Several dumpshockers have military experience or just your average military fetishism. Those who don't, may have watched Shooter. A modern sniper (fifth world, that is) is very trained and technologically advanced. So it's safe to assume that in the sixth world, the practice of sniping has been taken up a notch. We've just had an anti-dragon task force thread, so I think one about snipers is warranted.

So build me a sniper or sniper/spotter team if you feel appropriate. SR3 and/or SR4 rules. Standard BP allocation. Consider more than just skill with a rifle. How do they stay undetected, how mobile are they, how do they get to a target? What complementary skills do they have? What cyber-ware do they have? (especially relevant in the hacker-friendly SR4) How do they interact with technology and the matrix? How do they counter magical opposition?

One of the interesting things I noticed looking over the rules, is that vision magnification scopes are superfluous for a real sniper. You can get equal vision magnification in a set of cyber-eyes, and it also doesn't preclude the use of a Smartlink like a scope does. Also, it's one less thing to reflect light and give away your position.

Go nuts.

What's the purpose/mission of this team? I can do a lot more damage with a radio and a laser designator/rangefinder than the worlds greatest shot with the biggest man portable weapon can.

probably an ki-mage adept with focus on stealth, the shooting of the rifle of course, the attribute linked to both of those, some spells like impoved invisibility and levitation, some cyber-ware like eyes for the sight modifiers and of course ultrasound and radar imaging so he can see verything and so target more or less everything. . complementary skills should be stealth-craft, electronics, some socials and athletics i'd say . . no hard numbers but a basic concept ^^

Having made this team multiple times in the past using a variety of methods, I'll bite.
I'll whip something up once I'm home and have book access again.

Ultimate sniping team: a mage with a telescope and a troll adept spotter/bodyguard.
Sorted.

...I'll try to post Jill tonight. (SR4)

One thing, Chargen Availability limit waved?

I was wondering if and how a sniper or his spotter would utilize drones a lot. They could provide backup, confuse the enemy or assist the sniper team very well but bear the risk of being jammed. Also the sniper's commlink could be located if he transmitted wirelessly to a drone while preparing for his shot.

Much as in the Green Beret thread, I see this as a budget matter. Assuming we're talking military, you're going to want a team on the cheaper side. The only elements I could see added would be a smartgun for the rifle, and a datajack for the spotter. That way, the spotter can just plug in his optics, run the calculations through his PAN at the speed of thought, and transmit the corrections to the shooter. Come to think of it, you may even have a line running to the shooter's rifle, as well; you could do it all wirelessly, but the less you throw out there, electromagnetically speaking, the less you have to worry about OPFOR tracking excess noise.

Come to think of it, wouldn't a smartgun eliminate the spotter entirely?

unfortunately (or not, depending on how you look at it), there really isn't much to being a successful sniper in SR. high stealth skill, high rifles skill, big gun, camo--that's it, you're done. you can blow the rest of your bp and karma on opera singing. you don't need a spotter to help you out, you don't really need the armory/gun b/r skills, you don't even particularly need a scope if you're playing 4th ed. SR, for better or for worse, makes sniping easy and boring.


realistically, it depends on how you look at the technology. if you view it as a simple ballistic computer that simply shows you the path your bullet will take if you fire your weapon at any given time, then yes, you still need a spotter. if you view it as having some sort of target-recognition capability, then you might not.

either way, according to the rules, you don't need a spotter with or without a smartlink.

using SR3 rules

the primary sniper could be an adept with points in
traceless walk
vision mag 3
imp hearing
up to 6 points into rifles
-----
other points could be spent towards init if its a more urban sniper team,
though I'd consider points in
spell shroud, temperature tolerance, and true sight.

his partner could be a full mage, though an aspected conjurer would work just fine.
having spirits for concealment and watchers for the surrounding area could be beneficial for finding targets.
the partner should also be skilled in electronics for monitoring and transmitting data.

the only gear I'd consider a must have is the ruthenium polymer suits, guilly suits in case the ruth runs out of power, thermal dampeners, decent rifle, maybe a summoning foci.
other gear that you'd give standard characters would most likely apply as well.

With a sniper, you try to get to the target unnoticed, kill him from a distance and then get away.

Getting there unnoticed require high Stealth/Infiltration(or some effect that mimics these), killing from a distance is not too difficult as long as you have some way to ignore range mods and have a weapon that can deliver the necessary damage, getting away once the deed is done again requires high Stealth/Infiltration.

I favor a sniper with astral perception. That way you can flat out IGNORE invisibility and the Concealment power of spirits. (Which is a modifier to Perception but Assensing doesnt use the Perception skill)

Other good things to have are mobility based to get you to your hide position.... Traceless Walk and Wall Running. Run up the building to the roof and never make a sound. Barbed Wire? No problem. Newspapers on the floor? No biggie.

Lastly, the weapon itself is key. Magic allows the target to counterspell himself even if surprised (although not others if surprised only himself). This makes magic even iffier. A Barret 121 with AV Ammo allows shooting through car doors and such all that much more easily. (9P/-10 to be exact)

To hide just use something Ruthenium-based and take cover as well. Make sure you can operate with no wireless at all (so drones need to be 'dark' and hunt based on preexisting instructions if they are assisting. Weapon Watcher software can allow the drones to have a chance at detecting your weapon firing and use your silenced shot as a triggering event for their followup actions.

I'd stay the heck away from foci or anything magical if it were me... astral projection is awesome mobility like superman so anything making it harder to be seen astrally is a good thing.

Spotters are less important with a smartlink (i'm sure sniper smartlinks have all kinds of doodads that make for nice RP flair but have little if any game effect). But they still serve a purpose as a bodyguards, backup, and the guy who handles all the other crap that isn't shooting someone in the face. Sure your sniper can call in air support and what not through his PAN but wouldn't it be better if he just concentrated on tagging that guy from 6 miles away?

I think a low cost spotter would be a drone or a biodrone (lower EM profile) that watches a snipers back and provides various support services. The sniper would control the drone through a simple interface like spoken/hand commands or some such. You could also flip it around and have the sniper be a drone and the rigger acting as the spotter.

For those of you who have read DMZ, I'd love to see an urban gauss sniper that picks people off from satalitte imagery and local sensor nets.

I forget the name of the weapon mod but in Arsenal is a weapon mod that turns a weapon into a minidrone. Add Improved Sensor Array and the weapon can have as much sensors in it as a small drone once it has Improved Sensor Array.

For a spotting scope perhaps a Ruthenium covered Smart Firing Platform with a Steadicam on it?

I actually imagine a dedicated spotter rigger who coordinates a constellation of micro drones and biodrones that generate all the information a sniper needs to pull off insane shots. Maybe a "smart dust" nanotech that latches on to the target and makes him easier to track, if you know what to look for.

I don't think the minidrone pulled off enough speed to make it a viable spotter. Still, I could see dropping off a drone gun that slow crawls for weeks to get into position to take a shot. Call it the Carlos Hathcock mod.

All SR3.

Sniper:

Physical Adept, Rifles 6, Stealth 6, Improved Sense (VisMag, 0.25), Improved Sense (Thermovision, .25), Improved Sense (Low-Light, 0.25), Traceless Walk (0.5), Combat Sense 3 (3.0), Improved Ability: Rifles 3 (1.5), either Improved Sense (one of: Direction Sense, Flare Compensation, Sound Dampening) or Improved Ability: Stealth (0.25)

Spotter:

Physical adept, Assault Rifles 6, Stealth 6, Enhanced Perception 6 (3.0), Traceless Walk (0.5), Improved Sense (VisMag, 0.25), Improved Sense (Thermovision, .25), Improved Sense (Low-Light, 0.25), Improved Sense (Hearing Amplification, 0.25), Improved Sense (Sound Dampening, 0.25), Improved Sense (Direction Sense, 0.25), Improved Sense (Flare Compensation, 0.25), Empathic Sense

Assortment of first-aid and survival skills for both

~J

I've been thinking about a good sniper character for awhile. If I wasn't swamped with homework (which I am procrastinating on this very instant) I'd whip something up. Instead I'll just throw out ideas.

A Coungering Adept might be interesting. He could summon spirits to use their movement and concealment powers and watchers to astrally scout locations. Using accident or influence powers to set up shots also opens up a world of possibilities.

Survival skills and digestive expansion would be cool. Drop in behind enemy lines and eat dirt for a week or two until the target presents.

I imagine dwarves being good snipers- smaller shooter = smaller blind.

A dwarf spotter would be pretty damn useful, you can stuff those guys anywhere...

An alternative sniper would be the lowtech=low emission sniper. No magic or crazy drones/etc to trip people off to where he's at. Just him, a ghillie suit (chameleon suit, whatever), his rifle (bolt action, custom tooled rounds) and a whole lot of patience. I guess you'd need some way to hide on the astral though, which means that a concealment spirit might be a necessary evil.

Concealment does not work on the astral.

I'd try to use a living ghillie suit, to hide your aura in he aura of plants, and get training in using stealth in astral space, picking locations with background counts etc.

Finally a good use for the PKE-meter umm... I mean AMP.

On reflection, the Spotter I listed above can be improved by taking a point of cyberware to replace those senses which don't give bonuses for being natural (and, if applicable, geasing the point to get something else, but even without it it lets you take something like a Smartlink which would be handy.

~J

Just be sure you don't cross the st-

Hey! Wait a minute.

Which brings to me an interesting thought.

Can you make an SR Ghostbuster squad? I guess you could just have a bunch of mages who specialize in banishing and binding. But what's the fun in that! I want a Proton pack damnit!

Druid - Assensing 6, Counterspelling 4, Summoning 4, Stealth 4, Plant Spirit

Adept - Perception 6, Enhanced Perception 5, Improved Ability - Perception 3, Firearms 4, Stealth 4

Good for sniper and countersniper duty.

To quote wikipedia:

A sniper is an infantry soldier or other who specializes in shooting from a concealed position over longer ranges than regular infantry, often with a specially designed or adapted sniper rifle. A sniper requires skill in marksmanship, camouflage, and field craft.

To further quote wikipedia:

Different countries have different military doctrines regarding snipers in military units, settings, and tactics. Generally, a sniper's primary function in warfare is to provide detailed reconnaissance from a concealed position and, if necessary, to reduce the enemy's fighting ability by striking at a small number of high value targets, especially officers.

Soviet Russian and derived military doctrines include squad-level snipers, which may be called “sharpshooters� or “designated marksmen� in other doctrines (see below). They do so because this ability was lost to ordinary troops when assault rifles (which are optimized for close-in, rapid-fire combat) were adopted. See the “Soviet sniper� article for details.

Military snipers from the US, UK, and other countries that adopt their military doctrine are typically deployed in two-man sniper teams consisting of a shooter and spotter. A common practice is for a shooter and a spotter to take turns in order to avoid eye fatigue.

Typical sniper missions include reconnaissance and surveillance, counter-sniper, killing enemy commanders, selecting targets of opportunity, and even anti-matériel tasks (destruction of military equipment), which tend to require use of rifles in the larger calibers such as the .50 BMG. Snipers have of late been increasingly demonstrated as useful by US and UK forces in the recent Iraq campaign in a fire support role to cover the movement of infantry, especially in urban areas.

---

For the reading impaired:

US Army Sniper school (part1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkydtFDnssc
US Army Sniper school (part2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7picg4u2yI
US Army Sniper school (part3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saOgh60Ex8Y
US Army Sniper school (part4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saOgh60Ex8Y
US Army Sniper school (part5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVu4lPu7Wao
US Army Sniper school (part6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eadWmlVX_Y

I think snipers, in the traditional sense will be pretty boring, actually. Some of the most effective snipers in history weren't using top of the line gear for their time. At least one (Finnish dude, with the most confirmed kills in WWII with like 545 or some crazy high number...) didn't even use scopes, just iron sights.

As for hiding from astral security, whenever possible, I'm sure they'd hide under, or in, plants of all types. Nothing fancy, just make sure your aura ain't the only thing around for two square miles.



Not that any or all of the fancy nancy ideas posted here couldn't be great snipers, they wouldn't be the normal everyday snipers.

Not that the ordinary schlub sniper can't kill ya dead.

Even if concealment isn't useful for dodging astral security, it would make anyone in a chameleon or ghillie suit damn near impossible to spot on the physical. Plus it affects all other senses. And all those other spirit powers would still be damn useful (movement, accident, etc).

Now here is an interesting thought: a plant spirit has the concealment power. What would a plant spirit use to conceal someone? What effect would that have on the astral?

now i kinda envision that monty python sketch with the hiding/disguising in the green field with the bushes *g*

hehe...

So there's no way to mask astral sigs? Aside from tugging around great big slabs of that wood paneling that keeps out astral intruders?

there's . . that one meta-tech i think, which lowers your astral SIGNATURE to magic attribute or force MINUTES instead of hours . . but no, there's no way i know of to conceal your astral presence at that very moment, no way to hide your aura *g*

You could bury yourself in a hole, disguising the end of it to look like it was animal dug.

This keeping you out of prying astral eyes.

...ahhh the How Not to be Seen sketch...it is one of my favourites.

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