Help, I have a player that has confiscated 12 concussion grenades from some careless stormtroopers and he wants to link them all together to make an improvised grenade bomb to Drop on a pesky laser turret whilst attacking an imperial prison.

Thoughts?

Is that a problem?

whats the purpose of the turret? I mean in game terms, why have a turret if they can't destroy it. Even if they are concussive grenades, the shockwaves alone would disable the turret if nothing else. Chunky salsa effect.

If the turret is there to tell the players "don't go this way" then give it armor (not soak). Let him use the nades if he wants to. Just warn him that it's armored and may have little effect.

I mean, what's cooler for the pc? Every player should have a moment in a session where they can say "remember I did....., that was awesome". Don't get me wrong, it's not some simple 2 difficulty roll. I'm gonna add some red to that and pray for the despair.

I say let him go for it. I like it when players use stuff they find to come up with solutions for obstacles they face. Let him explain which skill he thinks is more appropriate to his plan, mechanics or skullduggery, then ask him to detail how he intends to take it out (pulp the troops inside, jam the rotator, damage the barrel, cut the power supply,etc...).

Take a look at the explosives rules. Additional explosives beyond the first add to the power of the detonation. In the case of these concussion grenades, I'd say that every grenade beyond the first (if you -must- have hard rules) adds +4 damage and, if the total damage goes over 20, it switches from stun to lethal. That should give it some kick against even Armored targets.

And remember to upgrade the difficulty when he uses them, because a Despair on that check would be something to watch.

How I'd handle it depends on the target.

If the target Laser Turret in question is an open-top gun emplacement... no need for the IED, just throw grenades.

If the player is set on the hellboy pack I'd do it like this:

The turret would be statted such that a grenade can damage it, but it'll take at least 3 or 4 good hit to HT it. (so assuming Concs' have a base of 10, I'd give the turret Armor 0 and an HT of 3 or 4, possibly even 5, and a SS of 2ish)

Making the Bombs:

The Player decides how many grenades they wish to use. Make a Hard mechanics check to assemble. Tools for the job may apply. Take the base grenade statblock and modify it based on roll results, the Enc of the bomb is equal to the number of grenades used, and it's Sil is 1 higher then usual (so typically a finished bomb will be sil 1).

Successes generate the Secondary ability of the bomb (see "Using the bombs")

Advantage: Spent 3 to increase the blast by 1

Triumph: Reduce Crit by 1 or increase damage by 1

Threat: Spend 2 to reduce Blast by 1

Despair: Very hard Coordination/Athletics check to get clear before a concussion grenade blows.

Using the Bombs:

Make a ranged light attack (with at least one setback for how awkward the bomb is). On a triumph the bomb thrower may make an immediate second attack, this attack is resolved using the base ability of the bomb (see "making the bomb") upgraded by the number of grenades in the bomb beyond the first (to a max of 5) like you would do with a minion group (in fact what I'm doing is using the bomb as if it were a squadded minion group).

End result would be a weapon that is better then a lone grenade and functions when being lobbed out of a vehicle or something, but that isn't automatically better then an actual grenade in a more typical scenario.

When tossed onto the laser turret in question, it'll typically take a pair of these grenade packs to kill it outright if they both successfully double strike. However, since many Crit results require a vehicle to be a vehicle, you'll also note that most say if you can't inflict the crit normally, apply SS (1 SS for 1-54, 2 SS for 55-81, ect) so if you extended that to other Vehicle required crits that wouldn't apply to a stationary gun (like knocked off course) then there's a good chance of a single bomb Crit-Straining a turret in one pass...

Why not just hand wave it?

I mean you could calculate the damage but I'd think that many grenades could take out the average gun turret. The only reason why I'd have the player roll if for the threats/despair. hes using them all right? Blow that sucker up with great narration and leave the math for when it really matters.

Only concern is long-term issues. If your players can handle it, then yeah, hand -wave it and be done. If the players are the type to then try and IED their way to victory from that day forward, probably better to use the math.

This is why you need a Hired Gun/Demolitionist from “Dangerous Covenants”.

They’re purpose built to create IEDs and do all sorts of nasty stuff with explosives.

Thanks for the tips guys. I was hoping for a bit of a sense check on what I actually implemented. The rules don't seem to have covered improvised explosives yet, except as part of demolitionist talents, and if I followed the standard explosive rules my player would have had to roll 12 difficulty dice to put it together correctly.

We used a rough number of each grenade would add an addtional 4 points of damage if he succeeded on the mechanics roll to rig it up. We saved the roll until after he had thrown the grenades to add to the tension of the situation and because you probably wouldn't know if you had messed it up until it was too late, we normally do this with explosives.

The character was hanging from the landing ramp strut above the turret, as the ship flew above it, and threw the grenades. He missed but got 5 advantage so I suggested that he could activate blast so that the grenade bomb wasn't wasted. I then made the player roll to see how big a boom would occur. The difficulty for this was 3 challenge dice (normal rules for getting the most from explosives would have increased the difficulty for each extra explosive, and I thought this would have been way too high) and a couple of set-back, he had 1 ability and 1 proficiency dice and a couple of boost, he also spent a destiny to downgrade the difficulty.

Unfortunately the end result of the roll was a single advantage, so in theory the bomb didin't work. I ruled that a single grenade exploded but didn't get through the armour of the turret.

My player wasn't happy with this result.....

For me things might have been different if he had more than 1 rank in mechanics, or had any useful talents (the game has now taught me start thinking 'isn't there a talent for that' when players try to be too creative), or had proper explosives. I really wanted him to succeed as it would have been very cinematic but with that dice pool it was probably unlikely to work out, and now I have a rare case of doubting how things played out.

Nah, sounds like you did it right. The dice just didn’t go in his favor.

Their enemies should have pulled out the pins and thrown it back.

So the grenade bomb was just sitting at the base of a laser turret, having failed to detonate when thrown, another player rolled a triumph during an attack run on the tower and asked to set the grenades off. It was both effective, causing 40 points of character scale damage, and very cinematic. Isn't it great when things like this enhance the game!