Or off into the orphanage, if you angle it just right.

Yes. Which is why, for instance, that's how people do it in real life.

I think the problem is that as written (or at least as FAQ'ed or Errata'ed or whatever), you DON'T handle grenade attacks "per person." You target the slow guy, overwhelm his puny Reaction, and then everyone else in the blast radius has to suck up the damage (without getting to make an opposed test).

Ah, indeed. Scatter is determined after the target dodges. Ugh.

Well, for my games it's the other way round:

First, determine if you hit the inteded place at all: Determine Scatter.
Then, determine if and how you hit the target(s): Individual Dodge Tests.
Finally, individual Damage Resistance Tests.

Yes, that means even though you manage to zero in, your targets simply drop behind cover, etc. and evade the attack.

Explosions don't care about "intent," and neither should game rules.

But you do fancy the idea of making several addidional tests every fireball?

Or, as in the case some years ago when the grenade my character hurled up onto the roof above us from which we were being sniped, a glitch brought the grenade back down on us.

The team was not happy with me.

Depending on the scatter, it doesn't even take a glitch to do that. My last big SR tabletop group was knocked out, to the man, when the troll decided to default to a grenade launchers test, indoors. He hit the wall in the center of a 't' intersection of hallways, where the group had taken cover from folks shooting at them from outside.

Chunky salsa, tight hallways, the group all nice and compact right there -- no glitch or critical failure required, he screwed the pooch into overflow physical damage with just the regular old failure he'd achieved.

Since by the RAW, thrown grenade goes off on the thrower's next action phase..even the slow people should often have plenty of time to get out of the way.

Unless the thrower has 2 or more actions, then he can just wait till his second one to throw the grenade.

Which is probably the main reason everyone I've played with seems to have a 'grenades go off instantly' houserule.

I'd still like to see someone dodge bullets. I'll even arrange for a whole bunch of them, if I can get volunteers. Then the survivors can try to dodge the cloud of fragments from a grenade going off at their feet.

don't turn on the wireless until the grenade is activated (the pin is pulled, or whatever)

throw some basic encryption on your grenades, and a nice high rating firewall. sure, that's not gonna keep it from being hacked, but it *will* keep it from being hacked in the 1 second that the wireless link is active, after which i think it's safe to say that the antenna is destroyed (as is the response chip) and that even if it wasn't, hacking the already detonated grenade is largely meaningless

Well that's why the wireless antenna isn't even powered until after you pull the pin. In the amount of time between the pin pull and the throw the hacker has to locate the hidden node, hack in with admin access, and give confusing commands. Unlikely, I claim.
And if you're holding it for more than a couple seconds in that state then you deserve what you get.

edit: Damn it! Why do I even bother posting today? I'm getting beaten every time. AND I forgot to mention encryption. I suck.

The problem with "intent" changing how things work in-game is that it's retarded. It's like in previous editions when bullets (and other attacks) did different amounts of damage (and affected armor differently) if you were shooting a door instead trying to shoot THROUGH a door (to hit someone behind it), ditto with shooting a car versus shooting someone IN the car, etc, etc.

Bullets and explosives don't know, or care, what you're shooting them at. They should do the same base damage, and have the same base effect, either way.

If a player says "I shoot the big slow troll with a grenade," the blast radius should be just as deadly and just as large as if he says "I shoot the big slow troll with a grenade, because he's the guy standing in the middle of the security team," which should be the same as "I plant a grenade in the middle of the security team, hey, look, a big slow troll is standing there."

In each case, it's the same grenade being launched at the same place by the same person with the same die pool and same lighting conditions. How a sentence is phrased should not affect the difficulty of a task, or the ability of potential targets to attempt a dodge roll. Right now, with the rules as written, and as some people are proposing fixes for those rules, sentence structure changes how effective a grenade is. That's silly.

...ahh, you've heard about my merc, Gracie I see.

How do you handle scatter if everyone in the blast gets a roll? The RAW seem to indicate that you roll Agility + [Skill] vs. Reaction (+ [Skill] if full defense), the net hits on that test reducing the scatter of the grenade. If more than one person is "dodging" the grenade, what do you do with scatter?

Also, how do you resolve the fact that to get out of a blast radius, a person must move. But, you can only declare a change to your movement on your phase? I suppose you could say that a held Free action could taken to start running, but do you rule that a person who can't act any more in a phase (or in the turn) cannot make this opposed test because, technically, they can't declare a new action?

I think I'm misunderstanding something.

I would resolve that by saying that a grenade at one's feet is an excellent motivator, and therefore wouldn't devote much time to worrying about movement modes, rates, etc.
If anyone tried to "propel" themselves beyond their normal movement rate by dodging a series of their own grenades, we would sit down and have an OOC talk about gaming.

That way.

but the dodge-then-scatter rules make more sense! the fact that the target of the grenade is trying to dodge means that he has observed its velocity, which means that the final location of the grenade cannot be known, ergo you roll scatter after dodge!

the real problem with that is that ducking and weaving in place is a great way to not dodge bullets at all. Neo aside, if you want to dodge bullets, you need to vacate your current location.

Not at all. It's the same for supressive fire.

Dodge is Dodge, Movement is Movement.
If you desire, you can rule that base damage is always done.

No, it means that trough waving your hands around, you can make the grenade miss you more... you know, pushing it aside with sheer willpower.