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Old 11-10-2017, 07:30 AM   #21
Canuck Lad
 
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Default Re: Attack is not opposed?

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Originally Posted by zoncxs View Post
As someone who practice longsword, your assumption is wrong. I don't claim to be a master of the sword, but I am well enough that a beginner wouldn't even land a strike on me. Most people who have been practicing for a little while won't be able to land much of anything less than me messing up.
I never said anything in opposition to this.


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Originally Posted by zoncxs View Post
If someone with a skill level of 12 fights someone with a skill level of 16, the parry scores are 9 and 11, the skill 16 person could take -4 to skill, dropping it to 12, when they attack which lowers the opponents defense from 9 to 7. That is technique in real life. Its harder to defend against the expert swordsmith because they can take bigger penalties and still land strikes.
So you fight a novice. Let's say you choose to put in no more mental exertion than he does. You're saying your attacks are no less difficult to defend than his? I don't believe that is correct.
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Old 11-10-2017, 07:38 AM   #22
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Default Re: Attack is not opposed?

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Originally Posted by Tomsdad View Post
As Sir Pudding said you could just assume all NPC's roll a 10 or 11 on their attacks and defences leaving just the PCs to roll. Your results will be somewhat predictable and binary.
Most rolls on 3D6 are 10 or 11 anyway. And you still get randomness from the players rolling...
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Old 11-10-2017, 07:59 AM   #23
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Default Re: Attack is not opposed?

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Originally Posted by Canuck Lad View Post
Most rolls on 3D6 are 10 or 11 anyway. And you still get randomness from the players rolling...
Try it out and report back. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would like to hear about your experience. There are many, many ways to make use of the GURPS rules. Most of the fine folks on these forums are not-at-all interested in a singular Best Way to Play.

For myself, I get bored of rolling back and forth if there aren't any meaningful choices to be made based on those rolls. For example, I don't like just wearing down an opponent's pool of hit points. If, however, I can make tactical choices to improve my odds of ending a fight quickly, then I'm happy to roll buckets of dice.
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Old 11-10-2017, 08:12 AM   #24
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Default Re: Attack is not opposed?

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Originally Posted by Canuck Lad View Post
Wouldn't that be inherent in their attack without a penalty?

ie: It's harder to defend against the expert swordsmith because his attack is so clever and well placed, and because he understands the motion of the blade so well. What you describe I don't consider the same thing.
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Originally Posted by Canuck Lad View Post
I never said anything in opposition to this.
Sorry, meant the reverse, its easier to land hits when you know what to do. (but what I said before is also true). Its also easier to make your attacks more difficult to avoid, in GURPS this is represented with high skill level and penalties.

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Originally Posted by Canuck Lad View Post
So you fight a novice. Let's say you choose to put in no more mental exertion than he does. You're saying your attacks are no less difficult to defend than his? I don't believe that is correct.
But it is correct, you are fighting at their level, of course you will also be able to defend against them more easy than them to you, and you will be landing more hits. but they will have a better time trying to parry and avoid because of that, if you decided to make it harder, in GURPS you do that by taking penalties.

Someone with skill level 18 vs 12. that is a parry of 12 vs 9.

the 18 person can target arms or legs and still roll against 16, the 12 person would barely land those hits without taking a few seconds to evaluate.

the 18 person would also defend against the 12 person more easily and without needing to step back as much, the 12 person would be stepping back.

if the 18 person wants to land hits more easly, they can make their attacks more difficult to defend against, GURPS treats that as the -2/-1. the 18 person could take -4 to give -2 making it more harder for the 12 person to defend.


I train with people who are still learning the basics of longsword, I don't go all out (by that I mean using techniques that would land on them because they don't know how to defend), I fight at their level (or a little more) so they can learn, this is true for all fighting.
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Old 11-10-2017, 08:32 AM   #25
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Default Re: Attack is not opposed?

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Originally Posted by Canuck Lad View Post
...
So you fight a novice. Let's say you choose to put in no more mental exertion than he does. You're saying your attacks are no less difficult to defend than his? I don't believe that is correct.
I'm not quite sure how mental exertion would be expressed or quantified here?

If you mean put as much effort into it = both just going off basic skill and not trying anything tricky like making an attack that is particularly hard to defend against. Then the result your looking for is the one you get in the system. In GURPS the end result is the net effect of both an attack roll and a defence roll*. And the net result is a novice will indeed avoid being hit less often against a high skill opponent. Also if we're just looking at attacking then both putting the same effort as defined above will mean a higher skilled fighter will have a higher chance of success than a lower skilled one.

So an example of this:

High skill fighter Skill 20 (parry 13)
Novice Skill 10 (parry 8)


Ignoring all mods and just going on basic skill:

High skill fighter will make a successful attack 98% of the time and successfully parry 84% of the time

Novice will make a successful attack 50% of the time and successfully parry 26% of the time

So they fight, not doing anything fancy just attacking and parrying. Each time one attacks it will be:

High skill fighter will be on target and the novice will fail to defend 73%
Novice fighter will be on target and the high skill fighter will fail to defend 8% of the time.


The thing is both fighter's ability to attack and defend against attacks factor into this result.

The novice is worse at defending in abstract, but because the high skill fighter is also better at attacking the novice's weakness in defence will mean they'll get hit more often than if they were fighting someone less skilled. For instance if the novice was fighting another skill 10 novice they will only be hit 37% of the time

But the end result is if by equal mental effort you mean both are just rolling against their basic skill, then yes the novice will have a far harder time avoiding getting hit than the high skill fighter will.

This all leaves aside the rest of the stuff I mentioned earlier about the various options the high skilled fighter can use to further leverage their advantage in skill to get better or quicker result

However you might consider this as more exertion. But the novice can also mentally exert themselves in this way. However because they are less skilled they are less able to do so and still be on target in the first place! Moreover even if they are on target against the high skill fighter, a lot of these tricks will be less effective because the high skill fighter also has a significant advantage in being able to defend!

You could view how much exertion they are putting is could be expressed as what's needed for both to be as likely achieve their goal. So the novice at basic skill has 50% of being on target, Mr high skill can also decide to be on target 50% of the time, (effective skill 10) and leverage that -10 penalty in some other way e.g penalising the novices defence by -5.

Another way of putting that is Mr high skill can put a lot less effort into hitting 98% of time than the novice, who would need to find +6 in bonuses to get the same chance of 98%!.



*or in situations where there's no defence roll it's just the attack roll (which is more likely to end in successful hit than if there is defence roll)


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Originally Posted by Canuck Lad View Post
Most rolls on 3D6 are 10 or 11 anyway. And you still get randomness from the players rolling...
You do, but you get a reduced spread of results when you have one roll vs. a set result than one roll vs. another.

The problem is the defence roll is binary in result (you either successfully make it or you don't). So assuming a roll of 10 that will mean that all defences that are made against defence "skill" of 10 or higher will be successful and all those that are against a 9 or lower will fail. No matter what.

However as I suggested there are a couple of ways of doing this. if you allow those who have set results to still adjust their defence by the various mods and options in the rules they can at least adjust when and where they successfully defend.

But you will still have known end results.

So for instance say you have a mook who has a broadsword skill 12 that will mean they parry at 9

If we assume they always roll 10, then they will never successfully parry.

But if they retreat while parrying (+1 to parry with a broadsword) their parry score increases to 10, and they will always successfully parry if we assume that always roll 10. Well unless those attacking them lower their parry again in some way, or some other factor does.


Thing is if you do allow for all the usual options to adjust defence then you are still tracking all these variables that may effect defence, and IMO doing the bulk of the detailed work anyway. So why not just roll the dice to model both side attempting to do something that directly contests with each other?

If of course you decide not to bother with options for adjusting defence and have automatic rolls, than you end up with people who never successfully defend or always successfully defend.

Or you can go for the Quick contest option I out lined as well

Don't get me wrong you want to have a fixed result to remove a dice roll go for it, what ever your view on spreads of results or any of the above it will be quicker!

Last edited by Tomsdad; 11-11-2017 at 03:06 AM.
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Old 11-10-2017, 02:18 PM   #26
Ulzgoroth
 
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Default Re: Attack is not opposed?

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Originally Posted by Canuck Lad View Post
I don't agree. You're saying the expert swordsman exerting no more conscious thought than the novice produces an attach which is no more efficient?
I didn't say anything about conscious thought, and I don't see any reason for you to either.

What I was getting at was that when the expert swordsman performs a no-deceptive, random-target-location attack they're performing the same attack as when the novice does (so long as neither of them fails, or crits, of course). Not a better version. They can perform a better version if they want to, and unlike the novice they probably do want to.

EDIT: The expert might be exerting less conscious thought to for the same attack, which might be part of why they're (much) less likely to fail at it. Maybe. 'conscious effort' isn't really a core consideration.
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Last edited by Ulzgoroth; 11-10-2017 at 02:22 PM.
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Old 11-10-2017, 02:31 PM   #27
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Default Re: Attack is not opposed?

Obviously, other than, sort of, hit location, nothing in a real fight (or sparring) has the granularity of GURPS maneuvers and attack options. If that's a problem, then GURPS probably isn't the right system, but honestly I don't know what system would be.
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Old 11-10-2017, 04:12 PM   #28
mr beer
 
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Default Re: Attack is not opposed?

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Originally Posted by Canuck Lad View Post
Most rolls on 3D6 are 10 or 11 anyway. And you still get randomness from the players rolling...
Only 25% of rolls on 3d6 are either 10 or 11, I think.

With the opposed skill thing, that’s how I played GURPS 3e. In 4e though I found the wider variety of combat options made it more interesting to drop that house rule. YMMV.
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Old 11-10-2017, 05:08 PM   #29
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Default Re: Attack is not opposed?

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Only 25% of rolls on 3d6 are either 10 or 11, I think.
54/216 (25%) are 10 or 11. 104/216 (48.1%) are 9-12. To get up to 'most' requires adding 8 or 13 to the range (either gets it up to 125/216 or 57.9%).
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Old 11-10-2017, 07:45 PM   #30
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Default Re: Attack is not opposed?

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Originally Posted by Canuck Lad View Post
So you fight a novice. Let's say you choose to put in no more mental exertion than he does. You're saying your attacks are no less difficult to defend than his? I don't believe that is correct.
No. He said exactly the opposite of that.

The expert exerts himself, taking riskier moves (Deceptive Attack) which he has a better chance of performing the novice (who can't even perform that level of Deceptive at all) in order to advantage of the novice's much lower defensive capacity.

The expert simply doesn't get this for free. If he wants to just trade generic swings with his foe (expending no more "mental" effort than the novice), he will strike with more surety (only failing on a 17 or 18 where the novice misses on a 13+) and has a greater defensive capacity. So he is likely to eventually win (in the Infinite Whiteboard of Theorycrafting).

but the expert can afford to get sneaky. They can better throw Deceptive Attacks. They can Feint. They can aim for better targets (like their foe's weapon arm, or a leg) for a faster means of ending the fight.

But again, they don't get this if they just trade vanilla swings that they have managed to 'perfect'.
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