The MGL-12 is a semi-automatic weapon. That means it should be able to fire semi-automatic bursts. Has anyone figured out how that is supposed to work rules wise?

Well it would give the target -2 to their dodge roll as per the rules but as the gun fires grenades that can't be dodged I'd say the effect is 3/8s of f-all and wastes 2 shots.

Or you could determine scatter and apply a Chunky Salsa effect for each grenade.

Page 183

MULTIPLE SIMULTANEOUS BLASTS
When multiple explosives detonate at once the effects
are similar to those of a blast in a confined space (more
chunky salsa). When two explosions occur on the same
Combat Initiative Score and both blasts effect the same
character add half the value of the lower DVs to the
highest DV and apply it all as a single modified Damage
Value for the purposes of Damage Resistance tests. For
AP calculations, use the best AP and improve it by 1 for
every additional explosion.

So, just to make sure I'm understanding the math right, a burst of 3 grenades of the same type equates to a +50% DV and -2 to AP?

Sounds more like +100% and -2.



-k

that.
2nd Grenade adds 50 % DV and -1 AP , 3rd Grenade too..... thats 32 K with AP -4
( Plus Chunky Salsa and no dodging if the Grenades are aimed at the floor..... Welll , Holla die Waldfee, this . is . gonna . hurt . )

with an explosive Dance
Medicineman

I'm not sure where you're getting that from.

The effect of semi-automatic burst is -2 defence modifier as per the table on p180. You can't multiply damage multiple times with it unless you use the multiple attack action and fire at 3 different targets.

If you fire a pistol in semi-auto burst mode you only ever get to apply the damage once.

The chunky salsa rule exists for set explosives or when multiple grenades just happen to go off at the same time. This only occurs with timers or when 2 different characters throw them.

Me, I'm getting that from Lobo 0705's Post and Lobo 0705 is getting it from the BBB Page 183 (as he already posted )

and a Burst of a gun is something different than a Burst of Grenades.
CGL is of the same oppinion or else they wouldn't have written these Rules

with a different Dance
Medicineman

does it really matter if you get to dodge or not when you're looking at that much damage with a very high probability of even more bouncing back from a wall or ceiling?

just think what it's gonna be like when weapon modding rules come in if you can make that thing full auto... you'll be able to just level entire buildings with it 0.o

which is why I believe Chandra always recommended using the overlap damage rule instead of full Chunky Salsa for figuring damage from rebounding off walls.

Still heft damage, but not totally liquefying like CS can be.

Problem: Grenades aren't fired at "targets". Grenades are fired at spots on the ground.

So my beloved Flash-Bangs would do 20S AP-6 within a 10m radius. Sounds fun.

What's stopping a single character from throwing two or three grenades duct taped together? Or carrying three grenades and critically glitching the throw of one, dropping it at their feet? Sympathetic detonation is a thing, ya know.

~Umi

Solution: Use the multi-attack action to attack 3 separate spots on the ground. Split your dice pool 3 ways and roll 3 separate attacks. Watch how you will have almost no way of getting 3 successful hits on any of these attacks and scatter the 3 grenades as per the grenade scatter rules. Lol when the grenades take out half the city block, half your team, lots of innocent bystanders and pretty much everything else (including yourself) except for the actual target you want to hit.

There is no magic 'grenade does x2 damage here' rule because someone noticed this launcher is SA rather than SS.

At the end of the day you can never apply damage more than once with a SA burst unless you use the multi-attack action. This is just as illogical (heaven forbid!) with guns as it is with grenades. It's still the rule.

Except you're not applying damage with the burst - it's the grenades detonating afterwards that deals damage.

The fact is that the burst fire rules simply were not written to be applied to anything other than bullets, and that really there should be a separate specific entry for multiple grenades being fired. But this is just yet another case of slipshod rules that clearly weren't tested to any real degree, written and edited by people with no capacity for imagining any situations other than the most basic and plainly intended of usages.

~Umi

Well the multi-attacks rules are a clusterfuck at best but it seems that the intent of the rule is that you can use them to attacks multiple targets, not multiple attacks on the same target. Throwing weapons aside, quite clearly the rules state that you can only ever make one attack per action phase:



Note 'multiple targets' not 'multiple times'.

Under semi-automatic burst it states:


Again, multiple targets. When examining the firing made table on p180 all a semi-automatic burst does is modify defense by -2, there is no possibility of increasing base damage. There has been debate on this before. Many don't like the fact that the 3 separate bullets don't do 3x as much damage because of 'why not?' but that's just the way that it is. The 2 additional bullets act to ensure that the probability of 1 hitting increases, that's it. The other 2 bullets disappear into the ether of abstraction.

Now grenades can't be dodged but that doesn't just magically mean that they have some new semi-automatic burst rule. The advantage this provides is being able to target multiple targets. That has tactical value, it doesn't need to do more damage to justify (this rather cheap and available) weapon to be listed as SA, rather than SS.

Now people can think that because you fire 3 grenades then they must all explode and overlap and do additional damage, and I'd agree with you that logically that should happen, but ultimately this is not what the semi-automatic burst rule allows you to do. The only way you can do this is through the multi-attack free action in the manner described in my previous post.

(Note: Posted before I saw Umi's last response).

So, what happens if someone decides to throw one of the three grenades from the semi-automatic burst back, before they explode?

To me it seems like there is a rule missing for this kind of weapon.

Neither the "treat it like a regular burst of bullets" nor the "simultaneous explosions" approaches are really satisfying.

Well ultimately the rules would be that they throw the single grenade back and the other 2 still disappear due to abstraction.

This again is one of those cases where I don't think the game should or needs to mimic reality. One thing I really don't want to see in this system is a situation where players are rewarded for using automatic heavy weapons. They break the game too much already as it is.

I'm probably going to implement some of the rules in Run&Gun that allow players/NPCs to avoid AoE through interupt actions in games that I run to discourage their use.

Aaah, Grenades . . still the most fun you can have while proving that the rules are stupid and don't make sense in certain cases.
Remember impact detonators and using grenades as thrown weapons to first inflict impact damage and then get rid of scatter because clearly you just hit.

Is it really so hard to write sane grenade rules?

One line stating firmly that "Grenades inflict no damage on physical impact - they only deal damage upon detonation." A paragraph or two about sympathetic detonation of explosives, with whatever level of power scaling makes sense. Then make both grenades and "demolitions" use the same basic rules for how damage and AoE is handled, with grenades simply not getting the bonuses that prepared explosives do from tamping, et cetera. Done.

~Umi

Wouldn't it be even simpler to just make sure that all explody guns are SS?

Simpler on one level, perhaps, but that would make things like weapon modding more complicated down the line. The solution isn't just to work around the problem, but to get rid of it entirely.

Treat the underlying problem, not the symptoms. The rules need to work for any reasonable given situation, because you never know when some strange exception to the rules is going to crop up.

Arbitrarily saying "no grenade launcher can be anything other than SS" simply doesn't work, because semi-automatic and fully automatic grenade launchers are an actual thing that exists in the real world today, and retconning them out of existence rather than fixing the rules is lazy and stupid. What you need to do is make it so that the rules actually work and can properly handle people firing grenade launchers in SA and FA modes.

~Umi

Why didn't I think of that? My GM will hate me. Even more.

If your GM is even half decent they'll say, "No, that's stupid" - if not because it's clearly absurd, then because it allows Throwing Adepts with Missile Mastery to get guaranteed one-shot kills against all but the toughest foes.

Even a grenade exploding at point blank can be survived - but getting in a free 10-15P attack on top of that is more than a little broken.

~Umi

absurd in what sense? because it sounds fairly plausible. i don't imagine getting hit in the face with a grenade is likely to result in "oh well, it was just a half-pound steel ball, nobody's ever been hurt by anything like that".

Gee, maybe in the sense that you're getting a free attack at absolutely no opportunity cost?

Rules exist to abstract reality and to fairly distribute power. A melee attack isn't a single punch - it's a series of attacks, feints, dodges, and other movements which set up the full strike. You don't get to say, "Hey! I have two hands, I should be able to make two punches with a single melee attack for twice the damage at no cost!"

Likewise, a grenade throw or launch isn't a pinpoint attack - it's an attempt to get the explosive in "the general area" of where you want it so the targets are caught in the blast. This is why grenades were given Scatter rules. You don't actually aim the grenade at a person - you aim it at a vicinity. Is this a perfect way to handle things? No, it isn't. But it's certainly fairer than letting a Throwing Adept get extra cheese-powered damage by throwing grenades like bricks.

Compare to Explosive Rounds for guns. No one says, "Aha! The bullet hits them first for normal damage, and THEN explodes for more!", because that's just stupid. The rules simply normalize the two different forces together into a single damage value. Based on that, if you really wanted to press the issue, I'd say maybe let grenades deal 1 extra point of damage to a beaned target.

But you definitely cannot allow it to count as a full damage standard thrown attack, because Throwing Adepts will exploit the hell out of that. A Troll with 9 Strength, plus another effective 12 from Power Throw, plus Missile Mastery would deal 12P minimum with the net hit needed to connect with the throw - effectively doubling the damage of the grenade on the struck target.

If we absolutely want to allow "impact damage" from grenades, then we need to figure out some way to balance that out compared to other options by adding other costs. Making them more expensive and less available might do the trick - if grenades are super powerful, they need to be appropriately hard to get a hold of and particularly painful for your wallet.

Or maybe we could add new limits to Throwing Adepts instead - like caps on damage based on the suitability of a thrown item. I don't care how much magic you use, the Missile Mastery power shouldn't allow you to explode someone's ribcage with a marshmallow. Yet by current RAW (at least in 4E), that's totally possible, meaning a bag of sugar puffs is as deadly as an assault cannon, while also being highly concealable, completely legal, dirt cheap, and having a huge "magazine" of "ammo".

I get that people want to be able to do cool tricks with playing cards and coins and stuff, but they really shouldn't be terribly viable choices with appropriate costs and limits - and they definitely should be on par with knives and other things intended to be thrown. A mere difference of 1 DV is just not enough. (Personally I think thrown playing cards are a prime candidate for being alchemical lynchpins, but I digress...)

~Umi

Judging from your Post-Count, because you haven't actually hung around us lot long enough to think like that as of yet ^^

Hey, my tenth Dumpshock anniversary is closing in...

Hmm, then i have no idea . .

but Grenade Beaning is a proven tactic of Missile-Master-Adepts since 3rd Edition. First You do the heightened Damage
from the Grenade as an Object and at the End of the IP the Grenade explodes ( this way you avoid the dreaded double Damage). Thats almost standard tactics... ? !!

with the dreaded Double Dance
Medicineman

You don't really need Grenades for 1-Shot Kills from a Missile Master. They were pretty common for my Oni Ninja.

Yes, but you typically could only kill one person per action, without also getting a free AoE explosion or two to mess with their buddies nearby.

~Umi

Oh, don't get it wrong
you don't do double Damage with one Attack ! Thats a No-Go in the Rules (and for me too !) the Grenade Explosion is at the end of the IP (just like Poisoned Blades/Shuriken. the Poison works at the end of the IP)
I wonder if I can find the Link to one of Raben-Aas released Ideas ; explosive Shuriken....
Can't find it, sorry only this here
https://rabenwelten.wordpress.com/?s=shuriken
and here is the Equivalent Info for Shadowrun
https://rabenwelten.wordpress.com/category/...enal-71/page/4/

with a Single Dance
Medicineman

My Missions GM at Origins had probably the sanest reaction to a group of mooks in a car getting hit with a grenade burst into the vehicle.

"Um. They die. Messily. So does their car. And parts of the road."

I think the mooks had their own grenades as well. Oops.



-k

And THAT is as it should be... A lot of players get a bit bent out of shape, however, when you tell them that "they see a great white light" and that it is now time to revisit Character Creation. Never mind that that is exactly what should happen when Shadowrunners go up against Military grade weapons and those who know how to use them. That said, the prices for things such as Grenades/Rockets/Missiles/High Explosives/etc. are ridiculously, ludicrously, low.

Only US-Americans wouldn't count an assault rifle as a military grade weapon.

and thats exactly what Burning Edge is for

with a Burning Dance
Medicineman

Which is exactly why, regardless of whether the rules allow it or not, gameplay that encourages constant heavy weapon usage should be discouraged.

Does anyone actually continue to play with people who's whole character concept relies on cheesing throwing grenades as adepts? I mean in 4th Ed you could do it strictly by the rules:

Throw Anything power
Troll with 15ish Str

If you can kill people with playing cards then surely you can with a grenade too? I see no reason why the grenade would not still explode (although it really is 2 attacks in one action when you get to the root of it, regardless of how much you rules-lawyer it, which precludes it in 5th Ed).

But it's just soooooooooo dumb.

da 'splosives rules as a whole 're dumb!
anna whole lotta da warp stuff too.

That depends on what you're using to classify it as an "assault" rifle. It's only military grade if it has a fire selector and/or a mode other than semi-automatic.

Funny fact: You know what the difference is between an "assault rifle" and a regular rifle?

Mostly just how they look.

Civilian-legal 'assault rifles' are mechanically pretty much the same as any other semi-auto rifle. They are just designed to look scary. And perhaps they have more attachment points for accessories.

The difference between semi-auto and full auto weapons? Mechanically, just a tiny strip of metal, called a sear, that prevents a semi-auto weapon from firing again until the trigger is released. Legally, about a mile of red tape and licensing requirements, depending on where you live. Because full-auto weapons ARE classified as military-grade and have heavy restrictions.

The confusion comes because many folks don't realize there are semi-auto AND full-auto assault rifles.


-k

Hope you are not counting me in that statistic.

Well, you can always play a campaign in the UK with the old London SB rules

True...

That really is the crux of the problem. Perhaps the solution to this is economics? If a grenade was 1000NY then you might use them only in select runs or emergencies rather than it being a go-to weapon of choice.

Hmmmm, time to implement the 'splodyx10' cost houserule Might need some drain changes for AoE elemental attacks to balance it out.

That would be way more expensive than real life black market prices for grenades. And that's the black market in weapon-hostile Germany.

I don't think that the legislation for civilian small arms has a huge effect on the price for hand grenades

The problem is that a bit of explosives and a shell doesn't cost much to produce

According to recent Federal Logistics Data, the cost of a M67 Fragmentation Grenade is $25.97, so 30 nuyen per grenade is just about right in terms of cost. There's just no realistic way the price is going to be in any way substantially higher in the 2070s.

Thus the limit should be availability. Grenades should be on par with other milspec stuff, anywhere from the high teens to the low twenties in my opinion. Certainly not available at the chargen without Restricted Gear. Non-lethal grenades suited for police work like flash-bangs might be mid teens, but still not available at chargen either.

~Umi

Well the whole concept of having cheap things being unavailable is in itself somewhat flawed. Supply and demand dictate prices. If there's one shadowy quartermaster in Seattle selling grenades from army surplus at major risk to his career and personal safety, then you can bet that he won't be flogging them at 100NY each, irrespective of whether they cost 1NY each to make or not.