The new grenade rules in War! got me thinking about the grenade & missile system, and I'm not too happy with it. There's a little discussion in the Errata forum, but I figured it's more appropriate here. My main complaints with the system:
Using an opposed roll to determine scatter doesn't work very well. My group has been struggling with realism issues: Why would a grenade scatter an extra 2-10 meters or more, just because you're aiming at a person instead of a place? We joke that the target gets to bat it away, but realistically it'd be more like diving for cover. While that would reasonably reduce damage, it wouldn't create so much distance, and it would cause little or no actual scatter.
A bigger problem with the current system is that only one target benefits from the defense roll. If the primary target rolls well, the grenade could scatter 10 meters away ... right into his buddies, who then get no defense. If they get an action before detonation, they could run away, but it's not guaranteed, and things like cover don't matter at all. I consider this highly broken.
Finally, it's been my experience that grenades are useless unless using them on crowds or confined spaces, in which cases they're extremely deadly. It's far too easy for them to scatter outside the 5m range of a HE grenade, and even 12m frag grenades don't have to scatter far before they're useless against armored targets. The old saw that "close counts in hand grenades" simply isn't true for Shadowrun grenades. It's tough enough to drop a grenade on target with a simple success test, and practically impossible with an opposed test. On the other hand, if you throw one into a crowded room, the chunky salsa effect is one of the few things in Shadowrun that can instantly kill even the toughest PCs. The huge variability in effectiveness, and the extreme lethality at the high end, just doesn't fit the rest of the game well.
I think two tweaks would make the grenade rules a lot more realistic, playable, and more consistent with indirect combat spells. First, throw out the opposed test for scatter, and always use the rules for targeting a location instead (a simple test). Second, determine damage the same way you do for area combat spells, with a single attack test versus many defense tests. This allows everyone affected to benefit from things like cover and full defense. You can use the same attack roll both for scatter (using the gross hits) and for damage (using net hits).
Some notes and caveats:
I'm not sure exactly how to apply the damage. Should attacker's net hits increase damage? Or maybe defender's net hits should decrease damage? Either way, you might need to tweak the base damage for grenades, which I'd rather avoid, but oh well.
This system would also work for things like land mines and other explosives. (Most of the time, you don't need to worry about defense for those, since they happen by surprise. And there's no scatter. So you could simplify a lot.)
Maybe we should revisit the chunky salsa rule too? New War! rules say that multiple detonations add together, but you only add full value for the largest explosion, and half for additional ones. Perhaps rebound damage should also be halved. That would make confined spaces more deadly, but not so much of sure kills.
I do like the new rule in War! for contact grenades. That's one case where I do think an opposed roll should figure into scatter. I recommend using the War! rules as written: On a hit, grenade detonates at the target, and net hits increase damage; on a miss, there is no scatter reduction at all.
I'd like your thoughts on this, especially for how best to balance the grenade damage. On the low end, I think a "hit" should inflict at least as much damage as a pistol, which isn't currently the case because of wild scatter. On the high end, I don't think grenades should be any worse than a mage overcasting a powerball.