[Plane]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I forgot to apply the -2 to kicking. My biggest take away from this whole exercise is that the kicking technique is awesome and if you're serious about unarmed combat in gurps you want it. My bad, and we can either do the funny half telegraphed thing or we can apply the -2.

Leg kicks wouldn't be such a big deal if we could just use the focused defense rules to cover the legs :) Basically like a "pre-crouch" where you are always keeping your hands low, to minimize the response time to kicks. Even a boxer could do that to try and compensate for their inherent lack of familiarity. Of course, this would give you defense penalties to guard your upper body, so the brawler/karateka could then switch back to targetting the upper body with their kicks: at which point you'd probably try a "leg grab" since ignoring the -1 penalty to grapple a leg only happens when the upper body's targeted.

Originally Posted by ericthered

I don't remember any "Near miss rules". Which pyramid?

Lessee, referred to as grazes here... "Ten Tweaks to Customize Combat" from 3/34 I think.

I think if you are making a slam, the attack AP probably counts as your deceleration AP.

Originally Posted by ericthered

If you're neither decelerating, nor evading, nor slamming... that is weird. we could argue that you MUST choose one of them.

Or just have a 'free slams' mechanic like giants get, but have actually "attack slams" be much more effective.

Slams are already inherently better than accidental collisions I think because they can gain a +2 damage from an All-Out Attack but that's not much help to non-attacking guys.

Originally Posted by ericthered

We could also do some weird house rule thing were the defender chooses if the action is an evade or a slam.

The difference is basically "I'm trying to move around you" vs "I'm trying to hit you" vs "I'm trying to walk into the hex beyond you and I don't care whether you move or not".

The latter seems to be what isn't covered, and that almost sounds like perhaps if you were targeting the hex itself (+4) with perhaps a random chance of hitting people in it (you don't care which part of the hex you step through) where people could easily move out of the way. You could probably telegraph it (you don't care if they dodge) but it would work better with more incremented rules of making it harder for low-ST guys to "parry" slams.

Perhaps the way to get past that is if someone does parry your slam (since dodging wouldn't stop you) perhaps a ST-base Feint (Beat) could be done so that your next attempt to shove past them is much more likely to succeed.

That'd take a series of 3 turns to do though... and -12 to do as a triple-hit rapid-strike technique. High ST low DX guys couldn't really manage it in a short time, unless you designed it as a technique where you buy off the penalties by taking ST/damage penalties, reflecting the stronger guy reducing his throwing around of his ST for heightened coordination in a short period.

Originally Posted by ericthered

The trick there is does the defender have to spend AP to simply avoid the evade/slam? I suppose the defender could choose evade and not resist it for no AP.

The choice of whether or not to attempt to evade someone is the stepper's. The occupant is who chooses whether to obstruct that step (get in the way) or move aside.

The weird thing about that, is you have people perfectly moving aside (if they don't desire to obstruct) of these utter giants.... people cooperating in perfect harmony, teammates never bumping into each other as they try to step past each other in combat to alternate hitting some enemy...

Originally Posted by ericthered

But if I block either the evade or the slam... yeah, that shouldn't be free for the defender, but it either cost the attacker AP or make him automatically fail... and if he fails does he have to stop and spend that AP anyways? DX check to avoid falling down?

DX checks to avoid falling I think happen if the target of a slam ends up doing more damage than the slammer?

The "you have momentum, spend AP to slow down" mechanic might be modifiable by sort of a "or have someone else spend AP to slow you down" in which case a block/parry's inherent cost (1AP) might involve that.

There should of course be some level of inherent slowdown due to friction (and inability to infinite-run) like 1y/s per second deceleration, causing someone to spend AP now and then to buy movement points to bump that speed back up to top.

Originally Posted by ericthered

As a partial application of the "MUST" option, it could require a will check to not spend AP to take some sort of action.

You mean like 'make a will check not to collide non-slammingly with the enemy' akin to 'make a will check not to spend AP to avoid a HT check from strangulation' ?