[Martial Arts] Should a Beat prevent using a weapon to attack?

[Anthony]

Realistically Beat should probably not be a separate maneuver, it should just be a subspecies of Deceptive Attack. You don't do a beat and then wait around, it just flows immediately into an attack. The defensive aspect of a Beat is primarily as a means of getting past a Wait, and can be mechanically represented by parry.

[kmunoz]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Only as an artifact of turns

Right, but that's the game we're playing, isn't it? And beats exist in GURPS and according to RAW turns are not simultaneous. The rules should be designed to account for the way the rules are designed.

So answers about how it works in the real world, especially when they describe sequences that are not standard in GURPS RAW, aren't relevant.

If beats were only allowed as part of a rapid strike, your point would have merit.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by kmunoz

Right, but that's the game we're playing, isn't it? And beats exist in GURPS and according to RAW turns are not simultaneous. The rules should be designed to account for the way the rules are designed.

Sometimes the correct answer is "they should never have written the rule that way".

[phayman53]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

If the attacker has initiative, the defender is stunned and can't attack at all. You probably mean sequence (i.e. this isn't D&D).

Well, since I started my post in the previous sentence (the part that you didn't quote) by using the word sequence specifically to describe what happens in a GURPS turn...yes, that is what I meant. D&D was my first and only p&p rolepaying game for years and I forgot that initiative has a technical meaning in GURPS that is very different from D&D.

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Only as an artifact of turns, in real life the weapons can still be in contact (or not), and fighters relative positions can be constantly changing. In other words it's possible for me to knock your weapon to the side, while stepping into your guard, which still leaves your weapon able to strike from that side but makes defending against attacks along the same line as my advance less economical.

True, but my point is that it seems to me that it still would be more difficult to make such a strike because options are more limited. It is still possible, but hampered to the degree that the beat is successful. I never argue that it should be impossible (unlike the RAW GURPS bind technique, which renders attacks with the bound weapon impossible), only that it should make the attack more difficult. As a corollary example, large shields give a penalty of -2 to attack for the one using a large shield because they cuts down on attack options due the size of the shield limiting one's options with a weapon (and LTC2 expands this to almost all shields with an optional rule). Likewise, having one's weapon beat aside limits one's attack options, so should there also not be a penalty to make an attack while one's options are limited? Anyway, you seem to think not and I definitely see your point that just because a weapon is off-line does not mean it cannot attack. I still think that such an attack is more difficult though.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by kmunoz

Right, but that's the game we're playing, isn't it? And beats exist in GURPS and according to RAW turns are not simultaneous. The rules should be designed to account for the way the rules are designed.

So answers about how it works in the real world, especially when they describe sequences that are not standard in GURPS RAW, aren't relevant.

If beats were only allowed as part of a rapid strike, your point would have merit.

If we treat the rules as an abstract, it is clear that only defensive beats penalize attacks. So it must be that offensive beats only put the weapon out of a defensive position, they still allow an unpenalized attack. "The rules are the rules, because they are the rules" doesn't really get anywhere, I don't think.

[kmunoz]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Sometimes the correct answer is "they should never have written the rule that way".

Sure. I'm on board with that. But people are defending the RAW on the basis of a real world example that can't be reproduced in RAW without an added option (rapid strike).

[phayman53]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

If we treat the rules as an abstract, it is clear that only defensive beats penalize attacks. So it must be that offensive beats only put the weapon out of a defensive position, they still allow an unpenalized attack. "The rules are the rules, because they are the rules" doesn't really get anywhere, I don't think.

Is there a RAW defensive beat option (I know there is one for feints)? Still, I tend to think beats are underpowered as an option compared to feints. Even if a character has much higher ST than DX, the beat only targets one defense and requires more actions to set-up (successful active defense-beat-attack). I know maneuvers do not need to be balanced, but I do not think it would overpower beats relative to feints to add a defensive element to them. There is even precedent for allowing both offensive and defensive benefits to a maneuver: MA 100 adds a defensive benefit to Evaluate maneuvers to help counter deceptive attacks and feints (and you don't lose the offensive value of the evaluate while using it in this way).

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by kmunoz

Sure. I'm on board with that. But people are defending the RAW on the basis of a real world example that can't be reproduced in RAW without an added option (rapid strike).

I'm not saying that it is a rapid strike. If I beat your weapon to my right, then you can still attack from that quarter without penalty but it's going to harder for you to defend against attacks coming from my left.

Why not just allow a beat to split some of the penalty between offensive and defensive penalties?

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by phayman53

Is there a RAW defensive beat option (I know there is one for feints)?

"Beat" is an option for the Feint Maneuver and Martial Arts p.101 explicitly says under Defensive Feint "You can use a feint (including a Beat or a Ruse) to make it harder for your enemy to attack you instead of weakening his defenses."

[kmunoz]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I'm not saying that it is a rapid strike. If I beat your weapon to my right, then you can still attack from that quarter without penalty but it's going to harder for you to defend against attacks coming from my left.

Yeah. I'm with you there. But the other real world examples being offered were ones that involved a beat and an immediate followup attack, with the opponent having no opportunity to attack in between. So they didn't actually address the original issue, unless they were assuming a rapid strike (which the OP was not). And your example above also is a special case, because a beat and the subsequent attack in GURPS can both be done from the same side (on separate turns). There's nothing in the rules about beats that prevents it, and your example doesn't cover it.