Heroes and Characters in StarGrunt/Dirtside

Hello, I'm currently unsatisfied with the StarGrunt rules regarding Characters
and I've been wanting to improve on them. So I went back and reread Donald
Chipman's OutWorlders site and Put these idead together. As Donald says
Characters are those strange people that the gods have smiled upon and to
which most grunts will find difficult to kill. They can
also accomplish extra-ordinary tasks that the regular grunt would not
think of trying. Here's a summary of Chipman's work, I reccomend that you
check it out yourself. Five primary stats rated 0 to 5 with 2 being average:
STR, DEX, INT, END,
LUCK.  Three secondary stats WIL = (END + INT)/2, MOVE = ((2 * DEX) +
STR)/3, Health = ((STR + END)/2) + (WIL/6).    All starts are rounded.5
or less down. Then you buy skills 1 = novice, 2= avergage, etc up to 5. These
skills include for my examples Leadership, Small Arms, Infiltration. You can
read his list yourself and probably come up with a few additonal skills. To
determine the die thrown to accomplish the event, double the value and add 2
and that is the die. So a Novice skill (2) throws a D4. An Elite (5) throws a
D12.
> Here's a modifier for the Leadership skills that Donald wrote:
Find the Leadership skill of the character and the size of the force he
wishes to lead.  That is the leadership modifier in DS/SG.  A sniper on
his own counts as a squad to lead himself. Leadership Size of Force
Skill           Squad/Fire Team Platoon Company Battalion
0               3                       -               -
-
1               2                       3               -
-
2               1                       2               3
-
3               1                       1               2
-
4               1                       1               1
3
5               1                       1               1
2

In a StarGrunt scenario a character's Confidence die is based on his Willpower
(WIL). In a StarGrunt Scenario, a Character's Movement die is equal to his
MOVE. When a character is trying to accomplish an event, such as shoot
someone, replace the quality die with the appropriate skill. For the Sniper,
when taking a shot, he would throw the size dies approperiate for his small
arms skill for the shot and a die appropriate to his infiltration skill for
the
hit/reveal process.
When a character takes a hit, its really hard to kill him. Roll the impact
value of the weapon versus his armor and health. If the armor rolls greater
that or equal to the armour, no effect. If the weapon beats the armor roll but
is less than Health the character is stunned for the next round. If it is
greater than the characters Health roll, then the character is wounded and has
all stats halved. If the weapon impact is greater that twice the health roll,
the character is incapacitated. You can do the medical rolls after the
secenario to see if the character survives, assuming that the side who finds
him wants to revive him... Okay Time to buy our character. Total up the points
for Primary Stats and Skills. Here is our typical sniper. Stats are all 2 10
        Leadership 1                            +1
        Small Arms D6                           +2
        infiltration D6                 +2
Condfidence D6 Stats Total 15

Sniper Weapons Firepower Impact Base Cost Hunting Rifle D6 D10 1.5
Conventional rifle D10 D10 2 Gauss Rifle D10 D12 5 Laser D12 D8 5 HAMR D8 D12
* 2 6

Any equipment that he buys using my StarGrunt list cost 3 times thier normal
value for a character.

Lets equip our sniper. Armour D6 1 Rifle 2 Enhanced Sensor 3 Total 6

6 * 3 = 18 Character = 15 Equipment = 18 Total = 33.

This low key sniper is pretty expensive, but worth the cost.

Other heroes would be the Platoon leader etc. In fact, I think that you should
be required to have that hero as a Platoon commander or above if you want that
Cascade communication leadship ability. This way, you trade off the cost for
snipers, heroes and specialists. Specialty soldiers like medic squads,
engineers, etc. can be obtained as usual but their Quality die is used for
their primary expertise only and they shift down one die for combat, etc.

I reccomend that both sides be allowed to expend up to 10% of their total
points on characters. This can obviously be shifted around for certain
scenarios or national characteristics. I would apreciate any feedback.

Gort, Klaatu barada nikto!

> At 16:27 23/02/98 -0800, you wrote:
<SNIP>
No disrespect, but isn't this over-complicating things a little (as well
as straying a little too far into Evil Empire territory for my liking)?
Stargrunt II is a *squad* based game - based on groups of troops in
general. Commander figures already have significant abilities compared to
standard grunts; anyone who doesn't appreciate the 'activate another unit'
action isn't reading the book properly. Plus it's completely against tried
military doctrine to have command figures roaming about the battlefield willy
nilly. As to having 'flavour' characters that's all very well, but there's no
reason the should be bulletproof any more than joe grunt. Even *if* you want
to have character figures, there are simpler ways to
implement it than this almost RPG level of characterisation- I mean
*secondary characteristics??*. Warzone (another of my fave games) implements
it by having special abilities that may be purchased for troops, such as being
a crackshot (probably only useful for a sniper unit in SG) or having good
luck. Even *if* you want to have characters, why have a system that needs you
to do any math (even simple math)?

> I reccomend that both sides be allowed to expend up to 10% of
Hmm.. That's the other thing I dislike, spending limits. The games that have
imposed these (WH40K and Warzone) do it BECAUSE characters are fundamentally
unbalancing to the game. I don't think SGII really needs that. In fact, I've
just shown SGII to a friend who used to work for GW and he says it's the best
25mm system he's ever seen, partly because it doesn't have the 'one game for
grunts and one for characters' system.

> I would apreciate any feedback.
Let me say I can find nothing wrong with your system (other than perhaps it's
a little bit number heavy). However in general I question whether adding
extended character rules to SGII benefits the system more than it degrades it.
And it still doesn't bypass the problem all these systems have, in that
characters vunerability always outways their points value. Killing characters
is one of the best tactics in every game that has them for reducing your
opponent forces points value by miminum effort. In that case, Characters
become 'fire magnets' which means you have to make them illogically tough or
they just aren't worth bothering with. Eventually your system consistency goes
to hastings in a handcart. I don't want SGII to follow that path, with
superduper characters wandering the battlefiled attracting all the enemy fire,
while the poor grunt cowers in a foxhole hoping one of the ubermarines doesn't
spot him.

                        TTFN
                                Jon

On Tue, 24 Feb 1998 08:54:28 +0000, Jonathan white <jw4@bolton.ac.uk>
wrote:

> Let me say I can find nothing wrong with your system (other than

I'll second this. While I don't see anything wrong with Phil's rules, they
don't feel like Stargrunt 2 to me. They are pushing more into WH40K and
Warzone territory.

On the flip side, SG2 is a flexible enough game that if these rule additions
are what floats your boat, go for it. I probably won't use them, but there are
plenty of people in Warhammer rehab that might like them.

> Hello,
[snip]
> I reccomend that both sides be allowed to expend up to 10% of

This seems a bit complicated. I don't play SG, but for DSII the following
might be simple, yet flavorful skills for the overall commander (only one
skill per army):

Inspirational Leader: Allows the reroll of one rally test per turn (or game,
depending on personal
        taste/force size).

Seasoned Tactician: Instead of making a combat action, the overall commander
my choose the next unit for activation (including an enemy unit, if desired).

Hard as Nails: Commander draws an extra damage chit during close assaults.

You could probably come up with a few more, but I think that most players
would be willing to try skills like this. They add flavor without really
changing the game all that much. Plus the rules are easily integrated with the
"stock" game.

release the napalm...;-)

> Gort, Klaatu barada nikto!

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