What use is Suppression Fire?

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I understand intellectually, because it has been explained to me many times, that some roleplayers apparently rebel against the idea that mental obstacles should require a roll to overcome in the same way as physical obstacles.

The "player agency" problem is handled in GURPS by the same rule that applies to Influence rolls against PCs (and is the approach that Tactical Shooting page 21 uses); penalize the PCs' rolls by the margin of failure if they choose to do it anyway.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

He wasn't talking about Tactical Shooting.

He was talking about the psychological effect of suppression. Wasn't he?

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

The "player agency" problem is handled in GURPS by the same rule that applies to Influence rolls against PCs (and is the approach that Tactical Shooting page 21 uses); penalize the PCs' rolls by the margin of failure if they choose to do it anyway.

Yeah, but I don't understand how these people supposedly think. If they are not simply declaring ad hoc whether their character succeeds at everything he tries, depending on what they want at the moment, they must be okay with rolling for success and abiding with the result.

How can 'You failed your roll, so your character cannot perform this extremely challenging physical or intellectual task' be perfectly fine, but 'You fail your roll so your character cannot perform this extremely challenging psychological task' be a HurtingBadWrongFun violation of player agency?

I get it that some people want to roleplay characters who never rattle and never fail to step up to the challenge. I don't understand why it's not okay to require them to purchase the appropriate traits for that purpose and then revel in how they stand out from their peers.

Full Disclosure: I use the Tactical Shooting rule for Suppressive Fire as written, with the exception that the maximum penalty for failure on the Will check is -4. Failure by 5 or more means that PCs must Do Nothing until they recover, which is exactly like recovering from Mental Stun.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Yeah, but I don't understand how these people supposedly think. If they are not simply declaring ad hoc whether their character succeeds at everything he tries, depending on what they want at the moment, they must be okay with rolling for success and abiding with the result.

Yeah, I agree with you there but I'm the guy who thinks it's bad roleplaying to act on disadvantages that you don't actually have. This whole "player agency" thing boggles me too, for the most part.

How can 'You failed your roll, so your character cannot perform this extremely challenging physical or intellectual task' be perfectly fine, but 'You fail your roll so your character cannot perform this extremely challenging psychological task' be a HurtingBadWrongFun violation of player agency?

Something to do with not telling them what their characters "choose" to do, and they believe that behavior is always choice for some reason.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

The "player agency" problem is handled in GURPS by the same rule that applies to Influence rolls against PCs (and is the approach that Tactical Shooting page 21 uses); penalize the PCs' rolls by the margin of failure if they choose to do it anyway.
He was talking about the psychological effect of suppression. Wasn't he?

He was but that doesn't mean he's familiar with the rules in Tactical Shooting.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

He was but that doesn't mean he's familiar with the rules in Tactical Shooting.

I'd strongly recommend you try those rules before you start handing out Fearfulness and Cowardice as universal traits.

[oma]

lolol, I shoot guns from time to time and carry a sidearm at work and feel very comfortable around guns. I can guarantee you, almost any amount of bullets coming at me causes me to be "supressed". I am super careful when I hear guns going off. ESPECIALLY if they're in my general direction.

Now, if I'm a war trained special ops kind of guy, who lives jumping out of planes and killing other humans, maybe I'm not so worried about a few bullets coming downrange. As a normal human being, I am TOTALLY concerned about it and ALWAYS find cover first and wait for a break in the firing before I even THINK about shooting back.

But that's just us mortals....

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Say we have an assault on a static defense of the normal sort of light entrenchments. A heavy MG is providing support from an overlooking support by fire position. The defenders are "professional" infantry with an average Will-based Soldier skill of 12. So they are coming under a rate of fire of 8. They have to make Will-2 rolls to expose themselves to fire at all which they only have a 50% chance of making. If they make the roll, they need to roll a fright check at 12 (+5-1)=16, but the Rule of 14 applies so they actually have 9.3% chance of failure. If any of them do fail, and are stunned the MG team can easily direct fire at them while they are exposed, which will almost certainly messily kill them, triggering a fright check at -5 or more from their comrades.

With apologies, I HAVE Tactical Shooting, but I have not yet played using those rules and your interpretation is not obvious to me from a casual reading. I am going to offer a counter-example, which will be at least as wordy as its predecessor. If I make any mistakes here, please tell me where I should reread.

Let's replace these "professional" infantry with ordinary people (i.e. All stats 10, no Adv/Disadv, no combat skills) and see what we get.

With no Soldier skill, their Will-2 has to beat only a 8, which means 1 out of 4 ordinary people will expose themselves to suppressive fire in any given round, so the average, ordinary person will do so after only 2 or 3 seconds of fire. Assuming +5 for heat of battle (which to the best of my knowledge applies to everyone in GURPS) their 10+5-1 (assuming it applies, not sure where this is from) still hits the same rule of 14 as the soldiers so they still have the same 9.3% chance of failure.

So at this point, we have 25% of the civilians popping up every round, and 9% of those who do freezing up with the rest capable of coherent action. For a 12-person "unit", this means that ~3 will pop-up per round, and about every 4 rounds one will freeze. These numbers alone seem extremely high, and that is why I suggested that "ordinary" people should probably have some disadvantages to bring these numbers down.

Now, failed fright checks ARE an issue here - once someone fails a Fright Check while exposed they are subject to an automatic attack and assuming no one pulls them back will likely dies within a few seconds. And once that happens, taking your -5 to fright checks as gospel for seeing someone gunned down, about half will fail a Fright Check and freeze up, three quarters if it is Contagious. But the other half/quarter or so will soldier on and keep popping up every 4 seconds or so and freezing up exposed about every 48 seconds or so.

I am going to ignore the rest of the tactical scenario you posted, first because it lacks numbers, second because it is uncharacteristic of the vast majority of gunfights in GURPS or reality, and third because I have medical restrictions on my computer time that I have already exceeded and am paying the price for. I do not dispute that you can beat up on people long enough that eventually they will all be too shocked to go on, I just dispute the ability of ordinary people to withstand the early stages as well as they can.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Let's replace these "professional" infantry with ordinary people (i.e. All stats 10, no Adv/Disadv, no combat skills) and see what we get.

With no Soldier skill, their Will-2 has to beat only a 8, which means 1 out of 4 ordinary people will expose themselves to suppressive fire in any given round, so the average, ordinary person will do so after only 2 or 3 seconds of fire.

Ah, well, no. Not someone with no combat skills. No, he'll be lucky if he's able to act at all, let alone intelligently. See MA p. 113.

Start by rolling a Fright Check as soon as combat starts and if he's not prepared for someone to start shooting at him, there will be no +5 heat of battle bonus to that check. Not to mention that Fright Checks can use the Familiarity rules as well as anything else, which means that when confronted by an unfamiliar source of fear, outside all prior experience, a penalty of -2 or more can be assessed. This doesn't mean that all untrained fighters will be unfamiliar with firefights*, but if you're postulating someone who has literally never heard a gun fired in anger before, he's likely to be.

If he manages to pass that Fright Check, he can try do something sensible, like take cover. If, however, he tries to leave that cover or just expose himself partially, whether that's to attack or flee, he can move on to the Will-2 check. Again, I'd apply a Familiarity penalty here for someone who had no experience or training. I wouldn't demand much more than a few hours of firm instruction to justify getting rid of the penalty in a narrowly defined situation** and probably not very long before it was entirely gone***. But a civilian with no training or experience? Yep, a -2 unfamiliarity penalty for a firefight, as a confusing situation outside his experience.

And even if he manages to do that, he still can't act in any way he pleases. He'll randomly shift between attacking, without a thought for defence or cover, the nearest foe, and going back to total self-preservation mode. Which means that even if he manages to get up from cover, he'll stay up for an average of 1-3 seconds before he Dodges and Drops again. If he's smart, behind total cover.

Basically, untrained people, with no combat skills at all, are really in big trouble if they are caught in a combat situation. Even if you don't bother to apply familiarity penalties, they'll still run around like headless chickens until they get killed or have the sense to stay behind cover so they can stop rolling randomly for what they do.

*Sadly, plenty of civilians in wartorn areas are all too familiar with them and have learnt to keep their heads and stay low, even if they have no combat skills.
**Such as for someone who had been carefully drilled in an emergency response plan for his home village and could thus run to his assigned shelter without an unfamiliarity penalty. But I would apply it again if he tried to deviate from what he'd gone through in dry runs.
***A short and intensely unpleasant week of military instruction ending in a life-fire exercise might justify getting rid of the unfamiliarity penalty in most basic situations.

[Anthony]

To be honest, of that portion of untrained people who manage to do anything at all (i.e. they don't just fail a fright check and gibber in the corner), having 25% be randomly recklessly brave is probably not out of line.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Ah, well, no. Not someone with no combat skills. No, he'll be lucky if he's able to act at all, let alone intelligently. See MA p. 113.

Start by rolling a Fright Check as soon as combat starts and if he's not prepared for someone to start shooting at him, there will be no +5 heat of battle bonus to that check. Not to mention that Fright Checks can use the Familiarity rules as well as anything else, which means that when confronted by an unfamiliar source of fear, outside all prior experience, a penalty of -2 or more can be assessed. This doesn't mean that all untrained fighters will be unfamiliar with firefights*, but if you're postulating someone who has literally never heard a gun fired in anger before, he's likely to be.

MA p. 113 explicitly allows the heat of battle bonus for untrained fighters going into a battle, and for the sake of argument, lets assume that these ordinary civilians are from the present and neither have personal experience (which would merit a +1) nor complete ignorance (which would merit a penalty, but would suggest someone capable of being scared by a gunshot but being unable to quickly know what it was). By earlier calculations, this freezes up less than 10% of the individuals.

Originally Posted by Icelander

If he manages to pass that Fright Check, he can try do something sensible, like take cover. If, however, he tries to leave that cover or just expose himself partially, whether that's to attack or flee, he can move on to the Will-2 check. Again, I'd apply a Familiarity penalty here for someone who had no experience or training. I wouldn't demand much more than a few hours of firm instruction to justify getting rid of the penalty in a narrowly defined situation** and probably not very long before it was entirely gone***. But a civilian with no training or experience? Yep, a -2 unfamiliarity penalty for a firefight, as a confusing situation outside his experience.

I would not impose any additional penalties to either shoot or retreat simply because I do not think that there are many people in this would to whom either idea would be foreign. I think I might ask for a Soldier or Tactics role in this case if they wanted to do anything fancy to see if they did the right thing, but I see no justification for adding additional penalties to the Will roll. Is this in the rules somewhere, or just part of how you personally would GM it?

Originally Posted by Icelander

And even if he manages to do that, he still can't act in any way he pleases. He'll randomly shift between attacking, without a thought for defence or cover, the nearest foe, and going back to total self-preservation mode. Which means that even if he manages to get up from cover, he'll stay up for an average of 1-3 seconds before he Dodges and Drops again. If he's smart, behind total cover.

Again, where is the justification for requiring that they act in a random manner? Again, I can see requiring some type of skill roll (at default, in this case) to see if they did something effectively or appropriately, but I see no reason to automatically assume that the only extremes possible are cower in fear due to failed Fright/Will roll or suicidal random-action.