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Old 02-12-2017, 01:39 PM   #34
Icelander
 
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
Default Re: Firearms training and familiarity for US Army mental health specialist

Quote:
Originally Posted by Warlockco View Post
From what a friend of mine had said back in the early 90s about his basic, his training group did get to use a M-60, everyone got to shoot off half a belt, except for him, he was the odd man, so he got a full belt to himself.
As to the truth of this or not, I cannot verify, since years later I found out this guy was full of crap, and the military was right to not allow him to re-enlist.
As to his MOS, it was probably infantry/admin, he was an admin weenie at a hospital duty station before they shut it down.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Polydamas View Post
I have heard someone's USAF basic training story which involved a short session with a .50 BMG and some kind of grenade or rocket launcher. In GURPS terms, I would be even less likely to apply a Familiarity penalty to their default Gunner skill for those weapons than I would for a character without a military background. But some people will forget what they learned as soon as they pass the test, and some will have served in units which had a lot of ordnance to play with and gave everyone a turn to meet some bureaucratic rule.

Basic training is an excellent excuse for a character's default skill in a variety of interesting things, just like "took a few courses in college" or "used to bond with my sister over it" or "worked as an X for a couple of years." But from what I have heard, however much military bureaucracies try to standardize things, the reality tends to be complicated (and how much people get out of training varies!)
We're guessing that the armoury at Manhanock Asylum for the Criminally Insane contains military ordnance from the time the island housed a secret DoD research facility and the guard force was a mixed Coast Guard and Army post. As they still have the M2 .50 BMG and the Mk. 19 grenade launcher in the towers, we're betting they still have the military longarms in there.

And we were kind of wondering if the profoundly disturbed mental patient with us, the very scary little Sherilyn Bell, will have familiarity or even an improved default from Dabbler with any of the heavy weapons. She still has one Dabbler Perk to spend on what remains of her early basic training. With DX 18, just a slightly improved default makes her pretty deadly.

It's been established that she knows how to use an M9, as she went shooting with Taylor (my PC) back when he was a young Ranger in the language training phase of SFQC and she was a mental health specialist on the base, but I didn't know if she had ever been issued a pistol of her own or if they had borrowed one from the Project Jade Serenity stores.
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