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Old 01-31-2012, 12:28 AM   #1
mhd
 
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Default Encouraging different attacks

In movies you quite often see people lashing out with kicks, punches or shield butts, even though they have a perfectly fine weapon in their hand, mostly because there's an exploitable situation for that attack. (Seems realistic enough to me, not that I care too much.)

Now I'm thinking about said situations in GURPS… There are a few factors that tone that done, as far as I can see it. Skills might be quite separate, so switching to Brawling while your sword is ready would be pretty useless and often downright dangerous. Also, what weapon hit does matter for wound multiplers and the system is quite granular - so I can't just say that a low damage result was an opportune kick instead of a decent slash or add a punch as an "auxiliary" second hit in the round.

Of course you could do some of that stuff intentionally. Bind the weapon, kick him in the groin. Although the risk and cost/benefit factor involved might not exactly be called encouragement…

The whole opportunism aspect would tie in nicely with critical hits and parries, though. So maybe just playing it a bit more loose with the relevant tables (or creating my own) might be worth the effort.

Any tips for that, rules I overlooked or good ideas for new ones?
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Old 01-31-2012, 12:39 AM   #2
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Default Re: Encouraging different attacks

Most of that would be narration I think.
But it is a good way to describe feints, ruses and surprise moves.
As GM I might even give a bonus to some of those depending how well there described and fit the setting and fight.
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Old 01-31-2012, 01:07 AM   #3
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Default Re: Encouraging different attacks

Yes, Dirty Tricks rules may be the way.

Make extensive use of Grappling and Grabbing by opponents. Or Beats against weapons to make them unready. Or enemies with whips or some other (natural or supernatural) forms of binding. Or stuck PC's weapons with jittes/sais. Use some sticky or soft or narrow environment to make long weapons unready or unwieldy.

To encourage shoves and trips use heavily armored opponents and hostile environment: sticky or slippery ground, water or just occasional bodies lying on the ground could trip shoved opponent.

Disallow Multi-Strike on Extra Attack or just encourage this while character creation.
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Old 01-31-2012, 04:10 AM   #4
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Default Re: Encouraging different attacks

One solution is to treat all non-different attacks the same way repeated Combinations are handled: provide +1 to Active Defences if the attacker refuses to employ anything other than Attack A. You can make the defence bonus stack to some arbitrary number if you're feeling nasty.
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Old 01-31-2012, 04:18 AM   #5
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Default Re: Encouraging different attacks

You could let people have Extra Attack. Maybe even Extra Attack 2 or 3. But don't let them have Multistrike. That will certainly get them thinking in terms of auxiliary attacks. Though also dual-wielding.

One problem is that for armed combatants, secondary attacks usually won't be able use the same skill as their primary, unless they fight with a wildcard skill. For cinematic style, wildcard combat skills might be a good choice, though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
One solution is to treat all non-different attacks the same way repeated Combinations are handled: provide +1 to Active Defences if the attacker refuses to employ anything other than Attack A. You can make the defence bonus stack to some arbitrary number if you're feeling nasty.
That seems like it would mostly encourage making called shots to a couple different locations, rather than out and out switching weapons.
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Old 01-31-2012, 05:59 AM   #6
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Default Re: Encouraging different attacks

IMO there are two ways to do this. A soft way and a hard way.

The soft way is to encourage your players to do this for instance by letting the NPC start doing this and to have people react positively to someone who does so "wow he really exploited all the opening" or "that's a good fighter able to use anything as a weapon". As opposed to someone just using 'Attack with weapon' who would get responses such as "a mindless fighter simply hacking away".
I know this might not seem entirely realistic, but it seems Hollywood-realistic.

Then to encourage it a bit more, you give people bonusses who do so. Allow new attacks a bonus to Deceptive attack and even to Feint. Maybe a higher bonus the more surprising, less-likely and also less-dangerous the attack is.

So using the following bonus to new attacks.
  • -1 to defense if attacking with something held in off-hand, such as a shield, a torch or holy symbol. (Basically anything that is not an obvious weapon).
  • -2 to defense if attacking with a 'unarmed' strike. Kicking, punching, kneeing, pummel strike and so on.
  • -3 to defense if attacking with a very unlikely and risky attack. Spitting in the eye, headbutt to the face, knee/kick to the groin, dropping weapon and attempting to grabble.

Deceptive attack stacks with Feinting as normal, and I would actually give a higher bonus to these kinds of attack if feinting before using the.
So if I Feint and then use a shieldbash I would not only give the -1 to defense, but also give a +1 bonus to the opposite feint-roll. (+2 to Feint for a -2 defense" attack and so on).


-----------------

The alternative way, is the hard way, in which you introduce rules that force the players to use those alternative attacks or suffer some penalty.

This is difficult as players will instinctively try to work around it to make the most optimized attacks anyway. so you will find yourself having to narrow the rules after every major fight-scene until it's very elaborate and hard to keep track of. Yes I'm speaking from personal experience.

Instead, try to keep it simple but still have a consequence.
For instance say that once you have used a weapon to attack using one attack-type every further attack using the same weapon type gives the defender a +1. The only way to reset this is to attack with a completely new weapon.
Combat Manoeuvre and target location doesn't mater, as that just add bookkeeping.

So a sword can be used in two way, thrust and swing. Once you have done one of each your opponent will get +1 defense no matter what you do untill you attack using a completely new weapon. This could be a shieldbash, a kick, or using an alternative weapon.

If you want the added detail or enforce it harsher, you could increase this bonus to defense for people making the exact same attack "thrust to torso" for instance. Giving a cumulative +1 bonus until they do something else, then it falls down to the normal +1 for not making new attacks.


This type of rule make players do their 1-3 type of attacks and then a new attack to get rid of the penalty and then start over. This mimic Hollywood pretty well where the "kick to groin" or "shield bash" only comes every so often to break up the rain of blows.

Last edited by Maz; 01-31-2012 at 06:34 AM.
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Old 01-31-2012, 06:28 AM   #7
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Default Re: Encouraging different attacks

Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
One solution is to treat all non-different attacks the same way repeated Combinations are handled: provide +1 to Active Defences if the attacker refuses to employ anything other than Attack A. You can make the defence bonus stack to some arbitrary number if you're feeling nasty.
Or give the defender a -1 (or even a -2) to defend against an attack from a different limb.
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Old 01-31-2012, 06:33 AM   #8
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Default Re: Encouraging different attacks

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
That seems like it would mostly encourage making called shots to a couple different locations, rather than out and out switching weapons.
Or same called shots with different weapons. What it does is prevent builds that do nothing but Thrust with Rapier into Eye.
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Old 01-31-2012, 06:47 AM   #9
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Default Re: Encouraging different attacks

Simplicity is the key to any additional rules for this sort of thing, by the very nature of what you're attempting to accomplish you're already making combat more complicated (remembering hit location penalties, using more than one combat skill, more than one damage amount and injury type etc).
I'd just go for "combo points", allow each successive attack that is different from those before it either add +2 to hit or +2 to damage on any future attack in this current engagement. This is added cumulatively, so different three attacks would allow a forth to have either +6 to hit, +6 to damage, or some variation of the two (+2/+4 etc). More than one turn of not hitting something (due to choosing not to or missing) resets this count, you can spend it in chunks.

This allows you to offset penalties incurred from mixing it up and aiming at harder locations etc, and have cool "finishing moves" which end a fight or help down an opponent. You will often find that you'll need to use some of the combo point pool to allow extra attacks which would normally fail whilst waiting for an opening to do a final decisive attack (if defensive manoeuvres and faints are used heavily). This helps emulate fights where not much damage is being dealt for a lot of the fight, but someone can clearly be "winning" and "losing", and then the odd decisive hit lands home and does lasting injury (often one big over the top attack).

Continuously changing between attacks needs to provide a benefit that will counteract the inherent complexity and reduce performance from actually doing it... as such I suggest doing just that, providing big chunks of bonuses to help balance it out.
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Old 01-31-2012, 07:03 AM   #10
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Default Re: Encouraging different attacks

Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
One solution is to treat all non-different attacks the same way repeated Combinations are handled:
Or, just conclude that the people in the movies are using Combinations. It seems to me that real, untrained people really do tend to just whack at each other.
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