I have been dredging through the explosives and demolitions in the main book and arsenal am wondering a few things...

How have you all used explosives?

Not that we need a RL bomb makers guide on Dumpshock, but what are some recipes/schematics that you have discovered for chemistry and casings in making Kabooms in SR?

It says in the book for GMs to be wary, how have Demolitions been managed and kept reasonable for your games?

There's a few questions, hope for some great insight, and bring up some more here if you have them on Kaboom Booms

Not exactly demolitions, but I would just like to say that Thermite is (RL) quite easy to create. You should be able to easily obtain the ingredients over-the-counter at a college chemistry store.

if you don't mind doing a little work (takes a few days) you can get thermite stuff at the hardware store.

You can get the materials to create your own, but no, Aluminum Powder & Iron Oxide usually are not available at the hardware store.

I always wanted to make a demolitions expert, but found it hard to pull off due to my own ignorance of explosives

Well here at my real life fab shop. I have so much aluminum powder and Iron oxide is a waste product so come on by tell em slyde sent ya.
LOL

What's up POGO... with your chemistry and demolitions you would have access to like an anarchist cook book.
Like making ammonium nitrate (fertilizer) with fuel your boom and a separate solution timed or instant delivery of an igniter like potassium chlorate (common pool cleaning tablets). Also glycerin and sawdust = dynamite. Or fork out the cash for some High grade stuff but I know you prefer to blend your own. Also casing can be made into anything especially if you just bought a nanite forge HAahahahah.

WARNING DO NOT TRY ANY ABOVE RECIPES WHEN YOU ADD ONE TO THE OTHER THEY WILL EXPLODE!
PLEASE USE ONLY DICE WHEN TRYING THESE RECIPES LOL

Hey Pogo,

I think you could probably get Mix to do some searching on "The Dark Emerald" for you to find some schematics for Kabooms and with a visit to the Crime Mall probably get your hands on some materials. Also Hells Kitchen and areas East were and still are mined for heavy metals and other goodies that flowed out of Mt Ranier. There are bound to be some demo experts still living in the area around Carbanado who might be willing to part with some knowledge for the right price. As a side note in RL I have a copy of the "Poor Mans James Bond" you could puruse that for ideas.

Poor Man's James Bond is good. Anarchist's Cookbook, not so much.

Although honestly, you can find almost everything you need to know about manufacturing explosives online; the trick is separating the bullshit from real information, & safety practices are often not included in the how-to's.

Tell me about it in the Anarchist they tell you in steps, apply this to this without telling you your now missing fingers due to just adding the trigger without being prepared for the results.
"look mom no thumbs" HAahahahh

I'm a fan of quick-and-dirty booby traps - set up an explosive in the hallway with a laser tripwire, and activate it by remote control after your team's passed by it. Or just trap all the routes but one, and use that route to escape (and maybe lob an HE behind you to prevent pursuit).

What i dont understand is that a High Explosive Grenade has a DV10 for 45Y (p314 BBB) in such a small package, while making a high explosive grenade with that same damage value even with Liquid Explosives 12R (p85 Arsen) would take a whole Kilogram, is it due to the casing of the grenade? If so how do you calculate casing in this example it effects the DV per meter from center? In this example as well they have net hits adding to the DV of an explosive, are those net hits what makes homemade demo worth it?

To make a fragmentation grenade, Strider fills a
recently-emptied beer can with rusty nails and screws,
and sprays in about a quarter of a kilo of Rating 6 foam
explosives to fi ll the gaps. She also inserts a cheap blasting
cap with a length of safety fuse in order to set the contraption
off . Th is is a hand grenade, so Strider should roll a
Demolitions + Logic (4, 5 minutes) Test. Because of the
fragments, though, the gamemaster lets her use the –1/m
Blast option, which makes the test Demolitions + Logic
(6, 7 minutes) instead. After a few rolls, Strider has a total
of 8 hits, or 2 net hits. Her grenade will have a DV of 5:
the base DV is √0.25 (weight of explosives) x 6 (rating) =
3, with +2 for the net hits. All Strider now needs to do is
avoid a critical glitch on the Demolitions + Agility Test,
to safely add the blasting cap.

SR doesn't do explosives well. A kg of HE is a big explosion. It would destroy a typical house. A lot more than a typical grenade.

But explosives are hard to do well. The linear dropoff in damage is the most obvious weakness, but that doesn't really become obvious until you start doing larger charges and find that you kill everyone within a half km with a car bomb.

Correct me if Im wrong, but arent most american houses heavy on wood in the construction? Over here we tend to go for Stone or ina lot of cases for Govt Housing reinforced concrete which would probably stand up to the blast a little better. Mind you stuck on a nice supporting wall should sort that out.

Seriously, 1Kg of high grade explosive would blow your stone or reinforced concrete house apart. Just to help you understand, arty has from ~.5 to 2Kg per round depending on size. Even one 105mm arty round would still wreak your house.

Depends on how the charge is set. There's blowing up your house with a fireball and lots of pyrotechnic visual effects but still leaving the superstructure intact and then there's placing demolition charges so the whole thing collapses. The latter usually uses less explosives but the former makes for nicer collateral damage to the surroundings.

I've used Demolitions skills in games to deal with setting grenade booby-traps, landmines, defusing bombs, and actual demolitions intended to break through a barrier using shaped charges. A PC once lobbed a backpack full of ~10 kg of C-12 and various grenades at a dragon once. Blew off the helipad and down into the upper floor below of the building they were on, incidentally taking out the barracks and the mainframe room located underneath it, along with a hefty chunk of masonry from the corner of the tower. Did the double-take at the prone dragon 28 storeys below, still alive and pulling a steel rebar girder out of its hide saying "Fraggit!" Ok, it was seriously wounded, but in that case I ruled that by not having actually placed the charge and the roof being mainly open-air the blast wasn't concentrated enough for full damage.

Oh yeah, and one of my current players recently got his rigger "tank" (GMC Bulldog) tagged with a thermite zip-strip so the bad guys could bypass the locked door to get his (air elemental induced) unconcious butt out as a hostage.

I wonder if the difference they are missing is chalked up to loose versus tight tamped down explosives. Another rule that needs some tweaking i believe, or maybe there twinking it do to the fact with a buncha plastique you can kill anything. Who knows?

My group has blown up two buildings. One of those times we used explosives. Wait, no, we're 3 and 2, and we brought our own explosives once.

One of my old teams, all of them ended up falling to Renraku. Were responsible for collapsing 3 city blocks in Bakersfield once it was like a 2405d explosion. Basically the end of a great team they hunted us down and didn't stop until my troll demo expert ended it with fire in the sky. Took as many of em as he could and retired the way most of us will in the long run.

RIP: Meat, Pauly The Blade, Jammer, Maaco,

There are rules in arsenal about Tamped down explosives, i think

TY! I'll check it out