Who do you geek second?, When the mage is dead Options

[Sicarius]

If its a uniformed group, I'd say take out command and control. Target their Police Commander, or the Security Shift Leader or what have you. If they are 'runners or gangers or otherwise from street level, that might more difficult to determine. If you've got a reasonable gm, that should effect their response considerably.

[Conskill]

My favorite decker PC approached running with the philosophy that if you look geeky and frail enough, the enemy will shoot at you last and be more inclined to let you surrender first.

Oddly enough, it worked.

So I say attack the biggest, nastiest, most heavily armored cyber-troll freak in the group. Spare the geeks.

[Snow_Fox]

[Siege]

They're NPCs - they can always find someone crazy, desperate or psychotic enough to work for them. :grinbig:

-Siege

[toturi]

[Foreigner]

I pretty much agree with Sicarius.

The standard targets for snipers throughout history have been, in descending order:

(1) Officers;

(2) Non-commissioned officers (usually anyone between Sergeant and Lieutenant Second Class, although Lance Corporals (Marine Corps) Corporals, and Warrant Officers, or their naval equivalents, might also be counted);

(3) Communications officers (the guy with the field radio on his back); and

(4) Heavy-weapons people--i.e, anyone carrying a squad automatic weapon, light, medium, or heavy machine gun (or their components, such as the tripod), bazooka, mortar (or components), or ammunition for the aforementioned weapons.

Example: During World War II, the favorite target of enemy snipers--after officers, NCOs, and communications personnel--was the man with the Browning Automatic Rifle ("BAR"), because the enemy had learned, from experience, that the BAR man was individually the most dangerous man in the squad, because his weapon was more portable than, but had about the same firepower as, a light or medium machine gun. Its main flaw was a low ammunition capacity--it had a maximum cyclic rate of 600 rounds per minute (10 shots per second in SR parlance)--but only a 20-round magazine.

(Emphasis mine.)

A story was once related to me of a BAR man whose entire unit (a squad or two, I think, that is, ten or fifteen men--something smaller than a platoon, at any rate)--except for him, that is--was wiped out by an enemy attack. He had survived by scrounging supplies (food and water) and ammunition from his dead comrades during lulls in the fighting. When another patrol found him later, he was alive and pretty much unhurt, but had been driven to the brink of insanity by rage, grief, fear, and exhaustion.

His BAR was useless; the barrel had been "washed out"--that is, the rifling had been destroyed, and the barrel itself warped from excessive heat, from the almost-constant firing.

His foxhole was surrounded by the corpses of between eighty and one hundred enemy soldiers. I say "enemy soldiers" because I am not certain whether the incident took place in the European Theater of Operations (ETO) or in the Pacific Theater--or, for that matter, whether the fellow in question was a soldier (U.S. Army, that is), or a U.S. Marine.

--Foreigner

This post has been edited by Foreigner: Sep 18 2005, 04:30 PM

[Shadow]

Who, reminds me of the stories about the Browning .30 cal water cooled LMG and the South Pacific theater. I forget which island but two guys and the Browning held off thousands of Japanese troops.

[mmu1]

[mmu1]

Oh, and it's my dwarven sam's policy to (after taking out the most obvious threats) shoot the tallest guy first. :)

[Paul]

[Mugzug]

Sniper targets in history may have been that way, but in modern times through a grunt's view (mine) this is the target order.

#1: Officer or whoever seems to be in charge (if on the battlefield, and clearly giving orders. They will not display rank, so figuring out who an officer is will be difficult.

#2: The guy with the heavy weaponry (machine guns, MK12's, etc). That is why all grunts are cross-trained with the heavy weaponry guy so they can jump on it when he dies. Heavy weapon is suppression and when it goes down, our people die.

#3: Comm guy. The dude has a HUGE antenna (the good ones do) and a sniper will see that. They stick out like a sore thumb, because they will have a big pack displaying their com gear.


Some terrorists might actually wound medics first, but that is a whole other story.

[Shadow]

[mmu1]

[hahnsoo]

[Mortax]

[The Grifter]

I say waste the damn radio guy first. What's more dangerous? A machinegun, or a multiple Snake and Nape run on your position? Not to mention loss of command and control.

[mmu1]

[nezumi]

[Siege]

[Dog]

I suppose I've been tempted to aim my second shot at the teammate who fumbled his stealth roll, but since that's been me just as often as anyone else...

[Grinder]

:grinbig:

[Mortax]

:rotfl: nice.

[Lucifer]

I like coordination with my teammates. This sometimes takes the form of focus fire, but more often means prioritizing targets based on who is best equipped for the situation. As you can imagine, it varies greatly depending on fields of fire and the condition the team is in (for example, the mage isn't much use if he's already fighting off +5 combined damage modifiers), but generally it breaks down like this:

The mage Manabolt or Stunbolts the biggest, most cybered target; a troll, a gilette, the guy in Heavy Combat Armor with a gyro-mounted weapon. They usually aren't hard to find since they're either huge, don't bother with cover, or go way before the mage in the initiative order.

The sniper pops the mage. A good sniper (usually an Adept with Improved Skill: Rifles or a cyber/bio combo with Reflex Recorders and the like) with APDS/AV ammo (more affordable than you'd think since he needs so little) has surprisingly little trouble with mages... or much of anything else, for that matter.

The assault rifle users focus on whichever targets seem like they'll be the toughest to hit or damage; a nice 6+ Full-Auto attack really tears through armor and makes dodging extremely difficult.

The pistol/SMG users (usually deckers, riggers outside of vehicles, and other semi-liabilities) play clean-up since they're usually far enough down the initiative order that everything important is dead.

In the case of an entrenched battle (allies and enemies both behind cover, long ranges with poor visibility or other fights likely to last multiple rounds) we usually try to assign someone to dishing out grenades either by hand or from a launcher - both the frag kind and smokescreens for movement - and either have the rigger drop heavy and possibly indirect fire from drones, have the mage whistle up some spirits/elementals for support, or just let him go crazy with -ball spells.

You'll notice we don't many allowances for melee fighters; that's not an oversight. The general policy I take on them is thus: "If you want to get your ass shot off trying to run over there, be my guest. I'll be behind cover. Mind the grenades, we won't be holding back on your account."

We usually play fairly 'professional' level runners, though. I'm not sure how I'd handle a street level campaign. I guess for one thing melee (probably via a troll adept or similar) would become a lot more important.

[Sabosect]

I geek the other magically-active character.

IME, every group has at least two.

[The Grifter]