As our GM handed out a few thermal detonators as a plot device in the last game session and my character used the opportunity to pickpocket one of them from the NPC intended to use them i now have a single thermal detonator and a nemesis assassin droid who is hunting my character. So i intend to use the Det to get rid of the droid since that thing is heavy armed and very resiliant.

I don't think that our GM has a problem if i destroy the droid in our next session since the story arc it contains is culminating but i am not sure if it is a good idea to throw that thing on the droid since the blast radius of a Det is medium, it has the breach-quality and blast 15 and my gunslinger is rather fragile. So my question is: Do i have to trigger blast if i have enough advantages to do so or can i use them to inflict a critical hit instead or even recover strain or give the droid a setback dice or even more for his retaliation strike should he survive the attack?

You are not required to spend your Advantages on anything in particular, including activating special qualities of your weapons. Any Advantages you score can be spent however you choose, and the GM will narrate the story accordingly. So if you throw the Detonator and the Blast isn't triggered, then the explosion ends up muffled somehow. Maybe the target was in a confined hallway and the explosion couldn't expand as well. Maybe it landed behind them so the explosion didn't hit anything else of consequence. Whatever =)

The fun part if you hit but don't activate Blast is figuring out how the heck you hurt the target but didn't utterly destroy everything around it .

The fun part if you hit but don't activate Blast is figuring out how the heck you hurt the target but didn't utterly destroy everything around it .

Technically triggering Blast means you deal damage to the people around the target. The explosion could still destroy objects, but somehow any people nearby happen to avoid injury.

Although, if I had a player try and play Leia Boushh, standing there holding the Detonator. But when it went off, they say "I didn't activate Blast, so only my target gets hurt." Then I would trigger Blast anyway.

Also as a note you can set grenades to go off after a few rounds, so if you have a way to affix it to the droid, set the timer, and then high tail it!

Thermal detonators might be better put to use as booby traps and timed devices than as grenades. I think most GMs would be hard-pressed not to upgrade the difficulty at least once and then have some evil fun with threats and despair, and you might not want to stand too close when that happens.

I think there is also a note in the CRB that says something to the effect that the GM can rule a grenade still hits everyone in an area even on a miss. The example given is a small room with several people in it. So the GM is well within their rights to trigger Blast despite advantages.

You don't want to destroy that droid. You want to disable it non destructively so it can be salvaged.

I think there is also a note in the CRB that says something to the effect that the GM can rule a grenade still hits everyone in an area even on a miss. The example given is a small room with several people in it. So the GM is well within their rights to trigger Blast despite advantages.

One of my PCs, a Hutt, has gotten hold of a Thermal Detonator, and now he tends to use it to super-coerce his way out of situations all the time, Return of the Jedi style.

If he would be pressured enough to actually use it in a small enough space, I would probably trigger Blast regardless of outcome and have it affect him as well.

Also, he will eventually run out of people that will not call his bluff.

The other thing you can do; rather then throwing it, is to set it to a round timer. It will be a little more difficult to trigger, but the devastation would likely flatten a house anyway.

Thermal detonators might be better put to use as booby traps and timed devices than as grenades. I think most GMs would be hard-pressed not to upgrade the difficulty at least once and then have some evil fun with threats and despair, and you might not want to stand too close when that happens.

Somewhat unrelated, this reminded me of the days of WEG's Star Wars Minis game, where the blast radius of a thermal detonator was larger than its short range, so either you started off with a higher difficulty just for using it or as the rulebook put it you were "merely choosing an interesting form of suicide."

Thermal detonators might be better put to use as booby traps and timed devices than as grenades. I think most GMs would be hard-pressed not to upgrade the difficulty at least once and then have some evil fun with threats and despair, and you might not want to stand too close when that happens.

Somewhat unrelated, this reminded me of the days of WEG's Star Wars Minis game, where the blast radius of a thermal detonator was larger than its short range, so either you started off with a higher difficulty just for using it or as the rulebook put it you were "merely choosing an interesting form of suicide."

Similar rule is in place for FFG's take on TD's as well, since a TD's Blast quality is called out as hitting everything within short range if triggered. And since the maximum default throwing range of any grenade is short range...

Yeah, interesting form of suicide does seem to apply. Although it could be used for a "heroic last stand" similar to that one dude towards the end of the Starship Troopers flick.

"Are you trying to be a hero?"

"No sir! I just want to kill some bugs, sir!"