Quote:
Originally Posted by Donny Brook
Det cord is listed in GURPS High-Tech on page 187. It says a pound of it would do 5Dx2 cr ex damage.
My question is, how much damage would it do when a line is laid out to a charater stepping over it?
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Not much. Detonating cord seems to top out around 50 grains per foot/10 grams per meter of explosive, with 3.6 g/m being particularly common, so if you stretch it in a line, about 0.02 lbs of it go off in your hex, for around 1d-3 damage. With the fall-off with distance anything contributed by the 0.02 lbs in the hexes to either side, let alone further away, can probably be considered pretty negligible. If you doubled it up a few times, I suppose you might be able to get a few dice out of something you could still reasonably call a line rather than a pile.
Remember this stuff isn't intended to be used to damage stuff, it's supposed to be used a *detonater* for setting off other explosives. Asking how much damage it will do is like asking how much a blasting cap will. From the designer's standpoint the "ideal" case would be zero, it would be able to set off explosives but be totally safe by itself. The manufacturers have done everything to minimize the damage, and maximize the difficulty of setting it off, that they can get away with without causing it to no longer work for the intended purpose.