Just played a session where we ran into two separate problems with the scatter rules, leaving us scratching our heads.

First, my character was holed up in a convenience store and threw a pair of grenades through the window outside at a massive ice spirit (force 8, though I didn't know that at the time!) that was capable of chucking cars at us.

With a lousy dicepool of about 10 (Agi 5 + Throwing 1 + Lobbing spec 2 + Tacsoft 2), I still managed to score 2 net hits over the spirit's Reaction roll (-2 area attack) on the Opposed Test. Great, I thought. We rolled scatter (Book isn't with me now, I believe it was 1d6 minus 2 per net hit, and I rolled a 4) and reduced the scatter to 0 meters. In one more pass, the grenade would explode at the ice spirit's, er, feet.

However, things got silly with my second grenade (Adept using Quick Draw power to get them both out in one pass). I managed no hits, and the spirit easily beat me. We rolled scatter and I got a 6. The direction was towards me. The spirit was only 5m away, so somehow the grenade was now 1m behind me. So we RP'd that I dropped it, which I grumbled about, but let it go, since someone else was able to grab it and throw it before it went off.

(Before the grenades exploded, the spirit ducked in an alley way, and neither boom could muster enough DV to break its hardened armor. Whoops.)

Did we do this correctly?

Second, this ice spirit wasn't going down, so we tried to escape. Everyone jumped into my truck. One guy (Sensho) picked up an AV one-shot rocket launcher and fired it out the back as the spirit gave chase.

I don't remember the rolls exactly, but Sensho rolled more hits than the spirit on the Attack test. Let's say there were 2 net hits. Then came the Scatter roll. It was 4d6 - 1 net hit (SR4A). WTF? If Sensho rolled an average of 14, it was reduced to 12.

We were only 10-15m away from the spirit. So a decent shot with 2 net hits ended up scattering 12m in some random direction, which got reduced to 0 by the time it got to the spirit (since the AV rocket had like -4/m on the blast, I think).

GM saw this, said "Ignore the scatter rules," and Sensho hit the spirit, bypassed its armor, and sent the ice spirit to a fiery hell.

So did we do anything wrong here?

Any tips or suggestions?

Wrong thing #1: throwing grenades at 1m range, and firing rockets at 10m range.

The scatter rules... well they are kinda silly. I could see a grenade rolling, but not back at you, and don't really have much experiences with rockets but those I have seen fired never did any crazy maneuvers like that. It's all needlessy complicated imo.

To answer your question yes you seem to have used the scatter rules right. As for suggestions ignore them or houserule them.

I can see the grenade rolling back, but you can alter the scatter table to include only non-backward directions. Say, W, NW, N, NE, and E?

The point of the rules, I assume, is to make these powerful weapons less sure. After all, hand grenades and unguided rockets *are* unsure in that way.

Except for the fact that untrained Iraqi extremists are able to shoot down moving helicopters, where as a trained shadowruner can't hit the broad side of a barn...

I shadowrun propelled explosive are as likey to wound you as the thing your aiming at. At exream ranges the scatter makes sense so maybe the scatter shoudl be based on the range category your firing in.

Also, the more effective/powerful you make something for the players, the more powerful/effective you are making it for their opponents.

TomD

I'm sure they don't shoot down those helicopters from 10m, and that they also miss often. In any case, I wasn't saying that SR4 is real-world accurate. I was saying that these weapons (especially hand grenades) *do* scatter.

Maybe we're just talking about rockets, really, because launched grenades are ungodly powerful, and I've never had a problem with scatter on them.

I mostly use the normal attack rules for rockets (hit/dodge etc), and the scatter for things that target a point in space. Not having dodge makes scatter less massive.

Hand grenades do scatter aka roll, but not so much they end up behind you. The reason I said it's a silly rule is because when a grenade hits it tends to keep going on the path it was going in the air. It'll deviate a little if it hits a root or something but it won't come back at you. Even with the roll it is fairly simple to land a grenade about where you want it to, well within the kill range. My suggestion for grenades would be on a 1-2 it'll go off to the left, 3-4 it'll go straight, 5-6 to the right.

Rocket's like I said I don't know much about, but shouldn't those basically be hit or miss, kinda like firearms? Eh, maybe not as they have an AE component but the scatter rules don't seem right either.

Many numbers contribute to lessening an explosive's final DV.

For a pistol, you got a Defense Test and a Damage Resistance Test.

For grenades/rockets/missiles, it seems you get a Defense Test, then a Scatter Roll, then (in the case of grenades) another pass for enemies to simply move out of the way, then a Damage Resistance Test.

Basically, for a pistol, you only need 1 net hit to move to Damage Resistance. For grenades/rockets/missiles, you need like 4-5 net hits just to make sure you negate the scatter roll.

Maybe it just seems like suckiness because my character sucks at throwing grenades. That's usually the case.

Angelone, only if you throw them badly from 1m.

Maybe rocket's shouldn't scatter, but I assume it reflects the fact that bullets in SR basically vanish if they miss. Missed rockets blow things UP, so it's important to determine their scatter. Don't forget about launched grenades, which don't have a 1 pass timer. … Come to think of it, neither do rockets, right? So, there you go: roll better and get to a *safe* distance!

Oh, that wasn't much better in SR3. I remember one instance of a bouncy ball grenade. Of course, that was also a stupid GM. It always is.

Anyway. The characters were on an oil rig, investigating sludge spirit matters, and some possessed zombies were closing in on them. A security shutter is being lowered, and the sam decided to roll a grenade under the door to splash some zombies.

The grenade is rolled an awesome 1 meter. GM uses scatter. Rolls a 4 (4 meters scatter), in our direction. The grenade rebounds, picks up enormous kinetic energy from soemwhere, and now is 3 meters behind us. Luckily, the mage put up a blast barrier, but ... bah.

How to fix this: simply use scatter only over distances of more than ten meters, where the grenade is actually launched. otherwise, you always have rebounding bouncy ball grenades.

And scrap scatter for missiles. They're not that inaccurate, really, they are not.

To answer your question more fully:

Scatter was Nerfed in 4th anniversary. Overly so. Now grenades and rockets acquire plot teleportation, and scatter so bad it couldn't the crust of the earth, much less a broad side of the barn.

My suggestion: Use non-anniversary edition's scatter rules. Here:



Additionally, add back in: Net hits reduce scatter. When scatter = 0, net hits increase DV(like they may do for any other weapon.)
And the ability to aim at a point in space (in 4thA's rules, if you surprise three guys in the living room, you -can't- aim between the three of them to catch them all in the splash. You have to aim at one of them. BUT if there's an inanimate object, which doesn't resist being attacked - like the couch they're sitting on - you can just aim at that instead and get the effect of the old rules. Its a rather stupid, pointless change.)

Actually, the "couch targeting" is something I made up. The only reason it works is because the character wants to blow the fuck out of a chair (couch, bench, bar stool, table, counter, whathaveyou) and accidentally catches enemies in the blast.

Psh, a spot on the floor still counts as a target object. It's not a cheat to aim at it. Bleh.

"That DAMN floor tile I don't like the way its looking at me!"

I never understood the controversy. Grenades are obviously dropped at locations on purpose. It's an obvious, normal tactic that's always fit the rules.

There's a reason why in FPSs you shoot rockets at the targets' feet.

Somebody wanted to forbid it because by RAW secondary targets cannot dodge grenades, only the primary one. So they tried to fix one silly rule with another one. Just let everyone dodge and place them at the edge of the blast radius if they are successful. If not they get damaged according to their distance from the epicenter of the blast and the attacker's net hits.

Gasp! That's so simple! How did no one think of this before!?

I know other people have thought about it before butr for some reason they were not heard by those who made the changes to SR4A.

At least to me telporting targets are better than teleporting grenades.

It's terribly written, particularly for rockets.

But I once threw a hand grenade simulator ('just' 4 oz of flash powder) and bounced it off a tree limb, it went off at my feet. It was not fun. So having a small chance of having to go off on top of you or behind is perfectly reasonable. IMNSHO the danger of using hand grenades is underrated in SR, but I'm not sure how fix that in a sane fashion.

I don't think anyone can dodge a grenade. You can only try to use a move action to get away. Maybe allow Reaction + Body + Armor to decrease the DV.

Only when coupled with an airburst link. Which really should be standard equipment by the 2070s anyway; just add 500 to the price of all Grenade/Rocket Launchers and be done with it.




Defending against a grenade attack is like any other ranged attack, the target gets to roll Reaction, or Reaction+Dodge(or Gymnastics) when on Full Defense for their half of the Opposed Test. Note however, that the Defender gets a -2 modifier for "Attacker Using Area Effect Weapon".

Well, yes. You'll obviously buy that in every case. Still, everyone will also get a Smartlink, 99% of the time.

I know that you can in SR. What I mean is that I don't think anyone can dodge a grenade.

Dodge... Maybe not... get the hell out of the blast area if you see it coming, your darn tooting that everyone and their grandmother would try that... you do have a few seconds after all (in the best of circumstances anyway, I knew a Marine that was good enough with his grenades that he could keep them in teh air until they exploded... most of the time anyways... makes a great airburst effect to say the least)... One of the reasons that we were taught to hurl a grenade into a room for clearing purposes (and by hurl, I mean HURL) is to get a lot of bounce in the device... makes it a lot harder to just catch/pick up and thow back... which people will try if they have no other choice... I am of the opinion that if you are not all that high up in a building, going through the window is a viable alternative to having the weapon blow up with you in the area of effect...

Keep the Faith

Right. That's what I mean. They get a turn to take a move action, which is not the same as dodge the grenade.

A Pass anyways... not a full turn... the grenade goes off at the end of the next pass (or end of the turn, whichever comes first?)...

Keep the Faith

It goes off at the initiative of the thrower, in the next pass, regardless of whether the character gets to act or not.

i think the reason for a primary target, is to make the use of a grenade not grind the game to a halt.

toss a grenade at a security team of 5, and suddenly the GM have to make 10 dice rolls if each gets a dodge then a save against damage.

with a primary target getting a save, and the grenade ends up outside of the target zone, the GM can instead just declare the blast throwing some stuff around (and maybe the odd devil rat). 4 less dice rolls, 9 if it miss fully.

as always when talking about SR4 rules changes may well be about speed rather then accuracy of events.

Well, yes, (Tymeaus, Draco18s), that's what I meant. Not that everyone gets a 'Turn', or that everyone gets a free move. It's a grenade, the best they can *hope* for is to try to move away, if they're fast.

Hobgoblin, that's exactly why all grenades should be targeted at the floor (= target's feet, or maybe 'leading' them). It's better for balance and speed both if aiming at a person isn't even an option. Unless it's a sticky grenade from Halo.

Gotta love those sticky plasma grenades...

Keep the Faith

Does anyone know what motivated the Scatter table change?

Was it done under the assumption that players were always targeting a location instead of targeting enemies, which allowed them to ignore the Defense test?

Or is it because the Defense Test (with a -2) and the previous Scatter Test was not enough to mitigate the power of explosives?

Or because they felt like it?

Clever marketing plot to sell more Ares Heimdahls.

If I had to guess, the goal was to make sure that any hits the players got on their rolls didn't go to waste since the rule for what to do with your extra hits once you reduce scatter to zero was taken away.

Personally, I never saw anything wrong with original SR4's rule that let you stage the damage up against your nominated target. There's a difference between a grenade that detonates 6 cm from your left foot, and one that catches a perfect bounce at the end of a cooked-off throw to go off a cm from your face, but at the increments used for the scatter rules, they're both less than 1 meter away from you. Your buddy, 3 meters away, is still going to feel the same blast in either scenario, but you, as the thrower's primary target, are going to be hurting a lot more from the latter.

But someone in the Powers That Be got it in their head that grenades are "easy" and that players who would throw to a location instead of a target were trying to get something for nothing. Then they went and removed from the rules the one incentive for a skilled thrower to actually target a person and not a location, as if to retroactively prove their point. I personally think grenades are supposed to be easy, and that you can trust the metagame consequences built into the setting to prevent abuse.

The link strongly implies they are using SA-7 passive infrared guided SAMs, probably from an ambush situation with plenty of time to aim at a large, hot target (achieving lock before launch). Which is a far cry from shooting an unguided rocket from the back of a (moving?) truck in the heat of combat, against a man-sized target.

Even with "guided" SR4 missiles, you can't hit a semi-truck sized target. Signal only reduces the scatter by Signal meters and is not cheap to have installed.

Perhaps shadowrunners are not meant to wield the power of missiles, so the rules are intentionally vague and the missiles prohibitively expensive.

Typically, that's why taxpayers foot the bill for these kinds of things.

I don't see why not... With a Missile equipped with an Airburst Link and a Sensor of 6, it will roll 2d6-6 for absolutely no scatter on an average roll, assuming that you got at least one net hit (7-6-1=0 Scatter)... sounds pretty accurate to me... matter of fact, I don't really see how you can actually miss with that setup personally...

It is the unguided Rockets that are more the problem, but can be corrected with the same technology as well... so you pay a few nuyen more for the Airburst package to be added to the Rocket (Your Scatter is now 2d6)... big deal...

The SR4A book explicitly states that you can equip a Missile/Rocket with an Airburst Link (which will reduce scatter to 2d6)... this is on page 325, Left Side, the paragraph just prior to the description of an Anti-Vehicle Missile/Rocket...

Keep the Faith

I really think you guys are just Doing It Wrong™. Grenades are very powerful, and missiles are just crazy. Not that I ever get my hands on them.

Heheh... Yeah, Have had a grand total of 1 Rocket/Missile in our game over the last 2 years... Just one...

Grenades, on the other hand, are great... 1d6 -1/Hit Scatter... can't get much better than that... it is a rarity that I actually Miss with a Grenade...

Keep the Faith