[d20 Modern] Chaff Grenade

Starwind · Mar 22, 2004

Anyone have stats for how a Chaff Grenade (from Metal Gear Solid) would work in d20 Modern. It disrupts electronics within a certain area for a brief period of time, but I'm not the best at house ruling things like this. Any help would be appreciated. Thankiez.

rkanodia · Mar 22, 2004

I haven't played d20 Modern, but if I were to take a blind stab at it, I'd say something like this:

Chaff Grenades: This device explodes one round after the pin is pulled, emitting large amounts of electromagnetic radiation and spraying a 10-foot radius around the point of the explosion with charged bits of iron and similar electronically-disruptive things. The explosion deals no damage to any form of life, but wreaks havoc on certain electronic systems, causing them to be inoperable for 1d4+1 rounds. After that period has elapsed, the affected systems recover and function normally. While most modern military-grade equipment is shielded against interference to the point that chaff grenades will not affect it, recording, surveillance, and targeting systems (video cameras, laser tripwire systems, computer scopes, etc) are (by necessity) more sensitive and are affected by chaff grenades. Consumer-grade appliances are also affected by chaff grenades. Also, consumer-grade recording equipment (such as a common digital video camera) must make a Fortitude save (DC 12) or be rendered permanently unusable.

Starwind · Mar 23, 2004

Wow, nice write up. Thanks. But is a 10 feet radius big enough? In Metal Gear Solid it seems to affect everything in the area. I read that they are in Splinter Cell: Pandora Tommorow which would probably give a more realistic appraoch to them but I haven't played it yet.

VirgilCaine · Mar 24, 2004

Um, chaff fools radar, it's not EMP. The "iron strips" are totally unnecessary.

Dang Japanese.

Krieg · Mar 24, 2004

VirgilCaine said:
Um, chaff fools radar, it's not EMP. The "iron strips" are totally unnecessary.

1. The name is a from device in the game that does (apparently) act as a short range EMP weapon.

2. Since a real world chaff dispenser uses "aluminum strips" rather than "iron strips" it really isn't that far off.

VirgilCaine · Mar 24, 2004

What I am saying is YOU DON'T NEED THE "IRON" STRIPS!!

Unless the enemy is using ACTUAL RADAR to find you, they just look pretty and have no use!

There's no point to have a hand-thrown grenade that fools radar!

With ground radar (radar that detects intuders appaoraching ground installations) you either have enough to worry about from the installation itself, or you might could avoid the radar somehow--using this "chaff grenade" just gives the enemy an actual reading, when you want to not have one at all!

rkanodia · Mar 24, 2004

VirgilCaine said:
What I am saying is YOU DON'T NEED THE "IRON" STRIPS!!

Unless the enemy is using ACTUAL RADAR to find you, they just look pretty and have no use!

There's no point to have a hand-thrown grenade that fools radar!

With ground radar (radar that detects intuders appaoraching ground installations) you either have enough to worry about from the installation itself, or you might could avoid the radar somehow--using this "chaff grenade" just gives the enemy an actual reading, when you want to not have one at all!

Calm down. He asked for something emulating Metal Gear Solid, so I gave it to him. In MGS, I'm fairly certain that pretty glowing bits of something float around the area where the chaff grenade is set off. No, it isn't realistic. But neither is d20.

Starwind · Mar 25, 2004

Thanks rkanodia. I was asking for MGS style chaff grenades because I want to run a Foxhound campaign with d20 Modern. I wanted the chaff grenades to get around cameras and sentry guns mainly.