Airburst, Yes it should be death Options

[Slide]

I've seen a couple of complaints about how over powered air burst grenades are. This is the tech of today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQBYXzXLsFo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d-n7i7hsKA

[Slide]

wanted to add this one too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hctyc6THbcE

[Umidori]

Wow that first video was bad. I lost my drek at the Counter-Strike clips being used with complete seriousness. The other two aren't quite as heinous, but are still garbage.

The XM25 never fails to catch the attention of "future weapons" fans, but the military wasn't pleased with its performance compared to conventional 40mm grenade launchers, and they stopped supporting or even considering it.

That said, SR5 already adjusted the "balance" of air-burst grenades. An Airburst Link requires a Wireless connection to function at all, making it a prime hacking target, and unlike the instant detonation (after scatter) of SR4, it now requires the user to take a Change Wireless Device Mode action, which is either a Free Action that can be taken when firing the grenade if you're using a DNI link, or is a Simple Action that can be taken manually on your next Action Phase or later.

~Umi

[Shinobi Killfist]

And if this wasn't a game I might give a crap about what grenades did in real life. Instant inescapable death is the SR5 grenade and quite frankly that isn't fun. I'll also point out that survival rates of grenades are actually decent, so instant inescapable death does not model that very well.

[Slide]

ok I won't argue about the quality of videos, they are pretty obviously propaganda bits (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

However the loss of fun of grenades can also be said of sniper riffles, car crashes, and anything else the GM springs on players with little to no warning. It comes down to making sure that the GM understands the power of the things he has and uses them to properly motivate players.

[Smash]

How about something like this.

When firing a grenade you are still firing it at an NPC, not just a 'space'. Pick one of the NPCs you wish to hit with the grenade. Make the opposed heavy weapon vs evasion roll. Apply all modifiers as if you were shooting directly at the NPC (range, visibility, positional from the position of the shooter; Cover based on whether the target has cover from the explosion's point of origin). Add an additional -1 to hit for every meter the target is away from the point of detonation (clipping a moving target with the edge of an explosion should be harder than dropping it at the target's feet). Apply blind fire rules for lobbing grenades to points behind cover you can't see.

If there are no successes the grenade scatters as per the scatter rules. re-roll any scatter that puts the original target at increased risk (they were successful at dodging afterall).

[Lynchmob]

The only reason weapons like this don't see more action down range is because of poor budget decisions. I'm not going to dive into the rules debates surrounding grenades but in real life a grenade is much much deadlier than a pistol or assault rifle. A MK 19 straight up owns small craft. So do 50 cals but it takes a few more rounds. (Check out what Mark V boats pack if you want to drool over some firepower) Stopping a small boat with assault rifles is almost impossible and if somebody tried to use a 9 mil they'd probably get yelled at for wasting ammo. In Shadowrun terms I would get kind of ticked as a player if on site security was tossing and firing off grenades every encounter but if a HTR team rolled in at least one of those guys is going to have a launcher. I understand rule of cool but I always get a little confused when I hear people complaining that fists don't do enough damage and next-gen high explosives do too much.

EDIT: Didn't see all the replies.

Yeah grenades in an open environment don't insta gib people and the issues with those launchers were mostly that the munitions were too small and in real combat conditions they didn't perform quite like those little show off buy my weapon demos in the clips. Grenades in a closed environment would be deadlier but that brings up the whole argument about Corps destroying their own property. Do they ever reference a size for the launchers in SR? 40mm, 20mm, some new class? Cause a 40mm is no joke but way overkill for an underbarrel.

[Slide]

Well the M203 is a single shot 40 MM that is for M-16s and variants. I'd assume that for any of the AR grenade launchers are 40 MM.

[Lynchmob]

A 203 is single shot though, a 6 shot clip fed 40mm underbarrel would be huge. I'm writing it off for next gen tech and all but it just furthers the argument for how deadly grenades should be in SR.

[Slide]

oh crap your right, that is 6 in a clip. yeah probably nothing bigger than like a 16 or 20 MM then. even that's freaking huge.

[Tzeentch]

Probably a preloaded barrel.

[Voran]

There's that Ml-6 pistol that doesn't seem much bigger than a revolver/hvy pistol with 6 'minigrenades' which do dmg equal to regular grenades.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

There's that Ml-6 pistol that doesn't seem much bigger than a revolver/hvy pistol with 6 'minigrenades' which do dmg equal to regular grenades.

Mini-grenades obviously use higher grade explosives to attain the explosive force of a normal grenade.

[kzt]

One XM-25 had a potentially disastrous malfunction during training caused them all to be withdrawn from service in March while they investigated and planned how to fit it. My impression was they were considered fairly successful in actual service until that point.

[Umidori]

A single malfunction is never the sole cause of an entire weapon withdrawal.

The Army may not always do they right, but they do things thoroughly. The malfunction in question was simply the most high profile problem - I guarantee they had reams and reams of reports on other problems, both mechanical, logistical, economical, and practical. At the end of day, if the Army says no to something, they've done their homework on it.

~Umi

[Voran]

One XM-25 had a potentially disastrous malfunction during training caused them all to be withdrawn from service in March while they investigated and planned how to fit it. My impression was they were considered fairly successful in actual service until that point.

....

results of a ....run?

[kzt]

A single malfunction is never the sole cause of an entire weapon withdrawal.

Given that there were only 12 of the weapons in Afghanistan, how many kabooms would you think it would take to suggest there was a major problem? They had a propellant charge for a round ignited outside the breech due to a double feed, resulting in destruction of the weapon and minor injuries. This was the second such incident (other was in the US). Neither resulted in the high explosive in the ammo functioning, which would have killed everyone within 5 meters or so. The fact that they twice had the weapon kaboom after a fairly common malfunction is a pretty huge sign that there is a big issue with the ammo design or the feed system.

[Umidori]

Uh. Okay. I thought you were bringing up the malfunction as a way of saying "They were working fine, but one small glitch and they canned the whole project". I guess I misread your meaning.

~Umi

[Draco18s]

When firing a grenade you are still firing it at an NPC, not just a 'space'. Pick one of the NPCs you wish to hit with the grenade. Make the opposed heavy weapon vs evasion roll.

No. No no no no.
That is everything that is wrong about the SR4 rules.
There is a much better way of handling this, and that's to have everyone in the blast radius get a dodge roll. Every hit in that roll moves them 1 meter away from the zone as they choose.

[Slide]

I'm gonna have to agree with Draco on that. Well mostly.

[Shinobi Killfist]

No. No no no no.
That is everything that is wrong about the SR4 rules.
There is a much better way of handling this, and that's to have everyone in the blast radius get a dodge roll. Every hit in that roll moves them 1 meter away from the zone as they choose.

Well I'd just say it reduces the DV by 1 not move 1 meter because they have move limits. Explosions are not perfect spheres of death so just say people use cover, make themselves a smaller target, face less vital anatomy towards the explosion etc reducing the effect by 1dv per hit on the dodge test.

[Draco18s]

Well I'd just say it reduces the DV by 1 not move 1 meter because they have move limits. Explosions are not perfect spheres of death so just say people use cover, make themselves a smaller target, face less vital anatomy towards the explosion etc reducing the effect by 1dv per hit on the dodge test.

I'm perfectly happy with letting people violate movement rates when dodging for cover from grenades.
And the reason I said "1 meter" and not "-1 DV" is because of missiles. 1 meter is -4 DV. I would much rather see people going "GRENADE!" and diving out of the way than getting pulped.

I'd probably also add:
Ground counts as chunky salsa surface and drop all grenade DVs by half
Airburst grenades don't get chunky salsa from the ground
"drop prone: -1/2 DV" free action (doesn't work against air burst*).

*Net effect is that if you drop prone, you're taking half the DV listed in the book, one way or the other: against ground-grenades, you take 1/2 * (2 * (DV / 2)). Against airburst you take (DV / 2).

[Slide]

Actually i think SR5 gives a good precendent for a way to deal with gernades. One step down from full defense you can "duck for cover" at a -5. I think that would make up for the meter or two of movement that you get from your dodge roll.

[kzt]

Real world grenades are somewhat random, outside of the immediate vicinity of the burst (like a meter). Yeah, there is the 'burst radius' or the 'lethal radius', but those are really a probability function, typically defined as '50% of standing personel within x meters will be hit', but that doesn't mean any given individual really will be hit even if thay are close to the grenade when it goes off. Someone in the IDF talked about throwing a frag grenade in a small stone room that they though was occupied by guerrillas and instead was only occupied by an old woman, who was shaken up but uninjured other then being at least temporarily deafened. You can also get killed by larger fragments (like the fuze) at 20-50 meters.

The main advantage of the XM-25 was said to be the ability to set off a round at some fixed distance behind an obstacle. For example, 1 meter after it goes through a window, or a meter after it passes over a stone wall.

One obvious fix for overly lethal weapon is making them hard to get. For example, it's actually pretty are in the US for criminals to have machine guns and even rarer to have grenades. Converting a semi-auto weapon to a machine gun is a lot easier then building a reliable and safe to carry hand grenade. In addition, in the real world trying to buy a machine gun or grenades on the black market is pretty likely to get you a seller with a wire and 20 heavily armed cops covering him and the meet.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Real world grenades are somewhat random, outside of the immediate vicinity of the burst (like a meter). Yeah, there is the 'burst radius' or the 'lethal radius', but those are really a probability function, typically defined as '50% of standing personel within x meters will be hit', but that doesn't mean any given individual really will be hit even if thay are close to the grenade when it goes off. Someone in the IDF talked about throwing a frag grenade in a small stone room that they though was occupied by guerrillas and instead was only occupied by an old woman, who was shaken up but uninjured other then being at least temporarily deafened. You can also get killed by larger fragments (like the fuze) at 20-50 meters.

The main advantage of the XM-25 was said to be the ability to set off a round at some fixed distance behind an obstacle. For example, 1 meter after it goes through a window, or a meter after it passes over a stone wall.

One obvious fix for overly lethal weapon is making them hard to get. For example, it's actually pretty are in the US for criminals to have machine guns and even rarer to have grenades. Converting a semi-auto weapon to a machine gun is a lot easier then building a reliable and safe to carry hand grenade.

Building a reliable hand grenade is really pretty easy, assuming you have the materials at hand. Built over a hundred of them in the 1st gulf war (broke down Demo Charges and packed them into a container with a small fuse). Used them for room clearing. They were a bit overkill (about 1 kilo of packed C4 into a discarded Grenade case, taped shut with Duct Tape and fused with a Blasting cap and short piece of timed fuse and igniter), but they sure packed a hell of a punch.

Of course, getting a reliable source of plastic explosives in the civilian world is a bit difficult, but everything else is easily obtained (or crafted), if you know the right sources. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)