[TheNarrator]

DV 44 per full-burst due to the overlapping explosion rules, and DV 22 every turn for 10 turns... and that's just one Full Burst. With 4 IPs you could stack the per-turn damage up to DV 88 by the time it "ticks" at the end of the turn.

Don't forget that you'd get to increase the initial 44 DV of damage with net hits on the attack roll, too, if you fire directly at the target with impact detonation. Not that it's likely to matter. 

However, since it's the result of autofire, wouldn't only the base 8 DV + net hits count against the hardened armor (which would be halved by the WP)?

[JustADude]

DV 44 per full-burst due to the overlapping explosion rules, and DV 22 every turn for 10 turns... and that's just one Full Burst. With 4 IPs you could stack the per-turn damage up to DV 88 by the time it "ticks" at the end of the turn.

Don't forget that you'd get to increase the initial 44 DV of damage with net hits on the attack roll, too, if you fire directly at the target with impact detonation. Not that it's likely to matter. 

However, since it's the result of autofire, wouldn't only the base 8 DV + net hits count against the hardened armor (which would be halved by the WP)?

Actually, at least according to my GM, the Overlapping Explosion rules supersede the Autofire rules, as far as Grenade Launchers go.

Essentially, he decided that grenade launchers are just delivery vectors for Microgrenades, and the BF and FA options just mean you're putting more grenades down-range with a single action. Since they're not bullets, what happens after that is covered 100% by the OE rules, as if you'd hand-thrown two grenades set to detonate at the end of the Action Phase.

EDIT: And, as a side note, DV 44 may seem excessive but you've got to remember each modern WP grenade contains 15oz of liberally aerated White Phosphorous, and you're detonating 10 of them near-simultaneously with each burst. That means that, assuming you have 3 IPs, you're going to be dumping 4.25kg of WP, a substance that burns at 2760 Celsius, into the air in about a second.

[TheNarrator]

*shrug* If the question came up in my campaign I would have said that any instance of combining damage from multiple sources (like overlapping explosions) would be treated the same as autofire for overcoming hardened armor: if a single one couldn't penetrate the armor, then pelting the armor with a shower of them wouldn't either.

It's really up to each particular GM's interpretation, since the rules in War don't say anything about how overlapping explosions effect hardened armor. If your GM is cool with it, then I have no complaints.

[Mara]

<--- gets up, heads for the elevator, and presses the "B-100" button, to go retrieve his jaw from where it just fell. 

You think that is bad? Head over to the other Shadowrun forum, where they will tell you that if you don't have 20+ dice
in your primary skill, you are not making a good character...

[Mirikon]

<--- gets up, heads for the elevator, and presses the "B-100" button, to go retrieve his jaw from where it just fell. 

You think that is bad? Head over to the other Shadowrun forum, where they will tell you that if you don't have 20+ dice
in your primary skill, you are not making a good character...

Oh yeah, you should have seen the WOTC forums back in the 3.5 days. Some of the same kind of crazy going on there, too. My favorite quote came from a build called the "War Hulking Hurler" which combined, surprisingly, the War Hulk and Hulking Hurler prestige classes. That quote was:

How much XP do you get for destroying Faerun?

All of it.

[Lethe]

That's not zero sum......

I have 18 dice.. you have 9 dice... no recoil comp.

-9 means I still have 9 dice, but you have no dice.

2:1 ratio is inferior to 9:0 ratio!

That depends.
9:0 is only less likely to fail, if all you need is one net hit.
On average both are generating 3 net hits.
If you need more than 3 net hits for example, 9:0 is inferior to 18:9, because the spread of the latter is higher.

[_Pax_]

<--- gets up, heads for the elevator, and presses the "B-100" button, to go retrieve his jaw from where it just fell. 

You think that is bad? Head over to the other Shadowrun forum, where they will tell you that if you don't have 20+ dice
in your primary skill, you are not making a good character...

No, we will tell you no such thing.

It so happens I post in both forums, under the same handle even.  And while the possibility of 20+ die pools will certainly be discussed, the majority of posters there will not say "if you don't have one too, you're not a good shadowrunner".  >=P

[Wakshaani]

One of those that that triggers the "There's no wrong way to play SHadowrun" twitch that I have. 20+ dice pools is significantly *different* than my game, but not *wrong*.

The Baseline game, however, doesn't expect dicepools over 12 for anything of note, and usually lower. 6 dice, after all, is "Professional competency", while 8 is "Veteran". That's a whole other discussion that makes people plant flags and tear their shirts, so, moving on.

I have to say that the gradual shift to "Cool professional" has snuffed the old Razorboi style. I undertsand why, but man I miss them in my old fart way.





*sniffle*

[Wakshaani]

And if your players hose SnS, hit em with a great form air spirit

Heh, with the wonky spirit rules, by RAW you can use stick-n-shock against an air spirit - or a flamethrower against a fire spirit. 

What, you never heard of fighting fire with fire?

[redwolf]

One of those that that triggers the "There's no wrong way to play SHadowrun" twitch that I have. 20+ dice pools is significantly *different* than my game, but not *wrong*.

The Baseline game, however, doesn't expect dicepools over 12 for anything of note, and usually lower. 6 dice, after all, is "Professional competency", while 8 is "Veteran". That's a whole other discussion that makes people plant flags and tear their shirts, so, moving on.

I have to say that the gradual shift to "Cool professional" has snuffed the old Razorboi style. I undertsand why, but man I miss them in my old fart way.





*sniffle*

+1 lol

[CanRay]

Willie Peter is NOT your friend and you should not hug him!

[JustADude]

*shrug* If the question came up in my campaign I would have said that any instance of combining damage from multiple sources (like overlapping explosions) would be treated the same as autofire for overcoming hardened armor: if a single one couldn't penetrate the armor, then pelting the armor with a shower of them wouldn't either.

Um... TheNarrator... what you just said means that because 1kg of C4 can't successfully breech an armor plate that a tonne of C4 in 1,000 separate, simultaneously detonated charges can't breech the plate.

The fact is that, unlike bullets hitting one after the other, multiple sources of *BOOM* going off at the same time does increase the impulse directed at the target, which makes it more likely to suffer structural failure.

[TheNarrator]

Point taken.

But on the other hand, would scattering a half dozen fragmentation hand grenades in seperate locations in the vicinity of a tank really crack that tank like an egg, as these rules suggest? I'd like to find to find a middle ground for game balance purposes.

Now that I think of it, there are already rules for combining multiple explosives... which work entirely differently from the overlapping explosions rules. According to RAW, those 1,000 separate 1kg C4 charges would be fifteen times as powerful as a single 1 tonne C4 charge (1 + 999 / 2 = 500.5 as opposed to square root of 1000 = 31.62).

...times like this I really miss the explicitly-logarithmic damage of Star Wars Saga Edition, where double the *BOOM* always meant +1 die of damage.

[JustADude]

Point taken.

But on the other hand, would scattering a half dozen fragmentation hand grenades in seperate locations in the vicinity of a tank really crack that tank like an egg, as these rules suggest? I'd like to find to find a middle ground for game balance purposes.

Now that I think of it, there are already rules for combining multiple explosives... which work entirely differently from the overlapping explosions rules. According to RAW, those 1,000 separate 1kg C4 charges would be fifteen times as powerful as a single 1 tonne C4 charge (1 + 999 / 2 = 500.5 as opposed to square root of 1000 = 31.62).

...times like this I really miss the explicitly-logarithmic damage of Star Wars Saga Edition, where double the *BOOM* always meant +1 die of damage.

It's a case of one size not fitting all. The rules make sense for everything but frag grenades, really, since the "shredding" effect of the criss-crossing shockwaves really will do much more damage than one, bigger kaboom hitting at the same spot... although, really, the 501 vs 32 just demonstrates the how nerf the "charge scaling" rules are.

As a fix, since it makes no mention one way or the other of how you modify the AP when using the Overlapping Explosions rules, I'd take the route of assuming that the AP of the Overlapping Explosions rule also adds the same way. AP of the best single hit + half of the total of the rest.

In that case, those frag grenades are at AP +5 per grenade. That gives them a final AP of +18... which, of course, adds to the Vehicle Armor. That means, assuming the worst case scenario of them all landing with zero scatter, it would only need 24 points of armor to defeat the grenades' collective DV 42... easily doable for even a modded street vehicle that's been upgraded with Smart Armor.

Of all the vehicles in Chummer marked as a "Tank" of some sort, none of the ones marked as "Battle Tanks"... the equivalent of a modern M1 Abrams... fail to rise well above that mark, and the ones that would be vulnerable to such a strike are all fluffed as lightly armored, due either to a desire for speed or because they're "cheap"... and the weakest still rolls 55 dice to resist after the +18 is added in.

And, again, that's pretty much assuming zilch scatter on all the detonations. That means the grenades have landed on and under the tank, where they stand the best chance of damaging the treads or bouncing just right and managing to detonate in part of the engine's intake/exhaust system. Every meter of scatter off the primary detonation, or 2 collective meters of scatter off the supplementary explosions, drops the DV by 1 while the +18 AP stays the same, meaning an inaccurate barrage would quickly become worthless.

--- --- ---

Of course, talking about actual explosives doesn't really cover the effects of White Phosphorous Grenades, which fill the area with a load of ultra-hot incendiary particles that are more than capable of melting through steel and similar materials. Douse a tank with enough of the stuff and you'll end up with all sorts of nasty problems like tank shells cooking off, fuel-cells exploding, and the crew getting dry-roasted and/or burned alive.

Here is a link from LiveLeak showing a real WP rocket hitting a real tank. The WP grenades may not be armor-piercing rockets, but I definitely think a full-scale barrage of them would make up for it with saturation.

[TheNarrator]

It's a case of one size not fitting all. The rules make sense for everything but frag grenades, really, since the "shredding" effect of the criss-crossing shockwaves really will do much more damage than one, bigger kaboom hitting at the same spot...

In this context, how simultaneous do the explosions have to be?

Of course, talking about actual explosives doesn't really cover the effects of White Phosphorous Grenades, which fill the area with a load of ultra-hot incendiary particles that are more than capable of melting through steel and similar materials.

True enough. Hence the AP -half, which is enough to even cut an MBT's impressive armor down to size.