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Grenade Skill


Brian

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Setting aside the obvious answer of "however you want to do it", how does BRP implement hand grenade skill?

The text suggests using Throw (which doesn't, in my mind, include such important subtleties as "what does this kind of grenade do again?", "how long after releasing the spoon before it goes BOOM in my hand?", and "where would be the best placement for the desired effect?"). I found what seemed to me to be contradictions in the tables, but I'm away from my book and can't cite specifics.

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I think to throw the grenade where one wants it to land is purely a matter

of physical skill, and therefore of the Throw skill.

The other questions, what the grenade does, the kind of fuse and timer or

the best placement, are matters of general or specialized knowledge, for

which I would use either a Know roll for the more common knowledge (e.g.

to distinguish a fragmentation grenade from a tear gas grenade) or the De-

molition skill for specialized knowledge (e.g. to decide where to place the

grenade for maximum effect).

"Mind like parachute, function only when open."

(Charlie Chan)

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I'd agree with rust.While I can see the need for knowing what kind of grenade you have, I'm not sure if the need for a skill is there. Realistically I can see someone who knows enough to point a rocket launcher in the right direction but being incapable of actually firing it or knowing the difference between an M72 LAW anti-tank weapon and an FIM-92 Stinger anti-aircraft missile. but in the typical game I just don't see it, even with a charater that just has the default pistol or rifle skill, there is never an assumption of need to roll to select the correct ammo, load the weapon or operate the controls.

I suppose for a military based game where it might come up frequently enough to add a skill, you could make an armaments skill allowing the character to identify various weapon systems, types of artillery rounds, missiles, grenades etc and know what they can do, otherwise I'd just leave it to familiarity with the weapon. It can be pretty humorous when the player doesn't bother to read the stats of a weapon and they chuck a WP grenade expecting a relatively small blast radius (white phosphorus grenades have a surprisingly large area of effect).

Not directly related but I always liked the way The Morrow Project broke down grenades by size and weight into 4 categories which effected throwing distance. It made those Dutch golf ball grenades pretty nasty, they didn't have a big boom but they could be thrown muh farther than your typical grenade. The above mentioned WP grenade on the other hand was pretty short ranged and some characters were incapable of throwing the grenade far enough to get out of its burst radius.

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Throw for getting the grenade from hand to intended target, Knowledge: Military Hardware for the capabilities of different grenades (or any other weapon). Demolitions might work, but it would probably be a difficult role - going through the Army demo manual there is almost nothing on grenades. The EOD manual has more information, but not nearly as much as Jane's.

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Yep, I agree - if it otherwise makes sense for the character in question (= he has a reason

to have that skill and enough other opportunities to use it during the game), Knowledge (Mi-

litary Hardware) would be a good choice.

"Mind like parachute, function only when open."

(Charlie Chan)

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