Pre-Gens for Spec Ops - Opinions?

[mook]

Howdy Folks!

Prepping for a Spec Ops game next week (NOTE: If you are attending Strategicon's OrcCon 2014, reading further may be spoiler-y), just finished the first pass of the pre-gen PCs, thought I'd throw them out there to get some more eyeballs on them and see if I missed anything or made any obvious goofs.

The premise of the game is a six-man CIA SAD/SOG team HAHO 'chuting into Syria to blow up a temporarily lightly-defend chemical weapons storage facility (around 30-40 guards, down from 400). The PCs are:

Lucas Ortiz: Rifleman, Demolitions, originally Force Recon (USMC).

Vinny Williams: Rifleman, Mechanic, originally Green Beret (Army).

Tyler James: Rifleman, Medic, originally DEVGRU (Navy).

Robert Caston: Rifleman, Technician, recruited internally from CIA and sent through military training.

Dylan Mendoza: Heavy weapons (SAW), originally Ranger (Army).

Christopher Murray: Sniper, originally MARSOC (USMC).

GM Sheets

One thing to bear in mind, these guys probably know how to play chess, or can ride a horse, or have a great love of poetry...but none of that is on the sheet, since they're already ridiculously huge and almost certainly won't come into play.

I will be making much simpler sheets to go along with these, but I want to make sure all the stats are good to go before undertaking that.

The loadouts are all pretty similar. SOG teams do not wear uniforms or use American-made weapons and gear when the goal is plausible deniability, reflected in the gear choices. The riflemen have:

Ballistic Helmet w/ Visor
Assault Vest (w/ ablative Trauma Plates)
DAP
Gloves, Leather
Riot Gear Leggings
Boots (steel-toed)

HK416 assault rifle
2x 5.56mm ammo magazine, standard
2x 5.56mm ammo magazine, hollow point
2x 5.56mm ammo magazine, armor piercing
SIG-Sauer P226 pistol
1x 9mm ammo magazine, standard
1x 9mm ammo magazine, hollow point
Sound suppressor
Large Knife
2x HG85 fragmentation grenades
2x stun grenades
Explosive Charge (Semtex; for facility destruction)

Backpack, Frame
Web Gear
Digital Camera
First Aid Kit
Flashlight
GPS Receiver
Lockpicks
Night Vision Goggles
Radio Headset
Useful Gear! (this is kind of a catch-all, like a Bang! skill but for small equipment)

The heavy weapons fellow adds 2x frag grenades, and swaps the HK 416 for a FN Minimi LMG. The sniper swaps the HK 416 for a Izhmash SVD rifle and the pistol for a MP5A3 SMG.

Have I made any glaring mistakes or omissions?

Thanks!

[Christopher R. Rice]

Dude, this is kind of awesome. One a quick glance everything looks as it should. I really like the idea of "Useful Equipment!" - basically, figure out a point cost, multiply by 3, then you can pull out a piece of gear you didn't state that you had equaling the cost? Am I getting that right? Man, this gives me a idea for a new modifier for Consumable Signature Gear.... Very nice Mook. Very nice.


As a aside - I recently sent you a PM, did you get it?

[Christopher R. Rice]

It also occurs to me that you may wish to consider using the Job Training advantage from GURPS Power-Ups 3: Talents for operaters to save some on points.

[Grouchy Chris]

This is great stuff. Permission to steal?

I notice that everyone's got cameras, and no one's got Photography. It might be useful to at least note the default.

No one's got Filch, Pickpocket, Smuggling, or Traps.

On the other hand, everyone's got Acting, Diplomacy, and Fast-Talk. It seems like being the Face could be one character's specialty, and everyone else could drop it.

No perks? Kromm made up some cool perks and wrote them up as parts of special ops training packages here.

Are you planning on point-optimizing?

[safisher]

Magazines for the rifles would be more like 12-24, total. Load bearing gear, and most other stuff, is going to be fine/expensive quality, and/or rugged, and/or combo gear. Long arms will have optics and lasers.

For further consideration, you should check out Pyramid 57 Gunplay, specifically Kenneth Peter's Warfighter Gear article. It has lots of very useful stuff for contemporary warriors. Pyramid 53 Action has some excellent templates and an article useful for planning operations, dealing with your Useful Gear issues to some degree. Pyramid 55 Military Sci-Fi has another of Ken's articles, Future Soldier, which has a lot of worked up loadouts for TL9, but it shows how the gear loadouts can be constructed -- just dump the TL9 gear and exchange for TL8. Your SAD guys very well might have unlimited budgets, so there is no limit to the customization the boys might have. I know troops deploying in recent years have made very heavy personal investments in clothing, webgear, packs, optics, and knives. Some ideas of the lengths of custom "extreme sport" takes on this gear, that is it's probably fine quality/expensive can be found here:
http://tripleaughtdesign.com/
http://downrangegear.net/DownRangeGear.html
http://highthreatconcealment.com/products.html
http://www.hrdpnt.com/Detail.aspx?ID=54
https://www.aresgear.com/

[acrosome]

You've stuck with non-US yet western gear (thought the HK416 is arguable) with the sole exception of the SVD. Is there a reason you want the SVD? That kind of jumps out at me.

I mean, if you'll tolerate the HK416 as "non-US" then why not a PSG1 or any of several bolt-action options like the AI AW? Or a Barrett M82? If you're doing tacticool high-tech stuff with lasers and thermal weapon sights and all then why not go whole-hawg? HAHO in, OV-22 Osprey exfil. If they're doing HAHO they need to be jumping to within 20km or so of the border- you can only drift so far with HAHO. Self-exfil back across the border might be fun, and be a good reason to make the mission sterile or false-flag rather than merely deniable.

Because if you're going high-tech then, frankly, in comparison the SVD kinda sucks. It's a rather poor sniper rifle. (In reality, anyway.)

Personally I would think that a totally sterile mission (which is different than a deniable mission, and probably more appropriate since the US would be breaking an agreement that they made in a very public fashion) using only ex-ComBlock weapons and older western weapons that are widely distributed would be more interesting. So it would be stuff like AKs, SVDs, PKs or RPDs, FALs, G3s, etc. Maybe Galil/R4s or Finnish Valmets, but the idea is to stick to stuff that locals in Syria would have. Lots of old Russian stuff- there's even decent Russuan surplus night-vision stuff easily available on the open market, nowadays. And the Syrian army actually has some pretty nice stuff: speaking as a member of a heavily-mechanized force I find the RPG-29 to be particularly concerning.

A sterile mission would be sort of like in Navy SEALs (movie) when they were going into Beirut for the Stingers. As a nice touch you could have their handlers stuffing the PCs' pockets with Syrian cigarettes, faked family photos of them with their Arab-appearing wives and children, etc. Or better yet, make it totally false-flag with them impersonating Iranian Quds Force or Jaysh al-Shabi (since everyone knows Quds are operating in Syria, anyway). You'd need Persian speaker or Arabic speaker respectively for such a mission, though, and the fake-Quds should probably be bilingual with Arabic as well. But again, that'd be much more interesting- they could have to bluff their way past militia roadblocks, etc., in the chaotic Syrian environment.

An HK416 is too new and shiny. At least consider changing that to some other older M16 variant like M16A1 or CAR15A, since they are much more deniable. OTOH for most of the world HK416 = USSOCOM. While not totally accurate this is certainly the impression, so even if it's "deniable" having an HK416 turn up on Al Jazeera would still be pretty damning.

EDIT-- And Glocks might be better than SIGs. Glocks are fecking EVERYWHERE and though I've seen a few SIGs (and even 1911s) all of the Special Forces guys I've ever dealt with favored Glocks heavily. (Though personally I like and own SIGs. I'm just not a striker-fired kind of guy...)