Incentivizing secondary attacks House Rule

[phayman53]

I was wondering what a good rule would be to incentivize secondary attacks in combat. What I mean by this is that it is almost always sub-optimal to attack with an off-hand weapon, a shield bash, or a pommel strike in GURPS combat. In the case of off-hand weapons, the only time it really makes sense is with a Dual Weapon Attack where both weapons attack at the same time. There is no bonus for alternating weapons in a rapid strike (or in one-two punch combos) as opposed to simply attacking with the best weapon twice. Same goes for shield bashes, with the exception of weapon breakage chances for parrying the weight of a shield and shield slams. Pommel strikes, especially with two-handed swords, likewise only find their niche in close combat--which is not trivial, but is not how they were often used.

In real combat a secondary weapon such as an off-hand dagger or shield (or using those as the primary attack and following-up with the main weapon) or a follow-up attack with a different part of a weapon such as a pommel or butt of a staff/spear/etc is an effective way to make an attack that is more difficult to defend against. In GURPS, however, there is no bonus for doing this and, since the secondary weapon/part of weapon often does less damage, there is often no reason to do it.

I was thinking of making a house rule something like this:

Secondary Weapon Follow-up Attacks:
If an attack is successfully defended against than the next attack made by the attacker against the same target with a different weapon or different end of the same weapon*, all active defenses against the second attack are at an additional -1. This stacks with any RAW penalties for multiple uses of an active defenses in the same turn. This benefit only applies to secondary attacks made on the same turn or the next turn after the initial attack, and only if the first attack was successfully defended against.

*This means a thrust from a spear can benefit from a follow-up butt strike, or a sword attack can benefit from a pommel strike, but a cut from a sword will not benefit from a follow-up stab (same end of the weapon) or a axe attack from a halberd will not benefit from a follow-up with the pick or top spear point (again, same end). GM word is final on whether the follow-up attack is significantly different enough to be harder to defend against.

With this rule, a Dual Weapon Attack Technique on the same target is still useful because both attacks are at -1 to defend against instead of only the second one. Likewise, a rapid strike with alternating weapons gets a slight bonus over rapid striking with the same weapon because the other weapon is a little harder to defend against (I also think rapid striking with multiple weapons should be easier to do than doing it with one weapon, maybe -3/-3 instead of -6/-6, but that is another discussion).

Thoughts?

[DouglasCole]

Kromm had a suggestion like this, as did a few others, when we talked about "openings" during combat. Someone - Christian Blouin I think - even made a random generator.

Let me see if I can dig it up. Might be a bit.

[Kromm]

Another possibility would be to treat a secondary attack on the same turn as being "set up" in a way that prevents the defender's chosen defense against the primary attack from being a valid defense option. For instance, if two rapier-and-dagger fighters face off and one attacks using both rapier and dagger, the other couldn't parry the rapier and the dagger with her own rapier – she would have to parry one with the rapier and the other with the dagger, or parry and then dodge.

Among other things, this would make kicks, open-handed grabs, etc. more viable: Faced with a weapon attack and then an unarmed attack, most defenders would use their high weapon parry vs. the weapon attack and devote a lesser defense to the lower-threat unarmed attack. If they have just one weapon, that would mean nobody's limbs would be endangered by being parried by a weapon.

This would only apply when the attacker is striking using two different attacks. If all the attacks came from one of the attacker's weapons, with the usual penalties for Rapid Strike, then I see no reason not to allow all the defenses to come from one of the defender's weapons, with the standard penalties for multiple parries. Particularly against fencing weapons, this would make sequences like "rapier stab + kick" more attractive than "rapier stab + rapier stab," as someone with high Rapier skill would probably just parry twice in the second case, but would have to fall back on a less-reliable dodge in the first case.

[ericthered]

This is extremely common in cinematic films. Watch the light saber duel in the phantom menace and observe that the weapon that hits the most is Darth Maul's boots.

I've got my own article on how to handle such things when running long combat scenes (in terms of in-game time), but those aren't exactly compatible with Gurp's signature blow by block combat.

My initial concern is that this method has the secondary attack happening too much for not enough hits. Right now it optimizes to every other blow with a mere -1 to defenses on the off-blow. I'd like to see less frequent attacks that hit more. My initial thought is if the foe makes a defense by 0 or 1, you can afterwards make a secondary attack (using normal attack pacing) at -2 (or more).

Another thought is to give the foe -1 to defense, but if you hit you have a random hit location AND a random weapon.

[phayman53]

Originally Posted by ericthered

This is extremely common in cinematic films. Watch the light saber duel in the phantom menace and observe that the weapon that hits the most is Darth Maul's boots.

It's common in real fighting techniques as well. Rapier and Dagger uses it, and Longsword masters taught an opposite-side pommel strike as a follow-up to a parried slash. Likewise, a quick opposite-side strike with a staff is pretty common and effective.

Originally Posted by ericthered

My initial concern is that this method has the secondary attack happening too much for not enough hits. Right now it optimizes to every other blow with a mere -1 to defenses on the off-blow. I'd like to see less frequent attacks that hit more. My initial thought is if the foe makes a defense by 0 or 1, you can afterwards make a secondary attack (using normal attack pacing) at -2 (or more).

Another thought is to give the foe -1 to defense, but if you hit you have a random hit location AND a random weapon.

Well, my initial thought was to give something like the Counterattack Technique penalties, so an additional -2 to defenses with the active defense used against the first attack and -1 to all other defenses. However, I thought this might be too generous when compared to a Dual Weapon Attack, which is only a -1 on all defenses (though it is for both attacks) for a -4 to skill on the attacks.

As it stands, I still think it would not be too over-used because usually the main attack has a much higher damage potential (and quite possibly higher skill), so repeated deceptive attacks at a -2 or -4 to skill would still be preferential against most opponents. Only in the case where an opponent's defenses are particularly challenging would the follow-up attack incorporating a sub-optimal weapon to get an additional -1 to active defenses be efficient. That's my theory, anyway.

[trooper6]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Another possibility would be to treat a secondary attack on the same turn as being "set up" in a way that prevents the defender's chosen defense against the primary attack from being a valid defense option. For instance, if two rapier-and-dagger fighters face off and one attacks using both rapier and dagger, the other couldn't parry the rapier and the dagger with her own rapier – she would have to parry one with the rapier and the other with the dagger, or parry and then dodge.

Would this apply to dodges?

So if the attacker is using rapier/dagger and the defender has no weapons, could they Dodge+Dodge or could they only Dodge and be defenseless for the second attack?

[phayman53]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Another possibility would be to treat a secondary attack on the same turn as being "set up" in a way that prevents the defender's chosen defense against the primary attack from being a valid defense option. For instance, if two rapier-and-dagger fighters face off and one attacks using both rapier and dagger, the other couldn't parry the rapier and the dagger with her own rapier – she would have to parry one with the rapier and the other with the dagger, or parry and then dodge.

Among other things, this would make kicks, open-handed grabs, etc. more viable: Faced with a weapon attack and then an unarmed attack, most defenders would use their high weapon parry vs. the weapon attack and devote a lesser defense to the lower-threat unarmed attack. If they have just one weapon, that would mean nobody's limbs would be endangered by being parried by a weapon.

This would only apply when the attacker is striking using two different attacks. If all the attacks came from one of the attacker's weapons, with the usual penalties for Rapid Strike, then I see no reason not to allow all the defenses to come from one of the defender's weapons, with the standard penalties for multiple parries. Particularly against fencing weapons, this would make sequences like "rapier stab + kick" more attractive than "rapier stab + rapier stab," as someone with high Rapier skill would probably just parry twice in the second case, but would have to fall back on a less-reliable dodge in the first case.

Hmm, this is a very interesting way to handle it. It restricts the bonus to multiple attacks on the same turn, but gives a much higher pay-off. I do not know if I like completely disallowing a second defense with the same defensive option used against the first attack, but maybe a higher penalty than normal for the multiple uses of the same defense. Maybe use an additional -2 to repeated uses of the first active defense (making multiple parries with a non-fencing weapon be at -4, multiple shield blocks at -6, etc.). This makes it still possible, but generally undesirable, to make repeated uses of the same active defense.

That said, I still like there being some benefit for follow-up attacks on the next turn. The reason is that it allows for reacting to the defender's success or failure on the initial defense with out having to sacrifice skill "up front" for a Rapid Strike. For instance, there is a sword play in Longsword where the attacker strikes to the defender's left side and then, if the defender parries, follows-up with a pommel strike to the defender's right. This is very hard to defend against, but it is possible to parry the pommel strike so, if the defender manages to parry the pommel strike, the play ends with a disarm attempt that is made possible by the blocked pommel strike. The point is that each successive move is made possible and more difficult to defend against by the previous one, but only because each follow-up attack is significantly different from each previous attack. But it does not seem to be a "rapid-strike" because of the tempo and the fact that each follow-up attack is completely dependent on the defender's actions. To me, in GURPS, this would best be modeled by attacks and defenses over successive turns. Maybe this should use the setup-attack rules from "Delayed Gratification" in Pyramid 3/52, but with an additional penalty to the follow-up defenses of -1 or -2? This would make set-up attacks with multiple weapons (or different ends of the same weapon) more effective than set-up attacks with one weapon, but would still require skill to utilize properly.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by trooper6

Would this apply to dodges?

So if the attacker is using rapier/dagger and the defender has no weapons, could they Dodge+Dodge or could they only Dodge and be defenseless for the second attack?

Well, they could dodge and then parry unarmed – I think it would cut down on abuse of infinite dodges ("all Dodge, all the time") to do things that way. But I suppose that allowing a dodge both times would be fine, perhaps at -1 per dodge after the first. It's mostly "all Parry, all the time" that gets out of hand, because there's a strong incentive for a fighter to crank up just one skill until multiple-parry penalties aren't that crippling. They would still get the value of multiple parries against multiple attacks from a single weapon or attacks from multiple attackers . . . just not against a single attacker's specific attempt to tie up one weapon with a parry, which is a moderately common real-life tactic.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by phayman53

Maybe this should use the setup-attack rules from "Delayed Gratification" in Pyramid 3/52, but with an additional penalty to the follow-up defenses of -1 or -2? This would make set-up attacks with multiple weapons (or different ends of the same weapon) more effective than set-up attacks with one weapon, but would still require skill to utilize properly.

This is precisely the sort of thing the Setup Attack is designed to help make happen mechanically, so (with obvious bias) I'd head down this route.

[aesir23]

I really like some of the ideas in this thread.

Originally Posted by phayman53

Secondary Weapon Follow-up Attacks:
If an attack is successfully defended against than the next attack made by the attacker against the same target with a different weapon or different end of the same weapon*, all active defenses against the second attack are at an additional -1. This stacks with any RAW penalties for multiple uses of an active defenses in the same turn. This benefit only applies to secondary attacks made on the same turn or the next turn after the initial attack, and only if the first attack was successfully defended against.

Originally Posted by Kromm

Another possibility would be to treat a secondary attack on the same turn as being "set up" in a way that prevents the defender's chosen defense against the primary attack from being a valid defense option. For instance, if two rapier-and-dagger fighters face off and one attacks using both rapier and dagger, the other couldn't parry the rapier and the dagger with her own rapier – she would have to parry one with the rapier and the other with the dagger, or parry and then dodge.

There's no reason these rules couldn't be used together--phayman's rule for attacks in different turns and Kromm's rules for attacks in the same turn.

Another potential approach (which may also be compatible with the two above) would be to use the Reputation rules from Martial Arts in the harshest possible way: Once you've launched a specific attack at a specific location (cut to the head, for example) additional attempts with that attack are defended against at +1. This wouldn't benefit attacking with the other end of a weapon or a secondary weapon any more than it benefits attacking different locations and adding thrusts as well as cuts, but it would certainly promote a more realistic amount of variety.