Further Discussion on Stun Grenades

[MrFix]

Originally Posted by EskrimadorNC

I don't recall the specific type of banger we trained with, but it was back in the early to mid 90s if that helps any.

If your experience is more recent, that could explain the difference in potency.

BTW, your blog is high-speed. Keep it up.



I get it. Maybe it's just my disconnect from RL experience. GURPS lets you do a lot in a 1 second turn, and I have always felt that my Players doing room clearing had time to spare when banging a room of badguys, even after pushing in, taking an AIM maneuver, and putting controlled pairs into vitals. IRL that crap takes time (unless you are CAG/ACE), and I never felt like there was enough time to dilly-dally when room clearing.

Also, in the games I've run, my PCs only really deployed bangers when they had time, and never really while under fire or out in the open. Giving the badguys 3 - 4 seconds of dumping fire on you while you prep a banger never seemed to be a smart play, so they didn't do it.

Thank you.

It's a quirk of GURPS, players are able to make decisions outside of time, and when actions do unfold, they really feel more like slow motion. Even with your IRL experience of 6 seconds, they can enter (1), aim (2), controlled vitals pair (3), drop gun on sling (free), Draw cigarette (4), Draw Lighter (5), Flick lighter open as a free action and light the cigarette up (6). Mission accomplished before the baddies were even half-way to sane.

Best way to combat that is to use counter-assault tactics, rather than rely on beefiness of your bad guys. Bottom line, bad guys value their eyes and thus wear ballistic sunglasses (+5 to resist) and value their ears and thus wear Tactical Headsets (+5 to resist). Or they start listening in for the stack approaching and force them to roll stealth if they don't want to be counter-assaulted. Then it stops being a routine of stack, toss, shoot unmoving lads, a quick way for things to go boring.