WOIN Grenades

[PolloParrington]

Just had a few quick questions regarding the grenade rules on page 96 of NEW:

1) The damage from your average frag grenade is 2d6 (which you can pretty much brush off with some decent armour), and it states they cannot be combined with other ranged exploits unless otherwise noted. Does this mean you can't do your usual 2 Attack Dice > 1 Damage Die exchange when making your attack roll?

2) It states that the grenade makes an attack roll against each creature individually, but it also advises that an empty square has Defence of 10 and to apply damage to any within the grenade's area of effect. Does this mean they're supposed to roll to hit the area first and then make an attack roll against each affected creature? Or do all creatures in the area automatically take damage?

 

[Morrus]

1) Attack dice > damage dice is not an exploit.

2) Make the easy DEF 10 check to hit the square; if miss roll to see which square is hit. Then make an attack roll against each creature in the area.

 

[TheHirumaChico]

Sorry for the post-necro, but this one is pretty much exactly on topic for my follow-on questions.

2) Make the easy DEF 10 check to hit the square; if miss roll to see which square is hit. Then make an attack roll against each creature in the area.

I understand that the character makes a ranged attack (AGI or INT dice pool), supplemented by his or her dice pool from the throwing (physical) skill, if any. The first ranged attack is against the targeted square, which is DEF 10. But then presuming the square is hit, what skill dice are used to make the subsequent attack roll against the VITAL DEFENSE of each creature in the Burst radius of the grenade?

It doesn't seem logical to use the same attack skill of the character who threw the grenade, because that was already used to hit the targeted square (or miss it and scatter). To my mind it seems to be the grenade's blast that is making the attack against the creature's VITAL DEFENSE, and not the thrower's lob. So for step 2, does the grenade have an attack value/skill dice pool that should be used?

 

[Morrus]

Sorry for the post-necro, but this one is pretty much exactly on topic for my follow-on questions.



I understand that the character makes a ranged attack (AGI or INT dice pool), supplemented by his or her dice pool from the throwing (physical) skill, if any. The first ranged attack is against the targeted square, which is DEF 10. But then presuming the square is hit, what skill dice are used to make the subsequent attack roll against the VITAL DEFENSE of each creature in the Burst radius of the grenade?

It doesn't seem logical to use the same attack skill of the character who threw the grenade, because that was already used to hit the targeted square (or miss it and scatter). To my mind it seems to be the grenade's blast that is making the attack against the creature's VITAL DEFENSE, and not the thrower's lob. So for step 2, does the grenade have an attack value/skill dice pool that should be used?

You won’t like the answer.

 

[TheHirumaChico]

Um, OK, but I'll still take the bait and ask for further clarification of your somewhat cryptic reply.

Am I right to presume that you are going to say it should use the initial roll to hit the square? Or that the thrower's skill is used again to make the subsequent attacks? I don't know if I won't like those answers, I am just trying to provide a reasonable explanation to my players. I guess the only answer I wouldn't like is if the answer you just gave is the only one you plan to provide

Aside: We played another session of WOIN:NOW this past Saturday, and we generally love the system, BTW. Generally intuitive, appropriate level of crunch, but usually quick to understand allowing for good pace. It's now our "Goldilocks" rules system for my modern covert ops campaign after having tried and discarded five other rules systems prior.

Return to topic at hand: The enemy soldiers opposing my players' team of agents tossed a flash-bang grenade at them, and a discussion ensued. I ended up ruling that the initial skill roll to hit the square would be used for the subsequent check against VITAL DEFENSE in the interest of moving on, but they wanted to revisit the Grenade topic post-session. I said I would ask in the forums and see what came of it.

In the absence of a flash-bang grenade in the WOIN source books, I've home-ruled it as follows:
No damage, but anyone in the Burst 2 radius who is successfully hit by an attack vs. their Vital Defense will suffer the Blind and Deaf conditions at their 2nd stage and as Severe conditions per pp. 173 - 176 of the NEW book. Anyone in Burst 3-4 radius who is successfully hit by an attack vs. their Vital Defense will suffer the Blind and Deaf conditions at their 1st stage. Specific PPE (night-vision goggles with auto-gating technology [If someone was wearing night vision goggles and someone threw a flash bang grenade, how much damage would it do to someone’s vision? - Quora], welder's goggles/face shield, ear plugs) will provide some appropriate immunity to these effects.

 

[Morrus]

Um, OK, but I'll still take the bait and ask for further clarification of your somewhat cryptic reply.

Am I right to presume that you are going to say it should use the initial roll to hit the square? Or that the thrower's skill is used again to make the subsequent attacks? I don't know if I won't like those answers, I am just trying to provide a reasonable explanation to my players. I guess the only answer I wouldn't like is if the answer you just gave is the only one you plan to provide

Initial roll. I’m a fan of fast mechanics.

 

[TheHirumaChico]

Good enough. VERY much appreciated to get an extremely rapid answer straight from the designer's keyboard.

 

[Evil_DM]

Searching for rules regarding grenades, I came upon this topic and thought I'd share some of our experiences. We're playing mid-level now in a pretty long running NEW campaign (grade 9-12 now) and we've thoroughly reworked the grenade rules.

First off, we've upped the damage of most damaging grenades to 5D6 (frag) or 4D6 (HE).
Secondly, if you hit the square but miss the VITAL DEFENSE, you still do half damage (and for flash or other grenades, you inflict a condition but it automatically wears off after 1 round).
Thirdly, we've added a special attribute called CASCADE that means that every square away from the center point, you to progressively -1D6 of damage. This works for Frag grenades for example, while a HE grenade would follow the normal burst rules.

Examples:
Frag Grenade, 5D6 Cascade, range 3
HE grenade, 4D6 Burst 2, range 3
Stun grenade, Burst 2, range 3. If you beat the VITAL DEFENSE, you inflict the Blind condition. If you fail to beat the VITAL DEFENSE, the Blind condition automatically wears off after 1 round.

 

[MacD]

Searching for rules regarding grenades, I came upon this topic and thought I'd share some of our experiences. We're playing mid-level now in a pretty long running NEW campaign (grade 9-12 now) and we've thoroughly reworked the grenade rules.

First off, we've upped the damage of most damaging grenades to 5D6 (frag) or 4D6 (HE).
Secondly, if you hit the square but miss the VITAL DEFENSE, you still do half damage (and for flash or other grenades, you inflict a condition but it automatically wears off after 1 round).
Thirdly, we've added a special attribute called CASCADE that means that every square away from the center point, you to progressively -1D6 of damage. This works for Frag grenades for example, while a HE grenade would follow the normal burst rules.

Examples:
Frag Grenade, 5D6 Cascade, range 3
HE grenade, 4D6 Burst 2, range 3
Stun grenade, Burst 2, range 3. If you beat the VITAL DEFENSE, you inflict the Blind condition. If you fail to beat the VITAL DEFENSE, the Blind condition automatically wears off after 1 round.

I see it is tempting to add more damage to weapon stats; my fighter-like ogron player is still looking for a weapon that deals more damage than his oversized 2handed sword.

BUT - he slowly gets the point how WOIN is thought to work - he started to add attack dice to the damage dice, and it works.
Ok, sometimes it works, most WOIN enemies get ridicully high melee / vital defense, but since our sniper began to play with defence-lowering conditions the damage output is great.

Long story short - why adding damage to the grenades?

As I should mention, the information in the initial post about converting dice is outdated - it´s done on a 1:1 ratio now (according to the official WOIN errata).

 

[Evil_DM]

Long story short - why adding damage to the grenades?

As I should mention, the information in the initial post about converting dice is outdated - it´s done on a 1:1 ratio now (according to the official WOIN errata).

Mainly because grenades did not do anything useful against moderately well equipped enemies - though you could hit them in the center of a blast with a grenade (hitting DC 10), they would still get no damage if you would not beat their VITAL DEFENSE, which becomes progressively harder if they stand further away. Which is silly because an exploding grenade just is - hence, you do not add damage from skill to a grenade attack. So, we house-ruled that if you hit the square but do not beat the VITAL DEFENSE, you still get half damage.

And even if you roll higher than the VITAL DEFENSE, since the average is 7 for 2D6, which is very easy to mitigate through SOAK with a simple kevlar or HQ kevlar and a helmet, we have upped the damage considerably - also to be able to make a difference between normal and micro grenades.

So effectively, now if you do not beat the VITAL DEFENSE, you still have a chance to do some damage (it averages around 10 damage, of which usually over half is SOAK'ed) and if you dó beat VITAL DEFENSE (which is difficult enough at longer ranges) you at least do considerable damage.

Also, we have decided against the 1:1 dice conversion as a standard - it is now an additional benefit of weapons with the Auto trait, that you can exchange 1:1 instead of 2:1 - representing firing multiple bullets at a single target.