In the process of attempting to secure my local LAN, I have determined that I am at little risk of a dictionary brute-force attack.
This being said, a standard brute-force attack which involves cycling through every possible password in existence is (although not exactly subtle) a very dangerous threat.
I have downloaded THC-Hydra, however I can't find any tutorial or how-to website which actually explains how to use any other function aside from the dictionary attack method, which is really limited to easy passwords:
How do I launch a standard (non dictionary) brute force attack on FTP with THC-Hydra?