After having watched a lot of Mythbusters, and having done the math on Shadowrun grenades, I'm of the general opinion that they're grossly underpowered.
The average HE grenade in SR is 10P, -2 AP, -2/m. Your average unarmoured human being has 9 Physical, with 3 Overflow. In otherwords, your normal human will 'survive' a grenade blast at ground zero, then proceed to bleed out. Presuming other PCs are around to stabilize him, a normal human has a 100% survival chance against a grenade. A flechette grenade is 12P(f), +5 AP, -1/m. Your average human can survive if they get one Hit on the DV reduction roll. Again, presuming other PCs are around to stabilize him, a normal human has a 100% chance of survival against the grenade. I thought perhaps War would have better grenades, but the damage for these seem to be around 8P.

If I remember correctly, grenades were generally considered lethal out to 5m. In SR, nobody is going to die from a grenade at the 5m mark.

Checking missiles, I get 16P and 14P, with a -4/m and -2/m reduction. This means that at 2 metres, a normal, unarmoured human will survive a missile.

I really think that grenades and missiles should have about +5P or something, and that the reduction to blast should be reduced some. (-1/2 m, perhaps).

Looking at information on grenades (kill out to 8m, casualty to 15), I'd have gone closer to this: 15P, -2 AP, -1/2 m for an HE grenade.


Thoughts?

Yup. Everyone knows this. On the other hand, they're stupid-cheap and easy to get ahold of, so it all kind of balances out. So, making changes, you'd want to make them vastly more expensive and high Avail/Forbidden if you're also going to 'realify' their damage.

The big problem for missiles is that it's hard to actually hit things; they should probably also have very high anti-vehicular AP. But almost everything in the game works better if you dramatically increase the AP, is my theory.

I thought a RL frag grenade was lethal at *well* over 5m.

Yeah, grenades are not designed for realism, but for game balance reasons. If you want to keep them from becoming a huge unbalancing problem, make sure you raise the availability and price in relationship to any increase in power you make. Realistically, injuries should also leave scars and permanent disability, but the rules for that are optional, because realism doesn't always make for a good game. (though the lack of realism bugs me too, once you start trying to fix it you end up playing a simulationist game that has a book ten times as thick for the basic rules)

If you're going for realism, keep in mind that depending upon the type of grenade, they injure at a range that is equal or greater than a person's ability to throw them. Those grenades are designed only to be used defensively, from behind barriers. Chances are runners throwing them haphazardly are going to end up with lots of self-inflicted injuries.

This is what GMs call a "teachable moment."

I don't know if it balances out, the idea that a grenade CAN NOT kill someone just kind of blows my mind. +5 DV for all explosive weapons isn't too bad, I think. I'll need to consider this.

As thorya says: realistic grenades are just impossibly deadly. If they were in the game, then they'd be rightly rare (and, as I said, expensive), and no one could ever use the things.

You're also failing to remember that if someone intentionally tries to get a grenade to detonate at "ground zero" range in relation to a target, it will inevitably scatter to someone or something else you'd prefer NOT to blow up.

~Umi

Since someone using a firearm can call a shot and increase the DV by +4 by "targeting a vital location," I bend the rules a bit and consider when an explosion is hitting one or several vital location, which most explosions do, it should get the same +4 modifier to DV.

It isn't that they should be 'impossibly deadly', it is that they should actually be deadly. No human being should be able to survive a grenade at ground 0. As it stands, anyone can survive a grenade at ground 0, and that's just wrong.

Don't forget about chunky salsa. A single wall within 3 meters of the 0-zone will significantly boost the damage of your standard grenades to lethal levels.

The chunky salsa effect has to be the number one killer in terms of grenade use in the games I've seen.

Toss a grenade at the feet of a guy in an open field? Probably dead, yeah, but I could see him potentially surviving, especially if he hits the deck.
Toss a grenade into the middle of the local Stuffer Shack? I hope you brought a lot of corn chips.

~Umi

"Probably Dead" depends on whether or not the person rolls even a single hit, has any armour at all, blows edge, or has a Body of 4 or more. A normal human has 9 Physical wound boxes, and 3 overflow, and a grade in an open area will not do enough to actually kill the person. This is a problem - apparently grenades are not normally lethal weapons.

Frag grenades are. You're specifically refering to the High Explosives variety.

In real life, most grenades kill via fragmentation. The shrapnel rips you to pieces, and at close range you get a lot more shrapnel hitting you because it hasn't had time to spread as it flies.

A high explosive grenade simply creates a powerful expanding ball of gas, essentially a shockwave. You're gonna be wounded by it, sure, but without a confined area to direct and channel the energy of the blast, most of the energy is going to go around you rather than through you.

Also, if you're going to complain about the lethality of SR grenades compared to RL grenades, you need to also complain about the guns and arrow and knives and everything. How reasonable is it that a normal human shot in the chest with an assault rifle with no armor is gonna live? They're probably lungshot if they don't take the round in the heart and die nearly instantly. But in SR, you can take that 6P round and the +1P from a minimum net hit, stage down NONE of it, return fire and kill the guy who shot you with only a couple dice lost, then continue on your merry way without bleeding to death or suffering from shock.

The point is that nearly everything is more lethal in real life than it is in Shadowrun. So quit yer whinging.

~Umi

The thing is, bullets can 'graze', and the more Hits you get, the more damage it will inflict - up to god-awful levels of damage. Explosives don't get this luxury, they're at a fixed rating, and go downward from there, which is really weird. I think having more damage, then letting it downgrade from that higher damage would be more useful, and give it a reasonable comparison against firearms.

Seriously, 4-5 hits with a firearm is currently on par with a grenade. But a grenade is supposed to inflict whole-body trauma.

So your complaint is that bullets have fewer situations in the rules wherein they defy physics and reality? That because you can stage a bullet up to more realistic levels of damage if you get enough hits, that this somehow makes it any less ridiculous of an abstracted game rule?

You're also forgetting something in the bullet to grenade comparisons - bullets aren't area of effect weapons. You really shouldn't be using grenades against single targets, but rather groups of enemies. Catch half a dozens guards by surprise in a small break room with a single grenade and you might very well do near 100P damage total with the chunky salsa effect.

...not to mention the tactical potential for a weapon than operates as a form of indirect fire, where you can kill people just by getting one through a window or over a wall without actually having line of sight to shoot them.

~Umi

Nothing in a retail store will resist the overpressure. It will blow out the ceiling tiles, blow the lightweight sheet metal shelves apart, etc. In theory you could double the damage due to it reflecting off the ground, but then the guy in the field is dead too.

Well, there IS the Chunky Salsa Rule . .
And technically, you can use the Ground for that too . .

True, you can throw a grenade at a group of people - but unless they're in an enclosed space, you're not killing any of them. And if they're armoured, you're even less likely of killing any of them. That's just it. A grenade, by itself, in Shadowrun, can not kill people. That's what I'm objecting to. The impossibility of doing lethal damage with a weapon that is designed explicitly to kill people. You can 'shoot to wound' with a gun, but you're not expected to with a grenade.

I'll need to consider that. 'The ground counts as a barrier for chunky salsa rules'. Hmm. *consults the rulebook to see how much this will up the damage*
I also like the idea of 'everything is a vital area', for +4DV, too. That might make grenades worth it.

WORTH IT?

They're already fucking cheap as hell and easy to get, you can chuck them out two per IP, you can reduce scatter with Airburst Links, AND that also make them explode the same pass that you fire them! Use a grenade launcher, even the pistol sized six shot one from Arsenal, and you essentially can use them as 10m AoE bullets that automatically get 4-5 net hits - and that's before the chunky salsa effect! HOW IS THAT NOT WORTH IT?

~Umi

Just a Nitpick, but a Normal Human will have 10 Physical Health boxes and 3 Overflow...
Back to your regularly scheduled topic...

A RL modern grenade costs the military about $28 buy. So yeah, cheap as hell.
Having the weapon be as lethal as it should be (kills in an 8m radius, cripples in a 15m radius) is really what I'm looking for. Seriously. That's not too much to ask.

@Tymeaus Jalynsfein

If we're gonna nitpick, we should also point out that a Normal Human also doesn't wear armor and buys hits, so with only 3 Body they stage down nothing and start to bleed to death. Short of getting immediate medical attention, they're dead.

Remember, Runners aren't normal people.

~Umi

Even better. Thanks. Which means even a frag grenade doesn't kill Joe Schmoe in the street.

Yes, actually, it is. For reference, see guns not being as lethal as they should be, melee weapons not being as lethal as they should be, fall damage not being as lethal as it should be, or in fact almost all damage in the game not being as lethal as it "should" be.

"If you're wondering how he eats and breathes, and other science facts;
Just repeat to yourself, "It's just a show. I should really just relax!";
It's Mystery Science Theatre... 3000!"
*guitar chord*

~Umi

Hmm. Normal HE grenade does 10P, a normal human has 10P Health. On three dice, the chance of getting a single Hit is pretty damn good (close to 100%), meaning that a normal human will not even be rendered unconscious from a normal HE grenade at ground 0, and could theoretically still function (not having any damage overflow). That's... actually pretty bad. I was already presuming that normal schmoes don't wear armour. But this also means against someone who IS wearing armour, and IS skilled (corpsec), grenades are going to do even less. Guns become the better option, hands down, for actually killing people. Sure, you might do 1-6 wounds to a group with a grenade, but they're still functional and can shoot back. Guns kill people a hell of a lot more effectively, it seems.

You do know that people survive stepping on landmines, right?
Besides, it is a game... realistic damage is not fun, most of the time.

People regularly survive gunshots. Multiple gun shots. That's nothing new. Same with melee weapons. Again, 'graze' is acceptable. Not every gun or knife is going to hit the most critical parts of the body, killing the person instantly (though it happens). Grenades do whole body trauma. The shockwave goes through the person, doing horrible internal damage as well as what it does to the outside of the body. That is a significant difference.

I'm not familiar with falling damage, it doesn't come up in the game often enough. Though this almost changed when a dragon attacked the airplane the PCs were in. >.> A fall from 2km would have been... interesting.

Yes, it happens. That could be either one hell of a soak roll, or blowing a permanent Edge to survive death - both are things that are possible in the game. However, as the rules stand, NOBODY normal dies from a grenade in the open. 0% fatality. That's just wrong on so many levels. (I wonder how the military explains that anomaly...)

It's actually 70.4% that they'll have at least 1 success, with a 7.4% chance they glitch their damage resistance check.

1) Average Joe noncombat NPCs buy hits, they don't roll. Three dice is not enough to buy a hit.
2) Use a frag grenade and they die even if they do get to roll.
2) People regularly survive gunshots and stab wounds because they get prompt medical treatment.
3) In the real world, people don't have damage boxes and can't walk around nine tenths dead with only moderate difficulties.
4) Everything Ty just said a post above yours.

~Umi

Landmines are frequently intended to maim, not kill. In a war of attrition, it costs the enemy more in the long run to care for wounded soldiers than replace dead ones. Part of the reason of the multi-national ban on them.

Reminds me of the Burn Notice episode where they poured rat poison on ball bearings in a bomb--the coumadin/warfarin keeps a victim bleeding.

Tashiro--

Your line "Guns become the better option, hands down, for actually killing people. Sure, you might do 1-6 wounds to a group with a grenade, but they're still functional and can shoot back. Guns kill people a hell of a lot more effectively, it seems" seems to be at odds with the rest of your post. Unless you're comparing a Sniper Rifle, I don't any weapons that are going to do more damage to a single person per Simple Action than a grenade off the shelf.

Beyond that, two grenades thrown in should take out the group. One per Simple Action, the same way that someone firing a gun would double tap.

Chunky Salsa is never worth the effort. If the game requires it to work properly, you need to change the rules.

It's a rule, like any other. I don't see how it's that unweildy in comparison to most others, especially other complex systems like Demolitions.

If you don't want to calculate it exactly because that's too much work or whatever, but still want to reflect the extra damage from an enclosed space, the GM should simply decide on an appropriate amount of extra damage without calculating it exactly.

~Umi

If you don't see how it's unwieldy, you haven't fully understood it. Agreed, anyway: in such an abstract system, it should just be a simple modifier (if it needs to exist at all).

Really though, I don't see how the game is enriched by having it though. Just make explosives appropriately dangerous, and have them be that dangerous regardless of nearby barriers. As I said, it's certainly not worth the trouble of 3D calculations and huge balance issues.

Well explosives actually ARE more dangerous in enclosed spaces - significantly so. It's one of the basic rules of demolitions.

While the Demolitions skill as written in the Arsenal rules may be unweildy, I can't fault it for not trying to at least strike a balance between realism and game useability. The same pretty much applies for chunky salsa too.

~Umi

I'm not saying they're not dangerous. I'm saying the extra realism is not worth the effort, particularly for Chunky Salsa: very mild realism, tons of complexity, and balance issues to boot. As you said, the thing is easily handled with a simple 'Enclosed Space' DV bonus. The game isn't meant to be (and isn't) realistic, so why start now?

I remember when the video game America's Army came out, it was pretty much the ONLY multiplayer FPS or even only FPS to have realistic grenades, in terms of bigger blast radii and lethality.

The gameplay with grenades was significantly different than what people were used to. But, in my opinion, the realism was cool. It was much more interesting that a well placed grenade could take out half the platoon, or a "death nade" (what happens when you're killed while cooking a grenade) was extremely dangerous and unpredictable.

After playing that game, the extremely minor splash damage caused by grenades in other games just never seemed as interesting or fun.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that everyone thinks grenades will unbalance games if they're realistic, but in my opinion, they add a level of craziness and lethality that really contributes to white-knuckle gaming.

In real life, no one has a problem with 'nade spamming. I mean, they even make automatic 40mm grenade launchers. Jesus, imagine the hell that can unleash.

Mind, the Mythbusters also proved 'chunky salsa' isn't as potent as people expect. (They did the Hitler in the bunker test, and was astonished at how much the explosion was mitigated) But the thing is, I don't mind if the PCs survive an explosion due to armour / cover / other factors. I just want stuff that would normally be lethal to normal human beings to actually be lethal to normal human beings.

Also, I tried to find the rules on NPCs not rolling to mitigate damage, couldn't find it anywhere. o.O

Just selectively so, it seems, because you fixate obsessively on (Heavy Explosive) grenades and zealously ignore everything else "that would normally be lethal to normal human beings" but isn't.

Even using your silly "lethality test" standard, a frag grenade will kill Average Joe. Its 12P wins out versus 3 Body + 2 AP, even assuming they get 2 hits they still take 10P and begin to bleed to death. White Phosphorus is likewise lethal. Ya know what? I think the easiest solution is for you to simply houserule that HE grenades do 11P. Then they, and all other grenades intended to deal damage, pass your test!

Out of curiosity, do you believe gunshot and blade wounds should cause bleeding damage over time? If not, why? It'd be far more realistic and is the primary reason why so many gunshot and blade wounds are lethal in real life. That and shock, which is likewise absent from the rules.

~Umi

First of all, If you want lethal gameplay, use the rules for it. Arsenal (more ways to die, heavy injuries etc.)

The problem here is, that net-hits to increase damage is a integrated meachnism in SR, which is disabled for explosives. Making them... Well, much less effective.

The point is to implement the stuff which makes a granade that dangerous, you need the rules to support it.
For example you could increase the damage of a granade but give additional resistance dice for beeing behind cover or hitting the deck.

Jump to 2 minutes in
Remember this equipment is 60-70 years old (in the 2070's).

*shrug* If 'white-knuckle gaming' means 'go build another character, there was another TPK', yes.

"You see a great white light, make another character."

"Turns out, the Light at the End of the Tunnel was a Freight-Train heading straight for you."

Yeah, that would suck... Oh well, make another character. Fortunately I have tons in reserve.

They ARE F-rated. Rockets and missiles are also hard to get, and ordinary grenades aren't easy either (unless you're a pornomancer).

Well, the current alternative is 'oh, a grenade. Ho-hum.'
Between Body 3+, Armour 5+, Edge 4+, Mystic Armour (over half the group are adepts), grenades aren't going to do anything. I actually had our Technomancer hit by an explosive device, and she walked out of it unharmed, and she's the weakest member of the group. Seriously, that's Not Genki.

Yeah, thats so often the case with changing rules.
"Hey, I don't do any damage to the players, lets spice it up."
"What do you mean, you are all dead?!"

Reminds me of one funny thing. (Not SR)
GM: How much damage did you take at all?
Me: Around 8.
GM: Man, I should have not allowed you to pick up your armor. Was no challange that way.
Me: Then I would be dead.
GM: What!?
Me: Wel. Every attack 4 points more damage would mean at around 40 Damage. I got 25 hitpoints...
GM: But the rest could have help.
The Rest: unconcious/no weapon/no more spells etc...

The point is, increasing the damage by 20% of the base weapon damage does not translate into the players taking 20% more damage. It can translate into players taking 150% more damage...
@Tashiro

So body 3 + armor 5 +mystic armor 6? = 14 dice to soak, making it 5 hits, reducing the granade to 5 Damage. Not nothing I say. Yes, if the grande lands several m away, and you are in the open, yes now it is not a problem. But hell, with that you are able to make a picknick in suppressing fire...