Hello

With these house rules I intend to eliminate the old Stun-weapons that are often overpowered to the actual lethal weapons, as well as making them slightly more realistic. I already proposed rules for Tasers which of course everyone does not approve of, and I suspect the same ones will disapprove of these:

Flashbang grenades are changed:

The idea is to have two effect, resisted by a single resistance test. Protection devices do not directly modify this test, but can modify effects as well as reduce the Power of the attack. These grenades generally do not cause Stun damage, but a Gm could have it do so as the result of the glitch or critical glitch on the resistance test. I used rules both from Toxin chapter as well as Flash-pak to simulate this.

Note that I had to reduce the effect compared to how, say Tear Gas currently works in this game, as being out of the combat for 3 full combat turns means you are unlikely to recover before it's over. I also made it less likely to trigger in the first place, while the blindness effect (which most shadowrunners can deal with) is more likely unless the target has protection.

I like this much better than the taser change. It makes flash bangs work like in real life, but without the issues of permastun with tasers (Or at least, no more issues than grenade spam already has).

Not a fan, but good work.

In my Opinion, Shadowrun Flash-Bangs are intended to work like RL Concussion Grenades, not Like RL Flash-Bangs.
It is a naming issue, not a results issue.

They might have been called concussion grenades, but RL concussion grenades are simply HE grenades. They don't do "stun" damage, they kill you if you are close enough and are meant to avoid dangerous fragmentation/friendly fire.

Does any of that prevent flashbangs from being affected by the chunky salsa rule?

Maybe they're louder in an enclosed area, but maybe have (temporary?) deafness as an effect instead of a multiple of the base stun damage to model that.

Good question. I didn't think stun grenades were affected by chunky salsa, as the damage is consistent in the whole area (10). The rules don't specifically say that Flashbangs are except from this rule, but if you take that ruling to it's logical conclusion, any use of the vanilla Flashbang grenade in confined spaces would become an automatic instagob, as the damage rating does not decrease by range at all. Thus target would take 10+10+10+10 etc. until the GM would think it enough to fill the stun track and physical and overflow track.

So the only sane way is to not use chunky salsa for anything that does not have distance-based damage. Technically, only part of a frag grenade damage is explosive in nature, and it's the shock wave that bounces back and forth, not the fragmentation. Sure, fragments can ricochet and hit the target, but they don't penetrate back and forth N times. But I'm not sure if I want to make any house rule regarding that just yet, chunky salsa dont come up often enough to justify it. That said, it is kind of weird that frag grenades are far superior to HE for the exact situation HE grenades (which are literally concussion grenades) are meant for.


However, it seems to me such a weapon can be more dangerous in close quarters, either increasing the effects of the damage, or maybe doing actual stun damage in addition as the blast is far from harmless and can ignite stuff in real life. For example, you could double the duration of the stun or blindness effect, or simply increase the Power to 15 of the attack, or have the attack deal half of Power or maybe full Power as Stun damage.

While a concussion grenade is potentially lethal within a meter or two, they will put you down and out, assumming you are not in the lethal radius, which is not that excessive; and the damage is not what I would call "lethal" outside of the immediate vicinity of the exploding ordnance. The point is that Shadworun's Flash-Bangs are for all intents and purposes, Concussion Grenades. Arguing that they are the equivalent of RL Flash-Bangs is ludicrous (though again, if you are too close to one, you will pay a price, just not an excessive one - have a lot of experience with these little buggers, and ended up with damaged eyes becasue of an unforseen training accident on a live fire infiltration range because of one)...

The lethal radius is about 2 meters, that's the kill zone where death is almost certain from the blast alone, and that is only in open area. Concussion grenades are meant to be used in enclosed areas such as bunkers and craters, and not endanger it's user. The famous WW2 german Stielhandgranate is an example of these, containing 6 ounces of TNT. It was not intended to cause concussions or as a less-lethal option, it was intended to kill or wound enemy soldiers so emplacements could be taken. The US version is depicted here: http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/mk3a2.htm
It has even more TNT, and hardly something you would use for training.


As for stun grenades, it's not at all ludicrous that they are Flashbangs, this is the modern militairy version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stun_grenade
WHich works just as I have described it.

If stun grenades are supposed to be concussion grenades, then what are SR HE grenades supposed to be? Krusher bob answers in this thread:
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=5013

Please do not link a topic that is 12 years out of date... it has no relevance to SR5.

Why not? It's not like some of the copy and paste used in current core isn't almost as old.

Well, there is that.

Looks like you ran out of arguments

No, I just do not have a lot of experience with Modern Military Flash-Bangs...
My experience with them is from the 80's, ad they were crappy little simulators... though they could indeed hurt you if you were caught unawares and you were close enough.

Our Concussion Grenades were also not all that rough, unless you talk about the ones we manufactured in the filed for taking the airfield in the 1st Gulf War... Thise were beyond deadly...

Sounds like training grenades, a whole different level.

'Til the training wheels come off:

http://daddytypes.com/2010/10/21/training_...nd_grenades.php

Flash Bangs are not grenades (training or otherwise)... they are an explosive device (think an M-80 firework but a bit bigger), usually set off by trip wire... and they can hurt you, if you use them wrong or are inadvertantly too close to them when they go off...

Grenades are explosive devices. Flash-bangs have a charge, albeit small. Having them set up by tripwire sounds counter-intuitive, as the primary purpose is to disorient enemies in buildings where there might be collateral damage - for example in hostage rescue situations. An actual fragmentation grenade is probably much more effective as a booby-trap with tripwire, as it will do it's damage without needing a follow-up attack. And if people are lying in ambush, you could use remotely detonated weapons instead. Tripwires are actually prohibited by international law due to being inherently indiscriminate attacks, although many (including the US) ignore this.

Anyway, this has gotten way off topic. If you have suggestions to make Flash-bang grenades more realistic or better balanced, feel free to do so.

You do not use fragmentation grenades as training devices unless you want to lose a lot of people...
And again, the trip wire Flash Bangs were to simulate Mines and static anti-personnel devices. In training, they could stun, disorient and were somewhat painful if too close.

They may use something different nowadays (I have been out of the Corps for 25 years now), but they were no joke. That being said, Concussion Grenades (also a stunning device, though potentially lethal if too close) are what I equate Flash-Bangs in Shadowrun with. After all, A Shadowrun Flash-Bang is simple a stunning device. The mechanic they currently use works in my opinion. But, Like I said earlier, your modification is interesting, and well done.