To build a Green Beret..., No, not the silly hat... Options

[Karaden]

[Stahlseele]

yes, wired reflexes did come with the option of a built in trigger as of SR3 somewhere, i think M&M . . but there is no such thing mentioned for MBW . . it is basically ALLWAYS ON . . whcih explains why it gatheres stress as fast as it does . . which other things only do when damaged . .

[Karaden]

[Magus]

In 3rd ed. The MBW racked up stress points and needed to be serviced monthly.

[Stahlseele]

MBW is the only piece of Cyber/Bio that accumulates Stress points over time even when not being ACTIVELY used . . so first come the shivers, then come the cramps, then come the seizures, then comes a pretty dead body with some twitch-wires . . so if this piece is the only thing gathering stress points on it's own everything else basically just works like it is supposed to forever . . aside from the SOTA Rules silliness . .
Edit:CURSES <.< . .

[Spike]

Riley: I'd suggest that the infamous 'breaking down of will' is a temporary state. Soldiers are not mindless zombies. In another game system I'd almost say it was 'willpower damage' that heals naturallly, but can't think of a good shadowrun precedent for that.

Like any other large group of people, there are numbers of individuals and groups of behavior patterns.

So, while as a general rule any soldier given an order will hop to and say 'yes sir!', that doesn't mean they will actually want to perform the order, or do so with any real enthusiasm... in fact in many cases the orders in question will be given a surface polish of 'effort' followed by many hours of 'shamming' and general tomfoolery.

In military thinking, the guy with the high willpower is actually the dude that does obey orders even when unsupervised and when the job is unpleasant (clean out the toilets, private!), and does the job to a high professional standard.

Its the low willpower that has the 'individual' mindset of 'I'm just gonna slack off and not really scrub anything'.

[knasser]

I once watched a very good documentary on the subject of violence which included an interesting discussion with an officer in the US army, whose responsibility was training new soldiers. He talked in some depth and very candidly about the psychological barriers most people have against hurting or killing another, and what it takes to overcome that. All the techniques that a cult uses to indoctrinate people are used by the US and UK army. And the end result has some similarities as well - most particularly that people come out of the process not merely obedient to those they are told to be obedient to, but proud of their obedience. When I visited the US some years ago, I had a fun conversation with a youngish lad who was going through boot camp at the time (I met him whilst bouncing around the country by Greyhound). He boasted about how he had to clean out the latrine with his bare hands as a punishment. It's almost fascinating in a morbid way to see someone go from "Do this horrible thing for no benefit to yourself - No way!" to "Do this horrible thing - right away, thank you!" From an objective point of view, outside the process, all you can see is someone go from a person who acts according to their own priorities and values to someone who acts entirely according to someone else's priorities and values. That to me is how the low willpower trait comes in.

Of course that's where the simplicity of the Shadowrun system breaks down. All the Shadowrun Willpower attribute measures is someone's ability to endure adversity or resist coercian. It doesn't care whether that ability is stemming from adherance to one's own beliefs or those conditioned into you, just so long as it is there. But conditioning to follow orders is still conditioning and I believe it has a general effect as well. I still remember that soldier cramming himself into a luggage rack to see if he could fit, because I told him to. (true).

[Siege]

I'm trying to remember when I spoke with an officer in BCT, except to call attention for our CO and get chewed out for not saluting properly.

-Siege

[Cthulhudreams]

Modern training programs also invest significant effort in training soldiers to act independently or in small groups on their own initiative as that is what modern warfare demands. It is an interesting dynamic.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[Siege]

[knasser]

[Whipstitch]

God, I hate that skill table. There often isn't that big of a difference between how a guy who's been through boot shoots and how a special ops guy shoots provided that they're both familiar with the weapon being used. The latter guy MAY be a helluva lot better if that happens to be an area of his specialty, but what he brings to the table isn't just "I shoot better" (which, like I said, in some cases may even be debateable) it's a wide range of diverse skills and the sort of situational awareness that only comes from experience. A talented young guy in the Marine corp may very well shoot just as well with his chosen weapons as any special ops guy out there, but he probably doesn't know a 2nd or 3rd language or have any experience with HAHO/HALO operations.

[Cthulhudreams]

The skills table explicitly identifies a group of professionals as having above professional levels in multiple areas: Senior managers of areas with an associated skill set - so the lead designer of the Mazda MX-5 for example has above professional skills in leadership/influence and above professional skills in an engineering discipline.

[Whipstitch]

[Riley37]

[Siege]

Re: CthulhuDreams:
Or that manager has incriminating photos - one of the two. :D

To derail to the Army -

I think the biggest misconception about the Army is the uniformity. Yes, it exists, yes, we try to dress right dress, but there is a tremendous and tremendously subtle distinction from Soldier to Soldier, unit to unit and branch to branch.

Those distinctions are not particularly obvious to the casual observer, but to someone in the organization, they are more apparent.

You'll always find someone in uniform willing to "snap to" and obey without question. It's the nature of the job to develop that sort of mentality. But at the same time, we don't confer that automatic obedience to anyone, regardless of rank or position. My NCO tells me to do something, I do it - he (or she) has earned my trust and respect that I will obey most, if not all orders without too many questions.

A new officer or NCO giving orders isn't going to get the same automatic response.

And in either situation, if I think an order is wrong or incorrect, given the circumstances ("Soldier, go see if that really is an IED - I want a picture of it for my memoirs"), I can and will say "uh, no. Sir."

-Siege

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[martindv]

[Eleazar]

One thing he should have that I haven't seen noticed is foreign language skills. Many of the Green Berets today at least know Farsi, for obvious reasons. I would think this Green Beret should know a foreign language as well. I suggest that language be of the nationality wherever he is most likely to be deployed or whichever "hotspot" the military is most concerned with.

[Fortune]

[Eleazar]

[Magus]

[Magus]

[Magus]

I am just wondering where the combat mage would fit into the SpecOps teams? Also would the medic possible be a Mystic Adept specialized in Healing magics?