Grenade launcher

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Name	grenade launcher
Appearance	grenade launcher
Damage vs. small	1d2
Damage vs. large	1d2
To-hit bonus	-3
Weapon skill	firearms
Size	two-handed
Base price	1500 zm (+10/positive enchant)
Weight	55
Material	iron

A grenade launcher is a firearm introduced in SLASH'EM. As its name suggests, it fires grenades.

Generation

Grenade launchers may be found on ¹⁄₄ of Yendorian army captains. They are not randomly generated otherwise.

Mechanics

Grenade launchers are two-handed and fire frag grenades or gas grenades. Apart from giving the player a slightly longer range with their grenades as compared to throwing them, the grenade launcher does not do much. Grenades fired from a launcher do not do any special impact damage, nor are they any more likely to explode on impact than thrown grenades.

Rate of fire

In order to fire more than one grenade in a round, a grenade launcher would have to be very highly enchanted. With expert skill, a +9 grenade launcher would fire two grenades with a 1/6 probability.

Strategy

Despite their relatively light weight, grenade launchers simply don't do enough to justify carrying one. Grenades are not terribly powerful weapons to begin with, and grenade launchers do virtually nothing to make them more powerful. Moreover, their two-handedness makes them inconvenient for most characters to use.

Origin

In modern terms, grenade launcher refers to a device that fires a large-caliber projectile equipped with an explosive warhead. They can be individual units fired in a similar manner to a rifle, or they can be attachments to a more conventional firearm such as an assault rifle.

Notably, the grenades fired by modern grenade launchers are not hand grenades, unlike in SLASH'EM. While devices to fire hand grenades have existed in the past, they were never terribly common, and also were more similar to a catapult or a mortar than to SLASH'EM's tile, which appears to depict a standalone grenade launcher similar to an M79.