Stunned after taking Wait maneuver

[Plane]

Does anyone know what page actually says you can't continue to attack while stunned?

B420's "Effects of Stun" says "If you are stunned, you must Do Nothing on your next turn." but I don't see any mention of current turn.

We know one thing that can cause a stun is a major wound (such as a crippling injury) where you fail a resulting HT roll.

For an extremity this is doing over HP/3, so 4 damage would be enough to cripple a hand if it struck a 3 DR target for 20 damage (suffer 1 injury per 5 damage "Hurting Yourself").

If you happened to have "Extra Attack" and your first attack crippled your hand and you were stunned from the failed HT check, would you lose your Extra Attack for that turn due to the stun?

You don't get an Extra Attack during a Do Nothing (only on maneuvers which allow attacks) but the Do Nothing wouldn't start until your NEXT turn... if you got stunned on your turn, then your turn hasn't actually ended...

There's also the question of... since "Compartmentalized Mind" stacks atop any other maneuver, would you still get a Concentrate even when your "main" maneuver is a Do Nothing, or is there forbidding language to exclude it somewhere about stuns?

If you do, I think the support would come elsewhere than B364 or B420 and maybe some errata. Perhaps "you may perform any active defense" was intended to convey "and active defenses are ALL you can do" ?

The best support I've found so far is B551's "Take no action but recover from stun." but that's not technically true since defences are actions... plus B371 mentions a stunned grappler can still roll the contest of ST (at -4, like with active defenses) to prevent their target from using Break Free.

There also doesn't seem to be anything preventing you from choosing options like "Aggressive Parry" during the subsequent "Do Nothing" maneuvers.

Originally Posted by Harald387

Threads like this are why GURPS has a bad rep.

The sequence goes like this:

Player: I Wait; if the Orc comes into reach, I hit him.
GM: The Orc casts Mental Stun. Roll to resist.
Player: Failed. I'm stunned.
GM: The Orc Steps into an adjacent hex.
Player: That triggers my Wait!
GM: No, you're Stunned - you can't act. But it's your turn now.
Player: I Do Nothing. <roll> I'm no longer stunned.

This isn't complicated, and trying to rules-lawyer around it is just the sort of argumentative behavior that would get you ejected from most games.

I can see why people would be upset about having wasted their Wait though, especially since a Wait essentially functions like a Do Nothing if it's never triggered (though Step-and-Wait might make sense...) and a "stun makes Wait untriggerable" interpretation's being taken.

I think a big problem is simply that the list of what it can transition to is limited possibly due to oversight than intent.

I don't think the writers necessarily would see incentive for people to convert a Wait into something like a Do Nothing or an All-Out Defence. Mainly because they'd probably be thinking "why not just choose that from the outset?"

Those 2 maneuvers don't seem like they were excluded due to the limitations of Wait like Move or Move&Attack were.

Since it's technically not allowed though... would it be worth a Perk to give a character the option "can convert Waits into Do Nothings or All-Out Defenses"? Ideas for a name?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

But everything that refers to turns in the Basic Set – with the sole exception of the active defense rules – hews to the more restricted usage above.[/URL]

Ugh... bad faq. FAQs should never outright change the meaning of the text, that's errata.

Originally Posted by evileeyore

That is where the entire argument of "But the PC's turn is not over yet when they are getting stunned" comes from.

Correct but irrelevant. Recovery from stun occurs at the end of a turn of Do Nothing.

Originally Posted by evileeyore

Returning to devil's advocacy, that doesn't say "you can only ever attempt to recover from stun at the end of a Do Nothing Maneuver"

Sure. If there's an explicit alternate method, that's also available.

Originally Posted by evileeyore

and, to point it out again, recovering from Mental Stun from Surprise is resolved at the start of every turn, not the end.*

That actually has no mechanical effect, because a character who is not in combat is considered to normally be taking the Do Nothing maneuver, so it's effectively the roll at the end of their prior turn of Do Nothing (this does apply that if you stun someone who is currently taking Do Nothing, they can recover at the end of their current turn).

Originally Posted by Plane

Does anyone know what page actually says you can't continue to attack while stunned?

Only the requirement to take Do Nothing on your turn. There does not actually seem to be a rule against a Wait triggering an attack while stunned.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Ugh... bad faq. FAQs should never outright change the meaning of the text, that's errata.

Take it up with the FAQ.

Only the requirement to take Do Nothing on your turn. There does not actually seem to be a rule against a Wait triggering an attack while stunned.

So then the OP's Player should ahve gotten his attack, and then taken a Do Nothing on the next turn. I can accept that ruling.

[Hide]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

So then the OP's Player should ahve gotten his attack, and then taken a Do Nothing on the next turn. I can accept that ruling.

I am OK with that as well.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Only the requirement to take Do Nothing on your turn. There does not actually seem to be a rule against a Wait triggering an attack while stunned.

Since the requirement is for the next maneuver to be a Do Nothing (unless it can transform a remainder of a current turn's maneuver to that) whether it's an untriggered Wait or a half-competed Rapid Strike / Extra Attack the question is what to do when you get stunned mid-attack.

That could also be a major issue if someone triggers a wait during your own attack. For example if you step, their Wait triggers and they stab you, you fail a HT roll and suffer a stun: can you use up the remainder of your allowed movement / attack and then take the Do Nothing next turn? Maybe it takes time for the pain to kick in?