Realistic Human DR

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by mburr0003

Only because Evaluate, Concentrate, and "Catch Your Breath" (aka Do Nothing) are suboptimal choices in GURPS.

Arguably, Evaluate should be a Free Action for a trained fighter at any range where Vision rolls aren't required to pick out target details. I'd allow it at a -4 penalty compared to the standard Evaluate maneuver. That allows a decent fighter to pick up useful details about their foes after a few seconds of combat.

Concentrate becomes useful if your weapons extend to supernatural or ultratech powers. ("I'm concentrating on using my HUD-based communicator-linked targeting laser to paint my target as the target for one of the orbital missiles.")

Do Nothing is GURPS' booby prize. Per RAW, unless it's part of a Wait gone bad, You only Do Nothing if you're Stunned or otherwise incapacitated. Unofficially, it can also happen if the GM is being strict about keeping play moving and declares that a PC is Doing Nothing on their turn because their player dithered too much about what maneuver they wanted to use. If it actually counted towards FP recovery Do Nothing might be a bit more attractive in running fights. As it is, if you're going to Do Nothing you might as well do an Evaluate or interruptible Long Action instead.

If GMs really wanted fights to go longer, they could rule that you're limited to HT seconds of intense physical activity before you have to take a break and that you can go for Per seconds of any sort of combat activity before you lose situational awareness and have to Evaluate your situation.

Will + Fearlessness/Fearfulness rolls might be required before you can perform any action that puts you in a more dangerous situation compared to your current one (e.g., rushing from one covered position to another if the gap between them is known to be covered by enemy fire, pushing ahead of your allies to engage a specific enemy, chasing a retreating enemy into a situation where you could be flanked). Failure means you hesitate and Do Nothing.