Razor or concertina wire

[kcdusk]

1. What does razor or concertina wire mean to you? A single looped length? Or 2 or 3 layers of strands?

2. What sort of skill checks do you employ for an individual to work there way through/over wire? What are the chances of injury or becoming tangled up?

3. What sort of skill checks do you employ for a vehicle to work there way over wire? What are the chances of it becoming bogged/tangled up?

4. other modifiers or factors i am considering are time, under fire or not, time taken, night/day time. Are there any others?

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by kcdusk

1. What does razor or concertina wire mean to you? A single looped length? Or 2 or 3 layers of strands?

2. What sort of skill checks do you employ for an individual to work there way through/over wire? What are the chances of injury or becoming tangled up?

3. What sort of skill checks do you employ for a vehicle to work there way over wire? What are the chances of it becoming bogged/tangled up?

4. other modifiers or factors i am considering are time, under fire or not, time taken, night/day time. Are there any others?

1)Most concertina wires around installations seem to be triple-strand. Around the TAC in Korea, we used single-strand, though by regs we were supposed to use triple strand (it was glossed over by the ADC(M)).

2) I've always used a straight dexterity check, combined with stealth if the character was trying to be quiet. (In practice, one of the best ways to cross concertina quickly is to have someone throw himself on the wire, then everyone else step on their back; throw your loads over the wire before you cross. The last person over picks the ground man out of the concertina. Note, it's not quiet, it's just quick. Make sure it's not boobytrapped!

3)I've never had to adjudicate that situation; I'll have to think about it.

4) Of course at night, you see a lot less, but hear a lot more. (No one has ever been able to give a good explanation on that one.) If you're reasonably quiet, you can really ream out guardposts.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Something else to consider is if the wire is new or older and by that I mean year of manufacture. Older types tended to be plain steel but newer types seem to be galvanized steel, zinc coated or something to that affect, basically to stop them from rusting. Rusty wire will obviously weaken over time but it's also a lot harder to see because it blends better with the background colours.

As for noise travelling further at night, as I recall it (although I'm trying to remember this from lessons from a few decades back so anyone feel free to jump in with corrections), there's two factors involved. First (secondary factor), is the lower level of background noise compared to daytime and second (primary factor), is that sound is conducted better in the denser air of night.

Apparently sound travels faster in a warm environment but it also needs material dense enough to effectively conduct the soundwaves.
So while air might be warm during the daytime, it also tends to be lighter and will rise, resulting in less density at ground level.
At night when the air is colder it will fall, it will also collect water vapour and both these increase its density compared to warm air.

Both these effects are constantly subject to environmental conditions so your experiences can be totally different in apparently similar types of location and also the same location during seasonal changes, different weather and so on.

[B.T.]

Originally Posted by kcdusk

2. What sort of skill checks do you employ for an individual to work there way through/over wire? What are the chances of injury or becoming tangled up?

3. What sort of skill checks do you employ for a vehicle to work there way over wire? What are the chances of it becoming bogged/tangled up?

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

2) I've always used a straight dexterity check, combined with stealth if the character was trying to be quiet. (In practice, one of the best ways to cross concertina quickly is to have someone throw himself on the wire, then everyone else step on their back; throw your loads over the wire before you cross. The last person over picks the ground man out of the concertina. Note, it's not quiet, it's just quick. Make sure it's not boobytrapped!

3)I've never had to adjudicate that situation; I'll have to think about it.

@kcdusk: Like Paul mentioned: If you want to have a check, dex would be the attribute to use. You could have a skill check for combat engineer. (Something like making the check on level easier for a PC with engineer skills)

@pmulcahy11b: Another good way to cross a barbed wire (concertina or razor) is the deployment of a ladder. Espacially in Urban warfare a short ladder, made of wood, comes in handy, crossing concertina wire is one of the reasons.
kcdusks last question is something, where I have to give the same answer as Paul did: I don't know.

In general: In certain situations I don't have checks for crossing wire. If your players are interested in kit and stuff, you could remind them of the fact, that several bayonets were designed to cut wire. Just to name a few: the U.S. M9, the various AK bayonets, and the German ACK.
Hope, this helps.

[Sanjuro]

When I was trained on the SA80, we were told the bayonet's wire cutting tool would cut US and Soviet (showing my age here) wire- but not British wire. Every fireteam therefore had to carry a pair of wire cutters.

[mikeo80]

As far as vehicles crossing razor or concertina, IMHO if the vehicle is tracked, it goes straight through. This ability is why the tank was first used in WWI. To break through the masses of wires used by the German Army in the trench warfare. Once the wire was broken, the infantry could engage the enemy to clear out the trench. (A nice side note, tanks were impervious to machine gun fire. The infantry learned very quickly to get behind the tank to lessen casualties.) There is the small issue of noise. There is nothing that says "Good morning, sunshine" like the sound of heavy treads smashing into your defensive works. Hopefully, you have something nasty planned....

Now a wheeled vehicle? Like Paul said, I gots' to think about that....

My $0.02

Mike