I'll never understand the idea that stun grenades + closed area = chucky salsa... seems like idiocy to me, more like shell-shocked catatonic maybe.
Stun grenades don't inflict physical damage?

The make more sense for the reasons for chunky salsa. Remember, we're talking about blast waves rebounding within the closed environment. A flashbang has three effect, noise, light, and a concussive blast. As such, it much better model's what causes the chunky salsa. On the other hand, a typical frag grenade does not model it as well since most of the lethality of the frag grenade is in the shrapnel, much of which would embed itself in the materials of the wall rather than reflect off the surfaces.

I always thought that chunky salsa was the idea that: Explosive + closed space = fine mist - chunky parts shooting out of small holes or out the top.

Mean-while a flash-band doesn't really produce much of a concussive blast compared to the "explosive" nature of true grenades or other forms of explosives.

Hold a firecracker on your open palm and light it off...

Now hold another one, close your fist and light it off....


Edit...-- just because i feel the need...Kids..DONT try this at home!

Fire-crackers and flash-bangs are two different things. Flash-bangs are chemical reactions via metal that produce light and sound, they are expressly for this purpose. Flash-bangs also do not produce shrapnel, nor explosive force enough to generally knock people flat like a grenade does, it is there but its not the same quality as a true explosive (the grenade has holes in it for the force to escape).

Firecrackers are more akin to true explosives, producing damage through force and flame, concussive grenades were made of pure TnT and used to deal with frogmen and sapper swimmers (think of depth charges).

Grenades utilize shrapnel generally.

Other grenades such as thermite don't even apply and tend to have special purpose.

This sounds like a job for Mythbusters!!!!

Okay...what we need to do is make a firecracker (we will say an inch&ahalfer) sized flash bang, and a dead pig.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M84_stun_grenade

Just saying.

Yeah, I mean for how stupid do you take the army. To develop a stun granade to be used in enclosed environments, where there is the risk of civilians or hostages and just forget to test it in such an environment...

So, no. Stun granades are not subject to the chunky salsa rule... (It is quite obvious since they do not have the -X/m. So they do a destinct damage in one area.

Yeah, that is such a simple fix. A flashbang is not a 'concussive blast' grenade (which is *why* it has a non-diminishing effect, exactly), and it's just easier to do it this way. Especially given the lack of 'stun can't kill you' rules.

Now, what about a fuel-air effect in an enclosed space? To me, it *still* doesn't make sense to use multi-bounce for that, either from a balance or a realism perspective. Basically, there's never a good reason to use that calculation.

I like it! I have not honestly seen a flash bang grenade go off, so after reading the little wiki, and listening to these fine arguments, i would have to concur, no chunky salsa via flash bang.

Actually fuel-air won't work correctly (or possibly at all) in an enclosed space. If the ratio of air to fuel is not correct it won't explod. It might not even burn. Depending on the size of the FAE and the size of the space you might just get wet and smelly. Of course that's RL, in a game it's up to the GM.

-D

Wow, just wow... reading through most of this thread the amount of people who must have failed physics.... That the waves 'cancel' in a circular room (they don't). Similar such effects...


And the amount of people with no understanding of exactly how dangerous a flash bang is IN A CONFINED SPACE.

It WILL blow doors off closets and the like if confined... it's similar to a fuel air explosive or grain/particulate explosion in how it operates. There's a bursting charge followed by an ignition charge. If the blast is confined to LESS than it's normal radius you still have the same amount of material going off in a lesser space == more overpressure == more concussive damage.... Anyone who says flash-bangs shouldn't get chunky based on a reality argument doesn't know what they're talking about.

Besides, the damage is STUN... who cares if it bounces twice or thrice... if it gets 3... you're only up to 18S not enough to kill all but the weakest of suckers... 18S is only likely to knock out someone in a confined space after armor... not much more. All your other explosive nades are doing physical damage... so there is quite a point to flash-bangs.

The M84 is a very poor subsitute for the one in the book... did you note the radius of only 2m!!! (compare to the radius of 10m... 20m diameter on the game book flash bangs!!! that's a hell of a lot more yield!!!).

Hey, at least I admitted I failed physics!

(I couldn't memorize the calculations. The theory I had down pat.).

@Falconer
Honestly, before you tell people they fail in physics you should first check the rules we are talking about.
Nobody wants to run a simulation. The question is, which is the better approximation...
And a flashbang going off 2 m away from your position in an 5x5m room does not kill you.
So an approximation telling it kills you, well is off.

And yeah, building a flashbang which probably KILLs hostages, which have NO Armor and probably only body 2 or 3 is STUPID.

So in this 5x5 room with 3 Walls you end up with initial damage+3 reflections. Giving you a total of 24 damage.

The radius is not 2m, Falconer. The DV decreases on 2m increments, that's all.

The problem is that stun *does* kill, and it adds up to much more than 18S (ridiculously).

Interesting, DMiller; thanks for the save.

My POINT was a M84 flash bang has a 5' range!!!! The flash bang in game has a 33' range. The safety bits about the one aren't applicable to a much larger blast. Also look at the fatalities (such as the cop who had one go off at his feet and killed him... so much for nonlethal: hence the less lethal nomenclature).


And Irion... even in your example the flash-bang is not going to kill you... it's going to leave you knocked out and unconscious since it's doing STUN! You're not talking about a HE/frag doing physical. 2m away.. except for some very specific geometries I only see the thing reflecting into you 3 times for 18S soak. FAR from a killer.

If you're allowing for more than that... then you're not following the rules for blowing out barriers!!! The rules state if ANY hole in the enclosed space is created stop the chunky express. Very few barriers are going to soak 12DV multiple times and NOT end up with a whole or wall blown out of them... The vast majority of building materials for certain won't stand up to more than 2 reflections (for 18S max).




Look earlier in the thread... I suggested simply looking at how much area you have confining the blast... if the grenade covers a 5m radius... and you're in a 3x3 room... double the blast. Simply call the damage increase due to reduced area of effect.

Also, I'm not certain the rule is to be used every time a grenade is close to a wall, but only when the blast is in a confined space like a small room or elevator.

@Falconer
Barriers are kind of immune to stun damage, so the exclamation marks are no help.

And, please, stop saying that DV20+ is far from lethal. Thats more damage than a gunshot. And getting shot by a gun is kind of lethal.


Draw a room. And a square is not a very specific geometrie...
But for you: Take a piece of paper with those little 5X5mm² squares on it. Draw a square with a length of 5 boxes. Make a point in the centere of the square. Thats the granade. Now make another point two squares left of the first. Thats poor buster (Since we were talking about Myth Buster before).
Now, lets say the wall on the opposite side of buster is made out of paper and does not count.
You should end up with something like that

1. The normal damage
2. Damage is reflected from the upper, the right and the lower wall. Thats 3 times. additional to the initial damage, thats 4 times.
3. Poor Buster.
4. And if you want to argue, if the other redirections hit you, jesus just make the room 4X4 m..
5. If you want to play smartass, I will throw in the floor and the ceiling.

I also love that after posting about how hard we failed, he referenced the explosive process of a flash bang when in fact its a metal burning process, more similar to a thermite reaction with a higher degree of light and sound produced than a true explosion (grain or air-burn).

Additionally no, a flash-bang is not a confined blast. Now, no one said a flash-bang isn't dangerous, it is... it is a chemical metal burning reaction that releases massive amounts of heat and light as well as concussive force (mainly because the ingrediants are compacted and stored into a lovely little aluminum fuel container that burns off after rupturing), but to jump to conclusions that a flash-bang in an enclosed space is anymore near as deadly than a high-explosive grenade spraying ball bearings is a joke.

Additionally reread my point... there is no chunky salsa from a flashbang not because it shouldn't receive the rule, but because THERE IS NO SALSA. Shrapnel from a flashbang is non-existent, besides maybe blowing out your ear-drums or rupturing a soft-tissue (like your eyeball), the idea of "chunk salsa" being used to refer to anyone in an enclosed space with a flash-bang seems idiotic to me.

Either way I think you need to tone down on the "you're all wrong" tone, this is a discussion, no one is wrong.

Chunky salsa is just a "plain english" shorthand name for a rule that covers grenades. Just because the effect from massive amounts of stun would not generate a visual "salsa" effect is not indicative that the rule does not apply to flashbangs. The rule applies to grenades, flashbangs are grenades, ergo chunky salsa applies to flashbangs.

Plus "chunky salsa" is a lot easier and faster to say than "Reverberation Blast Radius Damage Calculation".

FTFY

Flashbangs are the sole grenade that can cause issue and that is only because it is the only flat radius with no dropoff in damage that deals damage.

The remaining grenades that have no dropoff do not have damage or do not have damage that would apply multiple times in an enclosed environment. Gas grenades, for example, have the same radius as flashbangs (10m) and they do qualify for chunky salsa, except that the rules for toxins basically make the chunk salsa effect non-existent. No matter what, you can only suffer a single dose per interval.

Ah, I see Falconer. I thought you were saying frag radius was too small, not that flashbang radius was too big. In the end, though, the realism argument is nothing. If it corresponds to fun/balanced, that's gravy, but it can never override them.

Don't get me wrong, from a rules stand-point a flashbang in an elevator will knock you the @!#$ out, but I was just pointing out the idiocy of refering to it as chunk salsa... I would think it would be closer to well tenderized tomato.

But...but...the dead pig...mini flashbang.....but....::sigh::


.....i wanted to blow up the pig....

Makes me want to equip a backpack loaded pair of modular cyberweapon arm'd grenade launchers with flashbangs... To prove a point.

Falconer is right though in that there are a lot of cases of fatalities from flashbangs.

Yes the bright light is caused by burning of magnesium, which flashes to incredibly high temperatures and are very loud.

However, while the explosive radius of a flashbang is very short, they are bright enough and loud enough that if you are looking anywhere near them, you will be blinded out to a very long range. And when detonated indoors, even in a very large room, it will likely cause disorientation to everyone in the room. This is why breach teams using them are trained to throw it around a corner, and get back the heck away. And even so, they don't always avoid the affect of the shock.

my problem with flashbangs is that they arn't effective enough, assuming you take out chunky salsa. The bright light isn't modeled at all. If you treat them as if they also work like Flash grenades out of arsenal then they work better.

Again, "chunky salsa" is a slang term used to refer to the effect produced by lethal grenades. Non-lethal / less-lethal grenades still function under the same physics (and one would assume, same game rules) even if it doesn't produce the same effect of having turned people into red slurry.

Hey, momma always told me it was whats on the inside that counts....and mabye they go chunky salsa/red slurry on the Inside!

Actually to the one poster... find me a cite where a flashbang's explosion cannot cause damage to a barrier. Specifally the damaging a barrier section... barriers != vehicles.

I actually started to make the same point in another thread til I reread the section in detail... there is nothing anywhere stating that it cannot. So any explosive (even a flash bang weak FAE) can blow apart an enclosure. Which makes sense... toss one in a mailbox and watch it fly apart. People don't realize how lethal they can be.



Jeremiah: Distinction without difference
Yes, flash bangs operate by conflagrating metal typically... which was EXACTLY MY POINT. The flash-bangs described in SR4a BBB are weak FUEL AIR EXPLOSIVES. They're not the dainty little M84 with it's confined blast within it's perforated cylinder and puny 1-2m AOE!! (for the stun damage... not for the flash... but this is SR4a if we want blinding flashes in a world of flare comp... you need sustained flash paks and even then they're reduced effectiveness). That's the 3rd time I've stated this... the M84 you keep referencing is puny... it's scooty puff jr... it's more of a 'flash' grenade than a flash-bang doing a lot of damage to a wide area. (again 1.5m vs 10m radius!!! in volumentric terms that's over 125x the energy and yield and damage if the M84 does as much damage in 5' as the flash-bang does in 10m!!! You confine that much energy and you will get higher overpressures).

You could produce a similar effect to a flash bang by taking say powdered sugar... using a small charge to burst it into a fine dust all through the air of the room... then using an open flame to ignite the whole mess. It's not a high explosive (it conflagrates... which is merely a difference in degree in how fast it reacts with the surrounding air). Mechanically it's the same as the description of the flash-bang in the book... (and it makes sense as a weak explosive it would do stun
and overflow into physical).



Irion: reread the confined space bits... as soon as ANY OPENING is available... they say to stop the chunky salsa. I'm not certain that you're supposed to rebound the wave 3 times from 3 different surfaces. You only have one pressure wave going out... that 1 wave comes back (you're instead calling it 4 seperate waves then triple counting the rebound). I'm not even certain reading the section that given the escape vector that you should rebound the damage at all, instead simply funnel the blast out the opening to the normal radius.

That's why I said I'm not 100% certain that we're applying the chunky salsa bits correctly. If applied like you're saying, EVERY GRENADE would have it's damage doubled merely by fact that it has it's second hemisphere bounce immediately off the ground. Yet I don't believe the rules intend this. So why is bouncing off a wall ok... but a floor/cieling not?! If we add those to your example then your poor minion is most definitely red paste.

Toss that on the fact that nowhere in the structure and barrier rules does it state that stun type explosives don't deal damage. (VEHICLES are immune to stun... by virtue of their armor... the rules for damaging barriers are seperate and different!). Then after 1 rebound the vast majority of construction materials are likely to have been blown apart... after 2 you've more than likely blown a hole in something or blown out a door or window.

Toss in a different geometry... a hemispherical room... you're at the center... with the other side wide opening... now the wave goes out hits the wall equally at the same time rebounds... all the waves hit poor brutus at the center again at the same time... does that only count as 1 rebound even though it's coming off the curved wall?! Do I break the wall down into short linear segments and apply calculus... if so the damage sustained is infinite since you get full damage off each reflection.

Square, hexagonal, octoganal... how many walls do you need... you see why I'm saying I'm not certain you're tallying up the rebounds properly!

As such I'm reading this as the blast goes off... you apply the closest rebound once... then if it comes back apply it again and again... each time testing the barrier (again nowhere does it state that stun cannot damage barriers with intent of breaching). Which makes sense... a flash bang can and will blow out weak barriers like windows.

Removed.

There are rules for damaging Barriers on page 166-167 of SR4A.

Umarmed is a category for such damage (Standard DV, unmodified), and since Unarmed Damage is typically STUN, then obviously Stun Damage can destroy a Barrier, if there is enough of it. Like kicking a door down.

accidental repost

So only four direction. That means floor and ceilling do not get any attention

Barrier tests are a mysteries on their own. As a side note: vehicle do not have hardend armor. They just have no stuntrack, so they are not affected by stun.
If Barriers have a stun track? Does not seem reasonable to me. But on the other hand it prevents you from punching through paper. On the other hand we are talking about 10 cm thick and one m² of paper...

Unarmed is *typically* stun, but that's why the Barrier rules specifically have an entry for it. Tasers, on the other hand, don't affect barriers. Unarmed gets a specific non-stun DV for Barriers, a 'translation' value.

Indeed... that is probably a better way to put it.

You mean my burst of SNS won't blast a 1 meter hole in a concrete barrier? I actually have to load something else in my gun? I don't know if my street sam would even know where to go to get such odd ammo.

Actually... in the case of SnS... it's the same as any other bullet... all bullets are a flat base 2DV in the intentionally damaging structures rules. In the case of firing through barriers at targets... I'd rule it's completely ineffective (it discharges on impact with the barrier... and does nothing when it actually hits the target). The single best gun to blow a hole in a barrier is a machine pistol on full auto... (20DV + hits baby.... soaked by 2x armor)

What's really funny is the trollbow... it's a flat 1DV! (all projectile weapons are 1DV per projectile!). It's obviously really really good at punching through and hitting things on the other side of walls, but very poor at actually making big holes itself!


Irion: yes repeatedly... but note they don't say increase by 4x per rebound... the only thing that can be said conclusively about the example is it defines an enclosed space. They don't say it reflects individually off each wall for 4x damage each time... but they say it reflects repeatedly... which could mean it bounces off one wall into another wall then off another wall before finally running out of steam. (sequentially vs simultaneously)

Also other grenades DO have chunky salsa like effects... if I take the dosage of drugs in a gas/chem grenade (enough to cover a 10m radius)... then confine it to a 5m radius... I could easily apply the rules for overdosing multiple doses (lets see half the radius... volume decreases as the cube... that's 8x the dosage to anything in the area of effect... increase the power of the drug by +8 by the overdosing rules....). So once again, you're showing a lack of imagination on how confining the blast effects can have a mechanical impact by the strict rules.


Just to keep things simple and 2-dimensional, we'll assume a cylindrical space 3m tall and 2m radius. (sorry I don't buy that floor/ceiling don't count... if anything they give the GM an easy out!! yeah it's a corporate space... the cieling is those tiles and you the explosion blows out through them... rather than being confined in a tight space, but if you treat the blast as multiple individual waves instead of only one single continuous wave front it makes the problem worse).

Wave goes out... hits wall comes back... hits other wall.. comes back... hits wall and dies out. That's 3 times in a 2m space cylindrically... for only 18S (and 12dam soaked 3times by the walls probably blowing them out long before that).

Now if I replace the cylinder with say an octagonal cylinder... suddenly because they're planes instead of a continuously curving surface now I suddenly multiply the number of times hit by 8. That's exactly what you're saying, the rules never say it. Only infer a closed space with 4 walls and you assume it means 4x the damage based on the example.

The fewer faces I use to approximate the sphere... the less 'spherical' the space becomes... and instead of a continuously curving surface I end up with a set of lines... this somehow causes the blast to get more powerful?! Rather than focusing the blast back in on the victim this actually causes it to spread out more. Yet even in this case... if we treat it as a *SINGLE* blast wave bouncing off multiple surfaces (AS IN THE EXAMPLE... treating it like the sphere still only produces 18S). Far from a fatal figure... though I'd hate to be the guy caught in that elevator.

@Falconer

Repeteatedly off each wall.
The maximum is four walls.
That means, the blast is considered to be four waves going in seperated directions with an 90° angle between them. Thats really not that hard.

So you are standing in the middle of an hallway, 2 m wide an a granade explodes besides you.
10(initial)+2*8+2*6+2*4+2*2= 50 DV

The problem is, that you can't have a single blast wave, if you have multible targets. One right from the granade one left. Who gots hit by the blastwave?
The rules are kind of clear in this aspect. Four blast waves, rebounce only limited by "range" of the explosives" if the walls are tough enough.

And sorry, 18S is pritty much deadly. Thats about 6 physical. Thats about the damage of a GUN. Guns are lethal.
Just because you can survive it... The chance of a guy with body 2 to glitch is more than likely, even to throw in a critical glitch.

Actuallly if you look at the basic rebounding rules they strongly imply to draw a straight line from explosion to target, and then past that to the barrier, and the same in the other direction. That means the most that can ever affect one target is two waves - the direct wave and the indirect wave. And since there is no angled reflection other than 90°, as far as I can tell, just standing a meter short of the grenade, and not having a right angle is enough to only get base DV - distance mod.



Once again these rules are mess, so you'll just have to find a convenient way to run things.

You know, all this confusing mess of counting rebounds, whether stun damage affects barriers, and whether that barrier survives to continue rebounds is why I suggested my rule. Much Much Much easier from the GMing perspective and prevents 100+ damage flashbangs.

I was not talking about the concentration rules for toxin. I was talking about the multiple dose rules of toxins and applying that rule to chunky salsa. What you've described isn't chunky salsa anyway. If I were to apply chunky salsa to a gas grenade, in a 5x5m room, then I would see the "wave" of neurostun would hit someone in that room 8 times total which would mean that by chunky salsa the subject would suffer a neurotoxin with 80 power, or 80 stun damage plus the other effects.

So, as I said, flashbangs are the sole grenade which causes ugly issues with chunky salsa because the other grenades that -could- cause issue do not pay heed to chunky salsa rules because of the concentration and multiple dose rules. In fact, if we were only to pay attention to chunky salsa for gas grenades then that would create a ridiculous situation where by a person in the room when the grenade goes off has to deal with a 80 power neurostun toxin, yet someone who teleports into the room has to deal with a 10 power neurostun toxin (since they never got hit by waves of neurostun).

Nor would chunky salsa apply to gas grenade anyway. The rules say it increases the DV of the blast. Gas grenades do not have a DV so they are not affected by it.

Not quite, thorya. RAW, S&S do normal damage against barriers, because *all* bullets have a single 'translated' DV against barriers. Which is not just crazy for S&S, because it means EX-EX damage walls the same as Subsonic, etc.

Brainpiercing, that's kind of the point/problem: the rules vaguely-imply-but-don't-actually-say how to do the various blast paths. In theory, you have to calculate the complete system (all paths off all walls), which is obviously crazy. But it wouldn't have killed them to *say* so. Even then, the 90° method is not just totally arbitrary, but it assumes a 'spherical cow' (a rectangular room), so that's another helpful but lossy abstraction that it's nice to know for *sure*: 'Yes, this is vastly oversimplifying, but let's just say that the blast bounces along two paths directly and uniformly off any barrier, be it a car, perfectly flat steel wall, whatever.' And then, as you said to Irion, you do this for each target separately…

Agreed, ZeroPoint: the *easiest* solution is some kind of straight modifier based on context (by analogy, Perception tests have a -2 'distant' penality, not an exponential formula for distance in meters). Which is why I mentioned it two days earlier, and in response to someone *else's* even earlier point :So we need someone to run the numbers and test!

We're not showing a lack of imagination, we're showing restraint in applying rules to situations where they should not apply. If you want to show imagination, recommend a fix or offer your own interpretation instead of ONLY arguing with any and every point made.

Does that mean a shotgun loaded with Buckshot would still only deal 2DV? I would think it should deal 16 (00 buckshot typically has 8 pellets at the equivalent of .33 caliber.)

Where is this 'translated' DV against barriers text located?

166 of SR4A

So Birdshot for the win? Not even reinforced titanium bombshelters stand a chance against the might of number 9 birdshot!

No, ZeroPoint, because a shotgun shell in SR4 doesn't contain 'bullets' for barriers. According to a barrier, the shell *is* 'a bullet' (which is amusing, I know).

If we get Newton spinning in his grave, we can harvest him as free energy, right?

I doubt there will be much left to spin in his grave. Now a slice of buttered toast glued to the back of a cat....