House-ruling Grenades

[Gratz]

From the PRD: "Before being thrown by hand, the grenade must be primed with a quick twist of a dial at one end and then armed with a click of a button at the center of that dial. Priming and arming a grenade is a free action; a grenade launcher primes and arms all grenades it fires. The grenade detonates at the beginning of the wielder's next turn, hopefully in the area targeted."

I don't like the way grenades work and I want to try to tweak the rules a bit and add another option, else I think my group won't use them to much. First off I want to make arming a grenade a move action, so you will still be able to arm a grenade and throw in one round. But, what I want to add is the option to keep the grenade in your hand until your next round, but the first step of your next round has to be to throw it or it explodes in your face.

So what do you folks think about that change? Would that change make grenades to strong?

[Sauce987654321]

I was thinking you might be able to ready an action to throw it before it explodes.

[JohnHawkins]

Modern grenades can be held after arming in most cases by preventing the lever flying off. These sci-fi grenades are vastly expensive and have lost that capability, I would allow a grenade to be armed and then held if I required a move action to activate them. But seeing as they are already undewhelming I would be happy to leave them as a free action to activate

[moon glum]

You could ready an action to throw it just before your next turn. The trigger would have to be something like 'I finish counting to 6'.

"The ready action lets you prepare to take an action later, after your turn is over but before your next one has begun. Readying is a standard action. It does not provoke an attack of opportunity (though the action that you ready might do so)."

Just to give an advantage to high initiative people, I might say that lets you throw the grenade at the very end of the current round, allowing only those with a higher initiative than you to have a chance of moving the thrown grenade.

Spoiler:

Marrow, the hobgoblin necromancer from 'Lords of Rust', probably should have done this with a gas grenade in last night's game. But it was cool the way it went down. She threw a gas grenade into the midst of the party as her zombies advanced and attacked, but Singe, the technologist rat folk rogue, kicked the grenade back into the midst of the zombies.

A person could certainly allow someone to hold a primed grenade indefinitely (keeping the 'begin timer button pressed', but if its a free action to activate a grenade, there is not reason to do this.

It would be interesting to allow grenades to have their timer set for any number of rounds (even millennia in the future-- I bet the Androffens had at least 1024 bit registers in their processors). Then you could set up a number of grenades that all detonate in, say, an hour. Big boom.

[Ayanzo]

Thing about grenades that separates them from other splash weapons is that delay. It forces the enemy to react... possibly even throwing the thing back at them! Kinda like a hot potato as it causes events to occur before the thrower's next turn.

Well that and that they just do flat damage over an area.

[Ascalaphus]

We had a funny situation with grenades last friday. We come into a room full of [fire] creatures and earlier found some Zero grenades. But of course the problem is, how to ensure the enemies and grenades will stay nearby. Two solutions were found:

1) Target stupid enemies, like a magma ooze.

2) After we threw grenades, then enemies moved, and then our wizard used an Acqueous Orb to scoop up both enemies and grenades into one ball of happy fun.

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More practically, I think grenades should detonate faster. I'd go with the following:

- Grenades are thrown at spaces (not intersections) with a DC 5 ranged touch attack.
- Enemies that can reach the grenade's landing point may forego their Reflex Save and spend an AoO to try to move the grenade before it explodes. To do so the defender must roll a ranged attack roll and beat the thrower's to-hit. On a success the grenade scatters 5ft away from the defender, and another 5ft for every 5 by which the defender beat the attack roll. On a natural 20 the defender may try to throw the grenade back at the attacker (with a separate roll). If a natural 1 is rolled on this defence, treat it as rolling a 1 on a reflex save (i.e. equipment risks damage too).
- Enemies in the same square or adjacent to the grenade may dive on it as an immediate action. They fall prone and move into the square, and automatically fail their Reflex save as if they rolled a 1, but all others in the area automatically succeed at their save. Anyone so covering a grenade with his body does not gain the benefits of Improved Evasion.
- Anyone near a grenade drop may go prone as an immediate action. While prone you get a +4 on the Reflex save against the grenade.

[Eric Clingenpeel]

Yeah, after my party's first experience with using a grenade, against Sanvil Trett who simply picked it up and threw it back, they haven't used grenades much. In fact they sold all that they found in Scrapwall, which is too bad since the Alchemist cohort would have liked them.

[Codanous]

Hah yeah, Eric that usually is what happens to my party!

I house ruled that the grenade launcher lets the grenades detonate on impact or 1 round later, shooter's choice. Seems more movie thematic.

[The Inheritor]

My Grenade house rule.

"Before being thrown by hand, the grenade must be primed with a quick twist of a dial at one end and then armed with a click of a button at the center of that dial. Priming and arming a grenade is a free action; a grenade launcher primes and arms all grenades it fires. The grenade detonates at the beginning end of the wielder's next turn, hopefully in the area targeted."

this gives the person a chance to Cook the Grenade, and have a little more control over the toss. But adds additional risk and Reward in terms of the weapon its self