Quote:
Originally Posted by Adversary
I'm not saying I have a better way to handle it. Maybe, for playability and balance's sake, this is how it has to work. But Gurps is supposed to attempt to simulate reality. It isn't realistic that, if I have a yardstick and my friend doesn't, that he can consistently touch me with his hand before I can touch him with the yardstick, as long as he waits and I advance on him.
There may not be a better way to handle it. But I don't see how you can deny that it is a problem.
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He can't consistently touch you. He can consistently step right as you do and make the attempt to touch you, which you may defend against as usual. You can even Riposte and step back, I believe, as a normal part of the defense, maintaining your distance. You can also use Committed Attack to take advantage of the two steps rule, and back off even more, forcing him to close on you.
Getting past the tip of the spear (or the sword if you've got a Reach C knife) from the "just out of stabbity range" isn't really that difficult unless your foe is actively prepared for it. The mental hard part of this is that the GURPS rules are designed to enforce the reality of a swirling melee, which means many of our natural attempts to perform thought experiments that start with "consider two guys on a featureless infinite plain" are doomed to give misleading results, because we're throwing out one of the key assumptions of the combat system: that your attention is not fixed on your foe, but spread out among many threats.
I make the example in Technical Grappling that in GURPS terms, it would be as if each combatant in an MMA match could be attacked with arrows from the crowd, or have the ref pull a 9mm and try and shoot one of the two fighters at any time. Is it plausible that the Waiting character can leverage that distraction to step in? Much more so.
For game mechanical things, though, would you have an issue with the Wait if the advancing Reach 2 spearman was restricted to swings? Perhaps what we can do is give a bonus to the Reach 2 guy's defense if he's attacking with a thrust? Enough to counteract the usual penaly to Parry for Aggressive Parry, which would basically be "I impale him as I come in."
But if he takes his weapon out of line to make a swing, well, yeah, the Waiting guy should be able to enter. I've done it myself, and we do fight long vs short (both sword and spear, though not together usually).
But if you get a +2 to defend, so you get a full Aggressive defense vs. the other guy if you keep your weapon in line by thrusting, that would damp down the perceived incongruity without changing the basic fast that Wait guy gave up his entire turn to do just this move.