4e Mechanics & Rules Discussion

[Heffe]

Originally Posted by Raellus

Thanks for the link, Heffe. Fenhorn is a mod, but is he an official FL spokesperson? I haven't spent as much time on that forum as you have, but my impression is that he is not.

If his interpretation is correct, 40mm grenades, at least, are severely nerfed. They have a blast power of D (which only does 1 damage on a successful damage roll). On an indirect (?) hit (i.e. the hex was targeted, not an individual person), the Ref rolls two d6s to determine blast damage. Since you can't push that roll, it has only a 31% chance of doing any damage whatever to enemies within that hex.

That's super low, wouldn't you say? It kind of negates even rolling a successful HW attack with the GL, I would argue.

Here's why I asked this question in the first place. I was soloing a firefight. The Blue Force grenadier rolled a hit on a hex occupied by two prone OPFOR*. I rolled the 2d6s, showing no sixes. So, the two OPFOR in the targeted (and hit) 10m hex escaped injury from a 40mm exploding within same.

If I'm reading this rule correctly, being prone makes one completely immune from a level D blast:

PRONE: If the target is prone, the blast power is reduced one step.

Since D is the lowest level blast, reducing it one step means no blast at all? Or would that mean rolling only one d6? (That would lower the chances of the hit doing any damage to 17%)

Unless the design intent was to nerf 40mm grenades, I think Fenhorn must be wrong (or I'm still missing something).

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Agreed that he is a mod, but my understanding is that his words carry weight in terms of rules/gameplay. Also as a mod, I imagine he has the ability to check with the team directly in case any answers aren't as clear. With that all said, I don't think there would be any issues asking again about your particular issue - I definitely agree that the system when it comes to explosions is wonky.

We may have talked about it before, but my best example of how explosions are weird in 4e is the 25mm cannon firing HE rounds. Currently, if a PC is wearing a plate vest and gets hit square in the chest with a 25mm HE round, he would have to roll CUF, but otherwise he'd suffer no injury unless additional successes are rolled by the shooter.

The 25mm HE round does 4 dmg with a +2 armor modifier. The plate vest has 2 armor, bringing the total damage mitigation to 4. Even with the blast rating of D, because blast dmg is handled separately to direct damage, it would all be mitigated by the vest as well (it's unclear if the blast damage hit location would be rolled separately from the direct damage hit location).

In any case, I can't imagine that makes any sense from a real world perspective. You can abstract things, but it just feels off. I do think the FL team should have taken some more time considering how explosions are handled - there's a lot of room for improvement on armor modifiers especially.