I'll add my 2 here. Keep in mind, I know little about the military, actual weapon specifics, or probability tables that have so frequented this thread.

Instead I'm going to make my point with a seemingly overlooked and simple fact:
UCAS Military =/= US Military

The world we're talking about has dragons, spirits, magic, ghouls, trolls, drones. How much of what used to be the USA is still in the UCAS? People are grown in vats for replacement parts, bizarre and wonderful creatures roam the world, and the mega-corporations can have more control over a city then the government.

Do you really think that in this world, the UCAS military will use the SAME safety standards as today? I tend to think they may have changed prioreties a little bit, and in a dystopain future I doubt as much concern would go to such a safety standard given all the good points already made (like these).

To me, that's like saying that the Brotherhood Of Steal from Fallout would use the exact same rules of engagement that the US does today when fighting super mutants.

The people who send guys (and woman and little kids) to go blow up people with explosive vests don't issue "explosive bullets" to their cannon fodder "martyrdom" troops. It's not because they are trying to uphold the Hague convention or because they are worried about accidents. It's because they don't do anything useful in anything smaller than a .50 cal BMG round and only start to become effective once you get to 20mm or larger cannon shells.

Too much real life is no fun, anyway. If you start worrying about what's consistent and makes sense, you'll never be happy in SR.

Maybe a house-rule would be to just throw an Edge test on to 'resist' the critical glitch. Or, the misfire does full weapon damage as Stun instead, if the wound is the problem. If the fluff is just melting your brain, then give in and say it's specialty ammo for criminals and fanatics. That never stopped mass-production before.

I said "barrel and/or ejected round" - if you see the bullet still in the round, you don't need to check the barrel - and I specifically said this was how I'd do it now and not necessarily how we were taught to do it in the army. So good for you that you can quote out of context.

That being said, the US army and USMC M4 operator's manual clearly state that you're NOT supposed to "eject and fire" in case of a partial discharge. You ARE supposed to inspect the barrel. Despite your gung-ho ideas of soldiers not having time to check the barrel, in the real world preventing a catastrophic weapon malfunctions has a very high priority, and you are supposed to handle your weapon as you've been trained to.

If you want to argue that in combat you're not going to notice a partial discharge, mistake it for a malfunction, apply the incorrect procedure, blow up your weapon removing probably your only means to fight effectively, and possibly injure yourself in the process - go right ahead. I can see that happening, people make mistakes. But you make it sound like you're supposed to just ignore the signs of a misfire, which is quite frankly dumb - you're not better off risking a destroyed weapon and injury than taking the time it takes to ensure you can stay in the fight.

The manuals are good, and are for your training... in combat situations, many of the things that are good for training are not so good for combat operations...

Good Example that in training works, but in combat, things are discarded... I will assume that you know what a SMAW is, since you have had some military training (It is a Shoulder Mounted Assault Weapon... when I was in teh Marine Corps, it wwas the standard issue for the Assault Teams)... in a standard misfire of the rocket, you are to wait several minutes with weapon pointed downrange, on the off chance (minimal) that it is just a misfire, or delayed fire... once you have waited, you seperate the rocket from the weapon and set it aside, still pointed downrange, away from the firing line and away from any other ordinance... now... In combat operations, we had a misfire... now, while you are taking fire you have two choices... follow the procedure, which is probably going to get you killed... or you do what happened, which was the loader immediately tapping the end of the rocket casing to see if it was mated correctly, it was, so he seperated it, reseated it and carried on... the second time the rocket fired... took all of about 4 seconds to perform this simple procedure, cut way down from the several minute procedure of making sure the rocket was safe to play with... COULD bad things have happened... yes... could the rocket have gone off in the moment that rocket was seperated from the launcher (due to static buildup on the electrical contacts)... yes... were we going to wait around to see if it was safe... not while under fire we weren't, so it was a calculated risk...

These types of situations happen all the time in a combat environment, and the calculated risk is to just move along... much of the things you learn in training are developed to be muscle memory and rote... so Fuch's example is a valid one... is it a risk, sure, but under fire you relly have no time to be taking your weapon apart to observe down the barrel... Sometimes, as you have indicated, it is a valid mistake, as you did not notice the behavior of the round that may have lodged in teh barrel... othertimes it is nothing more than a calculated risk. You might be surprised at the amount of calculated risk that actually does occur in a combat situation...

It is funny that you comment on the real world and training though... in the real world, in a training environment, this is not a concern... in a combat situation, in the real world, you could be the difference between someone getting killed and not... in the case above, emplaced machine guns are a bitch... so, do you follow the proscribed training manual method of resolution, hoping that those who depend upon your taking out the bunker do not die while you ponder the situation for a few minutes... or do you take the chance and resolve the situation by the quick and dirty method that has a bit of risk attached to it... Yes, I was, and am, a Gung Ho Marine... that will probably never change in this lifetime... I know which method I use... How about you?

So back to the discussion at hand, IF there were available explosive rounds for the M16/M4... I would use them, if given the choice... however, we all know that the military usually uses what is economical, and as such, the grunts do not receive such ammunition... which leaves private contractors... would they use them... probably... the Miniscule chance (and it really is miniscule) of having something go wrong is far outweighed by the potential advantages of the round itself... the only real drawback is price...

Keep the Faith

One thing to keep in mind is that with modern manufacturing methods, a cartridge failure rate of 1-in-10,000 is unacceptably high. The idea of a cartridge being known for catastrophic failure and still being used by anyone but gutter scum or 3rd world randoms who don't any better simply doesn't make much sense. As a RW example, the various spec ops units in Vietnam had a program where they would swap some doctored ammo for the ammo they found in caches in the field. The rate of bad-to-good was well under 1-in-100,000 across the board, but it only took a unit to have one guy get his face blown off from this stuff before entire battalions would refuse to fight if their ammo from Chinese sources.

They were willing to blindly charge machinegun nests for the cause, but dying because your gun blew up in your face was absolutely terrifying to them apparently...

While that may very well be accurate, it doesn't really apply to the conversation here. The issue (even though the original poster hasn't quite gleamed it yet) is the rate that critical glitches occur in the game, not the predetermined critical glitch effect of one type of ammo. They all can have the same effect, or in some cases far worse effects (such as shooting your own teammates) if you go by the examples. As has been pointed out, that happens about 20% of the time if you just have two dice whether you're using Explosive Rounds, Regular Rounds, Gel Rounds, or anything else.

@Tymeaus

Of course you take calculated risks in battle, and if the risk and consequence of doing something safely is worse than the risk and consequence from an accident, you skip procedure. But when you have observed signs of a bullet stuck in the bore, I have a pretty hard time imaging a situation where just trying to resume fire is the best option. I don't think you understand the scenario.

If your weapon doesn't fire and you don't notice anything special, you're going to do SPORTS. I think this is the situation you're imagining. You may have
- a malfunction, good response
- a misfire, dud round, good response
- a misfire, delayed discharge, the ejected round will detonate on the ground somewhere. It is dangerous, but you probably can't even tell this apart from a malfunction, and anyway the only remedy is to not fire for up to 30 seconds, so in combat you could easily be better off risking ejecting the round.
- a misfire, partial discharge. You're likely to destroy your weapon and possibly injure yourself. This is because you didn't notice the signs, but since you didn't notice it, that's how it is.

Nothing wrong with that.


But when you notice the signs of a partial discharge, you're likely to have a bullet stuck in the bore, and you know it. You tell me you're just going to load a new round and resume firing because it takes too long to inspect the barrel?

Rounds cooking off without any support around them aren't really all that dangerous. When the Branch Davidian compound was (mostly) done burning, the FBI had agents walking all around and through it while bits of the ammo cache was still cooking off and nobody got hurt. You hear similar stories from American vets who have had their ammo get hit and cook off without hurting them very much due to the aluminium magazines, just like you hear about our various foes getting much worse results because of their much tougher steel magazines.

It's the structure of the chamber that forces the round to efficiently transfer energy that truly makes a cartridge dangerous.

What psychophipps is saying applies exactly to the conversation here. The tolerance for equipment failure in the military is extremely low, even if the soldiers are regularly facing even greater risks like friendly fire.

Yeah, that doesn't seem to be a concern for military purposes.

Partial discharges are an altogether different beast though.

And, as mentioned, that means they wouldn't be using any ammunition at all. Because all ammunition has exactly the same rate of failure. Which, again, is why I pointed out that the issue is with the rate of critical glitches, not Explosive Rounds themselves. Explosive Rounds are not more prone to critical glitches than anything else in the game and, oddly enough, is far less risky than most (minor damage to yourself at best, as opposed to the weapon becoming useless in the middle of a firefight, shooting your allies, and etc.).

So yeah, does anyone even know what the chances for a critical glitch are? I do:


Along with regular glitches because that is how I have it.

So, Joe security guard with 3 agility and 3 skill and a smartgun will have a 0.44% chance to critically glitch, which is to say one shot in every 200. Now, according to the rule we're all discussing here, it says

This means that 1 bullet in every 200 for joe security guard is going to backfire and injure him slightly (Using a pistol, 5P or so damage, half of which is negated by armor, so his hands hurt like hell but he'll survive). I mean personally, if I was a security guard and had access to this kind of ammo (and not considering the possibility of losing my job for having forbidden ammo) I'd totally use it, especially because the company putting it out likely tests it with DPs of 11 or so, which gives 1 misfire in every 2000 or so shots. It's the classic 'it'll never happen to me' mentality, and even if it does the report states that you'll get some burns on your hand. Totally worth it when faced with the risk of Shadowrunners. Similarly as a shadowrunner I'm more than willing to take the risk of some burnt hands (especially since my hands are made of metal) in exchange for a nice boost to my combat ability. Same also goes for a soldier on the battlefield, since they'll be wearing all kinds of protective armor, even on their hands. Heck, they might actually -want- it to explode so they have an excuse to get honorably dismissed for injury, earn a purple heart, and/or get to go to a nice cushy back line job since they are injured.

Also, like everyone else has said, critical glitches happen just as often with any other ammo. I'd personally, as a shadowrunner, prefer to have the gun misfire and burn me some, but leaving the gun able to continue operating, then have it jam up so that it requires several seconds of attention to fix.

You're pretty much wrong on every account.

Minor damage to yourself at best - you define 7 boxes of damage as minor damage? Even the expected outcome of 4 boxes is a stretch to consider minor.
Weapon becoming useless - an explosive misfire that damages the operater will ruin the weapon.
Shooting your allies - how do you handle this so it is worse than the damage from the explosive ammo misfire? And here your weapon is still ok afterwards.

Even shooting yourself is less severe than having your weapon blow up per the explosive misfire rule.

Shooting yourself or someone else is also not an ammo failure, it is an operator failure.

There are other crit glitches, like dropping your weapon, falling on your face, a jam you can't fix, that are not ammo failures, and less severe than the weapon blowing up.

PS: If you want to claim that explosive ammo misfires don't damage the weapon, please explain how you see that working. Saying the weapon isn't damaged is akin to wanting to reuse a grenade that has detonated. The weapon is between you and the round, an as kzt said, pieces of the weapon have been separated and gone flying in order to damage you.

Not necessarily. I'm not super familiar with guns, but a little slide thing opens up so that the spent case can leave the weapon, yes? Why wouldn't the explosion simply fly out of that and hit you? Also, keep in mind that a gun is designed with the purpose of containing an explosion because that is how the bullet moves in the first place. So yeah, I totally see the gun being unaffected by an explosion happening inside it, because that is what happens every single time you fire the weapon. The force of the explosion will go out the barrel, and presumably out the latch, catch, thing, whatever to injure you. Absolutely no reason the gun should be damaged.

So you're saying that expanding gas coming out the ejection port will somehow do damage equivalent to what getting hit by the actual bullet would do?

Where does it say the bullet hits you? Where does it say the weapon becomes useless?

If you're going to argue about the actual rules themselves, try to stick to what the actual rules say. Adding on to them to try and justify your point, while claiming that's exactly what the rules say (as opposed to admitting that it's a house rule you're adding because you don't like the rules) is kind of irrational.

The rules are really clear on this topic for once. 1) Critical glitches do not occur more often with Explosive Rounds. 2) When one does occur, the only thing that happens is that you take damage equivalent to the base damage of the weapon (with no description of what that damage actually is). 3) The weapon does not explode and/or become useless. 4) Other types of ammunition, weapons, and actions can have exactly the same effect if not worse effects due to a critical glitch.

If you want to house rule any one of those points and then debate the merits thereof, that's fine and dandy. But that's not what you're doing at all.

It eject the round and some how its then fires after ejection hitting you in the chest... ? No be fair a round going off in the gun and blowing the gun apart is unlikely to do the same amount of damage as the round hitting you solid.

So are we talking about shadowrun in this thread?

Partly I think.

Sure, why not. The gun blowing up also shouldn't do as much damage as being hit by the bullet. In fact, nothing short of the bullet actually hitting you somehow should do as much damage as the bullet hitting you. The explosion from ex ammo is far less powerful than the bullet itself (+1 compared to the base 5 damage of the weapon), so I don't care how it misfires, unless the bullet actually hits you, it shouldn't do nearly the same amount of damage.

So, like Dr. F said, if you want to argue the rules, argue the rules, you lose because the rules don't say the gun is damaged. If you want to argue 'real world' you lose because the explosion should only cause about 1/5th the damage of the bullet striking you, and still likely wouldn't be powerful enough to damage something that is designed to not be damaged by explosions.

You don't get to mix and match so that you're argument works. You don't get to complain about what a rule does when the rule doesn't do what you complain about it doing.

I think that this rule was made in a response to whiner-babies moaning about how EX-EX is the only ammo that players bother with and was written with the same forethought and attention to detail as such knee-jerk reactions are typically given. I would ignore it completely for all of the reasons given above by others and a few more rantish posts from myself that this post is nipping in the bud.

So, you allow grenades to be reused because it doesn't say that they're destroyed? You can reuse a throwing knife, and the rules don't mention any difference between the two regarding this, do they?

Why can't you reuse a throwing knife? And considering that the rules for grenades say the grenade actually explodes (as opposed to your view that Explosive Rounds say the same thing about the weapon), yeah, I'd say that the grenade actually explodes.

The rounds doctored in Vietnam had their propellant replaced with C4, to give an example of how extreme an overpressure was involved. Yeah, BOOM!

Rules for grenades say they explode, and conventional wisdom tells us that grenades are one time only deals.

Rules for exploding EX ammo says that the ammo explodes misfires. It makes no mention of the weapon in any form. It doesn't say the weapon is rendered useless. It doesn't say the weapon explodes. It doesn't say the weapon is damaged. Conventional wisdom tells us that an explosion inside a gun is an entirely natural affair, and so likely shouldn't damage the gun at all.

When getting hit by the explosive round, the damage is limited to what the mass of the bullet can do.

With the explosive ammo misfire, you're getting hit by multiple pieces of shrapnel from the gun - there's a lot more mass hitting you, potentially making bigger holes.

So your comparison that it should only be the +1 DV doesn't seem right.

This is a gun thread. Gun threads can get overheated and explode.

Don't let this thread overheat.

Who says the grenade can't explode multiple times? I know it sounds stupid, but claiming that a bullet can "misfire" inside a weapon and manage to damage you, on the outside of the weapon, with weapon parts in between you and the misfiring bullet, without anything happening to the weapon parts, is equally silly. Obviously, you're dealing with gun parts moving fast enough to damage you.

You're ignoring physics completely with that. Larger pieces of shrapnel will be moving far slower than a bullet propelled by the same amount of explosives. Now, in theory, the bullet and shrapnel would hit you with the same force but that's only if you ignore the fact that a ton of energy would be consumed causing the metal to fracture. That's also ignoring that most of the force of the explosion would go down the barrel (path of least resistance) or some other path that is going to result in less than the full force of the weapon being applied to you.

Then also take into consideration that the weapon would fragment in all directions, meaning would get hit with maybe as much as 1/3rd or so of the shrapnel. So, as a best case scenario (for your argument) the damage done should be 1/3rd that of being hit by the bullet, and that is ignoring force lost due to natural releases (barrel, clip, and whereever the casing comes out of, all of which are pointed away from the wielder) and the force lost causing the metal to fragment in the first place.

Like I said, rules or real world, your argument doesn't hold up in either case.

I don't understand how this is still at issue. It doesn't say the gun is damaged, so it's not.
It doesn't say grenades explode twice (? ugh.), so they don't.

If you want to alter the game with house-rules, do so.

And yet, while saying things like this, you continue to stubbornly concede the point that there is absolutely no difference whatsoever between the probability of a critical glitch with explosive ammo versus any other type.

I think the idea here is that a critical glitch with normal ammo might simply be the person dropping the weapon, or them losing control of it so it strays and hits an ally, or something like that which may not directly involve the ammo, but a critical glitch with EX ammo is always the ammo causing damage to the user. In other words, even though the chance of a critical glitch is the same, for other weapons it might not always be linked to the ammo failing in some way.

I still don't think it is really an issue. I provides a big benefit, and the downside will be reported as exceedingly low, and people will likely be willing to take what is perceived to be a minimal risk in order to gain that power advantage.

Not sure if this has been brought up before, but if you summon/bind or pay for someone to summon/bind a force 1 spirit with Guard, you can have it perform a Long Term Binding for a point of Karma and get a year and a day's worth of zero glitches. That's probably a good deal for 500 bucks and a point of karma (+potential service charges if you don't know a magician.) I don't know jack about Technomancers, so I don't know if they have something cheap and long term like this with regards to Sprites. So I'm not sure if there's a more effective way to do this in mass for things like the military.

I know the get free 256 day binding on sprite and they can use stability same net effect.

So, let's say that the average trooper will crit glitch once in 1 thousand shots. With an EX-EX ammo he will be hit with a 5P/7P damage and will soak it normally with an average of 12 dice taking 1 to 3 points of damage, with any other ammo he will: suffer the same effect aforementioned or friendly fire or jamm his weapon or lose control of it and drop and possibly one or more combination of the above and other stuff that I might be forgetting. Heck, depending on the kind if sadistic/cruel GM everyone would use EX-EX if SnS wasn't so good to begin with ( ) instead of any other ammo because with EX-EX at least you KNOW what will happen.

Same with monowire I screw up I know what I'll do.

I'm not sure how many attack rolls y'all usually make in a game session, but something rolling a 5% chance of blowing up in your face (*before* you use Edge to cancel it out) is going to manage to do so about once every other game session at our table.

Shadowrun has a Glitch mechanic. It leads to glitches happening more often in game than they would in real life. Your average squaddie doesn't jam his assault rifle every other magazine in real life (someone said crit glitches happen 1.5% of the time with 6 dice), so he probably wouldn't blow it up in his face every other magazine in real life if EX-EX existed, either.

It's a GAME MECHANIC. It results in ammo that BLOWS UP MORE OFTEN THAN IT WOULD IN REAL LIFE. Our game mechanics also allow MAGIC, and TROLLS, and CRAZY DUDES WHO CAN RUN 40 MILES AN HOUR. In "real shadowrun", exposive ammo detonates sometimes, yeah... and so some people use it, and some people refuse because they know a guy who lost his hand to it. It doesn't blow up 2-3 people every time a squad cuts loose in "real shadowrun", regardless of how the dice math works out.

I have had ammunition explode in the chamber of a rifle... worst thing that happened to me was the pieces of the casing (very, very small peices mind you) embedded in my forehead and right hand... that was it... the gun was still functional, and after a brief examination, shooting continued on as before...

That being said, I have also seen a rifle receiver disintegrate because of an overloaded handload... again, the shooter received minor injury, and did not even warrant a trip to the hospital... and as I mentioned earlier, I had the receiver of a hunting rifle fail due to weakened materials... the worst I got out of that was a stinging hand for about 15 minutes...

None of these incidents ever made me want to stop shooting weapons... they are edge cases (I have been shooting for the last 39 years), and are exceedingly rare...

I really think that you are making a mountain out of a molehill...

Keep the Faith

I can already hear the reply to TJ's statements "Well, you weren't using explosive ammo."

Lets nip that in the bud by pointing out that the bullet causes 5P damage, and the explosion causes +1 damage, and thus the explosive charge in the bullet is likely about 1/5th the charge used to propel the bullet in the first place.

When you roll a critical glitch with a normal gun it is up to the GM whether the gun misfires or not?
And I dont see anywhere in the rules of the Explosive ammo that it blows up or hurts anymore then a normal critical glitch turning into a misfire instead of friendly fire.

SR4 p. 312*
Explosive rounds will misfire whenever a critical glitch
is rolled. When this occurs, the character firing the weapon
is automatically struck by one “attack,” with a Damage Code
equal to the normal damage done by the weapon

When I read that I see nothing saying it is something other then a normal misfire, the ammo type is not even affecting the damage you receive as the crit glitcher.
And the explaination behind it being "explosive" is given in the entry of the ammo type same page as above Explosive rounds are solid slugs designed to fragment and explode on impact
I admit that the risk with this type of ammo is that WHEN you crit glitch, it is always going bang. where sometimes it is shooting your buddy in the butt.
I think the point of the topic have been covered.

*- I know I am not using SR4A, and if that changes everything about this ammo type consider my post irrelevant.

PS: sorry if I just bring more wood to the fire with this

Whatever your take on it is Karoline, you can't get around the fact that when normal ammunition explodes in a rifle, not that much happens, maximum a 3DV hit, probably less - an unarmored character can easily walk away from it practically unscathed. While SR explosive ammo doing it results in a 7DV/-1AP hit. There's obviously A LOT more bang in explosive ammo going off.

Your error in thinking seem to be that you assume that the difference from getting hit by a bullet travelling at 800 m/s, and one that also blows up (that's the +1DV), is going to be the same difference in damage as the effects of flying gun shrapnel from just the propellant going off compared to the explosive charge also going off. That's a baseless assumption, there's no reason to expect that a regular round going off would result in a weapon DV hit to the operator.

Yes, the game's rules clearly show that a misfiring EX round is worse than a backfiring regular round. However, the game's rules also fail to mention anything about the gun being damaged int the process. That is the end of argument one. If you want to counter argument one, you must use only the rules provided, and not anything that involves the words 'gun shrapnel' or 'separated from the bullet by the gun' or anything like that. The rules state that an EX round is much more dangerous when it backfires, and I'm totally willing to play by the rules. If that's what the rules say, that's what they say and what I go by.
[quote]
Your error in thinking seem to be that you assume that the difference from getting hit by a bullet travelling at 800 m/s, and one that also blows up (that's the +1DV), is going to be the same difference in damage as the effects of flying gun shrapnel from just the propellant going off compared to the explosive charge also going off. That's a baseless assumption, there's no reason to expect that a regular round going off would result in a weapon DV hit to the operator.
Now, argument two is if you want to follow the real world. In the real world, a misfiring bullet is lucky (From TJ's own statements) if it does 1S damage to the gun's wielder. In the real world, guns are designed to contain explosions. In the real world, an EX round would be lucky to do about 3P damage to a person. You really can't seem to get around this whole 'gun shrapnel' thing. Maybe I haven't said it enough. Neither the rules nor real world physics indicate that a gun is at all likely to turn into shrapnel via any sort of round going off inside it. It literally takes a stick of dynamite with the barrel welded shut in order to destroy a gun (Depending on the type) and it still doesn't turn into shrapnel.

So, if you want to continue to argue, leave out gun shrapnel, it won't happen. Period. And if you leave that out, you basically have to leave out your 'the gun is desroyed' argument. Then you have to decide if you want to play by the rules (In which you accept that somehow the misfiring EX ammo deals weapon damage to you) or if you want to make a house rule which brings misfires more in line with the real world. Do whichever you want, I don't really care but I'm tired of hearing you complain about a rule because you're trying to apply real world physics to it, and then ignoring the fact that real world physics doesn't agree with what you are saying will happen. I've already gone through and pointed out all the exact reasons that real world physics says that misfire damage will be less than bullet damage, I've also already pointed out how real world physics says the gun won't fragment. So like I keep saying. Take your pick and use real world physics or use the rules as provided, butstop trying to mix and match bits and pieces of them to make your argument work.

Please, as calmly as possible, try to explain to me how you imagine a round exploding inside a weapon will cause that amount of damage to the operator without him getting hit by "gun shrapnel".


You also keep say that guns are designed to contain explosions. This is hardly the whole picture, and tells me you don't know the difference between low explosive propellants and high explosives.

Smokeless powder, the propellant inside a round, is a low explosive - it burns rather slowly and pretty much only creates pressure from the expanding gasses. On the other hand, you have high explosives. These detonate very rapidly, which creates a VERY sharp pressure front carrying most of the explosive energy through the explosive. It dissipates very quickly in the air, but for solid materials in contact with the explosive the effects are devastating, causing the material to shatter. This property is called brisance. A low explosive has low brisance - a pipe bomb with smokeless powder will succumb to the pressure and the pipe pretty much just go apart in in two or a few big pieces. A pipe bomb with high brisance high explosives will fragment like a hand grenade.

The same thing happens in a gun. You get a massive overpressure inside that will mostly leave along the path of least resistance - with the bore open, that's just forcing the bullet out - with the bore blocked, the weakest points give in and release the pressure that way. However, detonating a high explosive in the round, even if the bore isn't blocked won't just let the energy escape. The high brisance means the energy gets transferred to the gun parts, tearing it apart and sending pieces flying.

If you take an M67 hand grenade, it contains about 180g of high explosive. This has a killing range of 5 meters, and at point blank range you're toast. An assault rifle bullet weighs around 1/25th of the weight of the explosives in an M67 grenade. I don't know if a quarter of the bullet weight is high explosive, but let's say that's about it - something like 1/100th of a hand grenade going off in the chamber is what you're looking at, and there's a more or less tight fit allowing the shock wave to propagate to the gun parts and applying the brisance properties there. Given the possibility of bore blowouts and such from the energies from smokeless powder, it seems that there could easily be enough energy to fragment pieces of the gun - and the idea that you have 1/100th of a hand grenade explosion seem to support it.

Bottom line is, high explosives have significantly different effects in terms of fragmenting material than smokeless powder.

It doesn't matter. The game says the shooter takes a hit, nothing else.

Well lets see. There is the concussive force generated by the explosion, the release of heat, etc..

The problem here is that you are making assumptions on how explosives rounds in the 2070's are designed. Have you ever considered that maybe the technology is different than that of the real world circa 2010. (Unlike the rest of the game, which is exactly like current technology. *sarcasm*) Since the rules only give us the result, we can only speculate as to how that result is generated. Heck, we do not even know the type of explosive used. So how any one argue the results with so little information? Speculate yes, but not rant about how right they must be.

The truth is that it is a game mechanic designed to provide balance. The ammo is batter, but is illegal and possibly damaging, and most important of all.... completely fictitious.

Has this turned into, argue becasue you want to argue now? I have been reading this all day, and not once have I seen anything come out of it except OP being shown "wrong" again and again.

The way to fix this would be to either read through this entire thread, take the good advice that is given, and/or make a house rule.

It is obvious that you dont agree even though all others here is proving something wrong with your arguments.
and seriously, it has started to seem like you just want to piss people off.
*points to the above mentioned* if you still have such a big problem with it, make a house rule, rule that they don't exist in your game world, something like that.

No harm meant with this post or personal attack intention, but really, it is starting to get pointless

Critical glitches with anything are said to be remarkably awful. The example used for another check is that they get caught on wire and can't get down without assistance. Critical glitches are not exclusive to just Ex-ex rounds. Regular bullets malfunction. Regular weapons screw up. Therefore, you shouldn't use them. Except your fists also screw up. You shouldn't use those either. Your face also screws up, so you shouldn't talk to people. The decker will screw up, so he shouldn't hack. Critical glitches are also more common in-game than they are in real life, believe it or not. Crazy crazy stuff. I've screwed up while doing crazy stuff once in a while, hitting my knee while vaulting a table, but critical glitches are in shadowrun for the same reason that D&D has 1s and 20s. Your failures and successes make things interesting. It's great that you can extrapolate lots of stuff from simple things and make up references to grenades when an explosive round could use any number of things, even using plastic explosive in a thin metal shell. It could be utilizing an impact-based explosion, or a electrically triggered once it hits the target.

You're at least under the pretense of using reasoning here, so let's do that.

1. The rules say the weapon misfires. "Explosive rounds will misfire whenever a critical glitch is rolled." Defining Misfire.

2. The explosive goes off incorrectly.

3. The user is hit for the damage code of the gun, and resists as normal.

4. Not with impact armor. Ballistic armor. Frag grenades are impact armor. Grenades are impact armor. Bullets are Ballistic armor. He must have shot himself.

5. It does not get shot at the enemy.

6. A critical glitch means you f*cked up all beyond normal circumstances, to the point where you screwed yourself pretty badly.

7. From these, I am making the assumption that the user of the gun shot himself with an Ex-ex round due to the gun misfiring, and rolls his armor to soak.



Here is your original argument:


Who would use it? A weapon that malfunctions fairly frequently in comparison to others? Hm. Sounds like something I've heard of previously.

Like I've told you several times. I don't know or care how the bullet damages the operator, the rules say it do, the rules don't say the gun is damaged. End of that argument.

As for all you're lovely discussion of explosives... Actually, given that I'm a Forensic Chemist, I actually know quite alot about explosives. I love how you compare the explosive power of an EX round to that of a frag grenade. I also love how you assume that a misfire means the barrel is blocked. I also love how you assume that an EX round is a high explosive when the description of the round never mentions as much.

So, gee, once again, your real world physics fail to support your argument again. And as I've mentioned a couple of times or more by now, even if I conceded that the gun did fragment, it would not do as much damage as the bullet firing off on its own. I'll reiterate. Either use the rules as they are presented, or house rule that the gun fragments and does about 1/6th the bullet damage to keep more in line with the real world.

I'm not really going to bother posting any more. It's obvious you're not going to be convinced, and are going to keep arguing based on your personal view of how physics works, and by mixing and matching rules and pseudo physics to make your arguments work. If you want EX rounds to be frag grenades, you go ahead with that and have fun.

I am simply speculating here, but I would consider it possible that the detonating mechanism be even more complex than your theories. Perhaps a sensor to provide a proximity detonation? Stick and Shock provides a precedent for an amazing amount of tech being crammed into a bullet. There are quite a few possibilities for how a "bullet" can damage a target beyond just impact.