And this is why I exterminate furniture with extreme prejudice.

The meatbags are just collateral.

Why bother? MGL in SA, do the semi-auto burst action.

The swap simple to free is a different question but in general I agree it should be possible. Though enabling wirless is a simple action so there isn't even a problem to go "IWIN" with grenades.

The usual order of operations to "safely" use iwin-grenades would be:

First phase you need to draw the grenade (Ready weapon simple action) and then do nothing or simple action fire useless pistol. Ready weapon might be a complex action since grenades are not in "typical holster". SR5 p. 165.
Second action phase you Enable wireless (simple action) followed by throw weapon simple action and detonate grenade (change linked device mode) free action.

Then repeat process above for simple broken grenade spamming every other action phase. The brokenness is because throw is not a complex action (even though melee attack is). This whole problem would disappear if throw was not a simple action (But it would probably gimp legit use of the throw skill). A munchkin walks around with grenades in hand already and do enable wirless + throw + detonate sequence the two first action phases. Two instant 18P no-defence sounds good.

The technomancer will have a hard time doing anything about proper use of grenades, just like you said. He can do with airburst grenade launcher grenades and other minor non-issues but when the can of "wireless grenades without wireless" are opened he too is a bit obsolete. I think you are right there. The saving factor I thought existed was an option to "pass your turn to interrupt someone else". Basically prepare action-action that doesn't exist. If TM could say "I ready myself for a grenade, and detonates it before he throws!" it would be more fun.

For no real reason, noise have no effect at all so jamming wasn't an option either even if it should be possible to jam the area around you enough to make sure no signals get through whatsoever. What you could do is live inside a giant hamster ball that is a farday's cage, the only thing that works by RAW.

The Run and Gun interrupt action fixes this, thankfully. It lets you take an interrupt action to simply walk away from grenades thrown with this tactic. It acts as a soft counter and should solve the basics.




It doesn't say either way actually. And I'm not saying it is "good" to treat them like I intepret the rules. They are just horribly broken if you let mages deal murderous damage and completely ignore all kinds of defence. In fact aoe spells are an order of magnitude more potent thanks to the zero damage fall off.

So, what about drain? Trivial I say!

I encounter a bunch of baddies, I decide to obliterate them. I cast F12 ball lightning but use 4 reagents (setting the limit to 4, making the drain Stun). It costs 80 nuyen to do this. With radius of 12 meters I don't even need to score a single hit, 1d6 scatter does not make a difference. I can use one single dram if I want to be cheap.

12P AP-12 means they get effectively barely any armor. Even with 6 body and 3 remaining armor they get around 9-10 boxes of damage. It invokes knockdown, max penalties, reduced initiative by 5-7 and a nice -2 penalty on top of that thanks to the debuff. All their devices also get obliterated with 6 matrix damage as bonus. The 452 square meter area should fit the entire enemy team unless they are extremely spread out. 24 meters end to end is bigger than a vast majority of combat maps I've seen. If anything I'll have to place it behind the enemies to avoid blasting myself and my friends.

Now, the drain. Lets say I only have around 12 dice to resist drain, and the drain code is 12 S. I roll some amount of hits and then use edge to reroll misses (another completely broken rule btw) I'm looking at rolling easily around 7 hits on that. 2-7 stun sure sucks but it instant-win almost every fight and it saves me the same amount of stun I'd get from taking a single hit with an enemy AK. So, I trade one "free hit on me" for an aoe splat.

That kind of awesome power is not available to the other character concepts. The grenade thrower sam is more efficient, but less powerful. The duo is nearly unbeatable.


AoE spells detonate next round -10. It has to be like that. Use Direct spells (Mana ball, power ball) to get instant effect. But like I said last time, at least they can defend against that. No defence is boring. Who needs it?

Who has thrown grenades or aoe spells at their players and they had an interesting time as a result? Can you even think of a situation? I rather give my players a very hard defence roll versus a sniper scoring 8 hits than just ignore their characters completely. That is bad game design, bad.

To be fair, Surukai, it does not HAVE to be that way, it is just your interpretation. I have yet to see anyone cast a F12 ANYTHING in SR5, let alone an AOE Elemental Spell, so your scenario seem pretty ludicrous to me. *shrug*

It seems to happen a distressing amount in Missions. In 4th edition at least, and I've already seen it in 5th.

Not that I'm blameless. Old Man Jones has been known to throw F14-16 spells. But usually only if he's really torqued off about something.


-k

to be fair, with the amount of collateral damage and the risk of blowing yourself up, force 12 AoE indirect spells do have drawbacks.

frankly, i wouldn't be surprised if, in many cases, you can't even fit a force 12 AoE spell into a single room. and with the massive AP, i would suspect they tend to actually damage more nearby objects than most grenades...

also, i can't really ignore the drain drawback. yes, it's not as bad as getting shot by half a dozen badguys. but then, it's definitely much much worse than spending some money on a grenade, and sometimes that drain will be enough to kill you or knock you unconscious (which is seldom the case with the nuyen).

You have to place it somewhere you can see that is 13 meters away from anything you care about. And have Magic of 6+, and spend reagents, and Willpower 6, and your other drain stat at 6, and have Edge to spend, and roll average or better on your drain roll.

I think the problem is the reagents to reduce drain category trick.

The scenario is not that far off. We are talking rules here, and rules need to be clear and good to avoid one player accidentally ruining the group experience by stepping on one of the many mines in the minefield that we call SR5 core rulebook.
Missions is a clear example. You can't always assume everyone knows the rules so well that they also know what to simply ignore or avoid using.

Many players just pick the best looking weapon in the list. Some also go for the best stats and in a perfect world the weapon lists, powers and all are interesting and balanced. Things are best in their niche but not allround godlike. This gives interesting characters and where you pick skills, guns, spells and powers based on your intended playstyle and for fun. But if there are a few of those that are so much better that you as a group have to ban them to have fun then that item is a problem.

For the group ignoring the iwin type grenades, mind control, mystic adepts, etc. there won't be a problem. They will have fun because they play the part of the game with interesting choice.

For the group that got one player who picked the broken part, by accident or deliberately the rest of the group suffer.

Strength 5 elf with a katana is pretty cool and quite effective at chopping bad guys.

However, the mystic adept troll with quickening metamagic (For +4 strength for just 6 karma, very good!) that has Strength 14 and adrenaline boost to get 31+ initative every single combat turn with accuracy 13+ however simply makes the katana elf obsolete.
When that troll picks up a tomahawk he deals near autocannon damage ranged in addition to his melee.
And the troll says he isn't abusing the system because at least he isn't also summoning spirits. Yeah, I had that player in my group...



Magic 6 is quite common for starting mages. Dwarves and Elves have an easy time getting 12+ drain dice. It is also not uncommon to see mages pick "focused concentration" and go for 4 or 5 in one drain stat and then cast increase [attribute] to get it to 8-9. That gives 14-15 dice drain resist directly out of chargen and normally that is perfectly fine. To deal meaningful sustained damage output as combat mage you need that. Drain can be nasty.
There are so many ways to get high drain stats that I consider it to be quite normal practice for mages and not some obscure unintended side effect like mystic adepts with reflexes and adrenaline boost.

Reagents are a problem in that they are pointless. They offer or add next to nothing meaningful to the game. I think there is a thread about that somewhere too. What do they actually bring to the table?
They mess with spellcasting like I described above, not meaningful. They can give higher limit but all that does is make spells with no Force component (direct spells, heal, armor and many others) be able to reduce drain and maybe that is the point? F2 manabolt with limit 8? Sure!
But, F1 sustaining foci to hold your 9 hits Increase reflexes? IS that really what we wanted? Nope. Reagents are somewhat essential to get alchemy working good though.

But, I think that is a different topic and doesn't have with Aoe and grenades to do

Placement of a 24 meter deathzone is tricky but it should not be the only trick up the character's sleeve. Maybe in a metagame with grenades, Melee is the best option? Encoutners will always be within 13 meters and enemies spread out from all directions to avoid "backpedal and nuke". Thus having your team a mix of grenade throwers, F12 ball throwers and melee covers most situations. I want to hate it but from a game point of view that actually sounds fun. The "Don't stand so a grenade can instagib you" kind of game. Or "floor is lava".

What if you play a clown that can walk on 5 meter tall stilts? Instant grenades will always give you 5 meters distance from the wireless bullshit.. that is pretty survivable! See where I'm going? The moment we let brokenness run rampart and when GM has to counter it by using strange tactics (all combat is within 12 meters because you have a mage. Enemies are walking on tall stilts because you have a wireless grenade thrower. Enemies constantly use edge to act first in combat since they don't get more than 30 initative, etc) you have what we call a metagame that is out of control. And even thinking about "meta" in a roleplay is bad in my opinion.

I think a grenade would blow the stilts out from under the clown. Levitation though...

Maybe the instant grenades can explode in midair.

Re: Stilts getting harmed, explosions are terrible at harming round objects. They do next to nothing unless they are in direct contact with them. And a 5m fall isn't that bad compared to the alternative.

Exploding grenades mid air is not possible in shadowrun since grenades have no travel time. They teleport to the final location (With or without scatter). You throw the grenade and it supposedly lands 40 meters away in a fraction of a second (since the target gets no chance to react whatsoever). You have throw at a very very low angle, throwing the grenade at the target's feet as hard as you can. Harder than a baseball pitcher. Even throwing straight at the target gets you only 40 meters at master-pitcher speed. Not the 50-60 meters you get with a regular grenade (STRx10)

So, you are throwing the hardest fastball in world class speed but hit within 1d6 meters regardless of skill (almost, need >6 dice to make the throw at extreme range)

But then comes the question:

I can move enough (reaction + intuition) to avoid a shuriken, but not a fastball? I can avoid gunfire but not a lobbed potato. I call BS on that. Why can we defend against a LASER (300 000 000m/s) but not a lump of metal (<40 m/s) unless it is a sharp lump of metal (<40m/s) then it is fine. Why is that?

This, honored members of the jury, is Chewbacca!

most (or at least many) combats being within ~12 meters isn't that unlikely. there's a *reason* pistols and SMGs are the standard issue weapons for security forces... most of the time, that's all the range you need indoors. there will be exceptions (fighting in long hallways, for example), but mostly, 12 meters is quite adequate.

also, as was pointed out, it isn't just 12 meters from yourself... it's also 12 meters from anything you care about not taking damage. if you're in a research lab and you don't know what everything is, and *especially* if you've been hired to steal something from that research lab, you don't exactly want to lob a force 12 lightning ball in there.

I would not be concerned about the stilts remaining undamaged, but rather being flung in some direction and then falling. You're right about it being better than next to an exploding grenade. Of course, what do you think the movement rate would be while walking on stilts? I hope there aren't any ceilings.

My take on dodge is that even though you make the roll in response to something headed your way, it's not a reactive action. To me, it's being able to move in such a way as to be harder to hit. So rather than someone shooting at you and you deciding that you need to be out of the way of the incoming bullet, what is happening is that the shooter pulled the trigger just a split second after you moved from where she thought you were going to be, thereby taking the bullet in a less-vital spot or even having it miss you entirely.

That is for things that require timing and precision like gunfire and lasers. The blast radius of a grenade or AoE spell is too large for erratic movements to have that effect. The way avoid damage is to not be nearby when it goes off. I see a few possibilities:

1) Your points about travel time are excellent. How should it work? How much time should it take?
2) Give characters, especially fast ones, time to scramble away.
3) Allow characters with cybernetic or awakened speed and agility to deflect, kick, or catch and toss away timed grenades if there's enough time left before detonation.
4) Allow magicians with the Levitate or Magic Fingers spells to grab it in midair and take it away. Similarly, to place a Barrier to deflect it or partially suppress the blast.
5) Allow jacked in characters to hack wireless detonation grenades at matrix speed. *
6) I'm not personally for this, but consider allowing "tank" like characters with nearly maxed Body and armor, and possibly adepts, to actually cover the grenade with their bodies and survive if immediate magical healing is available.

* There can be an option for grenades that allow them to detonate after some predetermined number of seconds even in the absence of a radio signal, or to not detonate. The latter would be the safer default, but the former would resist radio jamming. And here's an idea: wired grenades.

Actually many of your points exist in the books already.

1) Travel time for a 35 degree angle throw (Don't need perfect 45º) of 40 meters is just over 3 seconds. The existing rules with "Next combat turn" makes sense. But I'd say travel time makes detonation the same action phase dodgey. However a under barrel grenade launcher fires grenades much faster so maybe it isn't worth fiddling with.

2) This is added in Run and Gun as an interrupt action. Take -5 initiative and move. Only problem is the metagame of saving movement and throwing grenades at sub 10 initiative. The latter is less issue because by then everyone has at least done something.

3) Missile parry adept power can be used here.

4) Mystic adept with magic fingers and missile parry could be fun. However magical Barriers are absolutely pathetic in SR5, they did not get the armor inflation SR5 added. Even a massive overcast physical barrier with 6 hits is just like a thin drywall or rotten cheap door in power.

5) Maybe we'll see more of that later. Just like martial arts added Counterstrike and Riposte to react to an attack and make the attack back on your enemy's turn. A counterhack active that takes -7 initiative but lets you blow up the grenade in the thrower's hand. Fun. Anyway, this does not exist in current books as far as I'm aware.

6) Exists in run and gun. Problem is that it is very hard to build a "tank" character that can take a grenade 16-18P Before the lobotomized rule "Chunky salsa" means 10 body cyberlimb troll with armor, stacked armor and extra armor still get obliterated. (armor jacket + helmet is 14 armor, body 10, +1 troll +9 from 3 cyber limbs +4 from bone lacing + 3 more from RnG fitted stacking is still just 42 dice damage resist, versus 32 damage -2 ap means you have 40 dice to soak 32 damage. That is some 15-20 boxes to tick on your character sheet.


In short, Run and Gun adds a critical defence against grenade bs, the active defence with movement. It helps a great deal.