GREM

I just saw this and thought it'd be neat to share. Something interesting for door breaching in case your shadowrun has to be noisy...

Though it's mostly useful for the military because it allows infantry to breach doors from a distance, and thus minimize exposure to enemy fire, I suppose it might also be useful in scenarios more likely in normal SR games. Since it apparently requires no adapter, it should be a fairly quick operation to ready and fire one, and at 0.68kg it's a lot lighter than a door ram. The lack of fragmentation and limited blast radius is nice for the more squemish PCs, but it also means you won't be breaching any security doors with these.

Knew a CP2020 character once who kept a 25mm HEDP (essentially shaped charge) grenade in an underbarrel mount on his 12mm SMG for opening doors and making the occasional cyborg consider his own mortality for a minute. If you wanted to simulate this in SR, a grenade profile along the lines of one of the AV missiles would probably be in order...

That's like a very crude pick-lock: you blow a hole in the door, reach in and open the it. I guess the point of the GREM is more to "shove" the door, so you immediately gain entry, and also to have a very limited anti-personnel effect through the door.

That's what it looks like, it's made to take out the whole door and not just make a hole.

Austere, I know what you mean, but if you don't want any finesse and you're right it's lightweight compared to a large ram, or carry an additional shotgun (with the breaching rounds), you can just default to your carbine/rifle. I agree, about the security doors, though I am curious as to the upper limit that the grenade can breach.

Well, the product information PDF says it can breach "a multitude of door
materials, including steel", but I guess what it would usually come down to is the locking mechanism and the hinges. Even a light, sheet metal covered door, or a thick, solid wooden one might well withstand one of these if it had sturdy metal hinges and a heavy duty locking mechanism with several latches -- the charge might blow a large hole through the door, but the rest of the door would still be there.

Or, to put another way, it should work wonders on any door that a door ram would work on.

did you see how far the rest of the group was when they blew the door? you are going to give your enemy a few seconds to get ready in the very least. Isn't that usually a bad idea? If you are not worried about the enemy knowing you are coming, just use a grenade.

I don't know about for real-life use, but I see a primary usefulness of this for Shadowrunners to be quick door-breaching while making an exit under fire—nail the door at a distance, and the larger debris will have settled by the time you need to sprint through without tripping on anything.

~J

A well placed Blast Barrier could work well with it, too. Couldn't equivalent munitions be fired from SR under barrel grenade launchers?

As breaching weapons go, this still doesn't beat a good old-fashioned tank. Just ram a wall untill it gives, back out, and the team goes in through the giant hole. Everyon eexpects an atack team to come in through the doors or the windows. Few expect an atack team to come in through a solid wall so it works pretty well for surprise, too. There is just the small problem of accidently choosing a load-bearing wall to crash through.

Tanks work great until someone inside the building goes "oh shit, a tank" and pops it at point blank with an AT weapon. Nothing like having to rescue your fire team AND vehicle crew from right up against the side of an enemy-occupied building.

Firing a hole in a wall, with one of these for example, is a better idea than ramming it. Or, if you don't have tanks handy, one or two of these.

"obstacle reduced" thats funny Though that damage of one of those puppies, rather scares me.