Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Prev Previous Post   Next Post Next
Old 11-04-2016, 04:00 PM   #1
johndallman
Night Watchman
 
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
Default [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier

Soldier is the IQ/A TL skill for basic military activities that aren't weapons skills or Savoir-Faire (Military). It's learned in military basic training, and from actual combat experience in an organised force, so it's quite unusual to have it without having served, at least in a militia or reserve force. The only default is IQ-5, and no skills default to it. The skill first appeared in GURPS Special Operations for 3e, to the best of my knowledge.

There are several ways to use the skill: to follow correct battlefield discipline, for practical survival, as a daily roll in active service to avoid problems (on a failure) or disasters (critical failure), and for basic tasks that would be covered by other skills. Tasks which would be routine (and thus +4 to skill) for skills like Armoury, Electronics Operation (Communications), Housekeeping, or NBC Suit, at appropriate TLs, would be rolled against Soldier, without any bonus for routine, but with any situational penalties. This doesn't cover significant repairs, research, or new or secret technologies. It's the assorted things, using standard equipment and methods, that any trained soldier should be able to try. Recognising vehicles and aircraft seems to come under Soldier, unless you have a more applicable skill.

Soldiers who specialise in something will learn the proper skill in addition to Soldier: Signallers will have Electronics Operation (Communications) and usually the Electronics Repair, too. Mountain troops will have Survival (Mountains) and Climbing, and so on. Military personnel who aren't in an army make this more interesting: deckhands in a navy certainly learn a lot of things in addition to Seamanship, and Air Force enlisted ranks learn some basic ground soldiering. If the GM wanted to go into details, you could have Soldier specialisations by type of service, so (Land), (Sea) and (Air), and probably familiarity by nation: there are always differences in equipment and procedures. Marines might learn both (Land) and (Sea), or a combined version; paratroopers probably just (Land).

Soldier, naturally, is universal on templates for trained soldiers, although aristocratic officers often lacked it until their training was professionalised in the modern era. Action makes Soldier an example for the "group roll" rule, a possible retroactive planning skill, a skill for carrying out a patrol successfully, a substitute for Traps or EOD (at -5), and a valid skill for dealing with very simple traps, where a proper skill would be at +4, and for keeping watch. AtE allows it for gathering fired cartridge cases, handling chemical weapons (at -4), diagnosing chemical weapon effects, knowing about explosives, spotting minefields, and managing your backpack. High-Tech allows troops trained with rescue equipment to include it in Soldier, rather than needing another professional skill. It can also be used to set up and maintain packs, load-bearing equipment, and footwear as well as weapons, to find well-made magazines for dubiously reliable guns, to place land mines and simple traps, and to find land mines on a Soldier-5 roll.

Infinite Worlds makes the skill subject to cross-world familiarity penalties, since there is an element of knowing how things are usually done. Low-Tech suggests it for siege-engine crews, if a roll is required at all, and LTC2 makes it an option for maintaining armour. Martial Arts points out that Soldier includes the manual labour for building fortifications quickly, and Monster Hunters that you can use it to communicate with gestures -- but only for combat signals. The Power-Ups series has a Talent that include Soldier, but no Wildcard skills, because the Ten-Hut! wildcard covers just about every skill that Soldier stands in for. Social Engineering lets an organised force resist mob feelings with Will-based Soldier, and Back to School touches on basic training. Tactical Shooting has too many applications for this skill to list, while Thaumatology has items that will provide it for you. GURPS: WWII uses it as the primary measure of troop quality, and Zombies has the Soldier X treatment, which has a quality all of its own.

The most important Soldier roll of my GURPS career was in a Madness Dossier playtest game. There was nerve gas around, and nasty stuff at that (Novichok-7). We'd found the enemy's stash of NBC suits, but nobody had the specific skill, and only one PC had Soldier. That roll, to figure out those suits, really mattered.

What have you accomplished with this skill?
johndallman is offline   Reply With Quote
 

Tags
basic, skill of the week, soldier

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 06:39 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.