Ok I have few issues with the current Shadowrun 4th ed. Grenade Combat system, and I'm wondering how other GM's handle Grenade Combat.

1. If a Grenade is thrown, do you make your players make a perception test to see if any of them see the grenade? (I usually do with a Threshold 2)
2. Grenades are suppose to go off on characters next initiative pass, so if someone with 4 Initiative passes throws grenade, it goes off in .75 seconds, if someone with 1 Initiative pass throws grenade, it goes off in 3 seconds? (I think grenades should go off in the same IP in next combat turn of the thrower.)
3. I'm thinking about letting players use delay action to hold onto armed grenade, allowing the "Cooking off" of a grenade (Pulling Pin then waiting to throw), I'm wondering how I should handle this?

I use the RAW simply because if you try to get realistic with grenades, the way everything else works they become kinda useless IMO.Even in older editions when the grenade went off at the end of the combat turn made them sorta useless if used against any one with more that one action in most cases. To have people make a perception test seems a little meh. Simply that you are aware of what people are doing in combat anyway. (Unless of course they are hidden)

With the RAW, everyone gets a chance to get out of the way or try to throw it elsewhere, Take cover. The RAW can be punishing enough for those with one IP.

Cooking the Grenades, Well I dunno. The player in my party that likes to use grenades, uses airburst grenades. Thy go off when they reach their destination.

I've actually found that grenades in their current incarnation, while they aren't great for actually removing people from combat, are exceptional for manufacturing opportunities to shoot people. The combination of thrown grenades and suppressive fire sets up plenty of lose/lose situations, and replacing thrown grenades with launched airburst ones just works even better.

As for cooking grenades, I'd let a PC stand there, with a live grenade in his hand, while taking fire, to shorten the time that the opposition has to react to the bouncing explosive. Nothing worse than taking an SnS round to the shoulder and failing the incapacitate check with a live grenade in your hand, except maybe just being dropped from physical damage, and having the grenade fill your overflow boxes.

err on 2.

the grenade goes off at the throwers initiative in the next pass, even if the thrower do not have a pass then.

also, the duration between throw and detonation can be controlled by the thrower, so it can be as short as next pass, or as long as several rounds later. Thing is basically, that grenades in SR are digital, just like anything else, the detonation time is controlled by a small computer, not a burning fuse.

What about wirelessly-detonated grenades? With DNI, you could toss it and make it go boom just as someone's making a grab for it, right?

i think so. Heck, there may even be a contact sensor option somewhere.

Yeah or have some guy hack it while your holding it . In my eyes all wireless nade have to be armed physically before you can send the detonate comand other wise the hacker just gose any nades every combat. And while funny the first time it gets old super fast. Though A TM with the abillity to up in to anything in LSO makes nade deadly things to carry.

So a secure grenade requires a physical action to arm and throw, and then a Matrix action to detonate wirelessly. It seems to me to be the next thing for grenades..

Or make one of those mods that add a "personality to a weapon" and make them scream or call people.
There was and old thread about this that made me laugh a lot and also give me cruel ideas.

The way I handle grenades is to have the thrower roll Agility+Thrown Weapons with each success staging the damage of the grenade like normal ranged attacks.

I have any defenders, who I feel are in range, make a Reaction+Dodge roll to defend against the attack. Each success stages the grenades damage down, but it can't be dodged totally. Whatever damage is left is soaked normally.

Keeps things simple and fast without having to worry about scatter or any of that shenanigans.It also ensures that grenades stay deadly that the PCs think before throwing, and it makes dodge a more useful skill for everyone.

You might want to omit the actual "Chunky Salsa" rule, as most combat occurs in confined spaces (confined in terms of a grenade's damage getting boosted nearly every time). A grenade in the corner of a wall and floor will do 24P at the centerpoint and drop of at -4 per meter.

Tossing a grenade down a 4 meter wide hallway just kills people.

Which is the point...

Keep the Faith

Most walls and ceilings, being made of drywall, don't hold up to grenades either. This absorbs the blast. So the walls blow out, the ceiling blows out (and then collapses into the room), the lights all shatter and the room fills with dust and smoke.

No, I'm pretty sure a standard issue frag grenade in a school hallway does not in fact kill people. 4 meters is about 13 feet. That's enough for two people to stand side by side with arms outstretched and touch fingers and still not reach both walls. With the 'nade between them, each of them takes 16P damage.

But in game terms, its a weapon the NPCs can't use because that's what happens to players: they just die.

Um. M67 (modern US frags) have a killing radius of 5m and a wounding radius of 15m. Older 'defensive' grenades could have a wounding radius up to 30m. This is without any chunky salsa.

I wouldn't bet my life on your 'pretty sure'.

No, an M67 frag grenade will typically kill anyone within 5 meters of the grenade and will typically injure anyone out to 15 meters. You can, if really unlucky, get killed several hundred meters away by pieces of the fuze. It's not the blast that kills anyone not right next to the grenade, it's the cloud of razor sharp pieces of the grenade body moving at several thousand feet per second that kills most people.

I sit corrected.

Hand grenades are serious shit that are typically treated with great respect by people who use them. SR doesn't represent how easy it is to kill yourself (or your buddies) with them.

Especially if you throw the pin and drop the grenade, or forget to pull the pin before you throw the grenade. In the later case, all a perceptive enemy has to do is keep the pin and return the grenade.

A drywall ceiling is usually a false ceiling if there's a floor above it. The drywall won't bounce down the shockwave, but usually the structural floor will.

You right in that most walls will be drywall, but even a pillared design will usually some structural walls thrown in the mix, since they're cheap and effective way to provide stre,th against horizontal efforts (wind, heavy stuff beign moved inside, earthquakes (seatle isn't that far from recently active volcanoes) or some disgruntled gonk's car bomb nearby)

A related question, does raw seem to indicate that if a attack with a grenade misses, it has no effect? As in it doesn't blow up?

And how is dodging grenades come into play? So far I've basically done my own ruling on them, but that's not perfect as well (and I allowed to increase DV with net hits but ONLY when scatter is reduced to 0 and only to the initial target (the nade has the same blast radius.)

And why exactly cannot the NPC's use grenades? Death for the opposition is the general goal of the group using grenades, and would be somewhat unrealistic to not allow the equipment for your opposition just because you are a player character...

Opponents in our games are generally allowed many of the same equipment choices as we as players have, and sometimes even more, depending upon the run in question (Last I looked, most shadowrunner teams do not employ Ringu Gas with a Nano-tech system that directly attacks your chemseals to render them ineffective, in an environment that you must bypass prior to obtaining entrance to the underground secured facility)... we have been on the receiving end of grenades from on occassion, and it ain't no picnic... Not everyone likes going out in public with Military grade armor, or even the less obvious, but still obvious armored Jackets or Dusters that are so prevelant in the shadows... sometimes you just do not want to draw attention to yourself by wearing heavy amounts of armor...

I am just curious why you would not allow the opposition to use grenades?

Keep the Faith

Remove any special rules and treat them the the same way as indirect combat spells are treated:

Define the area, roll the attack – everyone there get's the usual defense (with area effect modifier), everyone's damage is treated individually – and there is no reflection.

See: scatter.

I don't have SR4a, I seem to remember they changed the "scatter" rules somewhat.

I've read the scatter rules in SR4 and they say nothing about what happens when you have no hits at all or the defender has more hits than you.

Hm. I'd have thought that it would increase scatter. But you're right, there are no rules.

hence the old "I am a ten second bomb" gag

By RAW, Scatter is a random value (bunch of d6, based on type of attack), which is reduced by your net hits, so if you roll 0 hits, you get a lot of scatter.

I've always ruled that if the target's roll exceeds the attacker's, they get to move that many metres away from the point of detonation. That's not RAW, but it's worked pretty good so far.

All hail RAH