Quote:
Originally Posted by Canuck Lad
...
So you fight a novice. Let's say you choose to put in no more mental exertion than he does. You're saying your attacks are no less difficult to defend than his? I don't believe that is correct.
|
I'm not quite sure how mental exertion would be expressed or quantified here?
If you mean put as much effort into it = both just going off basic skill and not trying anything tricky like making an attack that is particularly hard to defend against. Then the result your looking for is the one you get in the system. In GURPS the end result is the net effect of both an attack roll and a defence roll*. And the net result is a novice will indeed avoid being hit less often against a high skill opponent. Also if we're just looking at attacking then both putting the same effort as defined above will mean a higher skilled fighter will have a higher chance of success than a lower skilled one.
So an example of this:
High skill fighter Skill 20 (parry 13)
Novice Skill 10 (parry 8)
Ignoring all mods and just going on basic skill:
High skill fighter will make a successful attack 98% of the time and successfully parry 84% of the time
Novice will make a successful attack 50% of the time and successfully parry 26% of the time
So they fight, not doing anything fancy just attacking and parrying. Each time one attacks it will be:
High skill fighter will be on target and the novice will fail to defend 73%
Novice fighter will be on target and the high skill fighter will fail to defend 8% of the time.
The thing is both fighter's ability to attack and defend against attacks factor into this result.
The novice is worse at defending in abstract, but because the high skill fighter is also better at attacking the novice's weakness in defence will mean they'll get hit more often than if they were fighting someone less skilled. For instance if the novice was fighting another skill 10 novice they will only be hit 37% of the time
But the end result is if by equal mental effort you mean both are just rolling against their basic skill, then yes the novice will have a far harder time avoiding getting hit than the high skill fighter will.
This all leaves aside the rest of the stuff I mentioned earlier about the various options the high skilled fighter can use to further leverage their advantage in skill to get better or quicker result
However you might consider this as more exertion. But the novice can also mentally exert themselves in this way. However because they are less skilled they are less able to do so and still be on target in the first place! Moreover even if they are on target against the high skill fighter, a lot of these tricks will be less effective because the high skill fighter also has a significant advantage in being able to defend!
You could view how much exertion they are putting is could be expressed as what's needed for both to be as likely achieve their goal. So the novice at basic skill has 50% of being on target, Mr high skill can also decide to be on target 50% of the time, (effective skill 10) and leverage that -10 penalty in some other way e.g penalising the novices defence by -5.
Another way of putting that is Mr high skill can put a lot less effort into hitting 98% of time than the novice, who would need to find +6 in bonuses to get the same chance of 98%!.
*or in situations where there's no defence roll it's just the attack roll (which is more likely to end in successful hit than if there is defence roll)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Canuck Lad
Most rolls on 3D6 are 10 or 11 anyway. And you still get randomness from the players rolling...
|
You do, but you get a reduced spread of results when you have one roll vs. a set result than one roll vs. another.
The problem is the defence roll is binary in result (you either successfully make it or you don't). So assuming a roll of 10 that will mean that all defences that are made against defence "skill" of 10 or higher will be successful and all those that are against a 9 or lower will fail. No matter what.
However as I suggested there are a couple of ways of doing this. if you allow those who have set results to still adjust their defence by the various mods and options in the rules they can at least adjust when and where they successfully defend.
But you will still have known end results.
So for instance say you have a mook who has a broadsword skill 12 that will mean they parry at 9
If we assume they always roll 10, then they will never successfully parry.
But if they retreat while parrying (+1 to parry with a broadsword) their parry score increases to 10, and they will always successfully parry if we assume that always roll 10. Well unless those attacking them lower their parry again in some way, or some other factor does.
Thing is if you do allow for all the usual options to adjust defence then you are still tracking all these variables that may effect defence, and IMO doing the bulk of the detailed work anyway. So why not just roll the dice to model both side attempting to do something that directly contests with each other?
If of course you decide not to bother with options for adjusting defence and have automatic rolls, than you end up with people who never successfully defend or always successfully defend.
Or you can go for the Quick contest option I out lined as well
Don't get me wrong you want to have a fixed result to remove a dice roll go for it, what ever your view on spreads of results or any of the above it will be quicker!