Which ... really... shouldn't... happen. If there was a way to increase damage like there is for firearms (I've had players pull out 18P with a single shot), it'd be less of an issue.

[Yerameyahu]

I know, Seriously Mike. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I was (unclearly) suggesting they be 'more F'; to me, the game doesn't handle the area between 'permit' and 'nuclear bioweapons' very well.

I agree, Tashiro, but TPK is objectively worse than ho-hum. Those aren't the only two choices, anyway, it's just that I was responding to Ronin. Besides, there are so many non-grenade ways to challenge the party; adding grenades to that list is a 'want', not a 'need'.

[StealthSigma]

The chunky salsa effect has to be the number one killer in terms of grenade use in the games I've seen.

Toss a grenade at the feet of a guy in an open field? Probably dead, yeah, but I could see him potentially surviving, especially if he hits the deck.
Toss a grenade into the middle of the local Stuffer Shack? I hope you brought a lot of corn chips.

~Umi

I think once killed two guys with a flashbang because they were in a small 2m x 2m elevator car...

Properly deadly things I do say. 10m blast radius with no damage drop off..... You get chunky salsa off at least the floor and roof of it and two walls and chunky salsa off the back door once...

You end up with something like 120-132S damage depending on positioning of the grenade and the occupants. I almost felt guilty about that.

[Irion]

Don't forget spending Edge to re-roll failed dice. Or, depending on the pool, adding it to bounce 6's. In general, 10P will usually be reduced to 2P or so for them. That's if it is ground 0. Which ... really... shouldn't... happen. If there was a way to increase damage like there is for firearms (I've had players pull out 18P with a single shot), it'd be less of an issue.

Everything true. But if you use the "salza" rule, adding two points of damage to the granade can make 2P become 6P.

Boom at your feet 4m to the wall.
10P:10+2(rebounce)=12 soaking 10 resulting in 2.
12P:12+4(rebounce)=16 soaking 10 resulting in 6.

Thats just 300% of the original damage. And to go to an extrem.

They are passing through a wide hallway 6m wide. The granade is landing directly in front of one player and going boom.
10P:10+2*4=18 soaking 10 resulting in 8. not nice but...
12P:12+2*6=24 soaking 10 resulting in 14...
Again, I am not saying you should not do it, and it could not work. But even small changes can have quite a big effect...

[Tashiro]

That works for indoors, certainly. The problem is 'out in the open'. A grenade is supposed to be fatal to 8m, crippling to 15m. SR grenades don't do that. (P15(f) frag is 7(f) at 8 - won't kill anyone and 0(f) at 15m). I guess what would be a viable option is to say that these are 'minigrenades', and then make a list of actual, proper grenades which have +10 DV or something and perhaps double the nuyen cost and up the difficulty to purchase, maybe.

[Irion]

@Tashiro
But now you can't use those indoors anymore and throwing two will certainly kill the runners, even outdoor.

[Tashiro]

@Tashiro
But now you can't use those indoors anymore and throwing two will certainly kill the runners, even outdoor.

I... can't?
Seriously. It isn't like my players have script immunity. If they're in a situation where grenades are considered a viable option to use on them, then they've screwed up somewhere. They have enough armour that 'augmented' grenades would seriously maim them, but the first one going off should be a good warning to get the hell out of the area and find cover.

See, when I run Shadowrun, I make the threat against the PCs realistic to the activities they're in. By no stretch of the imagination do I think I should hold things back - they wound up willingly entering a warzone between Aztechnology, Saeder Krupp, and Ares - and got to see an Ares walker first hand. The thing could have easily turned them into a fine paste if they had been spotted. I've even had Aztechnology try a air-to-surface missile drop on them when they were trying to get out of the area - the vehicle was almost totalled after two 'near misses', and if the Technomancer hadn't succeeded (finally) in hacking the spotter drone and made it look like they'd been destroyed, the third hit would have killed everyone. It came down to one roll to see if she could bypass security and spoof the hit (after about six failed attempts without being spotted). I've even had one PC have to blow permanent Edge when he had his brains blown out by a sniper, due to another PC tipping off the enemy that the group was present.

The threat of actual destruction seems to get my group's blood pumping. This is good. Different people have different preferences, I accept this. However, I do think that at least some borderline realism is good. Grenades kill people. This should be at least reasonably true. Unfortunately, in SR4, it isn't at all.

[Irion]

@Tashiro
With reflecting damage this thing (a DV 20 Granade) kills nearly EVERYTHING.
Granade, 10 m, Player, Wall-> 10+10= DV 20 bye, bye.

The point is, SR is throwing in extra Hitpoints, so you can't get oneshoted. If you make weapons strong enough to one-shot a normal human, they will also be much tougher on armor. Since armor is just a linear reduction of the damage. So if you are not some soaking monster, you will be in deep trouble...

[cryptoknight]

Grenades aren't always lethal at ground zero.


These two lived for years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacklyn_H._Lucas

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Maxwell

This one lived for 3 days
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_K._Bausell

[Yerameyahu]

*shrug* As I said, there's a big difference between realistic deadliness and *playable threat*. If your characters are constantly, easily dying, it's not fun. If you want to make grenades more dangerous, give them a small bump (and don't use Chunky Salsa). But you don't want them *realistic*.

[thorya]

Tashiro, this is a similar discussion where someone was looking to do the same thing with handguns. It might have some ideas that are useful.

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...=37061&st=0

Feedback on your initial idea. Making the radius of the blast makes them much more deadly and makes the scatter much less of a problem (particularly for missiles). Just make sure your players know, and understand, that a deadly blast radius of 8 meters is enough that in a lot of rooms and city locations they're going to be hurt too. It will avoid a lot of hurt pissed players grumbling about your house rules.

I don't think a flat bump up really does what you want either. Afterall, a human with slightly above average body (4) will still survive a HE explosive under your rules 40% of the time, without edge, and someone slightly below average body (2) will have zero chance of survival without burning edge. Forget Trolls and orks who will regularly survive even your 15DV HE grenades, though I'm not sure if that's what you want or not. Maybe try something that makes the damage a bit more random, to keep it threatening without making it impossible for civilians to survive (because some do). Perhaps, allow hits on the attack to stage up the damage, as well as reducing the scatter. Or even rolling 1d6 and adding it to the damage.

Or raise the damage of grenades (and other explosives) like you have, maybe even a bit more, but allow the defender to add their reaction to their damage soak pool. Normally the defender's reaction doesn't come into play at all, but realistically if a grenade lands near you, how you react is pretty important.

You should also keep explosives threatening to players by greatly upping the -AP, or making it 1/2 AP. +5 for fragmentation grenades seems excessive.

As for Chunky Salsa, we just used fixed increases to save time on the math and to eliminate the stun grenade ridiculous scenario.

[BishopMcQ]

Options to scale up damage:
Use the direct hit rules from WAR that allow you to scale up damage on a single target.
Have the grenade roll its base DV in dice, hits scale up the power. (this means it could run from base to double)
Set a minimum blast radius at full strength, then falloff normally outside of that. (this changes the effects of scatter)
Allow players to buy higher powered grenades (+1 DV for each +1 Avail and +10% cost)

Play around and see what works for your table.

[Mäx]

That works for indoors, certainly. The problem is 'out in the open'. A grenade is supposed to be fatal to 8m, crippling to 15m. SR grenades don't do that. (P15(f) frag is 7(f) at 8 - won't kill anyone and 0(f) at 15m). I guess what would be a viable option is to say that these are 'minigrenades', and then make a list of actual, proper grenades which have +10 DV or something and perhaps double the nuyen cost and up the difficulty to purchase, maybe.

They actually explicitly are said to be minigrenades, thats why most of under barrel grenade launchers have 3 shot capabilities and the bigger hanheld launcher has a 20 round drum.
Here's my version of modern day sized grenades from an earlier thread(tought you might find it usefull):
Heavy Grenades
Modern more powerfull explosives allowed the creation of smaller grenades without any loss of power and these "minigrenades" quickly replaced older bigger grenades, as soldiers could carry more of them and launchers could pack more grenades into a relativly same sized magazine. But resently, faced with a demand for more powerful grenades, some weapon manufactorers have started to again make those bigger grenades of the old using same explosive as "minigrenades".
Cluster 10P — 12m radius 14F 80¥
Flash-Bang 8S –3 12m Radius 9R 70¥
Fragmentation 14P(f) +5 –1/m 12F 65¥
Gas/Splash chemical — 12m radius 6 + chemical 40¥ + chemical
High Explosive 12P –2 –2/m 10F 100¥
Incendiary — — 22m radius 10R 100¥
Smoke — — 12m radius 6R 60¥
Thermal Smoke — — 12m radius 8R 80¥
White Phosphorus 10P/6P –half –1/m 16F 250¥

[Tashiro]

A lot of good suggestions, I'll need to contemplate these. Thanks!

[Psikerlord]

I think its been said plenty already - grenades are balance friendly, not realistic friendly, but then probably so is muhc of the game. If you want to increase grenade dmg I'd just go with called shots. But damn, grenades are real scary in our game already (we dont use armour stacking stuff from Arsenal however, so typical armour in our game is 4-(IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif) . And then there is chunky salsa too.

[DMiller]

Fo those who want to use "Chunky Salsa" but hate math. I have a helper. It is an MS Excel file that will work with OpenOffice.

https://www.sugarsync.com/pf/D024671_68_6228651696

Basic instructions:
Blue fields are hand filled.
Green fields are drop-downs.
Macros are not needed and can be disabled.
The sheet is password protected to protect the formulas, but the password is blank.

-D

[The Jopp]

You're also failing to remember that if someone intentionally tries to get a grenade to detonate at "ground zero" range in relation to a target, it will inevitably scatter to someone or something else you'd prefer NOT to blow up. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

~Umi

Good lord, those rules just blow my mind. I prefer the simple:

1: Drop grenade at feet - Roll Dice: On a roll of 1-3 it stops and on a roll of 4-6 it rolls 1 meter in random direction
2: Throw grenade: Roll to hit.
Miss=Scatter (2D6 -Skill Level meters
Hit=Spot on target

Simple.

And if you want it more deadly you just apply chunky salsa rule

[Bazhel]

As someone mentioned earlier grenades in SR are presumably so called Minigrenades, and if i remember correctly in SR 2 or 3 there was a more lethal version called IPE Minigrenades. But by and large grenades in RL isnt allways as lethal as one might think, consider that up until more or less now the shrapnel a grenade generated came from its casing, also a greneade has about 100grams of high explosive as a charge. Place that in an enclosed space and it will be very effective, out in a field... not so much. Something the rules bypasses, and cant say its a bad thing since i would have had to reroll a character more often otherwise, is the the secondary effects of a grenade, sure you take damage from the overpreassure of a grenade (and thats what the enclosed space amplifies in a room), but whatabout the pure system shock of the blast, its at least as loud as a flashbang right? yet a SR grenade does not generate a stun effect.

Now a modern grenade is way more lethal since someone figured out that if you want a grenade to be more effective you have to have more shrapnel, for example the two modern grenades used by the Swedish armed Forces are quite nasty. For example the Shgr 90 houses a charge of "only" 95grams of Pentyl (explosice) and about 2500 2,5mm steel ballbearings, after testing they have found shrapnel as far out as 100 meters ffom the detontation even though its "kill"radius is 5 meters.... its actully being faced out as its to dangerous to the user. Its successor only have about 250 ballbearings, the same killradius but isnt as dangerous to the user. Both grenades weigh in at about 250 grams total. Then there is of course the shockgrenade... a Shockgrenade actually doesnt have any shrapnel, its whole purpose is to use the overpreassure alone to minimize damage to your own side.

What i mean to say with this longwinded rant is that if grenades was as lethal ingame as in RL we would all probbaly suffer quite a bit since the damage radius is potentially half a city block if there isnt any cover.
However, if you want a bit more lethality without totally unbalancing the game i'd suggest you look at AP. a 2.5 mm ballbearing being propelled by the explosion of 100grams of highexplosive should be quite capable to penetrate most worn armor at 5 meters. The ballbearing is after all smaller then most APDS traveling at some serious speeds.

just my 2 cents

[KarmaInferno]

Now a modern grenade is way more lethal...

Then again, there are documented modern real life cases where a frag grenade went off two feet from someone, and only caused a concussion and minor lacerations. The randomness of physics can be funny sometimes.



-k

[Warlordtheft]

Yeah, I generally go for if you target someone and miss, roll scatter. If net hits excceed target, assume target is the detonation point, add excess hits to damage. If missed, the scatter roll os reduced by the number of hits as outlined in the BBB.

[snowRaven]

Then again, there are documented modern real life cases where a frag grenade went off two feet from someone, and only caused a concussion and minor lacerations. The randomness of physics can be funny sometimes.

Edge use (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

[Tashiro]

Edge use (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

That's exactly my take on it. Edge use explains the 'less damage', but the 'base damage' should still be something that works. I'll accept the 'chunky salsa' effect from the floor however, which means that base damage will always be x 2 unless it is specifically exploded in-air.

[Yerameyahu]

Which might be nice, because airbust is the main 'power use' of grenades. This automatically limits that.

[Draco18s]

I'm just going to drop in and inform everyone that a standard SR4 frag grenade can blow holes through 20cm worth of brick wall.

Last I checked, real life frags don't.

[Yerameyahu]

That's no help if it can't also blow holes in people, which is OP's issue. Ah, well. You'd think the frag AP would help with that… except it has the same effect on kevlar as on brick. Oops.