Quote:
Originally Posted by Wicked Lurker
In any of these situations attacking two times gives a higher chance of landing a blow than attacking once with +1 to skill (see calculation above) unless your effective skill drops to 4 or below.
As an additional note: The chance of NOT being able to deliver the attack after evaluate is also higher. The other guy might disable or wound/shock his opponent in the first blow already, eliminating the threat.
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You are absolutely and demonstrably right. "Evaluate" is basically useless, and often counterproductive. Those who argue otherwise, clearly don't have the slightest idea of how probabilities work. It is quite shocking that many people still fail to realize Evaluate is useless and propose flawed justifications to say it is useful (e.g. thulben argued that you can effectively lower your opponent's defenses by 1 if you Evaluate for 2 turns before attacking... but it is
clearly more effective to attack three times, or to Feint & Attack.)
GURPS Martial Arts in some way acknowledged Evaluate's uselessness, and tried to make it better by adding the "reduce penalties caused by Feints/Deceptive attacks" bit. Even so, it is useless and counterproductive 90% of the times.
Those who want to make Evaluate a real tactical option, not just something you do when your enemy is too distant and you don't want to Move&Attack, usually adopt one or more of the following houserules:
- Evaluate grants +2 instead of +1 (each turn). Evaluate might still be statistically counterproductive in some instances, but it does lessen the problem.
- Evaluate grants +1 to your own defenses (as if it were a "Defensive Attack" maneuver). Evaluating an enemy seems a more cautious choice than directly attacking him, and this caoutiosness should be reflected in game terms. I think this is the realistic explanation on why fighters often Evaluate in real life (because they feel they would expose themselves more, if they attacked each turn).