[HoE] Big Boom Rules

[Sean Gore <sgore@midlink.com>]

I've noticed a number of folks discussing the modified explosive rules
introduced for HoE in the Iron Oasis book.  Just to pop my two cents in,
for our game, we kept the way the area of effect determined the same
(ie, degredation of number of dice, not die type), but included the
newer, and a hell of a lot more lethal, massive damage rules.  This
keeps Doomie Nuke miracles wild and random (as they should be), and
allows bigger bombs to have bigger booms (come on now, a small bomb,
doing 5d20 is not going to have the same blast radius as a large bomb:
10d20).  Furthermore, and on a side note, I also halved the area effect
of grenades to a burst value of 5 as opposed to 10.  As was, they had an
AE of 50 yards...that's 100 yard diameter!  Under the new system, they
actually got a boost in AE (an extra band due to die type degredation
instead of quantity degredation).  I can see small bits of shrapnel and
minor concussive forces out to say...25 yards, thirty maybe, but beyond
that it is incidental...unless its a big boom.

Sean 'Grym' Gore