Use looted grenades and any Bombard soldiers' freebie duct-taped soda can-o'-nails thrown 'grenade'.
Smoke grenades have lots and lots of uses all campaign long. Carry a couple if possible.
Great discussion!
How about a grenade that disintegrates people when they pick it up but remains intact itself?Not very useful unless you have telekinesis
No no see what you do is you write on the grenade "Pick me up!" devilishly devious.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
What if they did something like errata it so the listed price was for, say, a box of 12?Yeah, that seems like the cleanest solution -- make the listed price the cost of 10 (or 12) grenades. That would put them in the "something I might consider buying" territory.
I like it!
EDIT: Though I guess you want the price to still be high enough to not make Spell gems obselete... Hrmm...
Spell gems will never be obsolete because of grenades, because you can't have grenades that make you invisible, teleport you, give you armor, or generate illusions.
In SFS, grenades are more useful since you get the credit equivalent regardless of whether they are used or not.
But yes, they are not cost effective except in those 1 or 2 situations where they are. Swarms, attacking the guy behind improved cover (AC 5 for square +8 cover bonus= 13 to hit.)
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Spell gems will never be obsolete because of grenades, because you can't have grenades that make you invisible, teleport you, give you armor, or generate illusions.
A sufficiently powerful grenade will teleport pieces of you all over the room.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
No no see what you do is you write on the grenade "Pick me up!" devilishly devious.How about a grenade that disintegrates people when they pick it up but remains intact itself?Not very useful unless you have telekinesis
I have not seen grenades enough in actual play but I kind of want to have a battle with a ton of mooks with grenades chucking them at the players. Hmm lots of level 1 soldiers with grenades and improved initiative.
Grenades are great to hit people in cover.
At 5% of your WBL each, you'll be able to hit 20 people in cover before going bankrupt, tho.
Smoke grenade first, then lob in the fun ones: flash-bangs, stunners, et al. Enough crappy grenades will get the job done. Especially if your group has a Bombard soldier grinning evilly before lobbing in their soup-can-special of the day ... ;)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I think the price is what it is to try to keep people from just being walking buckets of grenades aoeing all of the things all of the time. But I think currently the prices seem a bit high for the effect so maybe something that gets errataed a bit over time.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
( And if the PCs reach level X, and have notably less wealth than they should have for that level, that's something the *GM* needs to fix, IMO. WBL is supposed to limit how much gear PCs can afford at any given time, not how much they will be able to afford ever. )
I agree that the chart is not an end all statement of wealth and how much cash you should have. But if I'm running a game and one of the players has significantly less money and equipment than the others because they've spent it all on consumables, I'm not going to feel like their bad spending habits are something I should fix by giving them more cash. And regularly buying single use damage consumables that cost 15-33% of what a level appropriate weapon does is a way to go broke while getting very little effect. Particularly when those grenades don't actually do more than a heavy weapon, which you get to keep using.
Stickybombs might be useful to keep around as a debuff, but you need level appropriate ones to have any hope of not having the DCs auto-beaten I guess. :|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Stuff
It seems that you cant ever apply Specialization bonus to explosives period. Under the Proficiency part in SRD ...seems like they're no point in specializing in explosive weapons even if you are a Bombard Soldier.
I'm starting to think this game is punishing more play-styles that it supports. -_-
I plan to carry smoke grenades no matter what. Like I've said before, it is effectively a shield against laser weapons along with the cover it provides.
Though, since cover is more prevalent in this game, grenades do take care of those bastards hiding behind walls or up-turned tables. Hell, one of the few weapons where "close enough" still does damage fer non-casters.
RAW explicitly calls out grenades as not benefiting from Weapon Specialization even when fired from grenade launchers.
StuffIt seems that you cant ever apply Specialization bonus to explosives period. Under the Proficiency part in SRD ...seems like they're no point in specializing in explosive weapons even if you are a Bombard Soldier.
I'm starting to think this game is punishing more play-styles that it supports. -_-
Well....it really seems that consumables are here only for fluff
With specialization grenades would have some sense...at least at lower levels...you can still use explode hvy weapons with specialization tho....
Shock caster, static FTW
Bombard soldier can add his str to dmg(from 5th lvl), and mechanic can use overcharge for extra 1d6(later for 2d6)
Soldier can even take that equipment boost for extra explode radius...
Mechanic is the only class that can shoot twice with those kind of weapons tho...himself + drone :)
but yeah....grenades obviously suck, and are here for GM to use against players :)
No no see what you do is you write on the grenade "Pick me up!" devilishly devious.How about a grenade that disintegrates people when they pick it up but remains intact itself?Not very useful unless you have telekinesis
Yes exactly like that.
I am running the Absolum Station campaign and I've used a total of one grenade in combat (Vesk bodyguard). The damage doesn't seem to be worth the trouble.
I think that grenades are worth it, but that their roll is that of a support weapon, not a primary. Don't load up on too many.
I think that grenades are worth it, but that their roll is that of a support weapon, not a primary. Don't load up on too many.
Are they deadly enough to be worth the price point though?
Are they worth it?
As with almost almost piece of gear, the answer is "It depends."
Have a Shirren Operative with Blind Fighting? Then smoke grenades would be a "yes."
...and so on.
Offensive grenades, I'd heavily lean against. Too small a boom for my liking and without specialisation or rate of fire (And even then, with price you can't afford to full attack with them much) they rapidly fall behind in damage.
Smoke grenades etc...I'd go towards 'Maybe'.
In my game, I made the grenade price be a pack of 5, so my players are more willing to dish out a little cash to pick some up now and then.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Grenades are kinda like Sniper Weapons. IRL they are balanced by the nature of combat (collateral damage) and other forms of fighting (Tanks, Artillery, etc). You can hear a standard U.S. Army Frag grenade from at least a mile away. You can feel portions of the shockwave from hundreds of feet. The kill radius (anyone not behind cover or in serious armor) is 5 meters. 15 meters is an almost guaranteed serious wound. Beyond that there are smaller chances (and hearing damage without protection) or wounds (fragments can fly up to 230 meters). Long story short, grenades in movies/tv pale in comparison to their destructive capabilities in actuality.
In Starfinder, grenades seem mainly aimed at niche situations (and hew closer to movie portrayals). Within this context, their pricing is a bit much (but is kinda balanced by their being a thing for special situations).
I would like to see all classes be given the proficiency. Learning to throw a grenade is something that literally takes half a day of training to do unless you've never thrown a hand sized ball in your life. A big chunk of that is also spent on capabilities and safety. If someone with no combat experience came across a grenade, they would most likely be able to use it. There's absolutely no logical reason for Operatives, Mystics, Solarians or Technomancers (who have had combat training) to not be able to throw something :-)
There's absolutely no logical reason for Operatives, Mystics, Solarians or Technomancers (who have had combat training) to not be able to throw something :-)
When I was in basic, they said grenades had to be thrown overhand. Sidearm throwers had a significant chance of hitting the inside of their wall and having the grenade bounce back at them.
I remember this well, because I've thrown sidearm all my life, and I nearly threw a live grenade right back at myself the first time I ever threw one. I just barely cleared the wall.
It's areal shame that crafting basically has no real advantage other than on demand materials. Was thinkign of that being a relatively viable solution but it's not.
Honestly it's probably fine to buy a few utility grenades as you might scrolls for certain situations. Bombard soldier is curretnyl one of my favorite builds for battlefield control atm.
Low level grenades can be pretty cool. Especially the utility grenades and being able to generate concealment at will means smoke grenades are always useful.
At higher levels the prices start to get weird though. Level 20 frag grenades in particular seem obscene for what they do.
Proficiency should really be universal too.
Single Frag Grenade cost relative to WBL seems to be random.
Frag level | Damage | Percent of WBL
1 | 1d6 | 3.5%
4 | 2d6 | 11.6%
8 | 4d6 | 7.75%
10 | 6d6 | 8.7%
14 | 10d6 | 5.6%
16 | 12d6 | 5.95%
18 | 16d6 | 5.7%
20 | 20d6 | 5.7%Do you really want to spend roughly 5% (3-11%) of your WBL for a level appropriate single AoE damage shot? Even as loot, consumables are supposed to count towards your WBL, so they're not even worth it as found gear unless your GM ignores WBL.
Hell, you're better off wasting an entire ultra capacity battery on full auto than using a grenade.
I would love to see the same data side by side with the spell equivalent cost!
I think the best thing to extend the usage of grenades (other than universal proficiency) would be to offer a method of crafting grenades somewhat below cost.
This might be a good method for partially equalizing the cost of projectile weapons too... I know that reloading ammunition is actually one of the few things that actually IS significantly cheaper for someone to do. This would likely only apply to relatively simple grenades that made sense for home making to be cheaper.
Bombard actually looks entertaining, though I wish there was a way to scale it's number of uses.
Having it on a refresh like a spell instead of a credit sink is a really nice way to mix things up from the Pathfinder alchemist that just spammed bombs, though I do wish there was something like 1 utility grenade and 1 offensive grenade later on in the style.
I think they should have pushed more grenade-centric things in the later abilities of Bombard, and separated the heavy weapons/blast stuff into another style.
Yeah, Bombard is a bit all over the place. It's got a 'Stuff blowing up' theme but it doesn't quite lead to a coherent weapon choice.
They could have made one of the abilities 'You get specialisation with grenades' and it would have instantly been a lot better for grenade users. That or just make it 'Part of grenades', so they are at least an occasional temptation for all classes even if soldiers are best.
|
|
The way Bombard is set up now works for me, there's a very heavy weapon specialist feel. If you made more of the abilities grenade focused it would, make the style kind of terrible. I mean grenades are so expensive that they're one third the cost of a weapon that does comparable damage, that's absurd. Any weapon that you only use when you loot it is a bad weapon. If Bombard was more grenade centric then they would just have a set of abilities they got to use once a fight, or the character would hemorrhage credits and be several levels down equipment wise just to use their abilities twice or maybe three times in the new longer fights.
They are definitely situational. And we haven't seen swarms yet...
We were discussing grenades in Starfinder and games in general. They seem to always suck damagewise but we started thinking about grenades in general: In normal life they are dangerous. Also to the person who is carrying them. Our thoughts were that they should be deadlier and cheaper BUT they should have a quality that makes them explode in your square every time you fumble the throw. Also scattering should be more random. This would make the characters (and NPCs) think twice before throwing them wildly around. And there is always telekinesis (or even psychokinetic hand) and the grenade pin which is a really nasty combination... >:)
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
PC fumbles are always a terrible idea.
If it was a 5% chance you could accidentally grenade your own team? Yeah, put that grenade down...
If there was a 5% chance AND the grenade did more than just tickle (read: go through stamina which can be restored in 10min)
If fumbles are a possibility and their damage is significantly greater, then grenades will only be delivered when the possibility of a fumble can be minimised - when you have a reroll available, when delivered without an attack roll (like in rixu's telekinesis(oid) example), or maybe left in someone's bunk via stealth. They'd still be not worth using otherwise, just for different reasons than before.
An 8th level spell gem does 9d6 damage for 1400.
An 8th level grenade does 4d6 damage for 2560.Load it into a spell throwing weapon and its vastly more damage to credit ratio.
Yeah but you can throw 2 to 4 depending on your class and level each round.
Amounting to 8 to 16d6 of total damage.
And blowing through a massive chunk of your WBL. That's literally 1/3 of your WBL at level 8, so you better hope you didn't need to buy any other weapons or armour as you'll need to skimp heavily on them to afford that barrage.
And blowing through a massive chunk of your WBL. That's literally 1/3 of your WBL at level 8, so you better hope you didn't need to buy any other weapons or armour as you'll need to skimp heavily on them to afford that barrage.
But that's the thing about WBL, you should get it back. Not necessarily immediately, but certainly by the time you level up you should be back up to WBL. That's why the concept exist in the first place.
As a GM and for the group I play with (for Pathfidner and Starfinder) we always reset all characters to WBL at each level up. This actually encourages the use of consumable (which helps reduce the difference in power between casters and non-casters). You might be out some WBL for the short term, but you reclaim that wealth overtime, in the worst case at level up.
Yeah but that's 1/3 of your WBL in a single turn and it seriously cuts into your ability to buy things that actually last the whole level. As you'll likely be a given level for a lot more than a single battle. Grenades are seriously overpriced for what you get.
Yes, you probably shouldn't go that HAM on grenades.