Further Discussion on Stun Grenades

[Icelander]

Below HT 10, someone can't finish military training or is medically disqualified before it starts. That means every soldier has HT 10 at minimum, and a significant portion of them will have higher HT, especially those who work out a lot (required for many MOSes) and/or have active hobbies. Finally, anyone who finished military training and continues to qualify for any kind of combat MOS will have at least Fit.

This means that all soldiers have effective HT 11+ and probably a majority of those who train room clearing have 12+.

[Willy]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Below HT 10, someone can't finish military training or is medically disqualified before it starts. That means every soldier has HT 10 at minimum, and a significant portion of them will have higher HT, especially those who work out a lot (required for many MOSes) and/or have active hobbies. Finally, anyone who finished military training and continues to qualify for any kind of combat MOS will have at least Fit.

This means that all soldiers have effective HT 11+ and probably a majority of those who train room clearing have 12+.

That may be true for every peacetime army or a army which can afford to be choosy, like the US for example today.
Most armys who have conscription, may have a lot of people spending time in the army who have to be considered unfit for frontline duty due to bad sight, and a bunch of other lesser medical problems. You can also add low morale since they are forced to serve, and they are often in the rear area or non combat dutys in this armys. Just look at russia here.
It gets even worse if landlocked countrys fight a actual war, than they take everybody who can hold a gun and doesn´t endangers the own side more than the enemy.
But this isn´t the end, if the war takes longer and gets all out, they take everyone who can walk maybe not even that. Here a look at the german Volksturm helps, in the last year of WWII the wehrmacht had a whole division composed of soldiers with severe gastrointestinal problems!

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by EskrimadorNC

FWIW, I wasn't complaining about the mechanical potency, just that it normally will take a $hit-ton of rolls for a HT 10 person to succeed on a HT-5 roll.

For $hits and giggles, I just did some test rolls for 4 HT 10 NPCs.

Here's how many rolls/seconds it took for them to recover from the standard Stun Grenade in High Tech:

1st NPC: 15 rolls/seconds
2nd NPC: 21 rolls/seconds
3rd NPC: 48 rolls/seconds
4th NPC: 07 rolls/seconds

For what it's worth, things like this that have a 'roll every turn' (or minute, or whatever) save effectively have a half-life. For a roll of 5- such as this grenade gives a HT10 character the half-life it's about 14s.

Against HT11 (or HT10+Fit) it's about 7 seconds/turns. So if you assume HT11/HT10+Fit for a trained and active frontline combatant, you get your 'about six seconds'.

Against HT12, the half-life of the stun is about 4s.

Of course, because it's a half-life effect, there's a long tail (and of course a lucky character can snap out of it immediately, or just not be affected in the first place).

Also, bear in mind that this is against enemies that are not prepared for an attack - if they were they'd have one of both of hearing protection and flash protection, and would thus be far less likely to be affected.

[weby]

Originally Posted by EskrimadorNC

HT -5 is pretty steep, especially since it's a static roll you have to make every turn (until you succeed).

For a HT10 NPC, that's what...a 5% chance to succeed? In my personal RL experience, normal folks usually recover from the effects of Flashbangs sometime around the 6 second mark, give or take.

When PCs have used them in action games, rarely do the NPCs ever pass the HT -5 roll, and the PCs end up being able to act with impunity for way longer than they should.

Has anyone out there had the same experience? Do any of you GMs have special house rules for stun grenades? Do your players ever even employ them?

Well, it depends on the "enemy".

In action if you want combat challenge to PCs you should likely use enemies with most of the combat abilities of the combat templates, but not the "special things" like luck. The templates have minimum HT of 11 and option to buy more HT and fit, so quite many of them have effective HT 12+

Also a basic soldier by Gurps Rules(soldier template in template toolkit 1) has a base HT 11 and 20 points to use on a list that includes both fit ant +1 or 2 HT, so quite many of them will have effective HT of 12 or higher.

If effective HT is 12, you have a 16% chance/round to recover. That gives a 65% probability to have recovered by 6th roll and those who have 11 will have more than half..

Also it should be noted that in training we at least always used hearing protection. The hearing protection gives +5 according to HT, so at that point you are rolling against your HT...

Any realistic modern enemies who are prepared for possible gunfire will have hearing protection and a considerable number of the non-realistic ones wear sunglasses even in dark.. :)