[Plane]

Originally Posted by Varyon

In cases where having contact occur on a failed Parry would actually be to the defender's benefit (say, defender is blocking with a burning brand against the zombie, or something made of cortosis against a lightsaber), I'd have no such contact occur. If it would be to both the defender's benefit and detriment (unarmored hand that is magically surrounded by flame against a zombie, or a cortosis bracelet that will still have the character harmed by the lightsaber before it shuts down), I'd let the attacker decide.

It seems a bit too magical though... I wish I could think of some way to dice this out.

Like for example, just have there be a risk of accidental collision when a parry fails, and then give both parties a chance to roll a dodge to avoid that accidental collision?

B389 ("Hitting the Wrong Target" and B392 ("Striking into a Close Combat") both use a 9-or-less roll for hitting non-intended targets, so that seems the right thing.

In both cases there's a "or the number you would have had to roll to hit him on purpose" caveat, but that's weird (for example: why should a blind guy or a clumsy guy be less likely to accidentally hit someone other than his target? they're not applying their sight/agility in that direction) so I'd just apply Size Modifier penalties to the 9 instead, like you would with Bombardment (B111) limitation on Area Attack. If 9 seems too much of an advantage this way, could always lower it, like to 8 which is the lowest level of Bombardment, or even something like a 3.

Originally Posted by Varyon

1 HP of injury is a fairly significant impact. A martial arts "block" works by one of a few methods. The first, for low-impact situations (where the hit wouldn't have caused injury in the first place), it doesn't do much other than avoid your opponent getting a point in a match or avoid Shock effects that GURPS doesn't cover (getting hit in the Face in GURPS does nothing unless it was sufficient to cause 1 HP of Injury, but can still be painful enough to cause short-term problems IRL).

0-damage can be made rarer by using fractional damage for all, 0.1 damage causing -0.1 DX would be enough to induce a penalty and make people want to avoid it.

Originally Posted by Varyon

The second, more common, is to intercept an attack while it's still low-impact (a short distance into a strike, it usually has very little kinetic energy and won't damage much; there's a reason Bruce Lee had to specifically train for his "One Inch Punch").

If only that helped... A Matter of Inches in MA would benefit from a 7th "Extremely Short" category for this and elbows.

Originally Posted by Varyon

A third, relevant to the zombie bite, is to intercept a low-impact attack that would have caused injury, by intercepting it at a location on the "striker" that doesn't cause injury (essentially having your arm tank a weak headbutt to keep the target's jaws from reaching your flesh).

That or you're doing a light 'shove' on the face to try and redirect the head, possibly succeeding or failing depending on the zombie head's momentum.

A perk like DR 1 (Active Defence -40% Limited: Melee Attacks -20% Flexible -20%) sounds sort of like what this might be. I didn't take "Tough Skin" because reducing the damage to 0 effectively means you're preventing contact with your HP.

It wouldn't make sense to have this be reducable by Corrosive Attack or for Armor Divisor to work against it, so that might be 2 levels of Cosmic: Defensive (+50%) making it cost 6 points though.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Finally, you may be able to block a medium-to-high impact hit by letting your arm act like a spring to absorb the impact, but that really works best if you've already got something else (like a shield or armguard) to spread out the impact. The first option is a failed GURPS Parry, but the target fails to roll enough damage to accomplish anything. The second and third (early/alternate intercept) I'd really count as redirecting the impact (you're markedly changing how it hits, forcing it to either hit too early or away from a striking surface). The fourth I'm not convinced is really an option when completely unarmed and unarmored, but is arguably a sort of redirection of the energy.

In terms of the difference to the previously defined trait, I'd definitely swap "Tough Skin" in for "Flexible", and also add "Limited: Crushing Attacks -20%" to it, since you're taking hits directly, not slowing them by intercepting another body part. That extra -40% would save 2 points and reduce it from 6 to 4.

Originally Posted by Varyon

I'd be inclined to treat Martial Arts' mention of "weapon or hand" as not being exhaustive, and would therefore allow one to use it to get a hand, foot, arm, leg, wing, tail, tentacle, Striker, etc out of the way. Heck, letting you use it to get your head out of the way probably wouldn't be a horrible option.

It sort of resembles the "Not the Face!" bonus at http://www.gamesdiner.com/rules-nugget-gurps-duck/

If using that (and especially if using "Flinch!" for a 2nd +1), then the option to use a no-contact parry instead of a dodge isn't as upsetting to the balance of power.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Just keep in mind you're still limited to what you can legally Parry (so using a Brawling Parry to duck a gunshot is a no-go).

The "Dodge This!" pyramid article has rules for blocking/parrying gunshots. As it's DX-based the penalty is twice as worse as it is for dodges, it would probably be okay to allow no-contact parries using these worse penalties. Your skill would have to be super-high for this to be a better roll than for dodging. The largest benefit would be that you could do AOA: Double to combine a no-contact parry with a dodge as a backup.

Dodging still has the benefit of getting a Dodge and Drop bonus resembling retreats (normal retreat bonuses don't apply to dodging ranged weapons, so they shouldn't apply to parrying ranged weapons, contact or not)

"Tactical Dodging, Redux" on pg 30 (pyramid3/57) has the benefit (if you dodged before the attack was rolled) of applying the posture penalty for lying down to that shot, so it might miss without you even having to roll, but if you do need to, you don't suffer the posture penalty to active defences.

TDR is an epic improvement over the usual "declare a specific attacker" for Tactical Shooting 17 (to reflect that concept we could use the +1 "one foe" for technical grappling, obviously only usable against attackers you're aware of)

The only part I don't like about it is "you only roll if the attack would have hit you if you hadn’t been dodging" because rolling could determine if you crit-fail a dodge.

That doesn't seem significant (you're diving to the ground anyway... a crit fail on a dodge doesn't use the tables, you just fall down) but I think it could represent the difference between a controlled fall (low risk of injury on a Dodge and Drop) and an uncontrolled one (high risk of injury).

RAW, I don't think you would roll fall damage on a Dodge and Drop, so having you roll it only on a crit-failed dodge would create a distinction between the circumstances.

If using a grittier "roll for fall damage when you dive to the ground under any circumstances" house rule, then I would represent the difference as you get (unless you took an AOA) an active defence (block or parry the ground...but instead of the weight of the earth, treat it like Slam from yourself, so weight equal to your ST) to mitigate that damage if it's an intended fall, and no active defence (surprise attack) if it's a crit-failed dodge, or you tripped, etc.

In terms of "Roll With Blow" or "Breakfall" (they're not active defences, so I'm not sure whether or not you'd get them against surprise attacks or if you took AOA) if you got them in both cases, I'd apply a -4 in surprise situations, like the ST-4 roll in Technical Grappling.