It really bothers me that grenade launchers are grouped in with heavy weapons - their use is so different from the other weapons in the category that I find it rather ridiculous. I'm considering making them exotic, but I'm concerned about game balance. It might not be too bad, considering that (esp. with an airburst link) extra hits aren't as important with grenades as with other weapons after a certain point. Thoughts

On an unrelated note, what would it take to modify a grenade to go off on a proximity trigger? I'm thinking of sticking grenades to walls beside doors as I go into a compound, then activating proximity triggers as I leave so anyone following gets hit as soon as they pass through the door. Would the prep be hardware or demolitions? Would it take much skill (or any) to affix them properly?

Yeah, it's pretty screwy... but, then, using a deer rifle isn't substantially different from using an assault rifle, and those are in different groups. The lines have to be drawn somewhere, and they're going to be a bit arbitrary. The rules also say that using a LMG on a pintle mount uses the same skill as the main gun on a tank, and I can tell you from experience that the two bear almost no relation to one another.

In short, if you disagree with the lines, move them. Moving Grenade Launchers to their own skill group would make them less common, which is also realistic... but I wouldn't suggest calling it exotic, because then you can't specialize if I recall.

On the subject of grenades, is anyone else confused by how a person's ability to dodge can change where the grande lands by several meters? Maybe if you were shooting at his head, and he ducks... Wouldn't it make more sense to say the grenade lands where it lands, based on the skill of the shooter, and everyone in the area gets a Reaction test to get behind cover or something?

I would indeed like grenade launchers to be less common, and though preventing specialization could be an issue, if they were in their own group specialization would make no sense. I'm not certain preventing speccing is totally a bad thing anyway. I don't like heavy grenade use.

Rules to fix the "dodge skill includes moving grenades with your mind reflexes" problem would be appreciated.

Anyone have an answer to my second question?

I think the correct skill would be demolitions. Arsenal has expanding rules for demolitions.

Easy, awesome solution:

Launcher skill. Covers grenade launchers, rocket launchers, and missile launchers of all man-portable variety.
Specialization: by specific weapon or by type

Dodge: eat hit on the dodge test allows the target to move 1 meter directly away from the blast radius. If they land enough hits to move on top of the blast center, they can opt to "throw themselves on the 'nade" granting everyone in the radius additional armor against the blast (equal to the target's half-impact + body).

I like both of those. I like them a lot, with the exception that non-man-portable missile launchers should stay with Gunnery. inserts them into his houserule document

Grenades can detonate by wireless command, you can have proximity wires that send wireless alerts, I'd figure it would be as easy as subscribing one to the other.

So clarify for me: extra hits on a grenade do/do not add to damage (apart from reducing scatter)?

And what about planted grenades? No attack roll & scatter obviously. But if extra hits do additional damage, how do you determine that when you don't roll?

Gunnery is for vehicular weapons.

Rather, non-man-portable missile launchers edits

Should I link the new skill to Logic? I might even link it to Intuition.

I'm trying to avoid tripwires so the bad guys won't get a perception roll. Maybe modify the grenade's proximity trigger to ignore the wall and only trigger if a new object entered its range? That should be possible to preprogram, so a 'runner without much skill could just hit one button and slap it on the wall. I'd make it a low-threshold Demolitions test, something that shouldn't be a big risk to default on unless the 'runner in question was stupid.

Sorry for the double post - I was multitasking and ended up replying to 2 posts in 2 tabs *sheepish*

That was my intent, hence "all launchers that are man-portable." Mounted ones are definitely still gunnery.

Proximity wires aren't tripwires, pg 253 SR4:

Capacitance wire, or proximity wire, detects the electrical
charge of a metahuman body (or animal) within 2 meters. It
is oft en used around a building’s perimeter fencing, on secure
entranceways, or on special objects, and either triggers a regular
alarm or switches on security cameras and other measures

As far as I know, they are used to reduce scatter and the targets must acquire net hits against the attacker hits to start diminishing damage (although this last part might be a house-rule created by our GM)

By RAW, net hits on either side only add or subtract from the scatter. Extra ones do nothing.

I have an intense desire to show up at a Missions game with a character who has Prejudiced (Radical) against furniture.

"TASTE EXPLOSIVES, CHAIR!" *lob*

At which point my declared target, the chair, is the dodger, and has no dice. Everyone else in the room are the "secondary" splash targets and do not receive a roll. The grenade lands exactly where I want it to (based on my hits) and I don't have to worry about a dodger.

I was referring to the paragraph on page 324 of SR4A (emphasis mine):

If secondary targets have no right to dodge, then why not just say "I'm aiming at this little point of the ground"?

Attack Test: The character targets a square (or hex, location, etc) and makes a single attack test. Each character within range of the blast makes a separate defense test. Net Hits increase damage as normal.

Scatter: Scatter determines where the grenade lands in relation to the target point if the attacker rolls a glitch. Hits on the attack test do not adjust scatter. Scatter uses the Shadowrun 4 (pre-Anniversary) values.

Grenades vs. Micro Grenades: Grenades are designed to be thrown. Micro grenades are designed to be fired from a launcher. Manually throwing a micro grenade imposes a -4 dice pool penalty to the attack test.



I do like the idea of a Launch Weapons skill. I will run it by the GM (I don't actually GM the group anymore, but I am still in charge of house rules & the like). On the skill subject, Automatics does not exist, having been merged into Pistols & Longarms.

The only thing I have to say against this is:
I once knew a character who enjoyed beaning people with the 'nade before it exploded (improvised thrown weapon). And was good at it.

One of my friends played a throwing adept (I think) who did that - usually the face, though. I think it was to avoid the rather shitty scatter rules.

I like this. What do other people think?


I'm glad you like it. Do you think I should link it to Logic, Intuition, or Agility?

Logic IMO. There's ballistic arcs going on here, so it's more "where do I aim?" than aiming correctly.

No. Still Agility - it's less figuring out how to fire than actually aiming (indirect or otherwise). Also keep in mind it includes rocket launchers & similar.

Agility covers a number of ballistic arcs already (thrown grenades being a fine example), as it is still a matter of placing them where you want, not calculating the angles.

The grenade launcher using the Heavy Weapons skill probably applies to launchers in the 25mm to 40mm caliber range like this or this. I think a more appropriate question would be why would an M307 (Auto Grenade Launcher) or M2 (Heavy Machine Gun) use different skills when mounted on a vehicle than they would when mounted on a tripod?

It's also easy to argue that under-barrell attachments like the M203 would use something different than the automatics skill also. Shells load differently. You hold it differently when aiming and use different sights when aiming. The slowness of the round means it travels a very different trajectory and is more affected by wind, and you'd have to lead moving targets more. So maybe under-barrel GLs should have their own skill?

Vehicle mounted == tripod IMO. I was thinking more along the lines of this.

This was part of the streamlining of SR4. In SR3 there were separate Heavy Weapons and Launch Weapons skills but you also had one skill for Firearms. Rolling Launch Weapons into Heavy Weapons in SR4 was probably intended to off set the splitting of Firearms into the various different skills. In other words they refocused the ranged combat skills to emphasize the kinds of small arms that are more prominent in the game and de-emphasize weapons that are (generally speaking) less used. The grenade launcher (which still sees a lot of use in most games) is just a casualty of that shift.

I would just split Hev Weapons in to Launch Weapons/Hev Weapons as has been suggested. I would say link Launch Weapons to Agility, just to keep things consistent.

For the problem of the attacker dodging the shot making it scatter it can be explained: Microgrenades - these usually explode on contact, so if you aim at someones head they dodge and it keeps going behind them. Or perhaps your attempt to compensate for thier erratic movement causes your shot to go wild.

With thrown grenades you have the erratic movement scenario (more likely?), or the defender manages to knock it away from themselves (kick etc) before it goes off. It is a game so there needs to be some compromise between reality and game mechanics :/ At least it's not DnD 4th ed where reality is more or less ignored now in favor of mechanics.

As far as reaction roll against Grenades.

No reason for it to 'move' the blast at all... it just means you were effective at ducking behind desk, cover, using your armored jacket, etc. to deflect a portion of the hit. Seriously... when someone 'shoots' your character w/ an AR wide burst... do you 'move' the target... no you just avoid the brunt of the impact. I simply view the reduction as a part of the damage soak test.

There's no reason to give things freebie movement or the mystical ability to 'push' the grenade away from you.


Overall, given the limited items in the heavy weapons group... I'd be against this. Really, you have MG's, assault cannons, launchers, GL's and mortars. All of them are pretty rare... and not really worth their own singular skill.

Quite frankly, I have more issues w/ the automatics for every occassion in the small arms group than I do w/ the Heavy Weap/Gunnery side of things.

Pintle-mounts, however, DO count as vehicle-mounted weapons, and are exactly the same as firing from a tripod. Yes, by RAW, two different skills, and two different attributes. This is, simply put, stupid.

Two characters standing in a blank white room with no cover.

One throws a sticky grenade at the feet of the other guy, intending for it to stick to the floor. He gets 6 successes, scatter is 1d6 - 6 = 0 meters. The 'nade goes where he wants it to (if there was no second person).

The other guy dodges, making no movement, and gets 4 successes. Scatter is now +4 meters.

The grenade rolls scatter distance and gets a 4. 4+4-6 = 2. The grenade lands 2 meters to the... (rolls a d6) left of the intended landing spot (in the thrower's perspective).

Hmm...

Something is not right here. Had there been no defender the 'nade would have landed perfectly on target, suddenly a defender jumping around causes it to land 6 feet to the left. Not "avoids 6 feet worth of damage," but actually 6 feet to the left. If there was a hypothetical third person in this scenario who would have been on the outside edge of the blast radius before the additional +4 meters of scatter, suddenly he's inside the radius and taking damage.

Reconcile that.

Yeah... house rule #1 in our game (aside from adjusting starting BP to be pro-level) was grenade rules. It lands where it lands. Thrower skill puts it where the thrower wants it. Everyone in the blast radius gets a reaction roll to avoid damage (throwing yourself behind a desk, etc.).

Eventually we came upon rockets, and the rules for those are even worse. It's nigh-impossible to actually hit something with a rocket launcher, even though the entire point is that they, you know, hit things... and don't require a huge amount of training to operate, either. Maybe Anniversary Edition changed it, but in the SR4 rules I have, rockets scatter 2d6m and you subtract 1m per net hit. Meaning that, on average, you must have 7 net hits on average to actually hit your target with a rocket. This requires a dice pool, on average, of 21 to hit an unmoving target at short range. Let's repeat that, for those of you who missed it: You must have a dice pool of 21 to reliably hit an unmoving target at close range.

And what's their blast radius? 4 meters? Deary me. You have to dead-hit stuff to actually do any damage at all!

Yeah, the only thing I can think of is a difference in tactics. A tripod mounted MG is generally used to suppress an area on the battlefield (fire interdiction) whereas a vehicle mounted MG is mobile and can be used to engage other vehicles (in addition to fire interdiction).

But when you design a role playing game you have to draw lines, and sometimes those lines get silly.

Also on the subject of dodging grenades (or bullets for that matter): this is why I have always hated the use of the word "dodge" in SR. It creates stupid notions about how modern combat works. The Reaction (+Dodge) roll is supposed to represent tactical movement, avoiding enemy FOFs, use of cover (in a more abstract sense) and concealment, etc. Its about not being where the bullet goes (which is different than moving out of its way) and throwing yourself behind a dumpster (or whatever) when the grenade goes off. Its unfortunate that the mechanics involve increasing the Scatter. Basically the problem here is an interface between a mechanism thats designed to be abstract (Dodge) and a mechanic that is very concrete (Scatter). If you can, it helps to think of Scatter in abstract fashion as well.

Blast radius, of course, varies by what type of rocket you use. That, however, is neither here nor there. I have it on good authority that hitting a nonmoving target at a range of 100m is actually pretty trivial. So unless those infantry guys with like a day of training with the weapon all just happened to have Agility scores of around 20, something in the rules here is pretty screwy.

Timmy, the 8 year old picks up his first grenade and throws it. He's not a very athletic kid, nor has he ever played baseball or any other sport. His Agility 3 is used to default, giving him 2 die on the throwing test.

Amazing! He rolls a 6 and gets a hit and doesn't roll any 1s. He's not trying to hit anyone with the grenade, so it's an uncontested roll. He is however trying to throw it in the trash barrel 6 feet in front of him.

However, he does have to deal with scatter, which is 1d6-1. Oh no, the die rolled a 5! And which direction, a 4. Hum...1 is out in front. 2 is the 2 o'clock position, 3 is the 4 o'clock and ah ha. 4 is 6 o'clock, directly behind little Timmy and 6 feet away.

Wait, what? I don't know about you, but every 8 year old I know can throw things in front of them. Hell, most two year olds can do that much. Things don't bounce that far, really. Heck, replace "grenade" here with "wad of paper" (which don't bounce and don't roll far) and get much the same results. Scatter should be to a ratio of the distance thrown, not some absolute value (look at rockets, firing one at your feet is more likely to blow up someone else than it is to hurt you).

Edit:
Imagine trying to play baseball. A baseball has roughly the same properties as a throwing grenade (wight, size, shape), but the strike-zone is one foot across. Anything but 0 scatter and it's a Ball.

So we basically agree, then.

And by the by, if you center the scatter diagram on the target (the trash can in this case) then the grenade landed 1m in front of little Timmy. If this were fired from a launcher, the grenade wouldn't even arm. I have seen young un-athletic children throw balls into the dirt right in front of themselves.

And little Timmy shouldn't be throwing grenades at stupid ranges like 6 meters unless he's behind a blast wall.

Edit: Oh, and like your idea of having scatter be based on range to target.

6 feet. That's 2 meters, give or take about six inches.

Wait, feet? Ranges in SR are measured in meters. I didn't catch Draco18s' use of non-metric measurements. But my point stands I think.

I have seen young un-athletic children drop balls into the dirt directly in front of them.

Barring severe physical disorders, any 6-year-old should be capable of tossing a ball ~2m.



While GMing, I had an instance of where the player, using a grenade launcher, firing downhill several meters, rolled rather well (several Net Hits). Guess where the grenade landed, prior to GM "this is fucking retarded" intervention?

Behind him.

Please note that the exact same thing can just as easily (if not even easier) happen with a fucking Sensor 6 Missile Launcher. Yes, a high-level military grade guided missile (the kind capable of navigating air ducts of a building) has a higher chance of misfiring into your feet than a thrown grenade.

Plus the example plays to an extreme end of the system (the low end in this case). Its pretty common knowledge that the SR4 system does really stupid stuff at the extremes (very high and very low DPs). No it doesn't make sense, but its also not designed to represent 8 year olds throwing baseballs.

And I would point out that if you want grenades to be more accurate (i.e.- effective) at your table thats great. I am not defending the stupid scatter rules by any means. But remember that the opposition has grenades too, and there are always more of them than there are of you.

I have seen them thrown. And I've seen grown women do worse than that. Its pretty simple- late release from an overhand throw = in the dirt in front of you.

Oh look... heres a video (complete with shitty middle-school production).

1) The ball still went a reasonable distance in front of the guy - 2m easily.
2) Such flukes are already covered in the rules, typically referred to as a (Critical) Glitch.

Seriously? I'm not going to argue about whether kids are capable of throwing badly. Watch some fucking blooper reels and tell me dumb shit doesn't happen in real life. To restate my position:

1.) The scatter rules are stupid.
2.) If you try to think of them abstractly you won't be driven to madness by how stupid they are.
3.) If you don't like them, change them, but be prepared for NPC grenades to = TPK at your table.

Now, if you just want to argue about banal shit like kids throwing balls, have it at. I'm not interested.

You mean SR2. In SR3, Firearms was split ridiculously into 5 (five!) skills.

And yeah, using the same rules as Indirect Area Combat Spells for Grenades/Rockets/Missiles is pretty much a given.

Well, here's the major difference between the two.

Freehanding it, you have as much movement as you want. Tripod, the weapon is now anchored to a single point which limits its movement. Also, just because it's on a mount doesn't mean you're sitting behind it firing. You could be in a vehicle cockpit using a computer interface to operate the gun.

I can see reasons why you could use the same weapon under different skills pending situation. I think the fixed point is probably one of the biggest reasons.

--



I changed the position of the grenade by observing it. Quantum physics ftl?

--

How about the fact that by scatter rules, you can fire a grenade launcher at someone and place yourself outside the blast radius, yet have the grenade land at your feet. Reconcile THAT.

I don't remember the exact situation. I just know that it's possible.

So don't think of the skill as applying one set of habits to a wide variety of weapons so much as having a set of aptitudes. After all, the Hardware, Medicine and Industrial Mechanic skills cover an enormous amount of territory and the Spellcasting skill works with any spell you care to learn, yet you hardly hear people make the same argument about them. In my opinion, we need less firearm skills, not more, since this is just a case of familiarity muddling people's expectations. From a purely gamist perspective, if you have 83 ways of killing a man that means you have a large number of redundant tricks up your sleeve, and in shadowrun players have to pay for each of them. I would just let it go.

By RAW that would require that scatter rolls near max and the defender won the test. In the RW that'd never happen (which I think prove my point, not yours).



I apologize for the use of "feet" rather than "meters," but I'm American.

Sure, but if you're launching at a Citymaster, three meters scatter doesn't matter a bit. Now if you're launching at a person, and you miss by a meter, your missile goes downrange by, oh, its range. Oh wait, no it doesn't - it dives from chest height, and hits the ground. No matter which direction it scattered in.

I was always under the impression that scatter was grenade bounce on the ground.Obviously, it's not. So why do you have two targeting rolls (one of them more random than the other) for launched grenades and missiles?

Scatter could be seen as the target trying to bat the grenade out of the air and away from them (mental image of going to a grenade fight with a tennis racket), grenade bounce/roll, landing funny, ect.
But yes, they are unhappy rules in general.

Agreed. And to channel an older but fairly recent thread, "How often do you find someone who has been trained to fire a Heavy Machine Gun, but has never been trained with any sort of grenade launcher or vice versa?" <paraphrased>