Blowing S*** Up in SR4

[Gelare]

So, Shadowrun is a game which involves grenades, rocket launchers, and plastic explosives. Going in the front door of a building is really just as good as making a new one in the side. So, why do the rules for these things suck?

Explosive ratings, barrier ratings, structure ratings, whatever ratings. Secret stealth rules that are mentioned in small print in entirely different sections of the book. It's possible some of this stuff is even intelligible, I don't know. What I do know is that it's impossible to adjudicate the detonation of a pound of C4 in any time less than half an hour, and even then it usually involves the demoralization of all parties involved and agreement that "it just blows it up". There should really be easier ways to figure out exactly how much explosive it takes to, say, demolish a small building or house, because it seems like it would be useful all the time. Just recently my group has used plastic explosives on post offices, hotels, an arcology under construction, a cement truck, and more.

Any ideas?

[Heath Robinson]

I'd like to ask what exactly you want from the rules. What is your set of design goals. Do you want some kind of set of rules that can be plugged into the existing set and work perfectly fine? What can we legitimately modify?


Quick suggestions

Barriers automatically soak Rating damage and each m^3 has N boxes, where N is fixed. Attack type does not matter for damage descriptions.

Explosives damage is Rating * Quantity. (NB: requires you recost all explosives, unless you like ANFO logistics)

When you're soaking damage from explosives, you always buy hits.

[Username17]

Barrier Ratings and structure ratings work fine. Basically walls have armor and body and their damage is calculated in holes. Explosives mysteriously don't work. Like, at all. Whoever did the conversion into game mechanics for those things must have moved a decimal point over or got their metric notation wrong or something.

My suggestion is to have any particular pile of explosive ad hocced to be equivalent to the most similar weapon. A little ball of the stuff goes off like a concussion grenade, a handful hits like a rocket, and a big block goes off like a plot device.

-Username17

[Gelare]

Barrier Ratings and structure ratings work fine. Basically walls have armor and body and their damage is calculated in holes.

Okay, fair enough, but body and armor (and body armor) both do the same thing for buildings, which is soak. And since both ratings are even based on each other by means of a simple formula, why not have them be one number?

Explosives mysteriously don't work. Like, at all. Whoever did the conversion into game mechanics for those things must have moved a decimal point over or got their metric notation wrong or something.

My suggestion is to have any particular pile of explosive ad hocced to be equivalent to the most similar weapon. A little ball of the stuff goes off like a concussion grenade, a handful hits like a rocket, and a big block goes off like a plot device.

-Username17

See, that's okay when you don't use them often, but my group loves blowing stuff up. We do it all the time, and when that's the case, you want actual rules so you can stock up on the proper quantities and such.

[Elennsar]

Let X equal the base explosive power of one charge of the least potent explosive (used in Shadowrun, the ineffectiveness of blackpowder is some fraction of X).

X is equal (on building scale) to a concussion grenade (on character scale). Since buildings tend to have better soak, you probably want more than one charge.

Something twice as powerful as X needs only half as much to do the same effect or is twice as effective with the same amount.

Enjoy.

Threw this together while typing it, as I don't play Shadowrun I can't give you anything more specific, but it sounded good.

[Sir Neil]

Any ideas?

An extended family of troll suicide bombers can be a fun way to say, "FVCK YOU" to the Man. 74 BP buys Demolition 6 and a lot of rating 6 explosive foam, that's all I'm sayin'.

[Username17]

We do it all the time, and when that's the case, you want actual rules so you can stock up on the proper quantities and such.

Sure. I think it's something of a travesty that someone seems to have written "kilograms" when they meant "grams" on explosives.

But honestly, I think that doing damage to walls with bombs like an attack is kind of silly. Bombs don't work like attacks. You can just add a few kilos of c4 to a bomb and make it Over 9000 or whatever in a way that you couldn't do with a sword swing.

You don't need anything more than the most basic of demolition training to put an excess of explosive onto the bottom of an oil drum and then set it off to create a column of fire. That'll put a hole in a wall. Maybe the next wall. And honestly, it is the second question that people should be rolling dice for. Anyone can use too much explosive - you just add more. Using the right amount of explosives is hard.

-Username17