When somebody throws or shoots a grenade or other explosives at you, and achieves enough hits on the attack test to reduice the scatter to zero an increase damage some amount, does the intended target get a reaction roll to oppose this?

If so, how does this work if they manage to reduice the attacker's successes to the point the grenade no longer "hits" directly?

How does this work when fireing the grenade to explode between two targets who are standing, say... 2m apart?

This came up when my sammy was tradeing launcher grenades with a bunch of corp-sec flunkies at the other end of the hallway.

Yes its opposed just like a firearm. Depending on the targets form of defense you roll reaction or reaction+something to oppose the hit. Hmm it doesnt say what happens if a grenade "misses" its target. I'd say the shot is so far off that you dont roll for scatter and it just explodes harmlessly behind the character.

However, If you are in a hallway or room or have something behind you for the grenade to hit then you would measure from the wall to the character to see if he is caught in the blast wave. sr4 pg146 has the diferent grenade radius's.

As far as two targets. You aim where you want the grenade to hit and then roll scatter and then you apply damage according to the blast radius. Some grenades damage degrades over distance and then you resist it with body+impact.

If you aim between two guys who are two meters apart and it rolls 2 meters to the left and your using a Frag grenade which has 12P -1/m then the guy who was on the grenade take 12p and his buddy takes 10p.

And a frag grenade dropped at the feet of a target in a one-meter-wide stone alcove takes something on the order of 146P.

In my games, grenades are aimed at a hex on the battlegrid. I've ruled that you can't dodge a grenade, but I think I like Lagomorphs interpritation. Grenades are too powerful if you can only mitigate damage with the soak test.

If your shooting at a herd of people I would go the melee route. Each person beyond the first gives you +1 to your opposed test. Grenades arent heat seekers.

You hit or miss. Net hits +/- the scatter and then damage. Then you soak with body+impact.

Thrown grenades dont work any different, you could still be trying to throw grenades at bad guys and bean the grenade off the back of a fellow runners head due to poor accuracy. (stupid technomancers)

I'd consider the opposed test to defend to represent the target trying to leap out of the way. If they beat the attacker then they have gotten out of the blast radius (at least for game affecting damage, even when a PC soaks all the damage dished out by an attacker I still rule it as hurting, just not bad enough to hinder).

If the defender fails to dodge they take the damage, although any scatter really only applies to the distance the defender gained on the grenade.

Consequently your standard offensive (high explosive) grenade is aimed between 2 NPCs standing 2 m apart. You score 5 hits to hit the square. NPC1 scores 4 hits and NPC2 scores 1. Thus the net "scatter" for NPC1 is 1D6-2 and NPC2 is 1D6-8. If the scatter roll goes in NPC1's favour he'll get 4m further from the point of impact for a total of 5m and no damage (10P-(2*5)=0P). If NPC1 is less lucky he may only get 3m or 4m away for a damage code of 4P or 2P respectively.

NPC2 can't get any further away, so he is exposed to 8P damage (10P-(2*1)=8P The 1m comes from the distance he was from the point the grenade was aimed at).

This isn't quite RAW, and does away with the scatter direction chart, which is almost useless unless you play with a hex-map.

I've suddenly been struck by an alternative! (Pardon me if I seem a little disjointed, I just got back from the pub).

For each net hit by the defender, add the appropriate modifier to the scatter check. Thus if they're good they can still get out of the blast radius, but you still get to roll to see where the grenade eventually ends up. It might potentialy scatter back into the opponent anyway (they'd have to declare which way they're dodging before the scatter check though) Of course the grenade might scatter back into the thrower if he's unlucky!

I describe dodge tests for grenades as some combination of getting down, getting minor cover, reducing your profile, putting an arm in front of your face jumping away from the grenade. It effectively reduces the damage buy one point per success before the damage must be compared to your armor to determine P or S.

Edward

I might misremember, but weren't grenades aimed at a location normally ?
Locations don't get a dodge roll.
So normally grenade attacks are not opposed.

Additionally, characters normally are not entitled a dodge/reaction roll to avoid grenade damage.
With non-airburst grenades, characters may use any action they have available between grenade launch and grenade explosion to move and get away from the grenade.

This is how RAW handles grenades.


And I agree with RAW that a normal dodge would not make sense with a grenade, as a normal dodge only means you move your body out of the line of movement of the projectile, not really change location - with a grenade it does not really matters if it drops at your feed or smacks into your forehead - it's the explosion that hurts, not really the grenade itself.

Still, with airburst grenades or a grenade lobbed on the 2nd IP of any turn against opponents with only one available IP, characters have no chance to avoid the blast by RAW, which is a little bit poor - everyone taking a quick jump away from the blast would be more ... ummm ... cinematic. (Yes, cinematic. In real life most people simply freeze when a grenade drops at their feet - pretty silly idea, but unfortunately true)

And the current rules do not take into account that a prone character would have a better chance to avoid damage.


To reflect the this, these changes might make sense :

1) Any character can take a Full Defense Action to jump and roll away from the blast. The character rolls REA+Dodge normally, each hit will mean the character ends up one additional meter away from the blast, prone on the floor and facing away from the explosion.
If the character already prone, half that distance.


2) Any character who is lying prone and facing away from the explosion takes damage as if twice as far away from the blast unless the explosion takes place directly above him. For any meter the explosion takes place above ground, any character within two meters of the blast will get no benefit from being prone.

Well the book says you make a standard ranged attack test, opposed by the target. if your aiming at a location treat it as a success test instead.

If you aim at a guy he gets to oppose it, if you aim at the ground under him he doesnt? Sure you can interpret it that way. I prefer to interpret it as follows. If you are targetting a location where you expect to hit somebody its opposed. If your shooting at a wall or stationary object it is a success test.

Well, the opposed test on the grenade test only makes sense if the target is moving (fast) (you have to get the grenade where the target WILL BE, not where it is/was) - but still you only dodge the grenade itself (= more chance for scatter, relativ to the target), not the blast.
In most case, a grenade will be aimed at a location - grenades are classical indirect weapons. And in that case, you don't have any way to get away from the blast by RAW (except if it's a classical grenade and you have an IP remaining between grenade launch and grenade explosion).


So if the character in the original post's example aimed at one of the goons, that one could try to dodge and have the grenade fly by or deflected (=scattering), the other goon would have no extra defense.
After scatter is determined, both goons would be fully subject to the blast.

If the character shot at the point just inbetween them, none of them would get a chance to dodge, and both would be subject to the blast after determining scatter.

Of course both could try to run away if they had either a Held Action or have an action available between the grenade lauch and the grenade explosion (same initiative, next IP - not for airburst-linked ones, as they explode at the same time in combat sequence as their launch)

There is no roll or rule in RAW to dodge the blast itself.

this question was discussed extensively in an earlier thread. I'll repeat my humble opinion. reaction tests + dodge etc, allow you to present the most beneficial profile to the grenade meaning that you can take less damage or even none.

The problem i have with Phobos's plan is that it is in effect making every person who ever throws or launches a grenade have pinpoint accuracy. He is saying that the only way for you to not get hit by a grenade is to run far enough away so as to not get hit.

Im saying the guy throwing/firing the grenade might not even hit the target area!!

Runner vs ganger a and b. Ganger A and B are standing 2 meters apart. Runner chucks a HE grenade at the spot between them. We will say its IP 2 and thegnagers wasted their IP shooting.

Runner rolls agility+throwing vs The lower gangers reaction +1. This test results in a net hit for somebody. If its the runner he reduces the scatter by the appropiate amount per hit. In this case a normal grenade by -2. If the gangers get more net hits then they INCREASE the scatter. At this point there are no rules. I dont know if its fair to let the gangers increase the scatter at the same rate the runner gets to decrease it. You could keep it the same. Make the increase double what an runner would get or let them only get half the inscrease the runner would get with a minimum of 1.

At that point you check distances and soak damage.

This can be explained with flavor of either the grenade rolling around on the ground before blowing up or just the guys aim is so bad thats where it landed when it blew up.


Thats alot more fitting for the game in my opinion than saying yeah nobody ever misses with grenades or grenade launchers, peoples only chance is to run like hell or dive for cover cuz im a freaking expert with these things.

But that's what the scatter rules are for. Lobing a grenade into a 6m radius isn't that difficult, and trying to pinpoint a 1m area is taken into account by the 1d6m off in a random direction with -2 per net hit. And it makes absolutely no sense to make it more difficult to hit a 1m area because a character dodges well.

People do completely miss the area of where they were trying to hit when they glitch.

If it works in your game I'm happy for you. But if you use a grid or distance based game board like I do, I don't see how you can get through the suspention of disbelief.

The problem I see is that you should be able to hit your exact target with an airburst grenade. They're programmed to go off after a certain distance, pinpointed by you, and that's it. Airburst grenades shouldn't scatter if you got even 1 success because it means that you "hit" the distance you were aiming for. Even if someone just drops behind a barrier that won't matter if the grenade was suppose to explode 1m behind the barrier from the airburst.

I think thrown grenades should have the rule from Cannon Companion where you can use a Reaction test to try and throw it back but if you fail, you are at ground zero. Otherwise, I would have the bad guys perform a Reaction test to see if they freeze up and stare at the grenade ( ) or they jump away in time, with perfectly lip-synched "aaaah" sounds

An airburst grenade can obviously still miss. It can go high, low (usually meaning short) or wide, which is exactly how a normal grenade launcher round misses its target. The only real difference is that you can't overshoot your target (assuming the technology holds up its end of the deal) and you can sometimes slightly reduce the risk of firing short since you're aiming at a point somewhat over the actual target.

The scenario where an airburst grenade hits where you aimed it relies on several factors:

- It assumes you've properly ranged the target. If you've placed the rangefinder over the wrong object, you're going to get the wrong range. The grenade may go off well beyond (or well short of) your target.

- It assumes you've properly elevated the launcher. While it's providing you with cues to increase or decrease your elevation, the grenade launcher is still going to fire if you pull the trigger at the wrong time. A low elevation will mean it slams into the ground or the cover you're trying to lob it over. A high elevation might cause it to hit the ceiling above you, or to airburst high and short of the target.

- It assumes you're lined up with the target. If the launcher is off a little to the left or the right (not hard to do in the chaos of a firefight), it's possible to completely change where it's going to strike. If the grenade skips off the side of a building, hits a windowframe instead of going through the window, or you miss the top of the foxhole and it's going to go off a few meters to the left, the kind of damage your target is going to be exposed to can completely change.

Airburst grenades don't use a GPS linkup or an image-based guidance system to head towards the right point... they go off after they travel a preprogrammed distance. If your target happens to be sitting that distance from your launcher, along that arc of travel, then the grenade is going to go off where you want it to. If not, well... it goes off wherever it was programmed to along the arc you launched it along.

If these things had a standard deviation in the tens of meters range, the XM307 and other projects would've been scrapped during the HEAB fuze testing years ago. Since inaccurate timekeeping by the fuze is not mentioned anywhere on the (long) lists of things that are problematic with the airburst weapons, I assume that's not currently a problem -- and it certainly wouldn't be 60 years from now.