I'd like to offer a little light reading to help augment the discussion.

Training and Selection
Special Forces Qualification Course
Robin Sage (especially the bit about goals)

My personal take on soldiers. YMMV.

Brand new recruit fresh out of high school (18yo, ~200BP):

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After basic training (19yo, ~275 BP):

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Sergeant (23yo, ~375 BP):

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Staff Sergeant, Ranger (26yo, above average~475 BP):


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Staff Sergeant, Special Forces (28yo, elite~575 BP):

Yeah, you only need a damage spell or two at most to contribute to combat via spells and even then they are rather redundant if you're capable with mundane weapons.

I'd expect to see Heal and Fix, since they're fast, effective and unlike mundane methods they are completely arbitrary and do not require anything in the way of tools. Nutrition may or not make it in, although it'd be obviously pretty damn useful in a survival situation. And Mana Static would definitely make it in because it is awesome. Believe it or not, illusions are kind of questionable because you really don't want to depend on them and these guys would likely depend on Concealment and their own talents instead, although I think they'd find a use for Trid Phantasm.

But the real belle of the ball would be the detection spells. Some of us tend not to appreciate them enough because no GM really wants a session to grind to a halt as player stumble around looking for their target in vain, so there's a tendency to have relatively focused goals where all you have to do is find the trail of breadcrumbs to your mark. Life is often more complicated than that though, and can you imagine the godsend that Detect Enemies, Mind Probe, and Thought Recognition could be in combating urban terrorism? It raises the nasty spectre of considering people guilty of thought crimes, and I could understand how people would be skeptical of their use, but at the very least there's still the Detect Object spells like "Detect Firearm" or "Detect Explosive" which could be extremely useful.

I stand corrected. It has been a few years since I was last in Bragg. Ah the good old days. I do wish I could go back an relive those moments.

I miss so many old friends.

Yeah, to me it's about minimum requirements and area of specialty, and I wouldn't put it lower than a 4 (veteran level) either. I just feel that once you've got a 4 skill, you're pretty damn good and it's going to be other skills that seperate you from the pack unless being a sniper or Weapon Sergeant happens to be your area of specialty. I mostly just stand against the knee jerk reaction that everyone's got to have a 5 or a 6 in the firearms skill without that being one of their specialties. I'm sure a guy with "only" 4 firearms skill but is otherwise very physically fit, mentally tough, speaks 3 languages and is an experienced combat engineer wouldn't just be shown the door without further consideration of his potential as a special ops guy, for example.

I can agree with that, I just think SR4 isn't really granular enough to justify 5 as being the cut off point as opposed to 4 since we're talking about a general template at this point rather than an individual soldier with definite strengths and specializations.

Indeed. The main problem with rating 5 in SR4 is there is little room for improvement. And I agree that there is probably a much bigger divide between your average SF Operator and your Carlos Hathcocks than between Firearms 5 and Firearms 7.


As a side note, here a great article about SF Selection:

http://www.special-operations-technology.c...e.cfm?DocID=981

Per Eric Haney's book, there were years early in Delta's operation where they shot more ammunition in training than the entirety of the Marine Corps.

There are a lot of misconceptions in this thread, mostly related to the fact that people are lumping together all special operations forces under the heading "Special Forces." A number of people have put out some good information here, but in reality for a lot of TO&E stuff it's best to just look at google or specialoperations.com (who has a web page for each of most of the world's special operations forces)--unless that is no longer around. Each "group" of troops is going to have different skills and abilities, and while there is a lot of overlap in mission, there is also some good differentiation.

Just within the Special Forces community (the "Green Berets" of the Army) there is actually additional specialization, of individual roles, team roles, and group roles.

As was previously discussed, each team has a number of different specialties (each duplicated): The officers (one Captain, one warrant officer), a team sergeant and an operations/intelligence sergeant, two medics, two engineers, two weapons sergeants, and two commo guys.

Within a SF Company (which also is a "B-Team") there are five or six (it should be six now, I don't know if they actually have the manpower to staff the extra team though) A-Teams and each one of those may do a different thing. You'll have an MFF (military free fall--skydiving) team, a SCUBA team, and "ruck" teams. You may also have teams that have specialized in water operations (non-SCUBA: kayaks and the like), direct action, or any number of other things limited usually by funding and imagination. These are primarily a means of "getting to work" though, and all teams are (supposed to be) capable of performing any of the "jobs" of a Special Forces team.

Lastly, each Group focuses on a specific region (though this has gone out the window a bit in the last six years), which (in theory) decides what language they will know, and what their type of environment or geography they train for. 3rd Group, for example, focuses on Latin/South America, so learn Spanish and do a lot of jungle/tropical training, perform a lot of "foreign internal defense" operations (training the local military for counterinsurgency/counterdrug missions), etc. They spend a lot less time on skis then someone from 10th Group (focusing on Europe) might. Every one of them is capable of falling out of an airplane with a minimal of skill, but it's not a passion for a lot of them.

The other thing to remember is that just because someone is in a special operations unit they aren't supermen, and aren't "world class" in everything. It's actually possible to do a "zero to hero" enlistment, going 18X and going into Infantry basic training, then Airborne, then Special Forces Selection, then Qualification--getting your speciality and language--then finally getting SERE and your pretty hat. It's a long hard road that many people can't do, so they are going to be "above average" but it's going to be in areas like willpower and body (stamina) rather then strength. You won't see below average in many areas, but they aren't superhuman. For skills, a basic competency with a rifle is required, but the reality is that shooting "Expert" in the Army isn't that hard once you've been on the range a few times. Getting that marksmanship qualification probably is the equivalent of a skill 3 rather then 4 or 5. Social skills are more important to Special Forces then anything else. The primary role of SF is to work with indigenous people to train them to accomplish a goal. That requires the ability to work with a lot of people and provide leadership and instruction well above what would be expected for their rank. Skills like "unarmed combat," "clubs," etc are probably no better then 3 (if that). There will be a passing familiarity with many things, but expert or "World Class" skills are still the exception rather then the rule.

Some organizations shoot a lot. The Rangers shoot a lot in training. SEALs shoot a lot. Tier 1 outfits like "Delta Force" and "SEAL Team Six" shoot a bejesus-load, but it's not universal. What makes SOF dangerous is not their mad combat skillz, but it's their minds, training, and teamwork. A drive not to fail. The ability to push beyond what your mind says is possible and actually work to the body's performance limit. Intelligence and willpower. Quantifying a SF soldier isn't actually as much fun as you'd think it is. Basically any good character can be of a SF background if played intelligently.

When you compare firing range performance to SR4 skill rankings, remember that shooting 40/40 at the range is a whole different animal from shooting 40/40 with a Taliban platoon coming up the hill at you.

It's a lot easier to hit that 200m target when you know that target will not shoot back at you if you miss.

GURPS handles this by assuming that the stats on your character sheet assume use under dangerous circumstances. Doing the same thing in a safe environment gives a hefty bonus.

Composure Test against a threshold determined by the GM, lacking successes translate into a negative DP mod for all offensive actions?

To be honest, I don't think this kind of thing is needed at all.

That being said, yes, I think that it is a substantial enough bonus to make a difference when you consider normal sized dice pools. And when abnormally large dice pools are involved, then the difference is not as dramatic, which kind of adequately reflects that person's ease in combat situations, as there would be less of a difference between the two 'environments' with the hard core types.

That is discounting the fact that a lot of Shadowrunners are going to be former company men or special forces types themselves. A straight shadowrunner to special forces comparison is going to be very hard because it makes a lot of assumptions about the characters and power level involved in the game. An 8 or 9 dicepool before any other considerations are taken into account for a generalist Special ops guy is plenty good enough to threaten a shadowrunner. Granted, it may not be enough to take down one on one a tuned and tweaked Samurai, but tuned and tweaked Samurai shouldn't be considered that terribly common either, since we're usually talking about someone who again, IS former special forces, the company man equivalent, or at the very least someone who managed to claw their way up out of the urban jungle despite all odds and become one of the top predators in the whole sprawl. And your average chargen street samurai would STILL likely have far less versatility than the special ops guy, even if he did have a slight advantage in a stand up fight.

I did miss a few of those posts, TheOneRonin. Thank you. A few notes on of them you quoted.

Everybody seems to have different ideas about what skill levels mean, and what the typical skill levels of soldiers are, especially with firearms. My interpretation of relative skill levels is:

• Hasn't passed Rifle qualification, but understands the basics - Skill 1
• Qualified Marksman - Skill 2
• Qualified Sharpshooter - Skill 3
• Qualified Expert - Skill 4
• Sniper school graduate - Skill 5
• Distinguished graduate in sniper school - Skill 6
• Eric England and Carlos Hathcock - Skill 7

That puts the average grad from basic between skill 2 and 3 (and most non-infantry types don't really get much past this since they don't practice that much), and the average experienced infantry grunt between 3 and 4. Most SOF would be 4 or 5. Direct Action groups such as DEVGRU, etc might average 5 or possibly 6. Does this seem reasonable?