Altering the Initiative Order

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

It seems that you are assuming that the players are using a lot of metagame information to make tactical decisions, and they are usually better at outguessing their opponents. I don't see a lot of risky Waits in my games (Wait generally gets used for less speculative uses like Opportunity Fire to cover a choke-point, or Waiting for another PC's action with a preplanned response); players seem to think that I'm pretty good at having the NPCs behave tactically when I want.

No assumptions required: I describe what I've seen based on experience. "I wait for my opponent to attack, and then I counterattack" is a common tactic. It's not rare, nor is it particularly risky unless your opponent has set up a complex move meant to take you down, or you're playing a low powered game, which I rarely do.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

No assumptions required: I describe what I've seen based on experience. "I wait for my opponent to attack, and then I counterattack" is a common tactic. It's not rare, nor is it particularly risky unless your opponent has set up a complex move meant to take you down, or you're playing a low powered game, which I rarely do.

What if he doesn't attack, but instead exploits your Wait by maneuvering to a better position? What if he attacks but from out of your reach? What if somebody you didn't see attacks you from the side or behind first? Waiting is a gamble that what you think will happen will happen.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

What if he doesn't attack, but instead exploits your Wait by maneuvering to a better position? What if he attacks but from out of your reach? What if somebody you didn't see attacks you from the side or behind first? Waiting is a gamble that what you think will happen will happen.

And what if fairies erupt from his sword and taunt you for waiting? It could happen. What if there is no "better position" to maneuver to and still be within range of attacking you (and in any case, how does your choosing to attack first prevent him from maneuvering to a better position)? What if he's armed with a similar weapon as you, as most people in swashbuckling adventures (rapiers), Action (knives and fists), Chambara (katanas) or Wuxia (fists and kicks)? And in any case, he can only take one step away from you, and you're free, when your wait triggers, to take one step forward, so if you could attack to begin with, you can still attack after your wait. Finally, if someone attacked you from the side or behind, you would have had a problem if you had attacked, waited, or twiddled your fingers or gone with All-Out Defense.

These are ridiculous arguments. You're conjuring highly specific scenarios, or scenarios that are broadly useful anyway, and attempting to use them to disprove the usefulness of wait. Wait has its risks, but these aren't it. The worst is that you'll waste your turn because your opponent won't attack. For example, a much better example, he Evaluates, which fails to trigger your wait, and he's now at a +1. You keep waiting, he keeps evaluating until he does attack (at +3!) and you're possibly in trouble. Moreover, I would imagine that even the most basic fighter would understand that the sort of tactics we're talking about our dueling tactics, not open battle-field tactics, or tactics you use when fighting with a knife against a pikeman, or what have you. In that sense, you're absolutely constructing strawmen.

As you describe it, Wait simply isn't worth taking and nobody uses it unless they have serious meta-game knowledge, but that's simply untrue. "I wait until he attacks and then counterattack" is the bread and butter of sagely judo fighters who "use their opponent's strength against them" or the stereotypical riposte-happy swashbuckler. This sort of things happens all the time, and doesn't require any particular meta-gaming to invoke, nor is it particularly risky, no worse than attacking andbeing parried and thereafter opening yourself up to your opponent Riposting or Counter-attacking or Judo Throwing you.

And that also means this particular artifact will come up in a game as soon as the Judo guy says "Wait a minute, he's primarily a parry guy, I parried and attempted to throw him and he parried, so he's at -4 if I attack again right away!" And that is, absolutely, a flaw. As flaws go, it's hardly the worst. I can think of systems that don't have it, but I wouldn't play in a million years because all their OTHER issues are so much worse. I'm certainly not going to hang up my GURPS spurs because of this, but you're wrong that it won't come up except in the most twinky or unusual of circumstances.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

And what if fairies erupt from his sword and taunt you for waiting? It could happen.

Not having perfect knowledge of the battlefield or perfect prediction of you opponents is realistic. It's not a faerie story at all. Perfect knowledge is the fairy story.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Not having perfect knowledge of the battlefield or perfect prediction of you opponents is realistic. It's not a faerie story at all. Perfect knowledge is the fairy story.

And a lack of perfect knowledge does not mean that making a Wait maneuver is too risky to perform, that it seldom works out, or that it never happens on the tabletop. It is not too risky to perform, it usually works out as expected, and it happens at the tabletop all the time.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

And a lack of perfect knowledge does not mean that making a Wait maneuver is too risky to perform, that it seldom works out, or that it never happens on the tabletop. It is not too risky to perform, it usually works out as expected, and it happens at the tabletop all the time.

It sometimes works out as expected, but it doesn't have to usually work out as expected. It's easy to exploit.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

It sometimes works out as expected, but it doesn't have to usually work out as expected. It's easy to exploit.

Only if you give your opponent the sort of meta-gaming knowledge that you yourself were criticizing just a few posts ago. And it often works out, otherwise you wouldn't see so many moves based on it. Run martial arts often enough, and you start to see why Wait and Evaluate are certainly worth your time.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Run martial arts often enough, and you start to see why Wait and Evaluate are certainly worth your time.

They are worth it, yes (Wait moreso, IME) but they aren't broken. Maybe you should try using Situational Awareness (the GURPS rule) and really thinking about situational awareness (the real world concept, not the GURPS rule) in combat.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

They are worth it, yes (Wait moreso, IME) but they aren't broken. Maybe you should try using Situational Awareness (the GURPS rule) and really thinking about situational awareness (the real world concept, not the GURPS rule) in combat.

Double standards again. Situational awareness for me, but not for thee? C'mon. I have routinely shown you why this would work, that it does happen at the tabletop, that many maneuvers and builds support this sort of tactic, and you have failed, each time, to address them. Can you address them?

Moreover, I never claimed that they were broken. I claimed that being able to double stack an attack on an opponent like that is not very elegant, and that doing so is not nearly as risky, nor to be dismissed, as you and Ericbsmith have. It's there, it'll come up, the question is whether or not you think it's sufficiently problematic to house rule or to walk away from the game. Personally, I think it's mildly annoying at most, but pretending it'll never happen because the instant you wait to attack then your omniscient opponent is going to instantly understand what you're doing and how best to exploit it is nonsense.

[Kuroshima]

In my games, I house rule that any two characters can, at the beginning of the combat, trade positions in the initiative order, as long as:

• Both agree
• No character acts in between their actions.

This must be done before the first round of combat, and if one of the characters is the first in the initiative order, and the other is the last, then the first character must forsake his first action. This is a house rule though.