And even if the elevator walls break, the walls of the elevator shaft don't.
Well, at least not as soon . . technically, with a single grenade in the elevator shaft, you can bring down big parts of a building. place grenade at the bottom, place elevator above, make boom, watch the whole building get it's core blown out . .

Yuo also forgot the initial damage before any bouncing

TL;DR

Unless you can reliably resist 6 stun damage, a flashbang in a small enclosed space will kill you.

Not only that, but as the blast reflects, it does not just travel straight across the elevator, it also spreads to the sides and reflects again from them...this actually quite the little math problem. Mathleets assemble!

When is the pressure from the blast going to exceed the barrier rating of this elevator?

Never, because it does stun.

It's sufficient to assess damage in the cardinal directions to ensure death.

But I want to know if we end up with chuncky salsa or creamy.

Set elevator to Frappe.

...

Sooo...I could conceivably lock the runners in the shower, toss in a flashbang, and have an inescapable deathtrap.

seems like it you evil evil man . .

Excuse me, I need to make some notes.

*cackle*

Force 1 physical barrier + flashbang.

I'm thinking of headlines.

CROOK CAUGHT WITH PANTS DOWN - 1 KILLED IN APARTMENT RAID
Civil Liberties Union calls for ban on 'non-lethal' weaponry, claims use 'state-sponsored terrorism'

SEATTLE, UCAS Civil Liberties Union advocates are calling for a crackdown on contract security use of 'non-lethal' weapons and ammunition after an apartment raid on dangerous Shadowrunner Iriquois Plissken Freely turned into a bloodbath.

Knight-Errant authorities raided the downtown loft early Wednesday morning when a 'flashbang' grenade - used to stun and disorient suspects for capture - detonated in the victim's bathroom.

"It was like someone threw a barrel of red dye and raw hamburger all over the walls," said building superintendent Max Dessicus. "Do you know how long that's going to take to clean up?"

Security experts have touted the advantages of what are known as 'non-lethal takedowns' where personnel are able to bring in perpetrators without harming the general populace.

A little known design flaw in the use of incapacitating explosives, however, turns them into 'tools of state-sponsored terrorism,' said CLA director John Turnbull.

"It's no different from locking a prisoner in a cell with a fragmentation grenade," Turnbull said in a press release to Seattle news outlets. "It's worse! At least the grenade will break the walls and leave something for a family to bury."

Flashbang grenades use a concussive force to disorient the target, where an ignition of magnesium powder blinds at the same time. Early use of flashbang grenades reportedly reduced security force casualties by nearly 78% in initial uses.

Use them in a confined space, however, and the concussive force redoubles on itself, creating a chamber where the victim is literally pulvarized in a fraction of a second.

"It's something completely unheard of in weapons technology," said Turnbull. "We don't know why it happens, and that's why we need to stop using them until we can figure it out."

In a related story:
" The NTSB has issued a directive requiring all curtains in licesnsed vehicles to be installed with a mechanism to prevent them from fully closing. Also new regulations are in the works to install sensors in government vehicles that will automatically trigger 'blowout' pannels in the sides and back. A NTSB researcher, who requested to remain anonomous, stated that even when blowout pannels are installed, for some reason they just never save you from the flashbang gernades."

Even more absurd is that chainlink fences have a barrier rating too. So someone caught inside a small section of chainlink would be equally salsafied.

go ahead and read it. you add up *all* applicable modifiers, including ones from the visibility table. no mention of only adding one modifier (presumably the worst applicable) from the visibility table, therefore reading that literally you apply all modifiers, including the possibility of visibility modifiers that add up to being worse than zero visibility conditions.

now as i said, it's pretty obvious that if you can't see anything, reducing your ability to see should not have any meaningful effect. but that's not what the rules say. once again, badly written rules are the name of the game here. i know full well that it would be absurd to give someone -10 to hit for being in absolute darkness at the same time as thermal smoke grenades have been thrown. but that's not what the rules tell me to do... hence, it gets listed in the thread about badly written rules.

if we thought these rules made sense or are written the way they are supposed to work, we wouldn't be posting them here. there's no need to tell me that isn't how the rule is intended to work. i know that. that's why i posted it here, in this thread, which just so happens to be about rules that don't work like they're supposed to. if i thought the rule was *supposed* to work like that, i would never have posted it here.

tape grenade to body, wrap body with grenade in chain link fence, tie string to grenade, run for your life.

nah, you don't have to run. the fence is containing the blast, remember?

Not on the Ends of the roll ^^

I would list that one more under "Lets assume the readers can use their brains and figure this out on their own, so lets not waste word count" and not under broken rules

Would that really work though? While the flashbang does Stun damage, it *IS* a force wave.

For the purposes of a chunky salsa effect, shouldn't the barrier rating of the surfaces an explosion's force impacts against still need to equal or exceed the force of the attack (to make the force wave rebound) regardless of whether it is Stun or Physical damage?

Yes. The only time you use the highest is when you're eyeballing things for time, which is why you figure out the modifiers beforehand.

I had the opportunity get out from behind the screen one day and got to play. We tossed 4 stun grenades into a small room holding the Wendigo we were after. I think our storyteller had different kind of finally in mind.

I don't think so, otherwise, Feathers the Troll could batter his way through a cement wall with a pillow. Stuff with a barrier rating should be immune to Stun --> I'm looking at you SnS rounds.

TTT, I was referring to things that have explosive force, like grenades, rockets, and the like.

There's no explodey bits with SnS.

Even better, now you have a goo-gun

That depends.... are said runners female, scantily clad, and bi-curious?

I think the first two are the only really important qualifiers.

Well if they're locked in the shower, then it's quite possible that two of the three possible criteria have been met.

But after the Flashbang, you may have some "issues" with shower scenes for a while.

Oh God, the blood, it was everywhere!

Wait could we use a oil drums as some from of stun-cannon drop a falshbang in aim at opponent watch them die or as a completely insane booby trap? Of corsse you have the lid as the method of fiering no the flashbang.

The solution is not to allow flashbangs to bounce
but the whole explosives/grenade section of the game is fubared.

It's basically a front loader cannon.

I need to make a note: if offered flashbangs, run away, and start using outdoor camp showers. ;P

Barriers can't be immune to stun damage. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to break barriers with your fists... not even a standard glass window...

-CJ

By the rules, you can't.....but then again this is a discussion on broken rules.

Also there is no glass in Shadowrun, there is only Transparisoy. The slight flexibility is possesses will stop mere fleshy fists from breaking it.

Nuh uh! Read the barrier rules. Your fists don't do Stun against them, because there's no 'Stun or Physical'. It's just 'DV vs. Barrier'.

In fact, flashbangs probably count as 'Explosive', so they do 'Base DV * 2'. Cue the deflation of all these Flashbang-makes-Smooth-Salsa scenarios.

Except that if the flashbang destroys the elevator car what happens next? You start falling.

That will actually make them do less damage since the walls can't hold the explosion in.

Well, sure. But that's hardly 'you turn to vapor because this rule is broken'. Your fault for even being in an elevator.

Staircases ain't that much better.

I'm still trying to wrap my brains around the idea that as a passenger of a car, you can try to dodge.
That just seems.. weird.

You can dodge while wearing safety restraints...

You do take a -2 penalty.

oooh -2

Really it should be a barrier issue. You're shooting through the armored vehicle to get to the person. So you have to punch through the armor, and get to the person. Then you have to punch through the personal armor mod of the car, and then through to the person's personal armor.

And with Vehicles having hardened armor, you need to do more damage than the armor rating to make the passenger make a soak roll.

And I'd allow the driver to make a pilot test to either avoid getting hit altogether or decide which part of the car gets hit.

-2 to dodge for sitting in a seat seems pretty fair.

It is a strange difference between vehicle damage resistance, barrier rules, and passenger damage resistance. I wouldn't say that vehicles (by RAW) have Hardened Armor, though; they simply ignore minor (Stun) attacks by virtue of being vehicles (no Stun). I *agree* that things would make more sense if they were treated as you suggest: weak attacks bounce off before ever reaching the passenger.

The driver *does* get a 'vehicle dodge' test.

That part always seemed kinda stupid to me. Are you seriously telling me that you could dodge bullets with good driving?

SR4a Page 170



Isn't that basically hardened armor?

As much as you can with good jumping and so on. That is, 'yes, within the context of Shadowrun'. You drive defensively, making it hard to aim against you. *shrug*

I agree, sabs. It's because vehicles don't have a Stun track. I dunno when the distinction would matter, but I was just mentioning it. It kind of matters for the fluff; if bullets are going through the vehicle skin, but simply not causing boxes of damage, then passengers can be hit. Given that this is the RAW way it works… Messy, yes.

ok, let's try this again: if this rule needs fixing (ie requires the user to ignore what the rules say), then it is clearly broken. you arguing that there is a solution to the problem, even an easily available solution, does not make the fact that there is a problem go away. it merely proves that there is in fact a problem in need of solving.


no, that just means we need to put wheels on the chain link fence before we wrap people in it (so that it's a vehicle) beware the outhouse on wheels!