Seriously? This can't be intentional, nobody would willingly put a mechanic that clunky into a finished game.

I don't see any grammatical errors, or omissions. It would appear that they wrote it and intended it to be used as such. I know it's fun to dig at the game, but I'd actually like them to make useful changes to the ruleset (correcting errors, fixing references, that sort of thing). I get that you're frustrated but this type of comment doesn't really aid the discussion any. Not for nothing, it looks similar to previous editions.

/rant over.

-DrZ

Uh:

An explosive’s Damage Value is calculated
as its Rating (modified by the Demolitions Test,
if you made one) times the square root of the
number of kilograms used (rounded down).

yup. what's your point? square roots are not exactly super-advanced math. you should know up to 10 by the time you're out of high school, and anything beyond that should be planned for anyways. for example, you'll most likely have to actually find someone who will sell you more than 100 kilograms of explosives in the first place, because that's the kind of thing that pretty much screams "we're going to make the front page news (or equivalent) and draw a lot of heat for whatever it is that we plan to do with this stuff".

So, for Commercial Explosives, Rating 5:

1 kg = 5 DV
4 kg = 10 DV
9 kg = 15 DV
16 kg = 20 DV

etc.

Like I said; there are no grammatical errors. This is how they intended it. You want a bigger bang, you're going to need to purchase explosives, and the amount you need increases exponentially.

There are hundreds of threads to complain about the game system, this one is to correct errors so when I end up buying a dead tree copy they get the pages labeled correctly. I don't really care if you don't like how the rule works, a passive aggressive, "well surely they didn't mean it to be THIS complicated" doesn't advance the discussion any.

Note the 'modified by Demolitions test' bit.

It is an absurdity that I can only assume is unintentional to put a damage code in that must be calculated on the fly with each use, especially when requires more advanced math than simple arithmetic.

I mean, seriously, the damage code is :

Rating + (Successes on Demolitions + Logic) x sqrt(number of kilograms of explosive)

Then modify for blast shape and location :




That's not even going into actually getting through a barrier.

So, say you slap a quarter kilo of minimum rating plastique in a shaped charge onto an apartment door to blow it in. Logic + Demolitions scores four successes. So our equation looks like this :

[6 + 4] x sqrt(.25) = 10 x .5 = 5

So we've got a DV 5 explosion.


Now then, onto what happens when it goes boom.

First, the barrier gets to roll a damage resistance test, with structure + armor. Given this is a standard door, it has Structure 2 and Armor 4 per the chart on pg 197. However, since this is an explosive placed up against the door, we're not done with the math and ready to roll yet. Per the 'Damaging Barriers' chart on page 198, explosives in contact with the barrier get to use Base DV times two. As this section quotes a completely different method of blowing up a door than the one under Demolitions :



We're going to go with the one under Demolitions on Page 436 as that's what we're illustrating.

We're going to assume the Base DV of this explosive is the one calculated above, despite it having the results of a demolitions + logic roll added in, for sake of brevity here. So the next roll is as follows :

2 (structure) + 4 (armor) dice rolled vs 5 (base DV) x 2 (per damaging barriers chart)

So 6 dice vs DV 10.

Assuming average roll, the barrier gets 4 successes. This leaves 6 DV unsoaked, which is more than the 2 structure the door has, and thus the door has been damaged!

Per 'Damaging A Barrier', page 197-198, The remaining 6 successes are divided by the door's structure to determine the extent of the damage. 1 square meter of hole is generated per multiple of the structure left over in DV. Thus here, a 3 square meter hole would be generated.

We'll assume most apartments don't have a 3 square meter door. Now back to page 436!



The penetrating a barrier section on page 197-8 doesn't actually have any specifics at all as to how you actually destroy a barrier, only how to punch a hole in one. In this case, I'm going to go with the assumption that if the hole is larger than the object, that object is destroyed.

This door has clearly been destroyed!

Therefore, anyone on the other side of this door needs to soak :

The 5 DV (AP-2) (Minus 1 DV per meter as this is a directional explosion) explosion/blast effect itself.

-AND-

The secondary shrapnel explosion, at :

5 (Explosion DV) - 2 (structure rating of the door) with a Blast of -1 per meter.

So the door is gone, and the guy standing behind it is soaking two hits, one at 5DV (AP-2) and one at 3 DV.

As this is a shaped explosion, the people on the outside of the door do not have to soak it as well. If this was a standard spherical explosion, they would have to soak 5 DV (AP-2) -2 per meter from the door.

I have intentionally assumed this apartment is big enough that we don't have to calculate the chunky salsa effects, as well.


Now we move on to the next combat turn.


You see the number of assumptions I had to make up there? This is why I'm asking if this is an errata point, because there are details missing and conflicting rules in these two sections that need clarification. Also, there's a typo in the earlier part of that same rule on page 436. The rules for barriers are not on page 194 as quoted, they're on page 197.

Again, you're free to suggest that it's overcomplicated (and you certainly have basis), but it is not something for the errata thread - and is in fact the same method used in SR4. This is a discussion that needs to take place outside of this thread.

While I agree that the rules are (perhaps needlessly) complex, I have created a spreadsheet that will calculate the relevant numbers for any given rating of explosives, demolitions + logic skill pool, and kilograms of compound used.

Click here to view it: http://goo.gl/96Dacq

You will need to make a copy to edit/use it.

If my math is correct, the sheet will accurately provide both a rounded and unrounded value of the explosion DV (for both arbitrary explosions and explosions set off in contact with a surface) as well as display the average size of a hole blasted into various barriers and the resultant shrapnel cloud DV and radius.

I'm sorry I just have to nitpick here because this makes me cringe. You describe a quadratic function as being exponential: they are not equivalent. An exponential function here would grow ridiculously too fast, whereas the quadratic function is actually manageable.

Thank you for not being the only one who cringes at stuff like that. The quadratic (or even more precisely the root function) is not only somewhat simple, it is also astonishingly realistical in its boundaries. A really big blast needs a lot of explosives, while even little stuff does some damage. This is also consistent with the damage of grenades and rockets. The only problem I have with that personally, is that it is actually too realistic compared to the rest of the game (and chunky-salsa, of course).

Both rules are holdovers from when damage level and power weren't intrisically connected.

And everyone loves salsa.

I prefer Picante.... But will definitely enjoy me some Salsa.

I'm not sure where you get that. A HE grenade has a damage code of 16P for 100 , roughly equivalent to a kilogram of rating 16 plastique for 1600 or ~9.5 kilos of rating 5 Commercial explosives, which would run you 9500 .

Note the massive increases in cost and bulk to come anywhere near the same level of damage. Apparently someone's putting very, very high quality explosives in those little grenades, and somehow got them exceedingly cheap.


I'd very much agree with this being more than a touch too realistic to work with the rest of the combat rules, though.

or they're just scoring an awful lot of hits on their demolitions test.

p. 184 -- "if a vehicle breaks contact a new target lock must be acquired. This can be done by using an action to evade detection ...'
p. 189 -- Defender Unaware of Attack -- "if the defender is behind cover, the defense dice pool is determined by the cover according to the defense modifiers table (187)." No such numbers in the defense modifiers table on 189. The melee modifiers table on 187 is also lacking them.

OK. Challenge accepted. A RGD-5 grenade (picked randomly from Wikipedia) contains 110 g of TNT. It is the equivalent of a fragmentation grenade. I am modeling the fragments as debris with a structure rating of 0, so the damage is -1/meter. So you got a blast DV of 1/3 rating + hits at -1/meter. The fragmentation grenade in the book has a DV of 16 and costs 100 Nuyen. For 99 Nuyen, I can buy 110g of rating 9 foam and would need 13 hits on my Demo to make up the difference. Not that unrealistical, considering the team work and effort that flows into building a highly-specialized and mass-produced product such as a grenade. More hits obviously increase my winning span.

Now, if I were a rule-book writer, I would rule that the grenade just gets its natural DV from the blast at a maximum of 8 for the highest rating explosives available and replace the Demo test with a Throwing test, which would be deadly enough, in my opinion. The price would then be around 300 per grenade. Probably less, given the higher availability of grenades, due to military campaigns in which selling of your equipment is part of your pay check. But I am not and my opinion does not count.

Still, my point holds: the explosive rules are consistent with themselves and the rest of the rulebook.

Take ten seconds and remember this is SR5. What would your Limit have to be in order to be able to make 13 usable hits on that test. 6/6/6 still only gets you a Mental Limit of 8.

The scenario you're laying out makes sense, the rules as written just don't support it. The demolitions rules call out that each hit on a Demolitions + Logic [Mental] Test
adds 1 to the explosive’s effective rating. This is not listed as an extended test, so your Mental limit is as far as you can really go on it.

He did mention that this test would be equivalent to a teamwork test (and I agree). As soon as 6 people were involved in the fabrication, your 6/6/6 guy's limit has gone up to 13.

I think you really wanted to disagree without really reading what was said.

And to be fair, the rules already don't support a "mass-production test".

You can project whatever motivations you like, it's the internet after all. But at the same time, 'the rules make sense if you add assumptions that the rules don't support' is about as far from a good argument for the rules as written being consistent as you can get.

honestly, i consider the dice pool that consistently generates 13 net hits to be a bigger anomaly than the limit being 13. there's probably some highly advanced piece of industrial equipment that can trivially give you at least a few points to your limit in the setting, and teamwork tests make raising the limit fairly easy regardless. but a dicepool to generate 13 hits consistently, you're looking at 52-55 dice (to get consistent, you need to use the 1:4 ratio that lets you skip rolling). that's quite a bit

Bet TJ can do it with 26.

But who cares really? The rules don't tell you how machines that mass produce grenades are made. They don't tell you what kind of test to make in that scenario. You are trying to apply rules to a part of the world not covered by rules. Of course it seems a bit off. The assumptions are not from me, they're from you. Where in the rule does it say that grenades have 110g of explosives anyway? Why would the industry buy explosives at street value? Why wouldn't there be some kind of extended test to build machines that build grenades? WOuldn't that "test" be made by engineers working on the blueprint? So then why would you need to make that "test" "consistently"?

I think you are all looking at a problem that doesn't exist at all. It's not inconsistency in the rules if the rules just plain don't cover it.

It is a bit of an inconsistency if the greatest explosives expert in the world is, per the rules, incapable of replicating a bog-standard and inexpensive mass produced product without resorting to using incredibly high-rating and thus massively expensive base materials, but that's just me being picky.

again though, not a typo, so why not debate this in a separate thread?

Apologies for exponential / quadratic malarky. Words can hurt- I know more than most.

-DrZ

Seeing as how I despise the Limit Mechanic, and will never run a SR5 Game. *shrug*
I can see it happening, though, from time to time (dice do some crazy things, and I tend to hit closer to 45% than 33%) with 26 dice (though I would place bets on the average of 8-9 Hits).

I'm not convinced of that myself. But more importantly: it's a game, there will be tons of inconsistencies related to that fact.

Game rules for gaming action, players and their characters. The reason we play this game is not because we wonder oh how do they put caramel in the caramilk, i.e. explosives in grenades. It's not because every tiny detail is consistent with tests and whatever. If it's not an important part of the game, or something that should require tests, then it's left untouched, as it should. Otherwise you'll have to make up tests for everything and nothing, not only designing grenade machines, but also correcting exam copies, painting the outside of your house, hammering a nail in dry wood, or a test for being elected president, for falling in love...

Come on, we're gamers, we're not trying to reproduce every aspect realistically and with consistent tests. It's not a major flaw of the game that it's mysterious how to build grenades from explosives. I recall we're imagining ourselves in a world with magic and dragons after all. If you want to talk about errata, focus on useful things please.



Agreed.

Which is a perfectly fair argument to have in a different thread.

page 206: "In both cases, healing is handled as an Extended
Test."

healing is not handled much like an extended test at all. the only similarity is that there are multiple rolls; however, you (presumably) do not lose dice on subsequent rolls, and hits are immediately applied to your healing rather than being applied towards the eventual completion of some task.

likewise, on page 207, when discussing the specific process for healing stun damage, we have: "Make a Body + Willpower (1 hour) Extended Test." and for physical damage: "Make a Body x 2 (1 day) Extended Test." (edit: to clarify, the problem with these two statements is the part about them being an extended test).

in contrast, the rules for extended tests indicate that

"Extended tests cannot last forever; at some point,
characters reach the limit of their abilities, and further
efforts will do them no good. To simulate this, with each
successive roll on an Extended test, players should remove
one die from their dice pool. Eventually they’ll
have no dice left, and the test will be over."

and

"roll, Extended tests allow you to make repeated rolls and
then accumulate the hits you made in each roll until you
either reach the threshold, you run out of time because
there’s something else you need to do or because people
start shooting at you, or you run out of rolls."

and further has discussion on the exact effects of glitches and critical glitches which do not match up at all with the rules for healing.

so yeah... healing is not an extended test. it is a series of simple/success tests.

p. 271 - The example allows Spike an automatic check to locate all silently running icons. Each silently running icon makes it's Logic + Sleaze checks and if gets fewer hits than the Matrix Perception test is spotted/located.

p. 236 - The above example directly contradicts the rules on p. 236 where they state "...if there are multiple silent running icons in the vicinity, you have to pick randomly which one you're going to look at through the Opposed Test".

I much, much prefer the rules in the example since even one person could have a hundred silently running icons making the hacker worthless if he needs a separate test mechanic to spot each one.

Vehicle-related rules shortcomings -->

p. 205 - "Evasive Driving" - references being like the Full Defense action but also mentions it is a "Free Action". This should be referred to as an "Interrupt Action"

p. 204 - "Catch-up/Break Away" - there is reference to a "maneuver Threshold", but it is very unclear how to derive that value. There is a table on p. 199 for Vehicle Test thresholds, but it is not intuitive whether the catch-up/break away would be an easy, average, hard or extreme threshold.

That example actually shows the "if you know at least one feature of an icon running silent" part of the Matrix Perception rules (p.235). "Spike performs a Matrix Perception actions, knowing that Driver’s RCC and his rotodrone are running silent within 100 meters."

Thanks rumanchu for that. However, you may be missing my point. Even if the decker does know something about the silently running icons (which he could also get from a hit on the Matrix Perception test), on p. 236 the rules still state he must pick one silent icon at random and perform an opposed test (implying that this is a separate Matrix Perception and thus a separate complex action spent for each silently running icon). However, the example does not do this. Instead, in the example all silently running icons (in this case two) rolled their tests and compared hits against the original Matrix Perception test. This is the deviation from the stated rules on p. 236 which I am trying to point out. The rules being followed in the example are much smoother and work. But if a separate tests is needed for every silently running icon, that is a broken rule. (For example, imagine a person who simply has 100 RFID chips and one important piece of gear all running silently. Good luck finding the important piece amongst all the RFID's if you have to pick one by one at random.)

Maybe I'm reading too much into the "pick one at random" wording. Perhaps the rules just mean to say, "go through every silent icon and make an opposed test". Maybe the rules do not intend this test to be a separate complex action and a separate Matrix Perception test. I would suggest that they not say "at random" then because why should it be necessarily random. But at least interpreting it this way would square up with the example.

Hall of Thousand Mirrors.
This is one of 2 tricks that can make hackers impossible to attack as far as i remember.

I've always interpreted the "if you know at least one..." part of the rule as overriding the standard "randomly determine which one if there are multiple" part (partially because of the example in question). Of course, then the tricky bit is deciding what counts as a "feature" for the purposes of the test. My rule of thumb is that you know that a particular icon *should* be in a fairly specific area (like the Ingram Smartgun that guard RIGHT THERE is carrying) you can scan specifically for that one silent icon. (Stealth tags get stupidly useful, otherwise).