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Old 02-27-2020, 03:21 PM   #1
Plane
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Default Critical Miss results 8-12 with Shield Bash or Innate Attack

Would you use the results on B556 (weapon turns or is dropped) or B557 (unarmed) of fall/lose balance/trip?

I get the sense you can't drop a strapped shield (B410 bolas note "does
not affect a shield strapped to the arm") so you could only drop a cloak or buckler held in the hand?

Similarly the idea of "dropping" your 'Innate Attack'... there's no inherent penalization here above and beyond a normal miss, whereas you'd have to go pick up your sword/gun to continue attacking with normal weapons.

B241-B242 mentions people who get injured and fail a Will roll get hurt by their own attack. This presumably means the failure indicates they dropped it on themself...

Would treating "dropped my weapon" similarly (get injured by own weapon) seem right? Or at least give some chance of that happening? Like a bombardment (8 or less) attack against your foot (-4) so roll 4 or less to see if dropped Innate Attack (could be Burning Attack advantage or Fireball spell) lands on foot?

Explosive/AE of course if dropped should damage the wielder just like fireballs, right?

It's possible for weapons to become unready without dropping them (crit failed shield blocks per B382 and failed disarms where target has MoV 0-2 per B401) so having this apply to a Shield Bash crit-fail seems okay (just like a crit-failed block).

If you were to "unready" a fireball, rather than lose the fireball (dropping it) maybe the mage has to spend an action to get control of it and ready it for throwing? Like when they first create it it's auto-readied by default, but then it might lose readiness as a result of a crit-fail.

This is an interesting thing to think about for shooting vs throwing weapons. If you crit-fail a gunshot roll then the GUN turns in your hand (you need to ready the gun) but you still shot the gun so the bullet is gone...

But if you crit-failed a throwing weapon, does that mean you didn't throw the knife/axe (it just turned in your hand, became unready) or that you DID throw it and got to avoid the "my weapon was unreadied" aspect? With a throwing weapon, should there be some other penalty like "my arm was unreadied" to substitute?

Innate Attack advantages might represent both (shooting a bullet from a gun held in the hand, or throwing an object which appears in the hand) so I'd like to know how they could be treated differently.

Non-drawn weapons need to be drawn (readied) normally, so there might be two forms:
1) "draw once, fire indefinitely" (you only need to use 1 Ready to prepare to Innate Attack, but you must also use a Free Action to put away your weapon to appear harmless)
2) "draw once per firing" (you need to use 1 Ready to prepare to Innate Attack, but you DON'T need to use a Free Action to put it away if you just fired it)
I don't know if those are necessarily equal (1st is way better for sustained combat, 2nd is better if you're trying to avoid detection) and they could break down into further components.

One difference with unreadying situations (the summoned gun loses it's "I don't need to re-ready" benefit if you crit-failed and the weapon turned or was dropped)
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Old 02-27-2020, 06:36 PM   #2
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: Critical Miss results 8-12 with Shield Bash or Innate Attack

"Weapon turns in your hand, requiring an extra Ready before it can be used again" I'd use as-is - a shield gets off balance, something goes wrong with your Innate Attack, whatever, you have to use a Ready to recover before it becomes usable again. For dropping, I could see a shield's straps coming undone (or being damaged), causing it to fall from your arm; for an Innate Attack, I might go so far as to treat it as becoming temporarily crippled (P156) even if you don't normally use those rules. That, or just treat these similarly to the "turns in hand" result, but require 2 Readies to get back into operation (a dropped weapon usually requires ~2 seconds to get ready to go again - a Ready to kneel (kneeling taking up your Step) and pick up the weapon, then at least burning up the Step of your next turn to stand up; I'd likely require another Ready to actually prepare the weapon for use again).
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Old 02-27-2020, 09:23 PM   #3
Plane
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Default Re: Critical Miss results 8-12 with Shield Bash or Innate Attack

Quote:
Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
"Weapon turns in your hand, requiring an extra Ready before it can be used again" I'd use as-is - a shield gets off balance, something goes wrong with your Innate Attack, whatever, you have to use a Ready to recover before it becomes usable again. For dropping, I could see a shield's straps coming undone (or being damaged), causing it to fall from your arm; for an Innate Attack, I might go so far as to treat it as becoming temporarily crippled (P156) even if you don't normally use those rules. That, or just treat these similarly to the "turns in hand" result, but require 2 Readies to get back into operation (a dropped weapon usually requires ~2 seconds to get ready to go again - a Ready to kneel (kneeling taking up your Step) and pick up the weapon, then at least burning up the Step of your next turn to stand up; I'd likely require another Ready to actually prepare the weapon for use again).
If this was an impact grenade, guessing the grenade would probably go off and the thrower gets exploded. Same too if it's a mage holding an explosive fireball. Dropping it in one's own lap is probably worse than throwing and missing.

Do you think with non-explosive throwing weapons "you drop the throwing knife on your own foot" or "you drop the non-explode fireball on your own foot" is too brutal? Non-thrown weapons don't drop on the foot...

But in a way, dropping a throwing weapon could be BETTER than missing. On a miss, you'd have to go a long way to retrieve it to throw again, but just dropping it, you can throw again faster.

I guess that's why I figure maybe it should somehow be worse than dropping a melee weapon.

Aside from the crippling option, I'm wondering visually what 'turn in hand' represents for innate attack. Like for example, if we assume someone who can shoot 'Burning Attack' doesn't walk around with flaming hands, but his hands are flaming when he's read to throw fireballs, then would it make sense to have him use a Ready maneuver to turn his hands into fire?

That sounds a lot like "switchable for free" but that seems to be how weapons operate anyway, except that when they're not readied they're visible unless you can stash them using sleight of hand.
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