Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultraviolet
I was thinking along the same lines.
I have been playing GURPS for...a long time. But in the last 20 years it's only been Modern Shooting and CLiffhangers, so we don't run into heavy melee weapons very often, so the issue hasn' come up.
But if the "U" rule could be changes to become a modifier to Parries made in the same round as an Attack has been made, it would be a sliding scale rather than a binary thing.
It could also mean thet ST higher than Min could be used to reduce these penalties, although not in a 1:1 ratio and perhaps never fully reduces. To keep in line with Dagger and Double-Dagger rules, perhaps is ST is 5 over Min then reduce Parry penalty by 1, and 10 more by 2?
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Yep, thing is if you penalise parry be enough than you defacto end up making the wielder rely on other defences anyway (so same effect as the 0U rule), but a range of penalties allows for a range of positions where different balances of Skill, ST, MinST, weights and balances of weapon apply. You can even adjust it for different modes of use.
Example of that last one:
Do I think top heavy impact weapons like the axe and maces that appears in both one and two handed axe/mace listings is hard to swap between defence and attack in the GURPS turn time frame?*
Yeah no issues
But do I think it's as hard to do so when using it in two hands as in one hand? No I don't, but neither do I think the issue goes away entirely when using two hands, it just lessens.
(That difference in one handed and two handed use in this context is made but giving the bastard sword 0U in one hand but not in two handed use!)
And similarly do i think more skilled and/or stronger axemen are more able to mitigate this issue than a less killed and/or weaker ones yeah I do.
Of course defensive attack does offer a compromise point here as well (its just how much of a compromise it is depends on the weapon in question, where perhaps counter intuitively more edge example of weapons incurring the 0U penalty are more compromised that more clear cut ones)
EDIT: one option could be you offset parry penalties by voluntarily lowering ST in terms of calculating damage (and MinST) to buy off the penalty. Basically just the defensive attack idea (trade damage for more control in this area) but with a sliding scale included. maybe have an upper limit for how much this can be done by, so that as per you point the penalty in some more extreme weapons in this regard can't be completely negated in this way.
*leaving aside the point that by the historical record those are pretty heavy examples of "one handed" axes and maces