[Bibiribobiri]

As a “realism” fanatic, i’ve encountered 3 main problems of GURPS battle system. If you want to skip those (and go right to the new rules) go to the next post.

Imagine a 1x1 medieval fight. Tom is a strong ST19 Ogre and Jerry is a sneaky ST10 thief.

i) The figthing pace is too weird:
On GURPS rules, they will usually attack once every second and defend once every second. In seems odd because no one can keep that pace (just watch an UFC fight, for exemple). Even those who could strike once every second (a experienced fighter, like Anderson Silva), rarely do so and when they do, they do it for only a few seconds.

ii) The attacking speed doesn’t depend on the weapon one use:
It also seems odd. That being the case, everyone (who had a bit of money) would just use the heaviest weapon he could wield without penalty. In that case, if wanted to use one-handed weapon optimally, both Tom and Jerry would always choose to use the broadsword.
Thinking in numbers, it would actually make more sense for Jerry to use a heavier weapon, like an axe (proportionally much more damage, no defence), than Tom (proportionally almost the same damage, no defence).
Also, if Jerry used a bastard-sword he would strike as fast as if using a short-sword or a dagger.

iii) Shields don’t protect passively.
Playing Mount & Blade (the best medieval fighting simulator I know) I noticed that my shield blocked some arrows even if I wasn’t defending. Some times, when I was running (with shield down), my shield caught an arrow from an archer I didn’t even know was there. The same thing should happen if I had a shield strapped on my back. Playing as an archer, I realized that it was much harder to hit
someone who had a shield (even if he didn’t saw me and wasn’t defending).

This rules may feel too much complicated at first, but I bet GURPS also seemed to much complicated as you started playing it. :P
The trick is to annotate everything on the character sheet (thus it only get tricky once).