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> Grunts, Rules are more like guidlines really
st23am
post Oct 3 2007, 07:41 AM
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So, I am guessing this has been hashed and rehashed; however a search did not yield much results so I will go ahead and ask. What guidelines do you use in your game when making grunts? I am looking for any helpful hints when determining things such as Build Points, Attribute Ratings, Money on equipment etc.

I am wanting to make up some batches of Grunts and grunt units w/ lieutenants for my game. Looking at the grunts in the book I can get general idea of what a grunt / lieutenant at various professional ratings should look like. However some more pronounced guidelines would be nice.

Do you use a guideline for how many build points they should be compared to the characters? Also do any of you GM's use a rule for balancing an encounter. I am looking at rating the challenge of an encounter based on how many build points worth of grunts and lieutenants you throw at the party; Something like a range, for instance: Easy, Average, Difficult, Deadly, TPK.

Thanks ahead of time. Keep on running

St23am
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Blade
post Oct 3 2007, 08:02 AM
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I generate the attributes and skills on the fly, using the ratings lists as guidelines.
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Crusher Bob
post Oct 3 2007, 08:50 AM
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Grunts should probably be defined by their ability pools in relevant abilities so something like:

threat rating 0 grunts: (no training)

ranged attack: 2 (defaulting from AGL)
close combat attack: 4 (skill 1)

passive range defense: 3
active ranged defense: 4 (full defense)

passive close combat defense: 4
active close combat defense: 5

typical soak: 3/3 (no armor to speak of)

typical arms: knives, clubs, predators, AK series rifles

using build points makes things much more complicated. You are generally not interested in the exact combination of stat + skill + gear bonuses the grunts have, just their final pools.

So we might go up to

threat rating 6 grunts: (real hard cases)

ranged attack: 14 (includes gear bonuses)
close combat attack: 14 (assumes reach 1 weapon)

passive range defense: 8
active ranged defense: 14 (full defense)

passive close combat defense: 13
active close combat defense: 18

typical soak: 14/12

typical arms: cougar fine blades, monoswords, alphas with all the bling, plenty of grenades
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toturi
post Oct 3 2007, 09:52 AM
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I see Grunts as a static opposition type as opposed to the Prime Runners scalable opposition. So to me, it means that as the PCs get better, the Grunts fade into the background more. A gang of Halloweeners just isn't going to matter against a well oil team of 200karma runners. A team of Tir Ghosts is a minor annoyance to Harlequin-level runners.

If you want Grunts to be scalable, well, just add more of them, I suppose.
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Crusher Bob
post Oct 3 2007, 10:18 AM
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Eh? I was assuming 'grunts' meant basically any opposition that didn't have a name. So the spec forces team that is after to PCs qualify as grunts, just like the security guards do.
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toturi
post Oct 3 2007, 11:21 AM
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QUOTE (Crusher Bob)
Eh? I was assuming 'grunts' meant basically any opposition that didn't have a name. So the spec forces team that is after to PCs qualify as grunts, just like the security guards do.

QUOTE
Rather than treating them as multiple individuals, gamemasters might find it easier to handle them collectively as a group. NPCs that can be grouped together this way are known as grunts.


Yes. Often any opposition that didn't have a name are Grunts. Grunts are grouped according to their Professional Rating and their Professional Rating determines their Group Edge.

When I GM, I use by the book Grunts, only that they are called different names: a Corp Sec Unit may be a Boeing Federated sec team or a Horizon sec team, but essentially they are the same NPCs and they do not get any better as the PCs improve.
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The Jopp
post Oct 3 2007, 11:41 AM
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Meh, we really dislike the whole �grunt� section of SR4. All opposition are normal people with full statlines and two damage tracks. If I wanted to play white wolfs adventure with carbon copy baddies then I’d do that. All earlier versions have played NPC’s as just that, NPC’s with stat lines like the characters.

Sure they are not at the same calibre (unless they are supposed to be) but nor are they so simple to drop so that they have ONE measly damage track for both physical and stun. You basically get an enemy with a half damage track compared to the PC’s and that smacks a bit like wrongness to me.
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Moon-Hawk
post Oct 3 2007, 03:19 PM
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I use some grunt rules, for when a fight comes up with unimportant NPCs, it's not terribly important to the story, and I think it would be better for the flow of the game if this fight were resolved sooner rather than later.
For dice pools: I say arbitrarily that this grunt is a standard professional, or kind of a lower standard guy, or maybe he's a veteran. So say, for the sake of this example, I decide the grunt in question is a fairly standard professional. Then whatever it is he does, you know, if it's his thing, I assume his attribute is a 3 (profession=3), his skill is a 3, and he probably has a +2 due to equipment, specialization, or something. So, 8 dice. If it's not something that he really focuses on, then he's rolling less dice. Probably 2-6 less dice, depending on what it is and my arbitrary decision because he lacks the skill, attributes, and/or equipment.
For armor, they're either not wearing any, are wearing armored clothing, or they're wearing as much as they can without penalties, and which is the logical case it pretty obvious. None of that requires me to look in a book. If the veteran security guard has a body of 4, then I assume he'll be rolling 12 dice (or more likely just buying 3 hits) for damage resistance, and I will describe his armor however I like.
The book suggests that for grunts its often not useful to track physical and stun damage separately. Meh, sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. Usually I keep the tracks separate, it's just not that much extra work.
I let grunts use the 4:1 dice trade-in rule pretty much anytime. Even for small pools and in stressful situations.
Now don't get me wrong, if someone is important to the story, maybe it's a "boss", or maybe it's someone who would otherwise be only a grunt, but because of the story he's a pivotal security guard, or maybe the whole focus of the run is on combat, in any of these cases I've probably statted up these NPCs ahead of time and I'm rolling dice normally. But these things can be handy for the unimportant and/or unforeseen interactions (usually "interactions"=fights, but not always) where your options are to use some abstractions and get the game moving in a productive direction again, or potentially lose good momentum and break up the flow trying to stat up an NPC on the fly and be meticulous with a combat that, either way, is going to end up with the PCs walking away and minimal impact on the plot. In those situations, it's handy to use some abstractions.
I almost never use BP for NPCs. Build points are to keep PCs balanced, that's it. I give NPCs whatever combination of abilities I feel is appropriate. The only time I might consider using BP for an NPC is if it's going to be a friendly NPC actually hanging out with the PCs for an adventure or something, then I might want him to be balanced. That's about it.
As for numbers, I put whatever I feel is appropriate. If my players feel that they can take 'em, maybe they'll try. If not, then I guess they'll just have to think of a different plan, or find a way to separate them, or something.

Perhaps most importantly, I've told my players what I'm doing, so that when I tell them that they've been shot, or they shoot an NPC and I just check off some damage, all without ever touching my dice, they know what's going on and don't think I'm "cheating". I've also assured them that while I may freely switch from my grunt rules to more rigorously rolling everything for NPCs and back again, even in the middle of a battle; it is all for the sake of pacing, and what I never ever do is roll, decide I dislike the results, and then decide to just buy hits or anything like that.
I have had 0 complains regarding this method thus far. My players really like it because it lets me control the pacing of combat and (de)emphasize fights as appropriate. Not surprisingly, I like it for the exact same reason.

Finally, I'll say that before this last game I ran I never did stuff like this. I always gave NPCs full stats and did everything very carefully. But with my new game it's up to 8 players all on voice chat via Skype, and we have a fairly set window of time reserved. They're in several time zones, and play is from X:00-Y:00 EST, and someone generally has a commitment before and after the game. Work, sleep, whatever. So suddenly controlling the pacing of my games has become much more important than ever before.

Hmmmm, this isn't the most clear I've ever been; I'm rambling. I blame lack of coffee. Good luck deciphering this. I hope it helps.
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AbNo
post Oct 3 2007, 03:25 PM
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Well, it's not so much that they drop, so much as grunts that aren't Profeshno' Enuff to carry that Glock 40 will retreat or surrender when they take X amount of damage.

Or maybe I'm thinking of the Threat/Professional ratings from SR3 again.
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eidolon
post Oct 3 2007, 03:29 PM
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On first read (which was...last night :D) I like the Grunt rules, although I have already considered giving them each 2 damage tracks. I don't have time to stat up fifty NPCs every week anymore, but I can tweak Grunts in five minutes and go. Awesome.
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Gort
post Oct 3 2007, 03:43 PM
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There are some pretty glaring faults in the grunts as they're statted in the book. They use very poor equipment (less armour than they should be wearing, no recoil compensation on guns) and they never specialise their skills! All my grunts have at least a specialisation in their primary weapon, specialisations are just too cheap in karma to pass up, and they make sense for anyone who's been trained on that weapon to have.

There are some large gaps in the grunts as well. I don't know about you guys, but if I run a squad of enemies with no mage, they'll get instantly fried by the shadowrunners mage the moment he gets a go. So why is there no mage grunt anywhere?

I pretty much design my own grunts when I want them. This leads to a harder game (for example, a corporate security guard has all stats at 3, an armour vest, and a smartlinked shotgun which he's specialised in, so he's rolling 10 dice instead of the SR4 corp grunt's 6) but I feel that that's not a bad thing.

Like the original ammunition rules, I really get the feeling that the grunts were designed long before the rules for equipment and how it was used. See all the references to equipment and skills that don't even exist.

Make your own, guys.
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eidolon
post Oct 3 2007, 04:24 PM
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See, I don't see that as "glaring faults". IMO, too many people approach the game from a "I'm going to squeeze every tiny little bit of points advantage out of this system that I possibly can, even if it takes me fifteen hours to do it".

I see the sample characters and the sample grunts as "this is what a generic character could be like". I actually appreciate that the samples aren't perfectly statted to hell and back. They seem like characters a first time player that wants to get the game started in less than three days would make, and that's cool to me. I despise RPG arms races.
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deek
post Oct 3 2007, 05:20 PM
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For about all of my NPCs, not just grunts, I focus on total dice pools. I know there are usually many ways to get to, say, 10 dice in a combat pool, so I don't bother with the details. If my PCs have shooters with a range of 12-16 dice to shoot with, I scale appropriately, don't worry about skills, attributes or specialization, just assign a number and go.

So most of my NPC statlines would be something like, 10 dice to shoot, 8 dice for melee, and 12/8 dice for soaking damage. If I have a mage, I'll give them a pool for spell casting and note a magic rating...I try to keep things simple and just note the pool upfront so I don't have to worry about combining stats, specializations or qualities.

I know there is always a way to get to the pool I am using, I just don't need to got through a chargen every time I want some baddies.

Now that I am thinking about it, I could probably put these notes in a little cheat sheet so when I need a quick group of baddies, I can just reference the notes, grab the pools and go!
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eidolon
post Oct 3 2007, 05:49 PM
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I've actually thought about going to that sort of system too, but sometimes it can be handy to know stats. I foresee doing both grunts and "dice pool mooks" in future games.
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Serial_Peacemake...
post Oct 3 2007, 06:28 PM
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Honestly spirits are pretty good measure for how tough a grunt is. Basically think how tough a spirit of what you think the appropriate force is. Then consider if the opponent you have is throwing a like amount of dice.
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AbNo
post Oct 3 2007, 06:29 PM
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And see, there you go. If there's a very VERY important misunderstanding, sometimes you just need to rewind a couple of seconds, and go from there.

I mean, would you make the same choices if the situation were completely different from what you were expecting?
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Dashifen
post Oct 3 2007, 06:36 PM
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I usually go with a very simply mook when I need it. Every attribute is equal to the mook's professional rating except for the one (or two) attributes that said mook requires to do his/her job. Metatype bonuses are applied as appropriate.

All skills that come up are also at the mook's professional rating except for those which the mook requires to his/her job.

All mook's are generally specialized in the gear they have. All weapons for mooks have stats roughly equivalent to those for cyberimplants. Armor penetration is by ammo type for convenience. Mooks in my games tend not to get recoil comp, but range also tends not to apply to them because I'm lazy so it probably balances out.

Any mook whose job it is to guard or otherwise know every nook and cranny of a location receives the Home Ground merit for that location. Other qualities may be applied as I see fit.

This means that I can pretty much create a mook in my head and remember all attributes, skills, and gear in my head. For anyone who isn't expected to arrive and either be controlled, ignored, or die then I probably put more effort into stating out a full NPC.
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deek
post Oct 3 2007, 06:38 PM
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QUOTE (eidolon)
I've actually thought about going to that sort of system too, but sometimes it can be handy to know stats. I foresee doing both grunts and "dice pool mooks" in future games.

Its worked pretty well for me thus far. I mean, the players don't care, either way. And in most combats, the three types of things you need are: combat pool (ranged or melee), damage resistence and damage tracks.

Granted, for things like knockdown, knowing Body is important and for my campaign that uses success caps based on skills, the skill rating is important, but that is easy enough to mitigate on the fly, IMO.

What the players do care about is that combat moves forward as a good pace, so if you can accomplish that by taking a few shortcuts up front, they'll be happy!
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eidolon
post Oct 3 2007, 06:44 PM
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Yup, and I'm hoping that EasyMooks™ combined with using SR4W is really going to make combats fly, and take most of the boring calculation out of it.
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Whipstitch
post Oct 3 2007, 07:57 PM
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QUOTE (Gort @ Oct 3 2007, 10:43 AM)
There are some large gaps in the grunts as well. I don't know about you guys, but if I run a squad of enemies with no mage, they'll get instantly fried by the shadowrunners mage the moment he gets a go. So why is there no mage grunt anywhere?

The corp sec lieutenant is a wagemage. He's nothing special though; 3 Magic, Conjuring/Sorcery at 3 and it looks like he's only got a dicepool of 8 to resist drain with (appears to be an Intuition+Will tradition). He'd be a lot better with a smidge more counterspelling dice, but that's what you get at such a low professionalism level.
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Gort
post Oct 3 2007, 08:03 PM
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True, I missed that one.
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Nikoli
post Oct 4 2007, 01:52 AM
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I make scaleable grunts within a group. the large portion of this one crew is profesional rating 0, when they've worked their way up, they might get a couple more skills, add a point or two to existing skills and attributes and go from there.
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Kerris
post Oct 4 2007, 03:22 PM
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I'm considering just using 2 * (professional rating + 3) as the dice pool for anything a grunt would be specialized in. Subtract professional rating + 2 for skills they're not specialized in. You likely only want to pick one or two skills they're specialized in.

Rating 0: Dice pool of 6, or 4 (no training in anything, really)
Rating 1: Dice pool of 8, or 5
Rating 2: Dice pool of 10, or 6
Rating 3: Dice pool of 12, or 7
Rating 4: Dice pool of 14, or 8
Rating 5: Dice pool of 16, or 9
Rating 6: Dice pool of 18, or 10

I think this makes a pretty nice scale, so grunts can be used for quite a while.
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Irian
post Oct 4 2007, 03:59 PM
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An absolutely untrained grunt with a dice pool of 6? Sounds a little bit strange... I would give 1-3 (2-4 in attributes and -1 for defaulting).
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Kerris
post Oct 5 2007, 07:38 PM
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I didn't mean absolutely untrained. That would, in fact, mean that they were defaulting all the time. The guy has some skills, he's just not particularly good at any of them.

Also, Rating 0 should be 6 dice, and 4 in unspecialized skills (edited in the post)
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