I may have misread this but in SR4A on page 155 in the Determine Scatter it says:



Now one way I could read this is when a Player makes his appropriate skill plus attribute role plus or minus modifiers, and comes up with net success that they only affect scatter and have no effect on Damage. Am I just reading this out of context or is that a proper read?

So hypothetically: Kill Master has a Heavy Weapons Skill of 2 and Agility Attribute of 4. This means he starts with a pool of six dice. It's a clear and sunny day and he's at the range with no windage blowing the fearsome watermelon enemies all too hell. he has a smart gun link, and an air burst link. For our example he is not taking aim, nor is he firing at anything beyond short range. (He's kind of chubby and running watermelons up and down the range all day is a lot of work.) So he has a total of eight dice. Kill Master rolls four hits on his success test, and his Game Master rolls for Direction of Scatter-we'll say he rolls a 1 so the grenade would go long, and then for distance the GM rolls 2D6 coming up with 2 hits, which means that Kill Master has two net successes. But these only mean that he nails it dead on, and do not increase the Damage Value?

You never, ever increase the DV of the grenade. The best you can do is hit them dead on, which means the full blast.

Of course, with the scatter distances, you're likely not hitting dead on ever with only 8 dice to attack with.

Thanks. For some reason I think we've been jacking up the Damagae Value-but I can't recall because I think in the last four games we've only used Grenades once.

Yeah, they're not really an 'everyday' weapon.

That's probably because most people would find it silly that a grenade CAN'T kill a person in one blast.

You recall correctly: we've been jacking up the DV. It's a holdover house rule from SR3, where we argued that if the damage staged because of where you put a bullet, it should stage because of where you put a grenade [or Fireball, or missile, or mortar, etc]. But I think the counter-argument is at least as solid, and other than severely weakening grenades, I don't think it'd break the game or anything to correctly follow the rule.

Grenade/Rockets/Missiles have been made less Damaging/Accurate in the game, because if you used RL Damage Capacities, you would have a LOT of very short lived Shadowrunners. Want more realistic Damage, play Twilight 2000.

The number of hits you get in a grenade attack indirectly affects the DV, in the sense that the further the grenade falls from a target, the lower the adjusted DV is. So in effect, the stated DV of the grenade is the maximum amount of damage you can do with it.

No matter how many extra hits you get. Which is what makes grenades different from bullets and leads to a number of house rules such as mentioned above. Of course, if Kill Master above had rolled a critical success, then the GM might have allowed Kill Master's player to 'place' the grenade in a favourable location.

"OK, it landed in the target's pocket. On the same side as he dresses."

There is also the case of the Missile Master who does damage with the grenade before it explodes.

I think its funny as all getup being able to kill with one shot of a light pistol, yet technically I could strap the grenade to someones head, and it would only give them a concussion and bleeding. no death. I think the grenades listed in the core books are not the ones used by the military, but instead are M80s.

You know what's funny: we didn't actually used to use Scatter, even, unless the grenade was hand-thrown [and often not then; we're pretty lax on combat rules sometimes]. I think subconsciously [or consciously] we all just assumed that any society that can produce smartlinks can also produce on-target airbursts. But we've used the switch from SR3 to SR4 as an excuse to start paying closer attention to combat rules.

Actually, net hits after scatter did stage up damage until the SR4a errata changed things.


But the best advice I can give you... is if you are relying on grenades... your best friend will be chunky salsa... and demolitions booby traps... Example.. hallway is 4m wide... you duct tape a HE grenade to the wall with a tripwire by the door. Sec comes through down the center of the hallway... sets off grenade 2m away... grenade primary damage from wall (and secondary wave bounces immediately off the wall). So effectively the blast is 20P (ap-2) with -4/m. It travels 2m to the guard... hitting him once/twice for 12p... travels to the other side and bounces back... and stops short of reaching center of hallway again. Hitting guard for 12p (ap-2) impact... reasonably scary... enough to knock him into overflow and maybe kill him.

Personally I like to have some HE because they make great tools... (especially since you can set them to contact, timed, or remote detonated). Can opening, booby traps, car bombs... or for real fun... throw a dummy grenade and watch people run!

Another great trick... if your mage has levitate... set it to command det... and levitate it right where you want it and set it off with a swift action (we've taken to calling free actions swift just to avoid confusion...). Granted it has an OR3 or 2 if the GM is generous... Far less drain than you'll take casting a fireball!


(though my one group doesn't let flash bangs do chunky salsa anymore... *sigh* it's only a 10m radius with no range degradation... which normally staged up to about 18s by the time a typical rooms dimensions were worked into it.) This led to the Cthulthu method of shadowrun... I open the door (without looking... sanity you know). Chuck 2 flash-bangs in... close the door.

PS: funniest toss ever... we were busting into an azzie facility through the front door... my mage is sustaining a load of physical masks. Defaults with 1 die to toss a grenade into the far back of the lobby... scatters near maximum... right into the elevator with 4 heavier armed security guards.

You got that wrong, actually (at least according to SR4). You're hitting an area (an immobile target, not a big difference). You have airburst grenades. Those babies scatter only D6 meters, minus your net successes (four), minus the grenade's sensor rating (let's say two or three). You plonk the melon dead-on. There.
However, things aren't that rosy if you use normal grenades. Scatter from a launcher is 3D6, -4 for each net hit. So on a bad day, you can plonk your grenade a meter or two from the melon. Which, of course, still deals it 10P damage.
Also, grenades are great in confined spaces. One 'nade plonked down a hallway deals, let's see, 12P when it hits dead-on, plus 10P off one wall, plus 10P off the other wall. Unless you're in an office, where it's 12P and two new entrances to rooms on the right and left, because, well, drywall.

Mike: you have it dead wrong on the airburst links as of SR4a.
Airburst links reduce scatter to 2d6 -1/success. (-sensor for MISSILES... not rockets or grenades).

Even non-airburst... the scatter is 3d6... with -2 per success for GL's! (not -4). So you're almost better off relying on the standard contact fused GL with good successes.

Quite frankly: the only way I can see to make anti-vehicle rockets or missiles usefull is to treat larger vehicles as bigger targets... yeah you're aiming for the center of the tank... if you scatter 3m left or right... you still hit the tank... just not dead center. (because otherwise the -6DV/m damage reduction on those anti-vehicle warheads makes em completely worthless).


Yeah Mike... I've never seen anyone allow the salsa bounce off the floor/ceiling... because it just gets gratuitously silly...

Every non-airburst grenade instantly has it's damage doubled because it landed on the ground... and reflects once off the ground...

The most I normally see is the side walls... and then there's a chance depending on construction that it's just drywall and you end up creating a new door instead of doubling the blast wave like you're trying to.

Basically, the rules are a total mess. Scatter is a mess, chunky salsa is a mess, etc. You have to use a (probably illogical) set of house rulings to make them 'balanced'. So… do that.

This. Grenades are a victim of edition wars and bad rules changes. Grenades and rockets in the current rules are incredibly stupid in that, for anti-armor or anti-big things weapons, they actually flat out can't damage vehicles with a high armor.
You would THINK that throwing high explosive grenades at a roadmaster or using anti-vehicle rockets on a tank would have SOME effect, but no, without 'net hits to damage once scatter is 0', its possible for some tough things(like ALL the tanks in war or milspectech) to have a high enough armor value that damage+ap isn't enough to scratch it. And if you miss by, say, a meter, the damage falloff is going to trigger that minimum-armor range sooner.



Here's a comparison for how it is vs how it used to be. You may want to consider reverting to 4th editions grenade rules, as it prevents stupid things like teleporting grenades scattering farther than they were thrown.

But it also re-adds stupid things like a 'better' but equally dead-on shot doing more (and bigger!) explosive damage. I'm definitely (and pretty clearly) not saying the existing rules are good, but neither were the previous ones.

It also might well be *right* for tanks to be immune to some explosives. It depends. There is indeed a basic mismatch between the power of certain attacks and their *intended* targets, though. The safest solution is probably to increase the AP (hell, even for specific targets), instead of raising the DV so high they become nukes.

And there's some mystical reason why an Ex-Ex round fired from a sniper rifle gets to stage up it's damage... and the anti-vehicle missile or contact fused HE nade doesn't. When all are equally well placed shots of high explosive?!

I'm definitely with Udoshi on this one... I can see why grenades don't stage up... but things like anti-vehicle warheads with such abysmal damage falloffs that they need direct hits to function are essentially no different from bullets.

At the same time back in the day we made an art of throwing grenades at inanimate objects to avoid seeing the furniture 'dodge' like living targets tend to do then just catching them in blast radius. We also only applies the staged up damage to the target thrown at... (the explosion didn't get bigger... just allowed you to place it better, secondary targets still only took basic splash/salsa damage). Also some things like airburst work against you if you're trying to hammer a vehicle with a HE grenade... the old -4 per success actually tended to mean you only need 2-3 successes to completely negate scatter... then you'd start staging damage up against your vehicular target. (airburst by definition is a proximity fuse so the 2d6... -1 per makes sense... even if it is less 'precise' when going for a direct hit).



This is one of my complaints with the current system... there's essentially no reason to ever take an anti-vehicle LAW as a just-in-case weapon for your hard-core street sam. With scatter you'll be hard pressed to ever *HIT* let alone damage any kind of vehicle you'd need it for. You're better off just resorting to the assault cannon... or a large bore rifle and a called shot for damage.

Actually the scatter for airburst in SR4 was 1D6, not 2D6.

I've noticed it appears both ways in SR4a, delightfully. We've chosen 1D6; the other appears to be an error. Can't speak to SR4 without walking too far and leafing too much.

We agree, Falconer: bullets shouldn't be able to stage up to kill tanks, and a LAW should be able to damage (moderately) armored vehicles, because that's its purpose. I'm just saying one wrong isn't a reason to commit another (stage up grenades).

Is staging up (against the intended target) really wrong though?

Whether it is or not, I find myself a little curious on something, that would need a developer answer; were floors taken into account? If yes, is that why grenade damage is non-lethal by itself?

For everyone else, might it be possible the intention was to have the rebounding effect off the ground? Whether it is or not, no one can really argue that they (as GM) wouldn't use it for, say, someone jumping on a live grenade. That guy is gonna be chunky salsa'd to death for sure. (I would maybe add half his body to the defence test of everyone else, or armour, whichever is higher)

HunterHerne: it depends on the mechanic, really. AFAIK, the mechanic doesn't *currently* work right with staged-up grenades, even if you take the extra complexity of calculating the blast damage separately from the 'target' damage… only in the case of direct hits. It doesn't really smell logical, either, that a grenade bursting near a vulnerable 'spot' would do much more damage. If it makes sense for anything, it makes more sense for bullets (and bullet-like things, anti-tank rockets are designed to pierce a specific spot, right?).

I agree it matters if all the grenades are intended to be doubled; it's certainly not clear either way, which is the same as 'wrong'.

I think the 'jump on' situation is special enough to merit a specific exception, instead of making the general rules (currently) accommodate it. The rules are very abstract; you shouldn't have to do 3D geometry. Especially checking against many various barriers, etc.; ugh.

I suspect the rules gimp rockets because they don't want people using them; and if such a weapon is used I'm sure the rule makers are trying to avoid it being a nice way to oneshot things that are supposed to be tough.

The rules are that way so that you do not "One-Shot" characters in large groups.
They made the rules in SR4A so that the threat of the rockets and grenades were not as serious a threat as they should be to facilitate playability. I think they overcompensated a bit, but there you go. Don't get me wrong, they are still a threat, just not a serious one, unless used in copious amounts.

I think the rockets would be fine (balance-wise) if they had much higher AP, and possibly a much smaller blast. Their purpose is to wreck armored things. That's fine. You don't have to 'one shot' an armored thing; it'd be fine if the LAW could get through the armor and then just *hurt* it (higher AP than DV, roughly). There aren't really any weapons that make use of this kind of DV:AP ratio (and good reason for that, usually). They're too expensive to use against people anyway.

Grenades, on the other hand, simply *are* very powerful (= should be). And with great power comes great numbers of authorities looking for you.

I can agree with that.

Very few walls and ceiling are able to handle explosive charges. You'll blow out the walls, destroy the doors, and drop the ceiling. Oh, and you'll blow out the lights, so it's a dark debris filled area choked with dust and fumes.

Ha, your quote reminded me that I wrote that post out of order, so I fixed it. It's *rockets* that are too expensive, obviously.

AV, at least, should be that way. HE and AP shouldn't, but they also should be doing significantly more damage.

By "should," in this case, what I really mean is, "I would personally prefer if..." Everyone wants a different game, but for me, personally - and presumably for Yerameyahu as well - I don't see a reason to nerf grenades rockets and missiles. I want them to be deadly. I want their in-game balance to be similar to their out-of-game balance: they're comparatively costly to obtain, they're not commonly available, and the police response to their ownership or use can be reasonably described as "apocalyptic." I want a LAW in Shadowrun to be more-or-less like a LAW in real life: you could get one, although it'd set you back a little, and if you knew what you were doing, you could certainly blow up a car or perforate some people or do serious damage to an armored vehicle. And then the world would fall on you, because you bought and fired a rocket filled with high explosives at something, and that makes people cross.


That return-on-investment analysis depends heavily on the financial return one gains from the use of the rocket. Or, I suppose, the benefit to survival.

Right, AV. And their stats halfheartedly reflect that intent. Such weapons even already have weird 'against vehicles, use different numbers' clauses, so I feel like my proposal's a good fit. I think firearms in general could benefit from higher AP:DV ratios as well, but that's another story.

I guess, but guns can handle most people much cheaper, that's all.

Yeah, they're definitely niche weapons! The only benefits I can think of - for, say, a rocket - would be area effect, range, and single-shot damage. Sometimes that makes them indispensable, but usually you're better off with an LMG. Particularly since you have to weight all that against the fact that you can fire a rocket from 60 feet away, "hit," and still miss the target by 30 feet.

[edit: With the exception of some 5k range missiles, basically this makes rocket launchers area-effect sniper rifles with slightly better damage, different ammo choices, and many fewer customization options. By and large, I'll take the sniper rifle.]

*bookmarks thread to point to his GM later*

This post kind of inspired me to put my thoughts on missile balance down in text. Just so you know. They are kind of like this.

They should get + hits to damage, like EVERYTHING ELSE in the game.
I think the trend set with AV rockets and AV ammo is a good one ( they get extra ap against vehicles), but isn't enough: Dedicated AV weapons need AP half. This is the main reason gauss rifles, laser weapon, and most elemental-damage weapons(tasers, flamers) are attractive: a high ap value is nice, but AP half is just SO much better. Thus, dedicated anti-tank weapons, like missiles and rockets, should get AP half against they targets they are meant to take out. (this is the big one. Ap Half on big explosives puts them suddenly back into 'dangerous to big targets' range)
With the state of technology in shadowrun, and smartguns being so prevalent, missiles should REALLY come with a stock sensor rating out of the box, at no additional price. It doesn't have to be large, just there: Rockets are there as more of a low-tech alternative. (as a GM, I also tend to assume Device Rating supercedes Sensor rating on drones. It makes bookeeping stock enemy drones easier, as they aren't literally blind half the time. This is part of that, and a bit of guided sensor on a military missile makes some sense.)
Grenades should get a price increase to about 2-3 times what they are now. Right now they are -cheap-, and it shouldn't be more cost effective to grab a grenade as opposed to filling up your gun with bullets. Make them a little more expensive, but not unreasonably so, so people are less tempted to fling them around - and make 'refillable' grenades, like splash and gas, more attractive. Maybe changing ammo prices to be per 20 or 25 instead of 10. At current prices, 'do i want 20 bullets for two full bursts, OR a high explosive grenade' is a valid question, since they're the same price. Grenades SHOULD be deadly, just not as cheap and available as they are now.
Chunky Salsa: Realistic but kind of OP. I feel that half the reason damage falloffs are in the game is just to slightly counteract the rule. Both are also more book keeping that can bog a game down. If grenades have a potential to lose damage(falloff), then they definitely need a way to gain it back due to a good shot(net hits).
Given the opportunity to run my own game, I would probably use the middle ground for scatter distances: 4A's higher dice values, but 4th's better decreases-per-hit. Also moving any 4d6 scatter down to 3d6, like most others, because that's just way too much for a guided missile strike. Also: Allowing Airburst as a common use software package for smartlinks at the same cost, instead of JUST an accessory, which makes a bit more sense.

Perhaps a way to resolve this favorably would be to increase the DV of the varied explosives, or allow the increase of damage after scatter is pulled to zero. Additionally, limit the amount of increased damage on a bullet to 2x the base value of the weapon. So standard heavy pistol would cap out at 10-12 damage. After all, no matter where you place the bullet, there is a finite amount of damage you can do to a target. A .22 isn't going to blow someone's arm completely off, after all. Increased damage from called shots would still apply, and not be affected by that cap. You should be able to get credit for putting the gun to the target's head.

Get an updated PDF... you have the old one. My printed copy of the book has both pages agree on 2d6. (and even explicitly says rockets and missiles reduce from 4d6 or 3d6 down to 2d6).

You're using either a pirated or old copy of the book PDF.



Quite frankly... I wonder how ANYTHING in SR deals with moderately armored vehicles (20'ish... when heaviest tanks are in the 30's) given that the heaviest common weapons have a lot of trouble with it. And the rare stuff like gauss/lasers aren't common enough. And the scatter rules pretty much stop the heaviest anti-tank missiles dead in their tracks. (let alone the need for anti-troll missiles for the non-awakened among us staring at the occasional 40 die damage soak pool troll).

Part of the issue is that SR has pistol ammo costing 2 per and Anti-tank rockets 1000 . Standard pistol ammo is about $0.25 per round or less in quantities of 50 and the absolute cheapest AT rocket I can think of (the cool for 1965 M-72 LAW) is $2250 per in quantities of many thousands. An AT missile, which in SR costs something like 4000 costs more like $65,000 per.

So yeah, they made the cool toys really cheap and affordable, then bitch when the players use them.

Of course, the price I can find on M67 frag grenades say they cost $27.64 per in quantities of many, many thousands vs 35 , so it's backwards there. But they are pretty tightly controlled, the street price is enormously higher than what the DoD pays. Which again points to SR making a cool toy too easily obtained, then bitching about them being widely used.

It doesn't. The mechanics make heavy armored vehicles either immune to attack or turned into a pile of burning debris depending on whether you exceed the armor by one point or not. That part of the rules are totally broken and the devs apparently made a decision that it requires too drastic a change to make it work. Which it likely does. But it means that if you have heavy armor in your game you get stupid results using the rules or you have to make up stuff that makes at least a little sense.

IRL modern tanks are fairly resistant to even reasonably modern antitank weapons - the two Gulf Wars and the israeli visit into Lebanon have shown it, it takes a lot to knock one out. If anything, Shadowrun's tanks aren't armored enough with barely twice the armor of an armored car/truck - when now it's more ten times the armor and more.

But those armor levels are only to the front rather than all-around like in the SR rules - an M1 is about immune to anything you can throw at it from the front, but shoot it in the back and a cheap RPG-7 (though probably with some good ammo) has a good chance to take it out of action.

but in most runs, MBTs aren't opposition, they're scenery. Which means getting realistic rules for them is a minor concern.

I still don't see the need to do +hits, but it shouldn't matter too much if you're also eating hits for scatter (rebalanced, obviously). *shrug* It does, again, add an extra step of complexity as you calculate the target's damage separately from the blast damage.

Yes, I agree that the prices are all crazy.

I honestly can't see any situation where chunky salsa is *not* more trouble than it's worth. Maybe give the base DV a single flat boost if it's a 'confined space', and define that as one thing; clearly, trading realism for simplicity. Unless they're in an *armored* hallway, or you drop the grenade under a tank's hatch, just be happy with the normal DV (rebalanced to reflect how utterly deadly they are).

Emphasis mine.Uh, this is how it USED to work.

No need to rebalance, just reset to the more sense-makey system. Hits on the attack reduce scatter to zero, past that they increase damage. not having surpus net hits add to damage just doesn't fit with the rest of the system, and also leads to (bad) cases where explosives aren't able to damage anything at all.

Just so you know.

Udoshi:

For rockets and missiles it always struck me that using a range dependent scatter worked much better.

Firing a rocket at short range... only 1d6 scatter. Medium 2d6. long 3d6, extreme 4d6... use this to replace the normal -dice modifier for range. Airburst link reduces scatter by -1d6. Or maybe just have airburst link reduce scatter by an additional meter per success.

Or alternatively since missiles are guided... they ignore the range penalty on the attack roll. Rockets don't... then you don't need to worry about sensor grades in the missiles... Another idea is to reduce scatter by 1 per success, with a bonus based on the sensor... (IE: firing a rating 6 sensor missile at something means serious business as each success reduces scatter by (1+6) each...).

There's a lot of potential ideas in there all of which would work better than the current mess.

I don't care how it used to work or not. *Either way*, I don't see the need, the logic, or the point. Explosives are not the same as bullets. You can fix explosive damage without net hits. Just so you know.

Yeah, Falconer, I've seen something like that, and it seems possible.

Yera:
I guess there's no point to the demolitions skill then... since the same amount of explosive should do the same amount of damage no matter how well it's placed.... Same goes for all bullets from guns... placement doesn't matter.

The point is that placement DOES matter.

Under the older rules in order to stage up damage against 1 target (and not other targets in the AOE), you had to attack that target and it got reaction roll reducing your successes (and still having to deal with scatter). Exactly the same as if you were firing at them with a gun. On the other hand a lot of people just went for collateral damage... I'm attacking this square that couch/chair whatever... because they didn't want the chair to 'dodge' the attack so they could place the grenade where it would do good damage to the real targets... (yeah that shouldn't stage up).

Also, only the target got a reaction roll... all secondary targets didn't suffer the damage staging but they didn't get reaction rolls either. (I don't think that's right either... I think everyone in the AOE should have gotten a 'soak' roll of reaction (ducking behind a desk/cover..) + armor + body.

That's apples and oranges, Falconer. 'Set' explosives are completely distinct, and indeed have their own rules for it.

It *is* kind of ridiculous how significant the +net hits is for the Advanced Demo rules, now that you mention it.

As for the Reaction/+net hits issue, you'll find I specifically said 'it's probably okay, even though it doesn't really make sense'. I said it isn't totally unworkable. But, as you clearly described, it's definitely an extra annoying layer of complexity.

The thing about vehicle armor is that the same ruleset is used for minidrones and tanks (and 30 foot tall mechs).