So ran across this in my latest game session and was curious if anyone else thought it was a little hinky? The rules as I understand it is the area affect spells are treated like grenades and are undodgeable. The defender only gets to roll for soak using armor and body and the to hit roll is primarily focused on scatter with no opposing dice roll. Is that right?

Currently that is correct, though the caster does still need to score 3 hits just to place the spell where he wants, otherwise it scatters as grenade. You also only count the net hits after discounting the initial 3 for placement for damage. If it scatters, the net hits only reduce the amount of scatter and do not add to damage. So the baseline damage is predominately what you are dealing with so you are starting off lower than many types of grenades. (assuming overcasting up to 12 force vs the 14-18 Force of most grenades) unless you get a really good roll and have hits to spare after determining for scatter. Grenades also get to use the chunky salsa effect while I am no sure spells would qualify as they normally don't have force unless you are a force element or similar.
When asked about this some of the freelancers who have worked on the project have said this is what it will be, however several GM's playing at the recent cons found it to be a bit TPK and did allow a Dodge at -2 to mitigate the damage a bit, unlike a bullet you can not fully dodge this in most circumstances, but this is not an official allowance so work on the assumption no dodge. Explosions are supposed to be rough and something to avoid.

But if you find it a bit too much, you can always houserule in a dodge, but I would go with a penalty as you are really not able to entirely dodge the area effect, plus unlike a grenade it does not reduce due to distance from initial point but is solid damage all the way across it's aoe, so the best you can do with a dodge is reduce damage a bit by maybe curling up into a fetal position, going prone, etc.....

From whence comes this perpetuating concept that an AOE attack cannot be dodged? It has, right there on the Defensive modifiers table a -2 Specifically for Dodging an AOE attack with the example referring to Grenades, Rockets and any other Area of Effect attack.

Also in the description of the indirect aoe effects, it states, that the roll is handled, like with grenades. It does list the difference in damagecalculation, but does not state, that you may not dodge. Dodging may be not too easy but there are more than a few ways, to do it.

Because a number of parties are giving different responses and making it sound like the -2 Dodge is an leftover from a previous edition and may or may not be in play for 5th.

Bull said the following over on JP/SG about grenades/aoe :


Aaron likewise touched on this with the following:


To be Fair, Aaron himself admits he is not a line dev and Bull handles Missions, so there can be some difference in what they feel versus what will become canon, though I tend to abide by Bull's choices as they usually play pretty close to mainline and does tend to weigh toward final solutions.
Hopefully this will be addressed in the errata to clear the confusion.

Personally I am inclined to allow the -2 Dodge (or half dodge.. still waiting on feedback from some groups on how their experiences went) as a form of helping reduce AoE damage, again it can be explained as going prone, fetal position or maybe finding a bit of cover, but it seems clear that you are NOT going to be able to dodge out of the AoE effect entirely under most circumstances so you will be taking a hit.

An exception for this may be someone on the very edge of the effect may get out, but again that's down to positioning and common sense.

It is confusing indeed. Also the whole grenade and aoe stuff is not all that well designed.

Answers my question. RAW has no dodge, which makes geeking the mage pretty much necessity for survival. How does counter spelling work with this then?

The counterspelling dice allocated to spell defense will add to your defense test, which in the case of AoE will be the Body+Armor+Counterspell equation.

Just remember that counterspelling works a little different than in some previous editions as against each spell attack, you have to choose how many dice from this pool to allocate for defense and your dice pool to draw upon for this only refreshes at the start of the Combat Turn. You can still use this dice for multiple persons up to your Magic rating so if you are Magic Five and allocate 4 dice versus that fireball you can cover up to 5 persons (including yourself) with that 4 dice of defense.

It's not a huge concern unless you got lots of incoming spells then you have to pick your best use thereof, but if you got that many mages trying to slag you you are already in for a hurt.

GEEK THE MAGE!

WHICH ON----FWOOM! , SIZZLE! , CRACKLE! , FWOOOM! , POOF!

>_> >_> >_> >_> o^_^o; sorry, glitched

Interesting... As far as I understand it, there are situations, where you do dodge a grenade. While timer and Wireless detonate delayed and give you a chance to seek cover or...run; Motion Sensor Grenades, sort of, detonate upon impact and use the standard rules for ranged attacks - this would include dodge. If no net hits are being scored the MS Grenade scatters.

I am not sure what or if that means anything for spells, but it is good to know in matters of grenades.

Which is why I like my (suggested) house rule of allowing a dodge roll, each hit allowing the character to move 1 meter. Alternatively they can drop prone for half DV.

(There was a bit more to it than that, but covers the basic idea)

Half the DV may be a bit much though.

The movement idea has potential as the further away the less damage versus grenade anyway, assuming you have room to move away to. Still won't help much with spell aoe unless you can get clear.

There was a reason for it. It also didn't work against Airburst Grenades (but those had half DV over regular anyway, instead of being just-more-awesome).
The point was that dropping prone In Real Life at 4 meters is a hell of a lot safer than standing at 10. This is the best image I can find: shrapnel from a ground-based explosion has a tendency to rise, leaving a narrow area along the ground that is more survivable (Bouncing Betty's even more so).

Also remember that while dropping prone is a free action, standing up is not.



Right. I also would say that dropping prone doesn't help against spells (as they are the same saturation everywhere).

RAW seem clear enough to me. Attacker throws grenade and rolls, defender rolls defence -2. Attack requires 3 hits to get on target or else the grenade scatters so if the defence roll reduces below three hits, scatter occurs, if not 3 hits lands it on target and the rest adds to damage calculations.

I am pretty sure that's now what they intended.

The -2 if for dodging an area of attack effect. Grenades, before they land, are not AOE.

Plus if you think about it, your not throwing the grenade at a person per say, your aiming for a location so the dodge of a target really should not apply toward whether the grenade scatters or not.

Now if you are trying to bean them on the head with a grenade first........

This... You never aim a grenade at a person... Ever... It is an area denial weapon.

Quite.
Throwing a grenade should be a success test (SR5 handles this reasonably well) and all characters caught in the blast zone when it goes off get a dodge roll to move out of the way/behind cover/drop prone.

Well it's either that, or your Dodge is taking off Damage directly or Dodging a Blast comes down as a Simple Test to avoid the Blast entirely.

Once the explosion has happened though it's too late to dodge. So what you're trying to dodge is the AOE of an attack before the AOE occurs. So, by logical extrapolation the attacker Wouldn't scatter if he got 3+ hits on his roll but the blast would only connect with the Dodging character if he rolled less hits that the overall attack roll.

This is why I said that hits on the dodge roll granted movement. Grenades are area denial, and the only way to not get hurt is to Get Out Of The Way. But as there are only a few seconds to do so, the best plan is usually to dive for cover, lay prone, and hope your armor does its job.

The best plan is NOT to kick the grenade into a corner.

Spells have such (comparably) weak damage that they are not really a concern, the problem is that motion sensor grenades are inescapable death and there is nothing really you can do about it by RAW as I see it.

Character A throws fraggrenade at bunch of people, even if he has near-zero skill the grenade lands 1d6 meters away, for worst case effect of 12P Damage, but typically around 15-18.

Even with 12 armor + 5 body + 2-3 random (+armor) items we are looking at a roll of around 5-10 hits damage resist so in best case you take 13 to 8 boxes and are knocked down and helpless. Not even assault rifles deal that amount of guaranteed oneshot damage.

How do I prevent "free action multiple attacks, shoot silly 6 clip underbarrel oneshotlauncher twice" from being the new F11 stunbolt from SR4A?

Only silly tanktrolls have a chance, but even they have a hard time rolling 18 hits on damage resist. A tanky character has some 20 armor, 8+ body and maybe some implants for 3-6 more. Rolling some 35+ damage resist dice and soaks 12-ish damage on average. Even a juggernaught like that goes down in one single split-pool-double-autohit-grenadeboom.


The option I have now is to let drop prone half damage (And allow characters to throw themselves maybe dodge-hits-meters away) to make it possible to defend against and not make Grenades SR5:s equivalent of the F11 stunbolts of SR4 that was guaranteed oneshot and impossible to defend against.

Actually you do get to dodge the motion sensor gernade, as it uses the stadard rules for ranged attacks. As an effective dodge however still only means, that the grenade scatters, you still are right in your assment. At maximum scatter frag-grenade will still deal 12P but grant a bouns to armor (+5 ap? [flechette rules apear sort of inconsistent]), Explosive grenades will do 10p (with -2 ap) and flashbangs cannot scatter far enough for it to affect the damage (10s at -4 ap).

And all that is positive thinking... as it is outdoors, in open spaces and without blastreflection from the ground... yay.

EDIT:

As for spells and the relatively weak damage... the indirect stuff does scale with net hits... and has - (f) ap... this gets nasty rather quickly.

F6 spell, -3 hits to hit, so max 9 for a 'normal' fireball. you need a spellcasting pool of 18+ to reliably get 6 hits on every cast. (even at 18 about half your fireballs will not hit the limit of 6)

9 Damage AP -6, since -6 AP gives roughly 2 fewer hits on damage resist it is expected to perform similar to DV 11 AP +0. (as long as target has armor 6+)

Frag grenade with +5 ap performs similar as DV 16 AP-1 or the autohit stungrenade 10 AP -4.

The maxed out fireball is like a cheap stun grenade or a grenade missing by 4. For "Aoe purposes" the fireball still has uses since it deals full damage in a 12 meter diameter (it hits over 100 square meters for damage). That is nice, but requires very specialized character. One can argue that magic is more portable and that makes up for the fact that a character with next to zero specialization and just a backpack of stun grenades and a fake licence will laugh at the mage for being so crappy*. He can even dual wield stun grenades to throw them with half his pool (he doesn't care if he scatters, can't possibly miss, sans critglitch) each pass.

Stun grenades don't even suffer from collateral. Innocent bystanders are given a stim patch and a cup of hot cocoa (bad guys get sold to a organlegger for max profit since they aren't blown to bits)

* Mages are still super powerful and not crappy in any way and the world's tiniest violin plays for their subpar damage output compared to before.

I don't know if you are an adept who can throw your grenade into someone, it might be worth it. Especially on the timer side as someone tries to dig the grenade implanted somewhere in their spleen out before it blows up.


The inescapable doom that is grenades was brought up as soon as the stats were revealed. The answer was something along he lines of we want big Hollywood explosions!! Problem is Hollywood explosions work great for Hollywood because the protagonist always faces the timer version with enough time to escape the explosion, in a game it just means you kill players every time you pull the grenade card.

So something like a Blood Bowl Ball with spikes along it make it stick maybe?

I was thinking more the missile mastery adept power that will most likely come out in the magic supplement. But any blood bowl reference works for me as well.

The way motion sensor is written suggests a missile mastery adept will have amazing firepower but at least that is defendable against (it is still OP and broken since it gives a massive increase in efficency for virtually zero drawbacks). I'll just ban motions sensor and debuff microgrenades (Ares stupid Alpha I'm glaring at YOU!) to SR4-levels of inescapable lesser injury.

That leaves airburst but a Jambot drone can negate that (A drone with Electronic Warfare and Clearsight autosofts and the standing order 'if someone fires a grenade, interrupt and jam signals') , and it is a fun target for hackers.

So looking at the options people have suggested I think I will probably go with the following for trying to use dodge vs Aoe effects.

Must use the Dodge Interrupt Action (-5 init) or Full Defense (-10 init),the Dodge roll at -2 dice.

Each hit allows you to move 1m further away from ground zero, but may face other problems (like leaving cover or reaching limits of movement if you were already moving, limited by space of area/exit) depending on circumstance.

This will work for grenades to possibly reduce some of the damage.

Versus spells it only really helps if it takes you out of the AoE.

Alternatively a character may use the Hit the Dirt Interrupt Action (-5 Init) to go prone.

Vs. grenades it will halve the DV (less of the body being hammered).

It's perhaps not entirely realistic vs an airburst grenade, but want to keep it simple so one rule for 'nades, insert bit o hand waving here....

It is a tough call on magic, and still not entirely happy with any one solution yet, but after some thought I figure if your prone half the body is pressed against the ground so your only getting toastied on one side so there should be some mitigation, but will it really be enough? Still running some numbers to see how this may work out.

Going prone does have some advantages in immediate survival but getting back up takes a simple action and may keep you from dong other things if you needed to be upright for them, which means you can make yourself vulnerable by laying down like that. So it does come at a cost.

The players will have to weigh the risks themselves....