Have you ever played a sniper? How do you like your snipers?

Ironically the spotter is usually the most skilled of the two, if I'm not mistaken. It could make for an interesting dynamic too, some "army of two" buddy cop-type story, except with soldiers instead of cops. You could even use the buddy cop stereotypes: the spotter is the old and grizzled veteran who does things by the book, while the sniper is the loose canon rookie who doesn't play by the rules.

That American Sniper movie played with it a little in the first act. Kyle has to shoot a mother and child who were about to grenade a Marine patrol. His spotter gets all excited and pats him on the back for it. Kyle gets really irritated with that. I can understand why people might not appreciate that dynamic but I found it interesting. The spotter acting all gung ho about a shot he didn't have to take and the sniper who actually had to just kill a kid.

My experience with players who play snipers is that they get pissy as soon as something -- anything -- happens that makes their chosen shtick not quite work as the want it to work.

A patrol gets close to them? They're mad. A counter-sniper spots them and shoots back? They're mad. It starts to rain and they can't get a good shot? They're mad. His scope out of collimation because the weapon was dropped or knocked around? They're mad. They just picked up a weapon that he's never used before and they're having problems with long shots? They're mad. You inform them that wind is actually a factor at long ranges? They're mad.

Honestly, I've come to consider it a warning sign when someone tells me they want to play a full-time sniper.

I've always hated sniping in modern games because the game rules usually make it as easy to take a shot from a half mile away as it is from 30 yards.

4e style skill challenges to range find, locate target in scope, get info on failed shots, etc would be excellent.

Not a lot of writers know about them or what they do.

Yup. In Shadowrun I made a gun guy who had a pimp sniper rifle.

He also doubled as the get away driver.

It attracts the worst kind of glory-hound players. They like the idea of being some lone wolf badass who just does his own thing and racks up the kill count. It's a power fantasy and they of course object to things which shatter it.

I gotcha covered, in an MMX-flavored game I am playing a cat-based reploid named Spotter Ocelot. Though his work tends to overlap with artillery more than sniping.

Played a cyberpunk robot police sharpshooter once.

That was a fun game.

Actually, yes - after a fashion. In Shadowrun, I once played a mix between a spec ops and a shaman. The intent was to have him as an out-of-work magical special forces man, and he'd use water elementals as spotters and for utility, while he sniped and otherwise supported the team.

In practice we were rarely ever in situations that called for precise long-range shooting. Some did come up, and he was a crack shot each time, but generally it was magic-on-magic battles because of how magic-focused our party ended up being. Still very fun to play around with though, especially since I'd never tried playing anything other than a vague support or a front-line fighter before.

Honestly, in most military games, a sniper team ought to be NPCs. They're job is to find a position, stay until they're needed, relocate, repeat.

Player sharpshooters are different, they stick with the squad.

This applies to most one-trick-pony characters though. Same thing happens when someone makes an ubercharger barbarian who can deal 3m1d12+36+3d6 damage is confronted with flying enemies, or enemies with massive damage reduction to physical damage. It's not about being whiny, it's that the one thing their character was built/trained to do is now an invalid option. They get to sit back and pout as everyone else has fun.

That ubercharger barbarian's playstyle doesn't require him fucking off from the rest of the party at every opportunity though. Having your one shtick invalidated sucks but in my experience "I'm a sniper!" players have an allergy to teamwork.

Shadowrun is perfect for mage snipers. A bunch of spells have LoS as their range.

There's a fine line between giving a character realistic weakneses and crippling him into impotence. I have not played with you, so I might be a poor judge, but taking into account the number of disadvantages you have listed, I rather think they're displeased with the idea of having their character's specialty consistently rendered useless.
I was playing a sharpshooter until recently. It was all about preplanning with the group and filling a scout/long range support niche. Pinning and disorienting the enemy, and the like. The backstory was a hunter from some wild backwater (rest of the world's cyberpunk) trying to get money for his wife's operation. It was good fun.

On one hand, I sympathize with those people who feel that they are no longer useful because their specific skill is now null and void against a certain enemy type or whatever.

On the other hand, I have hated in the past players that have made their characters rather broken by specializing in something that can be used against most every enemy or suchlike, and have felt a sort of satisfaction when they were invalidated and had to learn to prepare for things that they hadn't specialized in. Personally I would hate to be narrowly focused, and would rather have some level of utility even outside of my general specialization, so the mindset is just alien to me.

It's a special subset of 'that guy'. It's typically someone who forgoes all aspects of teamwork because they want to fulfill some edgy dream about being a cold-blooded lone wolf sniper who can kill enemies from 2 km away. Play any Battlefield game and you'll often see literally half the team playing these useless shitters who don't cap, and cannot heal, revive, suppress, resupply, repair, or deal with enemy vehicles.

You're right, the spotter is the senior of the pair.

Yeah I played GURPS with some faggot who was running a game, it was like modern fantasy with werewolves and shit. It was really gay, stupidest campaign setting I've ever played in. I don't know why Veeky Forums thinks that modern fantasy is a good setting idea, it is literally as bad as steampunk. Anyway he had us play 100 point characters, he had been playing at the flgs so I emailed him and found out when (Saturday nights) and since I don't have a shitty family to keep me home I can do whatever I want on Saturday nights so I go there and bring my character. 25 point disadvantage limit so I picked some obscure shut and purchased Rifles skill of 30, which is 3d6 rollunder so basically even with range penalties I could go up to - 12 and pretty much autohit. Or more. So I had a 95% chance of headshotting a guy at 300 meters. So I was less a sniper, than an aimbot. I picked an SR25 for my weapon and so i could fuck shit up. First session, i killed 9 guys from long range in the open and they could barely shoot back. Oh and I had like 20 perception too. It was a fun campaign. The DM had had enough after a few sessions cause he thought my character was broken, he decided he wanted to play FATE instead, so I quit the group cause I don't want anything to do with that shit.

>4e
>skill challenges
>excellent
Stopped reading there.

Of course you did, the post was done by that point

I played a Sniper in Shadowrun, it was pretty fun. I used a bunch of tiny drones image linked with me as my spotters, and had a high powered armor-piercing gun so I could even shoot through walls.

Only once, in an Exalted game of all things (about 3 months after it was released). I made a Solar bow specialist with cherry picked maximum damage choices and cooperated with two other players within the group for min maxing and the strategy.
My character was an outdoors survival monkey with a lot of tracking, had fun personality and background writing, but his thing was expending energy to put someone down in a hurry. The shortcoming was that archery in Exalted as a Solar didn't have nearly the same staying power as melee for that system.

The kicker was that I acted as a sneak sniper but our group would always craft our plans out of earshot of the Storyteller. If it was possible for our characters to speak quietly before an attack, we did so in a different room.
A sniper takes on a very different dynamic when the game GM relies on what they see and what they had planned without the knowledge of what the PC group is up to. Those encounters where we could do this played in heavily of my character being incredibly strong.

Best sniper is drone sniper. Rigging improves limit, adds dice, and hits.

Yeah, I had another character once that was a full on rigger, and gathered how good this was after a while. However I was mainly just sticking with a character concept of 'A guy who wants to engage from a long distance, who is also a Troll.'.

I mean, my eyes are quickly drawn to numbers, so I looked at 4e first. I also can "scan" a post pretty quickly. It's a symptom of my higher intelligence. Honestly, I haven't been formally tested, but I always got As in school and I'm pretty sure I'm in the top 0.1% of human intelligence. There are very few posts on this site that I have had to read in their entirety to understand. Honestly, I think I'm past "reading" at this point. I would consider it more "instantaneous comprehension." The crux of most posts can be summed up in a single sentence, and I like to do this in response to long posts that get a lot of (you)s as my way of showing my superiority. So, no, the post was not done by that point, it was really in a state of flux, kinda like Schrodinger's Cat. You probably don't understand that analogy, though, because you're not in the top 0.1 percentile of intellect like I am.

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One of the best scenes in The Hurt Locker, and probably my favorite sniper duel in a movie.

Player snipers suck, but snipers are amazing for GMs to pin down player locations and force some creativity and sudden danger into a story. The last time was a mando team of a sniper and a demolitions expert that they barely escaped and had to drag into closed-quarters to finally fight since they were always a distance away and trying to stay hidden.

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Played South African version of him in a shadowrun game. Lotta fun, but a bit more of a silly game than a serious one.

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wasn't too great of a movie but Jarhead had this.

The best kind of sniper is the one who can actually fight straight up with the sniper rifle and not force the party to play his game of hiding in the bushes from 400m. I had a character who could "see" enemies through walls and sense what they were going to do, so she had incredible prescience, and thus could do into close combat with a sniper rifle. She could shoot enemies through walls without actually having line of sight to them, fire blind through smoke, line up a couple while jumping and shoot a bullet through both. It was kinda ridiculous and Mary Sue ish but whatever. It just felt like a nice twist on a sniper that they use the rifle in almost every situation.

is the character in the picture Egyptian or was she just drawn by one?

But that was fucking retarded.

why are they so goddamned mad

>patrol gets close to them
why is he mad, he hasn't been spotted yet?
>counter-sniper spots them and shoots back
againt why are they mad, re-position conceal yourself, keep an eye out for the other sniper
>starts to rain can't get a good shot
wait until conditions are favorable
>scope out of wack
take the time and requisition a new scope and bring an extra next mission
>no long shots with new weapon
Again understandable, take the time to practice during the down time but keep using the rifle your used to
>mad about having to factor the wind when firing at long ranges
well if his character can spec into making his mod not suck as much due to the long range shots then why the hell is he mad. If not I'd be miffed then try to find a way to still be a sniper.

well she was drawn by me and I am fucking retarded at drawing so there's that. I am not egyptian though....
please don't look at the scope please don't look at the scope please don't look at the scope

ah I see you have angled the scope to make account for long distance shooting

my (wo)mans is sniping up to shoot pilots out of their aircraft

That's a ridiculous statement. A sniper can take out a force user in one shot, giving him no chance to defend himself, and no chance to ever spot the sniper if he keeps hiding. Condition track killer snipers are one of the most powerful builds in the game, and force users can't do shit to you if you're farther than 12m.

There was the literal one scene in Generation Kill, where the spotter was shown to be more important in some aspects, but only if you were REALLY looking for it, like real life.

youtube.com/watch?v=as_gpcmyg4w

I'm mostly just looking for an excuse to talk about generation kill though.

>His scope out of collimation because the weapon was dropped or knocked around? They're mad. They just picked up a weapon that he's never used before and they're having problems with long shots? They're mad. You inform them that wind is actually a factor at long ranges? They're mad.
If you start pulling new penalties out of your ass, yeah, he's got a good reason to be pissed.

>The fucking wind
See, if someone is presumably skilled enough in something to make it their entire shtick, they presumably are competent enough to compensate. Supra-human competence is kinda expected

Never have played as a sniper. Always prefered either being middle-ranged rifleman or an assault trooper getting stuck in.

I'm just using this thread as an excuse to post the pic. I actually do appreciate the team sniper giving in to his cowardly inhibitions and providing me with long range support and countersniping.

I don't have a reaction image old enough for this. Good show.

>mfw I have that in webm form for /wsg/
feels good

I've used a lot of sniper rifles in the Warhammer 40KRPGs. Then again, past Only War, sniping isn't really a role as much as it is what you do all the time unless you have a different specialty. Massive bonuses to hit, and a potential extra two die of damage? I'll take it until I get strong enough to lug around an autocannon.

>A counter-sniper spots them and shoots back?
> getting mad at the peak of sniper fiction
why, this is what I fucking live for in video games

As for the rest of these issues: user said it above, fucking designated marksman is a thing. Lots of times a DM's weapon is the same as the riflemen in his squad but with better optics and he can serve just as well as a rifleman when they get close up into shit.

Yes I've played a sniper. I spent most of the game acting as recon and occasional artillery spotter. There were two bits of a year long game where I spent most of a day in game sneaking foreward, set up a hide, make a long distance shot and then slip away in the midst of a manhunt. Fun times.

Best choice.

In theory, I love the *idea* of the sniper, the guy who sits in position for hours and makes one carefully planned shot to ruin a day. But in game it's just not practical and requires far too much setup. Designated Marksman or support sniper are much more realistic and practical. And as a GM and player, very little makes sneaky fuckers and close combat monsters alike happier than a support sniper PC or NPC picking off problems or softening things to help them shine. But support sniper requires, you know, teamwork, and not your garden variety Weighted Companion Sniper or "SUPER COOL TWO MILE SHOT" That Guy Sniper.

I played one in an AoR Star Wars game, although I deliberately went for any kind of twist to the usual loner/quiet guy I could think of. In this case, I got a guy who was a crack shot with a blaster rifle who got hired on to turn tricks and play bodyguard for a Used Freight Ship Salesman. He was also the breadwinner on hunting expeditions while said merchant talked shop with VIP customers. The guy dressed like he wanted to be a badass with a facemask and the leathers, but was ultimately someone who was trying very hard to get validation of their skills. A total goober socially, but damn if he couldn't consistently shoot a thrown thermal detonator out of the air at 150 meters.

If the player is a newb, then I agree 100%. They have some image in their head of a lone-wolf invisible murder bot, failing to understand that snipers are fucking fragile, and not everybody is Gunny Hathcock. I generally tell them straight up: "If you try to do this, it won't be a lot of fun." If they don't listen, well, it's on them when they spend a whole game session looking for a place to set up shop while everyone else does their thing and bugs out.

That said, I have played sniper characters twice, in IKRPG and Shadowrun. I make sure to always give them a backup skill set so they're not one trick ponies. In Shadowrun, my sniper could also do demolitions, and my IK sniper was an expert tracker and all-around wilderness survival guy, so he was useful to have in all kinds of situations. Both of them could hit a quarter sideways from three clicks away, though, so when they got to shoot, it was usually pretty spectacular.

The only time I ever feel like I would consider a "dedicated sniper" character, is in a modern day/shadowrun-esque style setting where the idea is to sit yourself opposite the building the party is going into, and doing bookkeeping counting enemies, while picking off the occasional enemy trying to get behind the rest of the party and just generally playing support or taking the shot to kill the VIP.

It helps these sorts of characters to be in a setting with radios and mobile phones and such.

We love you Fruity Rudy

yeah sort've in shadowrun

basically just waited in areas for enemies to pass by windows while my team infiltrated, then I'd pick off stragglers if I had to, if I couldn't hit a target, I'd provide some sort of over watch and feed my team information or just move to a better spot instead of hogging all the attention or whining like a baby

unfortunately it looks like you guys ran into some bad people, a shame really

Now we get to the difference between real snipers and fictional snipers (the latter being what many players want)

>Patrol is close
>he hasn't been spotted yet
But now he can't really fire from a safe distance. He has to wait and that's not cool.

>counter-sniper spots them and shoots back
B-but muh ebin unseen god of death. I can't be matched by an enemy who uses the exact same tactics, right?

>wait until the rain is over
But that's boring!

>Scope out of wack, request new scope
But that means waiting, that's boring!

>Muh wind
But that's difficult!

It's the same as with roleplaying a general. Everyone remembers that Caesar pulled of cool enemy encirclements and personally led charges. Nobody remembers that Caesar was a stubborn motherfucker who would sit on his ass for days if not weeks until the exact conditions he enjoyed were met. He would seek every little opportunity he could exploit, like fighting in the early morning with his troops facing west so the enemy would have to fight on an empty stomach and with the sun in their eyes. But that's not "cool" or "fun".

Has anyone ever used or at least encountered any mechanics representing long range sniping?

I mean beyond "you get -2 to hit from distance, -1 from wind etc. now roll."

Also for the spotter role?

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>If you start pulling new penalties out of your ass
>all the things listed is what makes long distance shooting hard
He didn't even get to shit like fucking HEAT SINKS.
Being a sniper is hard business when it's your business.

In the 40k rpgs, tho, you aren't sniping, you are using the rifle as a short ranged cannon, and we both know it, because there are no penalties to using a sniper rifle at >40m distances.

Depends on system.

In Shadowrun I might be more nitpicky with long-shot tech. Savage Worlds? Just use the range band on the guns.

Would there be a penalty? The bullet isn't exactly weaker at closer ranges. I imagine scope problems are easily compensated w/ familiarity w/ the weapon and that's not getting into scopes that flip to the side.

user, if the nature of the game when it comes to success is small bonuses and penalties, why is that a problem?
Unless what you are talking about is a whole new subsystem just for long ranged firing like some D&D shit (and you probably are).

There was a reason Simo Haya had more kills with a submachine gun than his sniper rifle, user, and that's because long arms like that are a pain to maneuver and bring to bear accurately in a pitched battle.
It's also a mechanics caveat, but one that immediately has people run to long arms until they can get a bolter, and sometimes not even then.

You are making a case for why submachine guns should get bonuses but not why snipers should get penalties.

Personally I assumed that he got into some brief, bloody firefights where the high rate of fire was super useful.

Yeah, Sniper Rifles at point blank ranges are deadlier than pistols in Only War.

One of my players has discovered this to his everlasting joy, and my utter despair of keeping any sort of officer or boss mob alive longer than two turns.

Well that does make sense. I can see a pistol being a smaller caliber than a sniper rifle.

You can only get into advantages of pistols vs sniper rifles if you start getting into the nitty-gritty of your opponent just snatching the barrel of your gun or just closing the distance past the barrel.

>why snipers should get penalties
Rapidly swiveling a long barrel rifle suited for accurate shots at 300m base isn't easy, user.
The 40k rpgs have movie logic, but SR has penalties for them, as does Gurps.

The intuition, future sight and reflexes the Force affords would be able to counter it, no?

Lol @ the idea of an american soldier feeling remorse at killing a child who was going to kill them to boot, as if they don't constantly slaughter civilians

Played a sniper/force recon character in a Shadowrun game pretty recently, it was good shit. For me it strikes a good balance of blowing enemies the fuck up with a big gun, and providing support to the team by way of map information and keeping the scarier enemy's heads way down.

It's also real fun being able to brag about your kill-count to your chums. All in good fun of course. Shame that SR game died though :^(

Because that's a thing only among Anglos.
My country has snipers as literal single guy with no support, but every single squad (as in: 10-12 soldiers) has a sniper with it as support for THEM. This situation exists in pretty much all post-Warsaw Pact armies.
Hell, it's not even called "sniper", but "marksman"

Also, since I forgot to post the file... best fictional sharpshooter coming throu

feel free to tell us about your war experiences

10" isn't that much. We are talking about milliseconds here. Very important IRL but out of the scope of many RPGs in terms of applying penalties.

Unless the system incurs a penalty on heavy melee weapons, then a sniper rifle would receive no penalties.

What movie is that?

Metadata? I'm 100% sure I left the information in the file. And if you know just about anything about sniping, then you should instantly recognise what it is.

Quigley down under

I said I never had much use for one. Never said I didn't know how to use it.

This movie is fucking perfect.

Quigley Down Under. Probably the only movie in existence that shows all the pain of pulling the various trick shots that are just there in every other film involving sniping. So Quigley never does anything that would be impossible (unlike your average western shooter) and always all the important details are shown without making them tiresome exposition or slowing action down. Comes with a really nice bonus if you know a thing or two about distance shooting, since someone walked the extra mile while preparing material for the movie and coaching Selleck. It's on tier with Mann movies when it comes to guns, only it wasn't done by Mann.

Had a character who had to cover everyone from a roof.
A Gangrel. The building caught fire,I frenzied, fell off a roof, tried to run back, stumbled into a fireman, tore him in half by accident.
The party in the meantime really felt the lack of cover fire.

NATO has that too. Designated Marksmen are literally the same thing. You're not special, tankie.

... the hell it has to do with tanks?

Either way, having a spotter is an Anglo thing as far as I'm concerned and informed. So for me it's the other way around - spotter is an "unique" element, not lack of it.

Tried to be a stealth and heavy crossbow-oriented Bolt Ace in Pathfinder (because my DM hates guns). It was OK against human-scale targets, but it flopped against anything stronger than a gorgon.

>Using ranged weapons
>In D&D or derivatives
Are you insane?

>Condition track killer
Is a niche build that no DM allows, and that requires around 12 level.

I know, but I wanted to play something different from my usual healing clerics/alchemists.

Don't take it the wrong way, but pic related. It really is the solution here.

>3.PF is the only D&D version

Ranged characters are perfectly fine in 4e, and stronger option than melee in 5e.