Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus
A question about explosions:
A PC grenadier targets an enemy occupied hex. He rolls a hit. The 40mm HE round from his M203 does 3 damage and has a blast rating of D.
Do both direct hit (3) and blast damage (results of 2d6 roll) apply to every enemy within the same hex? I assume the answer is yes, but I'd appreciate confirmation or correction.
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This question has come up a lot over the past few months since the way the rule book is written (and the grenade example they use on pg 68 doesn't help) leave a lot to be desired. We ended up asking FL directly for clarification here. The TL;DR is that you generally can have an easier time hitting someone with a heavy weapon but do less damage, or have a harder time hitting them but doing more damage.
When using a heavy weapon, such as a grenade launcher, generally a PC would aim for a large target such as a hex. When targeting a hex, the damage done to the target is only the blast damage, not the direct damage. The benefit of this approach is that you don't get any penalties for aiming at a large target (hex or vehicle).
When aiming for a small target directly with a heavy weapon (such as an individual enemy), you would receive a -2 to hit penalty, and therefore have a higher chance of your shot deviating. The benefit of aiming directly at a person however, is that if you hit, you do both the direct damage AND the blast damage.
As I mentioned, the way it's written is a little vague, but it can be found on pages 70 and 71 of the player manual.
I think a lot of the reason for the vague approach here in the book is that things are...abstracted? a lot when it comes to explosions. For example, if you lob a grenade directly at a person and hit despite the -2 penalty, you'd do 2 direct damage
in addition to the blast damage. In this instance, the 2 direct damage from the grenade is abstracted as the grenade landing at someone's feet or right under them, as opposed to the damage being imparted from the kinetic energy of the grenade literally smacking someone in the chest after being thrown. Contrast this with other weapons where the direct damage is a representation of that kinetic energy transfer, such as a 30mm round hitting someone in the arm and tearing their arm off.