On the Scatter table for Grenades (SR4A, page 155) there is mention of Sensor rating reducing scatter for Airburst grenades. Unfortunately this is the only mention of the use of Sensors for grenades, unless I missed it somewhere else in another section or book (which Shadowrun is notorious for spreading rules all over the place).

Does the table suggest that regular Sensors (SR4A, pages 333-334, and Arsenal, pages 59-61) can be placed on individual Airburst-ready grenades? If so, which sensor would be reasonable to suffice?

Grenades don't have sensors and aren't guided munitions. The entry on airburst is there for missiles (page 156... rocket and missile scatter). They're guided weapons and you'd subtract the missile's sensor rating from it's scatter roll.

If you read the rules text on page 155 (text trumps tables), you'll also notice thrown grenades are -1 success. Aerodynamic & GL's are still -2 per hit. The airburst scatter is 2d6. (under some printings the text on p322 still has this wrong as 1d6. It's supposed to be 2d6 scatter).


If you had a missile launcher on your vehicle... you'd fire the missile using gunnery + (command/sensor/agility) + (higher of missile or vehicle sensor rating). Net hits would reduce scatter, sensor rating of the missile (not the vehicle) would reduce as well.

Okay, the table was misleading since the text said that Airburst grenades roll 2d6 for scatter instead of 3d6, and in the table Airburst is listed as 2d6, I figured that entry applies to grenades.

It's great the core rules are misleading and offer no proper explanations.

If you think *this* is a tricky rules point, I advise you not to read the rest of the book.

Copy-paste errors in the transition from 4th to Anniversary edition. They unnecesarily nerfed scatter, because oh no, grenades are deadly.

Just use 4th edition scatter, its way less dumb.

"Our explosives rules suck, our rules for grenades suck and we have no idea how to fix them, so we'll make it impossible for anyone to hit with a rocket or grenade to make up for it."

The original 4th Ed book has the same erroneous "- Sensor" in the entry for Airburst, you quoted ityourself

Just because you can apply an Airburst Link to a Grenade does not magically make the grenade capable of carrying a Sensor Package. You would use the (- Sensor) tag for Guided Rockets and Missiles.

Wasn't the solution for grenades to aim for a square or object that is unable to defense to avoid painful scatter? I know my character can throw a grenade 80 meters and roll 9 dice so that should be, at worst, 1d6-2m for scatter, and I'm not even heavily vested in throwing weapons.

We just use them as Direct Fire weapons, and only use scatter if you miss... Works for us.

Sooooo I directly throw the grenade at a square on the ground which is incapable of defense?

IIRC, they eventually explicitly banned that.

Which just shows me that they have no clue what they are doing.

Sorry... Direct Fire for Grenade Launchers, Rockets and Missiles.
Thrown Grenades have scatter as normal...

No they didn't ban that.

If you try and attack a person yes... the roll is opposed. If you take a severe dislike to the interior decor especially that gauche office chair and decide to shoot it instead. That's good as well. (I've always said everyone in the blast radius should get a check to take cover from the blast and treat it as extra distance).

War even explicitly added a direct fire mode for trying to shoot things without scatter with a normal ranged attack test.

Too late. My head hurts every time I read the rules.

I have very successfully used Gecko Grip and cheap flying drones to deliver grenades.





-k

Just the other day, I was thinking that Gecko Grips are cheap enough to put on grenades, particularly if its one-mod-per-10-ammo if your GM plays enough TF2 to say stickygrenades exist.


Not useful for directly reducing scatter, but GREAT for traps.

As an example, if you have opponents taking cover behind, say, crates in a warehouse, and you want an airburst grenade to go off between and just behind two of those crates in order to catch two opponents in the blast, what kind of roll do you (currently) face? What if, instead, the opponents are drones zig-zagging across open terrain so fast that it's hard to get a direct hit with bullets?

I remember that there used to be some heated debates on this exact topic, and there never seemed to be a good compromise; GLs either targeted the ground at someone's feet with miraculous accuracy, or else an opponent taking a full dodge action meant you couldn't get a grenade within his Zip Code. Has that changed?

Actually they did. If there is anything living within the blast zone, you MUST roll an opposed test.

How about backing that up with an actual rules quote Draco... oh wait you can't. You're making up things you *MUST* do without any cited authority. At least I backed up my position with an actual rules pointer to a published rulebook.


The closest to anything you're saying is the FAQ (which is not RAW, and should only be taken as an indication of intention). Says there *SHOULD* (not *MUST*) be a roll... but then stops short of answering any of the really thorny problems which it then brings up. There are 3 rent-a-cops at the donut dispensor... you toss the grenade... which one rolls the dodge?! (the dodgemonkey... or the fattest one!... why does the fattest benefit from the dodgemoney or vice versa). Grenades by their very nature attack an area, not a person.

Not once in the rulebooks does it ever say you can't attack an immobile target which can't dodge and screw everyone else over in it's vicinity. Which is the reason this question comes up. The RAW does not disallow attacking an immobile inanimate object.

Given that targets have a full IP to run away from the blast zone I don't think it's an issue. (remember movement is split over all the available IP's.


In War (p140) they further altered the published rules (after the FAQ... so I take that as a clear indication of change in RAI). For contact fused grenades fired from a GL at least... they act just like any other direct fire weapon. You fire it at a target... you stage up the damage with net hits just like a normal bullet... and if it misses only then roll scatter! (I like it, it makes the underbarrel GL with HE grenades a viable anti-vehicle weapon... even if the blast radius is a bit of a drawback compared to a panther cannon).

At least I back up my posts, don't get into a nya'ah I'm right, you're wrong posts.



Onto other things:
I'm not hostile to each and every person getting a roll to reduce damage when a grenade goes off. (make the explosion appear farther than it really is as a game kludge). But I acknowledge that as a house rule. (I'm against one person affects scatter for everyone in the blast zone). This is mostly for people attacking the floor type situations and the problems inherent in attacking multiple people with an area attack. (see area spells, or suppressing fire for similar situations).

The gecko-grip idea is a good one. Though the rules allow you to contact fuse, so it seems superfluous except for trap purposes (either tripwire or command det). And really you want to try and toss a grenade that is as likely to stick to your hand as to the impact point. (I'd definitely treat a glitch the same as ex(-ex) ammo... and most people don't have good thrown weapon dice pools.. making glitches far more likely! *evil GM laugh* ).

I've been known to use bust-a-moves with grenades duct-taped to them as well. bust-a-move + gecko grip... instant suicide drone bomb for fairly cheap. Oh no, they're getting away... 'ka-boom' I had a bust-a-move sneak under their car and attach to their undercarriage near the fuel tank!

Yes, there is a success test version to get the grenade to be somewhere specific. However, if that was intended to be used all of the time even when there are living targets in the blast zone, then the opposed test version wouldn't exist.

And then we wouldn't have posts like this one:


Q.E.F.D.

(Quod Erat F*cking Demonstrandum)

I'm still going to get into a Missions game at some point and be a demolitions expert with an intense hatred of furniture.

Draco:
It says the target. It never says the target must be living. Which is entirely the point. That target could be the guard... or the wall behind the guard, or even the donut dispensor. Walls aren't known for their ability to roll reaction and dodge. You haven't done one thing in RAW to support your assertion. Only quoted text which doesn't say what you claim it says.


You claimed that if there is anything living in the blast radius... it *MUST* be opposed by that living target. Your words not mine. That's what I took issue with. Nowhere not once does it state your target must be living (especially if there's multiple living and unliving targets in the blast zone). That's why I say you're making up things which aren't in the rules, and which the rules in War directly contradict. (there are no rules saying I can't shoot the chair with a predator IV, and I can fire the contact-fused GL just like the predator in that case).


Similarly... in a fast moving situation like say vehicle chase... simply dropping the grenade on the ground isn't good enough. Room to room fighting is kind of static. If trying to hit a moving vehicle with a slow moving grenade... then yeah it's going to be opposed. Since you need to hit the right patch of ground to get one moving item with another.

Walls and doughnut dispensers are still locations. They lack a "reaction" stat and therefore cannot dodge and therefore are not targets capable of an opposed roll.



If there is a living target in the area that can dodge, you cannot target an area, or the opposed roll rules are extraneous and should not exist.

Yes Draco... and this argument does nothing to address changes in RAW since the publication of War.


Furthermore, NEVER does it state that the target chosen must be capable of an opposed roll. You're inventing an additional requirement which IS NOT PRESENT. This has been hashed out quite a few times in the past. Search the forum archives.

Which is why I'm accusing you of making up house rules and asserting them as RAW when the written and published rules never once say anything of the sort. The rules here aren't even grey.

But that is simply an opinion, and not Fact. Just use the rules for Direct Fire Grenades and you are set. At that point, Scatter only matters if you miss (Obviously does not apply to thrown Grenades)...

WAR! doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned.



If an opposed roll is not required, then why is the rule even there? Under what circumstances would it ever come up where the unopposed version would not qualify?



And obviously doesn't apply to this conversation about thrown grenades.

but per SR4a pg 324



So I don't see why you couldn't have hand grenades set up to detonate on impact and use direct fire rules with those. Or even remote command if your timing is good.

While I agree that the scatter rules are silly, poorly written, and circumventable, I am merely trying to argue "what RAW is trying to say."

In any case:

Impact detonation + Throw Anything = No Scatter. You don't even need the direct fire rules.

(If I have enough hits to bean the guy with a baseball sized object, and said object detonates on impact, what scatter?)

Thats really the way I look at it too. I don't know what the direct fire rules are, but this is the way I would run it.

You're throwing a grenade through a window that is occupied by a target. It's simply impossible to target behind the target since it is obstructing any targets behind it. Hitting to either side of the window protects the target from most if not all of the damage.

The rules are clear. There's hardly ever a reason to target a person with a grenade, as opposed to a location, but those occasions can pop up, and when they do, there's a rule for it.

Target the window, then. That's a location.

Hit the window, inside it goes...

Actually, I would target a space within the room, and increase the threshold of the success test in accordance with that space effectively being granted cover by the wall. If you fail, roll scatter from the window as ground 0. Any results that throw it forward beyond the window/wall mean you got lucky and it bounced on the inside of the sill and continued forward. otherwise it bounced back out.

This would by my GM on the fly call.

Next time you're throwing an object through an opening, stop and think about what you're actually trying to accomplish in a mechanical sense.

99% of people would indicate that "through the opening" is the objective, and where the object goes after that is irrelevant and that what they're doing is to aim for the opening and it's not comparable to aiming for a point on open ground.

That is known as RAI, or Rules As Intended, not RAW.

RAW is what is present in the black and white text, nothing more or less.

RAW generally cannot be argued. It simply is.

RAI gets argued all the time.




-k

While true, with your ruling then you would be aiming for the air in the window, so you would have to roll scatter since its not going to impact or stay in the window. In which case your rolling scatter with the window as ground 0 again, and you only have a 50% chance of it ending up in the room (because of stupid scatter rules).

Your other option that would require a higher level of GM intervention is do it as you say (which would have the same difficulty threshold test as I described above) and aim for the window, then somehow extrapolate where in the room its going to land as ground 0 for scatter/impact detonation.

1st option is just stupid while the 2nd option lacks clear guidelines. The option i described in my previous post, while it may not necessarily describe a real individual's thought process will better model how to handle the situation without without causing crazy stupid results and without making the GM play a guessing game.

I'd run scatter on the vertical plane: above/below the window rather than inside/outside the window. If it's off by enough to hit the wall, THEN it's outside the window, otherwise it's in the room. This is not an unreasonable extension of the rules as written, and should be used for missiles and rockets.*

If it's in the room, then I'd treat ground 0 as any location within direct LOS the thrower has that they desire (or GM fiat, but I'd give it back to the player, as they rolled well enough to get it through the opening).

If it isn't in the room, then it lands outside the building, and ground zero is a meter away from the wall left/right as per scatter (if it went high or low, then it's still a meter away from the wall directly below the window, as grenades are inelastic objects).

*Missiles and rockets treat scatter on the vertical plane, where the line from shooter to target is treated as the surface normal (in 99% of cases, it will resemble a vertical sheet of glass with the flat face towards the shooter). If the projectile misses, then it continues to travel in a strait line until it hits something (can generally be abstracted to "collateral building damage").

What you mean is that the RAW ideally can't be argued. Sometimes different interpretations of a piece of it can be reached, usually due to either a word in it having more than one possible definition, or in its relation to to sentences it is separated from with punctuation.

The intent behind a specific phrase or wording can be argued, especially if it's written badly.

But if the text says, "A is A", you cannot really argue that it doesn't say "A is A". You might reasonably argue the meaning and intent behind the text, but that is RAI, not RAW.

Blindly following RAW is stupid, but confusion occurs when people aren't using the same definitions. Draco may be right, but clearly he has a different idea of what "RAW" means than others do.




-k

The stated objective by CGL was to nerf grenades by making them scatter all to hell.

The fact that they can't write decent rules that don't have at least 3 different interpretations is how SR has pretty much always been. "Sell the sizzle, not the steak" was the FASA motto, and they didn't spend any more effort on the steak (rules) than they needed to.

Which again, only works if the text is clear. Unfortunately, too many people here conflate their interpretation with RAW.

That's why I said "erroneous '- Sensor'"...

Hmmmmm... Gotcha.
Only Erroneous if you try to apply it to a Grenade, though.