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> Abuse of Grenade Weave, Is the Grenade Weave broken ?
Deryl
Posted: Mar 29 2004, 09:37 AM
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We have a discussion in our RPG community about the GRENADE weave. Is it possible to build hundreds of GRENADE stones and thus creating a gigantic bomb ?

Besides the time and effort needed and the risk to carry them around, is there anything in the rules which prevents a channeler from doing this ?

Our current house rule fix, would be to limit the time of the spells duration. Meaning that the grenade ability will be lost after a day or so.

Has anybody stumbled on a similar problem ?

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shaun
Posted: Mar 29 2004, 10:25 AM
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The way I see it the "grenades" created are like gelignite-if you jiggle it around too much it explodes. This pretty much restricts carrying it on a horse going any more than a walk unless it has a exeptionally smooth gait.
I'm not sure if it is a tied off weave or a chemical change to the rock being used as I don't actually have the WoT RPG book. If it is a tied off weave it couldn't be tied off too "tight" otherwise it likely wouldn't go off- though this could be a good thing as it could be transported better and have a longer use-by date and it would deffinately have a used by date as when the weave wears off enough it is likely to go of at the slightest disturbance, or even without warning if it is left too long. This could be used as a time bomb exept the timing is rather irrational and you might not know if it would go off in an hour or several days later.
If it is a chemical change then it would have much the same effect because of the reactants slowley decaying eg. bumping or even leaving it in the sunlight too long. This could be also be made to take longer to decay but this would make it even harder as you would have no way of knowing weather it was going to need extreem force to set it off or if it would go off with the slightest bump. In this it's "used by date" is rather random to a certain extent but is far less predictable than if it was a tied off weave as all kinds of enviromental factors such as preasure, temperature exposure to sunlight ect. would have some effect on it.

You could even have different weaves to utilise it in different ways.

This post has been edited by shaun on Mar 29 2004, 10:33 AM
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Deryl
Posted: Mar 29 2004, 10:50 AM
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QUOTE (shaun @ Mar 29 2004, 10:25 AM)
The way I see it the "grenades" created are like gelignite-if you jiggle it around too much it explodes. This pretty much restricts carrying it on a horse going any more than a walk unless it has a exeptionally smooth gait.
I'm not sure if it is a tied off weave or a chemical change to the rock being used as I don't actually have the WoT RPG book. If it is a tied off weave it couldn't be tied off too "tight" otherwise it likely wouldn't go off- though this could be a good thing as it could be transported better and have a longer use-by date and it would deffinately have a used by date as when the weave wears off enough it is likely to go of at the slightest disturbance, or even without warning if it is left too long. This could be used as a time bomb exept the timing is rather irrational and you might not know if it would go off in an hour or several days later.
If it is a chemical change then it would have much the same effect because of the reactants slowley decaying eg. bumping or even leaving it in the sunlight too long. This could be also be made to take longer to decay but this would make it even harder as you would have no way of knowing weather it was going to need extreem force to set it off or if it would go off with the slightest bump. In this it's "used by date" is rather random to a certain extent but is far less predictable than if it was a tied off weave as all kinds of enviromental factors such as preasure, temperature exposure to sunlight ect. would have some effect on it.

You could even have different weaves to utilise it in different ways.

From what I got from the Wot RPG book, the GRENADE imbues a stone with the ability to explode on impact. I don't think TIE OFF is needed here. So far we have played it the way, that some force (such as throwing the grenade) is needed to trigger the explosion. Therefore it was possible to carry that thing around.

But now we have come to a point, where a channeler of our group had the idea to basically create a giant bomb with hundreds of stones. We all found the idea abusive, but so far found nothing in the rule books to actually forbid this. The only thing we could think of as a house rule, was to limit the time the effect stays on the stone.

The problem with "broken" spells like this is, that they could be used against the players too. I think, that it is vital for a game setting to get rid of these "broken" game aspects. Otherwise the whole setting becomes inconsistent.


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TwangCat
Posted: Mar 29 2004, 01:36 PM
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In some ways I'm still new to being a DM and combat is my weakest area. So with that disclaimer in place I'll continue. From what I understand your players are trying to make lots of grenades and end up with a gigantic bomb. This makes sense according to game mechanics, but now that they have these hundreds of potentially exploding rocks what are they going to do with them? if they set all the rocks up in a pile (of course taking the time to carefully place the rocks one by one) any enemy they were doing this to would see them. and if they are using a catipolt that must slow down travel time significantly unless they have the travelling weaves. When my party caries around grenades I always make a roll to find out if they go off or not, I base this roll on what they tell me they do with the rocks. Usually they wrap them up in cloth and them place them in a box that goes in the saddle bags. This has a 5% chance of exploding in my world. The first time they lost a horse and almost lost a pc they started to rethink this plan.

So I guess I'm curious why you think this is broken?
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MagusRogue
Posted: Mar 29 2004, 03:32 PM
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actually, wanna know what tying a whole bunch of stones into one big stone bomb'll do? it'll do the normal damage of the weave, as one of the grenades just simply destroys the other grenades. The Grenade weave is based on similar ideas with true grenades. If you throw a bunch of grenades tied together at a person, it's not going to do much more than a single grenade going off, as the other grenades are destroyed by the first one's explosion, and don't trigger.
that's how i'd handle the weave. you jsut spent an insane amount of time and effort, and just got a bunch of rocks.


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Kakita Aramoro
Posted: Mar 29 2004, 04:19 PM
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hmn, that's good magus, I was thinking to just do the normal damage, but in a larger radius, and what you are saying supports my idea. for example, say that you had 100 fist sized granades, and you managed to constrain them somehow and launch them all at once, when they landed they would be somewhat spread out, and thus more than one stone would land before the first one going off destroyed most of the rest. since the fist sized granade has a burst radius of 10 ft, an I'll asume that the rocks expand to an area of about 20 ft on a side, the aditional burst radius from the outlying rocks would be another 10 ft. so the first rock somewhere in the center would hit, destroying all of the adjacent rocks then a few outlying rocks would hit and thats it. Damage would be at most 6d6 in the center area and 3d6 elsewhwere within its 30ft burst. Hmn, kinda like grape-shot I guess laugh.gif

This post has been edited by Kakita Aramoro on Mar 29 2004, 04:21 PM
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Deryl
Posted: Mar 30 2004, 07:08 AM
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QUOTE (TwangCat @ Mar 29 2004, 01:36 PM)
In some ways I'm still new to being a DM and combat is my weakest area. So with that disclaimer in place I'll continue. From what I understand your players are trying to make lots of grenades and end up with a gigantic bomb. This makes sense according to game mechanics, but now that they have these hundreds of potentially exploding rocks what are they going to do with them? if they set all the rocks up in a pile (of course taking the time to carefully place the rocks one by one) any enemy they were doing this to would see them. and if they are using a catipolt that must slow down travel time significantly unless they have the travelling weaves. When my party caries around grenades I always make a roll to find out if they go off or not, I base this roll on what they tell me they do with the rocks. Usually they wrap them up in cloth and them place them in a box that goes in the saddle bags. This has a 5% chance of exploding in my world. The first time they lost a horse and almost lost a pc they started to rethink this plan.

So I guess I'm curious why you think this is broken?

Your approach was the first thing our game master came up with. Of course you always have to consider the risk carrying around the grenades. But be assured that players will find a way to reduce that risk and do it anyway. In our particular game situation the plan was to create a large amount of grenades, put them in a chest and drop the whole lot via "Arms of Air" on the specified target.

I also disagree with some other statements above, that only one or a few grenades would go off. The reason for this is, that the impulse from the impact would spread over the entire set of stones, thus creating a chain reaction. So not the explosion itself triggers the other grenades, rather it is the impact impulse knocking the stones against each other.

But all this restrictions aside. I strongly believe that inventive players will find some way to get around the restrictions and dangers in handling the grenades and eventually will confront the game master with a fool-proof plan to create a giant bomb. So the best way to counter this, is to fix the weave somehow. For example by giving it a duration.


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MagusRogue
Posted: Mar 30 2004, 01:39 PM
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actually, no the impulse wouldn't set off the grenades. The grenades have to come into contact with something physical, and being tightly wound in a ball doesn't allow most of the grenades to do said contact. If you destroy the grenade, the grenade won't go off. Simple as that. besides, even if they did go off, all multiple grenades would do is extend the blast radius. it wouldn't cause more damage. *take it from a guy whose been in the gaming business for 12 years and is working on getting published*


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Deryl
Posted: Mar 30 2004, 02:14 PM
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QUOTE (MagusRogue @ Mar 30 2004, 01:39 PM)
actually, no the impulse wouldn't set off the grenades. The grenades have to come into contact with something physical, and being tightly wound in a ball doesn't allow most of the grenades to do said contact. If you destroy the grenade, the grenade won't go off. Simple as that. besides, even if they did go off, all multiple grenades would do is extend the blast radius. it wouldn't cause more damage. *take it from a guy whose been in the gaming business for 12 years and is working on getting published*

To your first point: Of course the grenades would not be tightly wrapped. So they could bounce and therefore trigger each other.

To your second point: You claim that additional grenades would not do more damage. That does not make sense in my opinion. If you compare this to real explosives, it will certainly make quite a difference if you blow up 10 pounds or 100 pounds of TNT. It will do more damage and an additional blast radius.

And to take an example from game play. Your reasoning would suggest that if somebody gets hit by two fireballs in the same instance he would not get additional damage. That does not make much sense. Just because something happens at the same time does not mean it will reduce the damage dealt. Besides since the grenades are stacked in some way and bounce around, they would certainly not go off at the same time, but microseconds apart from each other. *take it from a guy whose been in the gaming business for more than 20 years :-))*


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LuciusT
Posted: Mar 30 2004, 02:41 PM
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What we have here is a fundamental disagreement about how the Grenade weave works. So, I thought I'd take a look at the weave itself.

QUOTE
You imbue a stone with an explosive property. If the stone strikes a hard surface, it detonates, doing damage to all creatures within its burst radius (Reflex save for half damage).


Now, the question: What prevents someone from making hundreds of Grenades and thus creating a giant bomb?

1) The stone needs to strike a hard surface to detonate. One stone exploding will not necessarily cause a chain reaction setting off the others. However, given the rules for damaging an object, it is also unlikely that the explosion would cause any real damage to the others stones (Hardness 8, hp 15/inch... an average "fist-sized stone would be able to absorb 8+45 points of damage before being destroyed... and remember that engery damage is halved).

2) There is nothing to indicate that, even if mutiple stones were detonated... say by throwing them in a blundle..., the blast radius would be increased. At best, if you threw 5 bundled Grenades at a target, you would have 5 seperate explosions with the same center point (or near enough for game purposes). IMO, anyone in the 10 ft radius would have to make 5 seperate Ref saves and suffer 5 seperate damage results. Of course, throwing 5 fist-sized stone would be a fairly hefty task to begin with.

3) OK, so let's say the party is really creative... say they create a "minefield" of Grenades, each surrounded by a cluster hard stones set to fly off and impact the surrounding Grenades so that when one goes off the resulting sharpnel is sure to detonate the others. They manage to lure their foes into this field and set off a chain reaction, doing massive damage and killing hundreds... good for them! If the players put that much time, energy, planning and effort (to say nothing of weave slots) into such a plan and manage to pull it off, they deserve the resulting mass carnage.

I guess what I'm saying here is, you don't necessarily need to "fix" the weave. You need to look at how the weave works and enforce it's restrictions... you need a stone of a certain size, that stone needs to strike a hard surface to detonate, it does a limited amount of damage in a fixed radius. If the players find a creative way to get "more bang for the buck" within those limits... great! It means they're thinking creatively and probably having fun, which is the whole point.

...and don't forget, whatever the players can think of, their foes can think of too. Besides, most really creative and sneaky tricks only work once... because after you use it once, people know about it and can plan for it.
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Deryl
Posted: Mar 30 2004, 03:40 PM
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QUOTE (LuciusT @ Mar 30 2004, 02:41 PM)
What we have here is a fundamental disagreement about how the Grenade weave works. So, I thought I'd take a look at the weave itself.

QUOTE
You imbue a stone with an explosive property. If the stone strikes a hard surface, it detonates, doing damage to all creatures within its burst radius (Reflex save for half damage).


Now, the question: What prevents someone from making hundreds of Grenades and thus creating a giant bomb?

1) The stone needs to strike a hard surface to detonate. One stone exploding will not necessarily cause a chain reaction setting off the others. However, given the rules for damaging an object, it is also unlikely that the explosion would cause any real damage to the others stones (Hardness 8, hp 15/inch... an average "fist-sized stone would be able to absorb 8+45 points of damage before being destroyed... and remember that engery damage is halved).

2) There is nothing to indicate that, even if mutiple stones were detonated... say by throwing them in a blundle..., the blast radius would be increased. At best, if you threw 5 bundled Grenades at a target, you would have 5 seperate explosions with the same center point (or near enough for game purposes). IMO, anyone in the 10 ft radius would have to make 5 seperate Ref saves and suffer 5 seperate damage results. Of course, throwing 5 fist-sized stone would be a fairly hefty task to begin with.

3) OK, so let's say the party is really creative... say they create a "minefield" of Grenades, each surrounded by a cluster hard stones set to fly off and impact the surrounding Grenades so that when one goes off the resulting sharpnel is sure to detonate the others. They manage to lure their foes into this field and set off a chain reaction, doing massive damage and killing hundreds... good for them! If the players put that much time, energy, planning and effort (to say nothing of weave slots) into such a plan and manage to pull it off, they deserve the resulting mass carnage.

I guess what I'm saying here is, you don't necessarily need to "fix" the weave. You need to look at how the weave works and enforce it's restrictions... you need a stone of a certain size, that stone needs to strike a hard surface to detonate, it does a limited amount of damage in a fixed radius. If the players find a creative way to get "more bang for the buck" within those limits... great! It means they're thinking creatively and probably having fun, which is the whole point.

...and don't forget, whatever the players can think of, their foes can think of too. Besides, most really creative and sneaky tricks only work once... because after you use it once, people know about it and can plan for it.

I see, that we both have the same vision, how the grenades work. And if you rule, that the blast radius does not increase, it would restrict the area of this bomb. That might be good enough to limit its use in most cases. I will discuss this with my people and check out, how the overall opinion is on this. If I find the time, I will keep you informed, how the whole thing went in our campaign.



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alohahaha
Posted: Apr 2 2004, 08:33 AM
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I have a very simple thing you could do to any player that tries to horde a bunch of grenade stones and you don't like the idea: ask him to please don't do it anymore as it may disrupt your game far too much.

If you want to be a book-banger about it, you can point it out in the book where it says, "You may throw the stone or use it as ammuniction for an appropriate weapon (such as a sling or a catapult)." Since making a bomb out of sling stones or even fist-sized rocks isn't covered in the book, you could tell your players that it's not possible to create a bomb out of several of them together. Under the book, it says that "If the stone strikes a hard surface, it detonates..." When it says "strikes," it doesn't say how hard the contact has to be, so you could infer that, except for loading the stone as ammunition, the slightest touch, including one stone against another, is considered to be a strike and will therefore cause both of them to detonate. If you'd rather let them be able to do something like this, but what to give them some kind of restriction, have the weave fade away from the stone by the end of the day - it's believeable that a catapult stone that was charged during the Age of Legends had lost it's potencey long before the Dragon was reborn.


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Deryl
Posted: Apr 2 2004, 12:10 PM
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QUOTE (alohahaha @ Apr 2 2004, 08:33 AM)
I have a very simple thing you could do to any player that tries to horde a bunch of grenade stones and you don't like the idea: ask him to please don't do it anymore as it may disrupt your game far too much.

If you want to be a book-banger about it, you can point it out in the book where it says, "You may throw the stone or use it as ammuniction for an appropriate weapon (such as a sling or a catapult)." Since making a bomb out of sling stones or even fist-sized rocks isn't covered in the book, you could tell your players that it's not possible to create a bomb out of several of them together. Under the book, it says that "If the stone strikes a hard surface, it detonates..." When it says "strikes," it doesn't say how hard the contact has to be, so you could infer that, except for loading the stone as ammunition, the slightest touch, including one stone against another, is considered to be a strike and will therefore cause both of them to detonate. If you'd rather let them be able to do something like this, but what to give them some kind of restriction, have the weave fade away from the stone by the end of the day - it's believeable that a catapult stone that was charged during the Age of Legends had lost it's potencey long before the Dragon was reborn.

To your first point: I strongly believe, that it would be very disappointing to ask a player for reasons of game balance not to use certain spells or options. In the overall context this would make the game setting illogical. A good example of this are some bad action movies, where the good guy gets captured and the bad guys do not shoot him right away, but rather keep him alive and even tell him the master plan, so that he can escape later. I hate this as a movie goer and I would hate to do that to the players. If you have to use strong guidance as a game master it is always a sign of a bad game concept or setting.

Your second option is also not playable. If you let the stone explode on the slightest touch. It will render the weave useless. And the game master will have a tough time to define "slightest touch".

I do however like your last option. That was one, which came to our mind quickly, when facing that problem.

However at the moment we will try to go with the option of keeping the spell as it is. Multiple stones will not have an increased blast radius, but still do additional damage and requiring a separate save for each of them. The game master was afraid, that the "grenade bomb" could wipe out the whole headquarter of bad guys in one simple strike. But since we decided to go for a limited blast area, the bomb will just tear a hole in the building. This will make the bomb a lethal weapon to a small group of opponents, but also dangerous to handle. The master ruled, that if a character carrying the bomb falls or drops it somehow, will suffer the explosion of the whole set, thus making it quite risky to carry it around.


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Uratoh
Posted: Apr 2 2004, 12:45 PM
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ya, you gotta watch those explosives...in a d20 game I was in (Deadlands), two of the party members wanted to kill a lawyer, so they bought 50 sticks of dynamite. they needed a cart to carry it in, so they went to get one and got the idea they better double their order to be safe...so, 100 sticks of dynamite. Where it really gets amusing is that the general store owner was an evil cultist out to get the party...he put a time bomb in the first 50 sticks and figured his store'd be out of the blast when it went off...the extra 50 sticks ruined his plan, but too late to remove the bomb...the entire stack went off in the blast, and detonated a nearby shed full of misc explosives...took out almost the entire town. did, however, uncover gold in the nearby mountanside which collapsed due to the explosion, so the ensuing boom was able to rebuild the town exactly as it was before the explosion. the two PCs wit hthe dynamite died, despite arguments that their characters should have been able to survive cause they were running etc.

oh dear, I've rambled >_<

explosives bad!
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darkrider
Posted: Apr 8 2004, 07:25 AM
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if the caster wanted to use the grenade spell it gives rules for getting catapult rocks made into grenades. Also if he wanted to try and make the a-bomb that way, first if he is female that is part of the tower that would never happen due to the 3 rules. If female but not part of the tower the tower will hunt her down and force her to stop. If male and tries that, well that is a death sentence.
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darkrider
Posted: Apr 8 2004, 07:28 AM
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one last thing on the "true grenade" thing. If you tie 3 granades together and set one off they all go off. The explosion from the first will case the other two to explode form the heat generated.
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chiz
Posted: Apr 13 2004, 06:50 AM
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Uhh, why not just use the rules for those fireworks in the equipment section? It gives rules for exactly what you want. All you have to change is the fact that they are using a product of the one power instead of fireworks. I have read the weave and see no reason (mechanic wise) why you can't make some grenades, set them down, high tail it out of the area, make one more and lobb it to the area. Makes perfect sense to me. And when your players use it, remind them it can also be use against them......... ph34r.gif
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