Chunky salsa rule flaw, it just hit me Options

[ZeroPoint]

Falconer is right though in that there are a lot of cases of fatalities from flashbangs.

Yes the bright light is caused by burning of magnesium, which flashes to incredibly high temperatures and are very loud.

However, while the explosive radius of a flashbang is very short, they are bright enough and loud enough that if you are looking anywhere near them, you will be blinded out to a very long range. And when detonated indoors, even in a very large room, it will likely cause disorientation to everyone in the room. This is why breach teams using them are trained to throw it around a corner, and get back the heck away. And even so, they don't always avoid the affect of the shock.

my problem with flashbangs is that they arn't effective enough, assuming you take out chunky salsa. The bright light isn't modeled at all. If you treat them as if they also work like Flash grenades out of arsenal then they work better.

[Draco18s]

but I was just pointing out the idiocy of refering to it as chunk salsa...

Again, "chunky salsa" is a slang term used to refer to the effect produced by lethal grenades. Non-lethal / less-lethal grenades still function under the same physics (and one would assume, same game rules) even if it doesn't produce the same effect of having turned people into red slurry.

[VykosDarkSoul]

Again, "chunky salsa" is a slang term used to refer to the effect produced by lethal grenades. Non-lethal / less-lethal grenades still function under the same physics (and one would assume, same game rules) even if it doesn't produce the same effect of having turned people into red slurry.

Hey, momma always told me it was whats on the inside that counts....and mabye they go chunky salsa/red slurry on the Inside!

[Falconer]

Actually to the one poster... find me a cite where a flashbang's explosion cannot cause damage to a barrier. Specifally the damaging a barrier section... barriers != vehicles.

I actually started to make the same point in another thread til I reread the section in detail... there is nothing anywhere stating that it cannot. So any explosive (even a flash bang weak FAE) can blow apart an enclosure. Which makes sense... toss one in a mailbox and watch it fly apart. People don't realize how lethal they can be.



Jeremiah: Distinction without difference
Yes, flash bangs operate by conflagrating metal typically... which was EXACTLY MY POINT. The flash-bangs described in SR4a BBB are weak FUEL AIR EXPLOSIVES. They're not the dainty little M84 with it's confined blast within it's perforated cylinder and puny 1-2m AOE!! (for the stun damage... not for the flash... but this is SR4a if we want blinding flashes in a world of flare comp... you need sustained flash paks and even then they're reduced effectiveness). That's the 3rd time I've stated this... the M84 you keep referencing is puny... it's scooty puff jr... it's more of a 'flash' grenade than a flash-bang doing a lot of damage to a wide area. (again 1.5m vs 10m radius!!! in volumentric terms that's over 125x the energy and yield and damage if the M84 does as much damage in 5' as the flash-bang does in 10m!!! You confine that much energy and you will get higher overpressures).

You could produce a similar effect to a flash bang by taking say powdered sugar... using a small charge to burst it into a fine dust all through the air of the room... then using an open flame to ignite the whole mess. It's not a high explosive (it conflagrates... which is merely a difference in degree in how fast it reacts with the surrounding air). Mechanically it's the same as the description of the flash-bang in the book... (and it makes sense as a weak explosive it would do stun
and overflow into physical).



Irion: reread the confined space bits... as soon as ANY OPENING is available... they say to stop the chunky salsa. I'm not certain that you're supposed to rebound the wave 3 times from 3 different surfaces. You only have one pressure wave going out... that 1 wave comes back (you're instead calling it 4 seperate waves then triple counting the rebound). I'm not even certain reading the section that given the escape vector that you should rebound the damage at all, instead simply funnel the blast out the opening to the normal radius.

That's why I said I'm not 100% certain that we're applying the chunky salsa bits correctly. If applied like you're saying, EVERY GRENADE would have it's damage doubled merely by fact that it has it's second hemisphere bounce immediately off the ground. Yet I don't believe the rules intend this. So why is bouncing off a wall ok... but a floor/cieling not?! If we add those to your example then your poor minion is most definitely red paste.

Toss that on the fact that nowhere in the structure and barrier rules does it state that stun type explosives don't deal damage. (VEHICLES are immune to stun... by virtue of their armor... the rules for damaging barriers are seperate and different!). Then after 1 rebound the vast majority of construction materials are likely to have been blown apart... after 2 you've more than likely blown a hole in something or blown out a door or window.

Toss in a different geometry... a hemispherical room... you're at the center... with the other side wide opening... now the wave goes out hits the wall equally at the same time rebounds... all the waves hit poor brutus at the center again at the same time... does that only count as 1 rebound even though it's coming off the curved wall?! Do I break the wall down into short linear segments and apply calculus... if so the damage sustained is infinite since you get full damage off each reflection.

Square, hexagonal, octoganal... how many walls do you need... you see why I'm saying I'm not certain you're tallying up the rebounds properly!

As such I'm reading this as the blast goes off... you apply the closest rebound once... then if it comes back apply it again and again... each time testing the barrier (again nowhere does it state that stun cannot damage barriers with intent of breaching). Which makes sense... a flash bang can and will blow out weak barriers like windows.

[Draco18s]

Removed.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

There are rules for damaging Barriers on page 166-167 of SR4A.

Umarmed is a category for such damage (Standard DV, unmodified), and since Unarmed Damage is typically STUN, then obviously Stun Damage can destroy a Barrier, if there is enough of it. Like kicking a door down. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Falconer]

accidental repost

[Irion]

Toss in a different geometry... a hemispherical room... you're at the center... with the other side wide opening... now the wave goes out hits the wall equally at the same time rebounds... all the waves hit poor brutus at the center again at the same time... does that only count as 1 rebound even though it's coming off the curved wall?! Do I break the wall down into short linear segments and apply calculus... if so the damage sustained is infinite since you get full damage off each reflection.

Square, hexagonal, octoganal... how many walls do you need... you see why I'm saying I'm not certain you're tallying up the rebounds properly!

As such I'm reading this as the blast goes off... you apply the closest rebound once... then if it comes back apply it again and again... each time testing the barrier (again nowhere does it state that stun cannot damage barriers with intent of breaching). Which makes sense... a flash bang can and will blow out weak barriers like windows.

Theoretically, a detonating grenade could rebound repeatedly
off each of the four walls in a small, well-built room, raising
the effective Damage Value of the blast to a value far higher
than the original damage of the grenade. This is known as the
“chunky salsa effect.”

So only four direction. That means floor and ceilling do not get any attention

Barrier tests are a mysteries on their own. As a side note: vehicle do not have hardend armor. They just have no stuntrack, so they are not affected by stun.
If Barriers have a stun track? Does not seem reasonable to me. But on the other hand it prevents you from punching through paper. On the other hand we are talking about 10 cm thick and one m² of paper...

[Yerameyahu]

Unarmed is *typically* stun, but that's why the Barrier rules specifically have an entry for it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Tasers, on the other hand, don't affect barriers. Unarmed gets a specific non-stun DV for Barriers, a 'translation' value.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Unarmed is *typically* stun, but that's why the Barrier rules specifically have an entry for it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Tasers, on the other hand, don't affect barriers. Unarmed gets a specific non-stun DV for Barriers, a 'translation' value.

Indeed... that is probably a better way to put it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[thorya]

Unarmed is *typically* stun, but that's why the Barrier rules specifically have an entry for it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Tasers, on the other hand, don't affect barriers. Unarmed gets a specific non-stun DV for Barriers, a 'translation' value.

You mean my burst of SNS won't blast a 1 meter hole in a concrete barrier? I actually have to load something else in my gun? I don't know if my street sam would even know where to go to get such odd ammo.

[Falconer]

Actually... in the case of SnS... it's the same as any other bullet... all bullets are a flat base 2DV in the intentionally damaging structures rules. In the case of firing through barriers at targets... I'd rule it's completely ineffective (it discharges on impact with the barrier... and does nothing when it actually hits the target). The single best gun to blow a hole in a barrier is a machine pistol on full auto... (20DV + hits baby.... soaked by 2x armor)

What's really funny is the trollbow... it's a flat 1DV! (all projectile weapons are 1DV per projectile!). It's obviously really really good at punching through and hitting things on the other side of walls, but very poor at actually making big holes itself!


Irion: yes repeatedly... but note they don't say increase by 4x per rebound... the only thing that can be said conclusively about the example is it defines an enclosed space. They don't say it reflects individually off each wall for 4x damage each time... but they say it reflects repeatedly... which could mean it bounces off one wall into another wall then off another wall before finally running out of steam. (sequentially vs simultaneously)

Also other grenades DO have chunky salsa like effects... if I take the dosage of drugs in a gas/chem grenade (enough to cover a 10m radius)... then confine it to a 5m radius... I could easily apply the rules for overdosing multiple doses (lets see half the radius... volume decreases as the cube... that's 8x the dosage to anything in the area of effect... increase the power of the drug by +8 by the overdosing rules....). So once again, you're showing a lack of imagination on how confining the blast effects can have a mechanical impact by the strict rules.


Just to keep things simple and 2-dimensional, we'll assume a cylindrical space 3m tall and 2m radius. (sorry I don't buy that floor/ceiling don't count... if anything they give the GM an easy out!! yeah it's a corporate space... the cieling is those tiles and you the explosion blows out through them... rather than being confined in a tight space, but if you treat the blast as multiple individual waves instead of only one single continuous wave front it makes the problem worse).

Wave goes out... hits wall comes back... hits other wall.. comes back... hits wall and dies out. That's 3 times in a 2m space cylindrically... for only 18S (and 12dam soaked 3times by the walls probably blowing them out long before that).

Now if I replace the cylinder with say an octagonal cylinder... suddenly because they're planes instead of a continuously curving surface now I suddenly multiply the number of times hit by 8. That's exactly what you're saying, the rules never say it. Only infer a closed space with 4 walls and you assume it means 4x the damage based on the example.

The fewer faces I use to approximate the sphere... the less 'spherical' the space becomes... and instead of a continuously curving surface I end up with a set of lines... this somehow causes the blast to get more powerful?! Rather than focusing the blast back in on the victim this actually causes it to spread out more. Yet even in this case... if we treat it as a *SINGLE* blast wave bouncing off multiple surfaces (AS IN THE EXAMPLE... treating it like the sphere still only produces 18S). Far from a fatal figure... though I'd hate to be the guy caught in that elevator.

[Irion]

@Falconer

Theoretically, a detonating grenade could rebound repeatedly
off each of the four walls

Repeteatedly off each wall.
The maximum is four walls.
That means, the blast is considered to be four waves going in seperated directions with an 90° angle between them. Thats really not that hard.

So you are standing in the middle of an hallway, 2 m wide an a granade explodes besides you.
10(initial)+2*8+2*6+2*4+2*2= 50 DV

The problem is, that you can't have a single blast wave, if you have multible targets. One right from the granade one left. Who gots hit by the blastwave?
The rules are kind of clear in this aspect. Four blast waves, rebounce only limited by "range" of the explosives" if the walls are tough enough.

And sorry, 18S is pritty much deadly. Thats about 6 physical. Thats about the damage of a GUN. Guns are lethal.
Just because you can survive it... The chance of a guy with body 2 to glitch is more than likely, even to throw in a critical glitch.

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

The problem is, that you can't have a single blast wave, if you have multible targets. One right from the granade one left. Who gots hit by the blastwave?
The rules are kind of clear in this aspect. Four blast waves, rebounce only limited by "range" of the explosives" if the walls are tough enough.

Actuallly if you look at the basic rebounding rules they strongly imply to draw a straight line from explosion to target, and then past that to the barrier, and the same in the other direction. That means the most that can ever affect one target is two waves - the direct wave and the indirect wave. And since there is no angled reflection other than 90°, as far as I can tell, just standing a meter short of the grenade, and not having a right angle is enough to only get base DV - distance mod.

Ortega is trapped in a hallway when a high-explosive grenade goes off. The first wave
hits him with a Damage Code of 8P. It then reaches the wall (1 meter away), rebounds,
and hits him again. Since it traveled 2 meters to the wall and back, the second wave
has a Damage Code of 4P (–2 DV per meter). The Damage Values of these results are
combined, for an effective attack of 12P.

Once again these rules are mess, so you'll just have to find a convenient way to run things.

[ZeroPoint]

You know, all this confusing mess of counting rebounds, whether stun damage affects barriers, and whether that barrier survives to continue rebounds is why I suggested my rule. Much Much Much easier from the GMing perspective and prevents 100+ damage flashbangs.

[StealthSigma]

Also other grenades DO have chunky salsa like effects... if I take the dosage of drugs in a gas/chem grenade (enough to cover a 10m radius)... then confine it to a 5m radius... I could easily apply the rules for overdosing multiple doses (lets see half the radius... volume decreases as the cube... that's 8x the dosage to anything in the area of effect... increase the power of the drug by +8 by the overdosing rules....). So once again, you're showing a lack of imagination on how confining the blast effects can have a mechanical impact by the strict rules.

I was not talking about the concentration rules for toxin. I was talking about the multiple dose rules of toxins and applying that rule to chunky salsa. What you've described isn't chunky salsa anyway. If I were to apply chunky salsa to a gas grenade, in a 5x5m room, then I would see the "wave" of neurostun would hit someone in that room 8 times total which would mean that by chunky salsa the subject would suffer a neurotoxin with 80 power, or 80 stun damage plus the other effects.

So, as I said, flashbangs are the sole grenade which causes ugly issues with chunky salsa because the other grenades that -could- cause issue do not pay heed to chunky salsa rules because of the concentration and multiple dose rules. In fact, if we were only to pay attention to chunky salsa for gas grenades then that would create a ridiculous situation where by a person in the room when the grenade goes off has to deal with a 80 power neurostun toxin, yet someone who teleports into the room has to deal with a 10 power neurostun toxin (since they never got hit by waves of neurostun).

Nor would chunky salsa apply to gas grenade anyway. The rules say it increases the DV of the blast. Gas grenades do not have a DV so they are not affected by it.

[Yerameyahu]

Not quite, thorya. RAW, S&S do normal damage against barriers, because *all* bullets have a single 'translated' DV against barriers. Which is not just crazy for S&S, because it means EX-EX damage walls the same as Subsonic, etc. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Brainpiercing, that's kind of the point/problem: the rules vaguely-imply-but-don't-actually-say how to do the various blast paths. In theory, you have to calculate the complete system (all paths off all walls), which is obviously crazy. But it wouldn't have killed them to *say* so. Even then, the 90° method is not just totally arbitrary, but it assumes a 'spherical cow' (a rectangular room), so that's another helpful but lossy abstraction that it's nice to know for *sure*: 'Yes, this is vastly oversimplifying, but let's just say that the blast bounces along two paths directly and uniformly off any barrier, be it a car, perfectly flat steel wall, whatever.' (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) And then, as you said to Irion, you do this for each target separately…

Agreed, ZeroPoint: the *easiest* solution is some kind of straight modifier based on context (by analogy, Perception tests have a -2 'distant' penality, not an exponential formula for distance in meters). Which is why I mentioned it two days earlier, and in response to someone *else's* even earlier point (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) :

I kinda liked the idea that someone half-suggested in the other thread: just give a flat bonus/multiplier for coarse situations like 'small fully-enclosed space' (DV+6, DV*3, I dunno), 'half-enclosed' (DV+3, DV*1.5), etc. You'd have to play around and see if it works at all, but it would at least be fast and simple (half the battle).

So we need someone to run the numbers and test!

[ZeroPoint]

Also other grenades DO have chunky salsa like effects... if I take the dosage of drugs in a gas/chem grenade (enough to cover a 10m radius)... then confine it to a 5m radius... I could easily apply the rules for overdosing multiple doses (lets see half the radius... volume decreases as the cube... that's 8x the dosage to anything in the area of effect... increase the power of the drug by +8 by the overdosing rules....). So once again, you're showing a lack of imagination on how confining the blast effects can have a mechanical impact by the strict rules.

We're not showing a lack of imagination, we're showing restraint in applying rules to situations where they should not apply. If you want to show imagination, recommend a fix or offer your own interpretation instead of ONLY arguing with any and every point made.

[ZeroPoint]

Not quite, thorya. RAW, S&S do normal damage against barriers, because *all* bullets have a single 'translated' DV against barriers. Which is not just crazy for S&S, because it means EX-EX damage walls the same as Subsonic, etc. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Does that mean a shotgun loaded with Buckshot would still only deal 2DV? I would think it should deal 16 (00 buckshot typically has 8 pellets at the equivalent of .33 caliber.)

[StealthSigma]

Not quite, thorya. RAW, S&S do normal damage against barriers, because *all* bullets have a single 'translated' DV against barriers. Which is not just crazy for S&S, because it means EX-EX damage walls the same as Subsonic, etc. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Where is this 'translated' DV against barriers text located?

[ZeroPoint]

166 of SR4A

[thorya]

Does that mean a shotgun loaded with Buckshot would still only deal 2DV? I would think it should deal 16 (00 buckshot typically has 8 pellets at the equivalent of .33 caliber.)

So Birdshot for the win? Not even reinforced titanium bombshelters stand a chance against the might of number 9 birdshot!

[Yerameyahu]

No, ZeroPoint, because a shotgun shell in SR4 doesn't contain 'bullets' for barriers. According to a barrier, the shell *is* 'a bullet' (which is amusing, I know). (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Vegetaman]

The biggest flaw in the physics of the chunky salsa rule is that the resounding force loses no strength from its impact with the wall. Just the kind of perfect elasticity to have Newton spinning in his grave (entropically of course).

If we get Newton spinning in his grave, we can harvest him as free energy, right? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

[Dakka Dakka]

I doubt there will be much left to spin in his grave. Now a slice of buttered toast glued to the back of a cat....