Feints dominating fights?

[makke]

First of all thanks for all the great answers!

I don't think this is a problem with my players. Like I said before all of us tried (rather hard) to come up with something that doesn't use feint and is able to keep up. This actually doesn't mean everyone was using feints all the time - they did not - but to be the most effective they should have, as far as I can tell.

@Riposte: I don't think this technique is very effective against a foe that is as skilled as you are. Assume your mirror-image that makes frequent use of deceptive attacks to lower his skill to say 12. That makes your tactic nigh impossible or at least extremely risky.

@The Executioner: Too be honest I don't think DR 8 is that impressive. I've just looked up one of our warriors and she would deal an average of 19 to 20 points of dmg to that guy with a single attack to the vitals - without any magical abilities or anything at all but a simple committed attack.

@Circumstances: I find it hard to imagine that ppl happen to frequently stumble into situations in which they are not able to take an extra second to feint. I'm actually aiming to lengthen the time a typical fight needs in my current campaign since I don't think that a fight between a dozen combatants should last only ten or twenty seconds.

@Using combat options: If I'm not overlooking anything obvious the fighter that uses feint to prepare an attack has largely the same combat options as the one who doesn't?!

@Reputation: This is actually not possible in either of my campaigns. Not really. I can see how this works in a campaign like yours with clans fighting each other but this is by no way the typical situation - at least in my games so far.

I think my point about feints is something like this. Assume two equal fighters that can spend 8 CP and have to fight a head on duel in an arena ("Gladiators"). I'm not able to come up with a better option than "increase skill by two levels or, in case you have not maxed the feint-technique yet, max that out and invest the rest in the skill" (if you want, you can vary the available points - I just wanted to exclude extra attacks and stuff like that).

[trooper6]

Originally Posted by makke

I think my point about feints is something like this. Assume two equal fighters that can spend 8 CP and have to fight a head on duel in an arena ("Gladiators"). I'm not able to come up with a better option than "increase skill by two levels or, in case you have not maxed the feint-technique yet, max that out and invest the rest in the skill" (if you want, you can vary the available points - I just wanted to exclude extra attacks and stuff like that).

I wish the Arena game I participated in on RPoL were still up, because then you could have read all the fights we had. While sometimes Feint was awesome...it wasn't always the technique that everyone favored...and it wasn't the technique that always won the fight. There were a lot of different players in that game and a wide range of different fighting tactics and fighter types emerged.

[makke]

Originally Posted by trooper6

I wish the Arena game I participated in on RPoL were still up, because then you could have read all the fights we had. While sometimes Feint was awesome...it wasn't always the technique that everyone favored...and it wasn't the technique that always won the fight. There were a lot of different players in that game and a wide range of different fighting tactics and fighter types emerged.

I guess a backup is too much to hope for, eh? :) This sounds highly interesting.

[Deadite]

Originally Posted by trooper6

I wish the Arena game I participated in on RPoL were still up, because then you could have read all the fights we had. While sometimes Feint was awesome...it wasn't always the technique that everyone favored...and it wasn't the technique that always won the fight. There were a lot of different players in that game and a wide range of different fighting tactics and fighter types emerged.

The campaign I'm currently creating is mostly focused on dueling and raising an NPC to replace your character when it's in its old age, in the game. The disadvantages and advantages are a huge part of the game, but mostly it's all about competitive dueling.

So if you can give some of the example that happened in your arena play it will help my campaign a lot.

[Kuroshima]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Three chances to roll a crit is pretty eh. But it occurs to me that in DF, you'll often face things like ogres, where you'll want to wear down their piles of HP, while in CBR, a single hit is often enough, so players tend to focus on getting that single hit, while in your game, multiple hits are necessary to remove Piles of Hit Points.

Not 3 chances to crit, it's 3 chances to crit per round, or 4 if I decide that you're turtling too much. If instead of attacking at skill 14, I decide to go with skill 17 and only two attacks with the rapid strike, I have a 10% aprox chance with each. If you could go first, and instead start evaluating, and I then rush in, I get three rounds of raining attacks on you. If your single attack doesn't manage to put me down, I get 4 more rounds. If I happen to roll low on any of the feints, you're in for a world of hurt. If I roll a crit, you're in for a world of hurt. If you miss a single defense, you're in for a world of hurt. If once you evaluate me thrice, I retreat and disengage, you've wasted your evaluate. If I move beyond your reach, you lose the evaluate bonus, and I can dive in and repeat. I can do this because while evaluating, you can only move a single step, while I can disengage by moving backward at half move, that should be greater than your own move.

Yes, I'm giving you the first turn. And why not? That +1 evaluate gives me a +1 to defend against all of your feints, and I have sufficient defense to defeat your attack, especially since you're going for quantity over quantity. I'm counting on one, single, powerful attack to defeat you, because I can't get around your defense otherwise.

You're forfeiting the initiative and opening yourself to many tactics by turtling so much. The Last Grasp, that makes Evaluate a decent way to remain in combat while recovering action points, may be helping though.

Yes, a pure dodge monkey can be defeated by a pure skill monkey, but a balance of the two is superior to one or the other, especially if you're focusing on rapid strike, as dodge defeats rapid strike very handily. Even better than Feint + Rapid Strike vs Decent Skill + Mobility is Feint + Deceptive attack (You're doubling up your benefits of skill)

Obviously it's not a one size fits all thing, but it's certainly an option you should not disregard.

Oh, there's lots of ways to defeat this.

Never said there weren't, but this really requires only that you invest in the feint technique, as Extra Attack and Weapon Master/Trained by a Master are things you're going to want anyway.

• Enormous defense and all-out attack: Say I'm strong enough to basically ignore your attacks most of the time, and you have to whittle me down. That Extra Attack stops being useful (it's just +1 attack) if I can afford to ignore it and AoA. That AoA gives me, effectively, +4 to skill. That's 16 points of advantage. That's not necessarily enough to win the day, but it can be when combined with other elements.

No amount of ST/HP is going to save you here. This tactic in fact works even better than yours against big lumbering mases of hit points. Also, AoA means I'm going to telegraphic attack for even more rapid strikes! I'm not going to feint either! Weapon Master will give me at least a +2 damage bonus, and probably a +4 damage bonus (ST 13 is not that high, specially when I don't have über DX, but invest in pure skill instead), meaning that you'll need really heavy armor to make my blows bounce (ST 13 + Weapon Master + Swing+1 weapon means 2d+4 damage, cutting. That's an average of 11 points, and injury is +50%). A big, heavily armored character will bite the dust.

• Enormous mobility and/or stealth: If you can't see me, you can't defend against me. If I attack you from behind, you have to parry at -2 (or not parry at all)

Stealth, that hoses everyone equally. Mobility, I don't see how I'm not that less mobile. ST 13, DX 12, HT 12, Speed 6, Move 6 is reasonable for a fighter, at point levels not that high. Unless you have Move 11, and thus can do 2 yard steps, I fail to see how you're avoiding having to move and attack, and on a combat scale, that's what counts.

A more modest combination of skill and mobility: A run-around attack and solid dodge paired with decent skill can allow for the ability to slide past defenses and keep your defenses high.

How much mobility are we speaking about here?

• Beats and Ruses: Yeah, totally use these, though I use a variation of Icelanders house rule on beats, which makes it more about applying a penalty to a weapon than just a "feint with strength."

While I agree that Beats and Ruses need of some lovin' that's entering house rule territory, and so, specially given that you provide no reference to the actual rules, irrelevant in this discussion.

Note that your ruleset is allowing several of these at once. Specifically, Heroic Charge effectively gives all characters high mobility, so there's no reason to put extra points into some ability that lets you move quickly.

And so part of the trick has been to make the characters have to spend the FP on those heroic charges, so it's unavailable later. The Last Grasp works well for this too. However, need I remind you that you can get the benefits of Heroic Charge, with some extra ones, for 10 points, in DF11? (See Run and Hit, I provided the page reference before)

Why not? In some of those cases my defense skill is higher than your attack skill.

I have no issues with you using Luck to avoid screwups. However, that gives you 15 points less advantage, OR I can have luck too, and remember, you can only use luck once an hour, and in this situation, it would probably mean once between your attacks. Don't selectively quote me to build strawmans.

You're forgetting that your design is 30 points more expensive than mine. For that number of points, I can buy:

• 6 points of DR
• High Pain Threshold, 2 levels of ST and a handful more perks
• 7 more levels of skill and a couple of perks

(EDIT: The comment about 9-12 defenses was incorrect. I was sporting 13-15 defense)

You don't have primacy. You're LOSING. I gave you a best case scenario and still beat you. You're trying to shift the odds while forgetting that I've given you a huge point advantage. The fact that you can exploit that point advantage is not the proof of your supremacy, it's the proof of your higher point value.

Extra attack costs 25 points. You don't need multistrike to feint and attack. You can even take Single Skill to save 5 points (even if you, as a house rule, require multistrike to feint and attack, Single skill will works to make it 25 points)

The PROBLEM with Extra Attack is that it costs THIRTY points, unless you're a dual wielder, and then you can't take advantage of the dual-wielding trick, unless you're feinting with your feet, in which case you need Karate or Brawl at equal levels with your skill, and all of that only saves you 5 points.

Sure, yes, Extra Attack is a big deal. It's thirty points worth of big deal. 6 points of DR is also a big deal, as it 7 levels of skill. But your approach is absolutely not superior, because you're not really stacking benefits and you're assuming a very rigid scenario.

Yes, Feint > Deceptive Attack if you can Feint and Attack in the same turn, but that costs you lots of points. To put this in perspective: Skill 20 + Feint 4 + Extra Attack is an average of -4 dodge and, ultimately, -6 to parry (average victory of 4 on the feint, -2 total from the multiple parries, assuming your opponent doesn't have sufficient dodge that he doesn't care). By contrast, 27 skill is an average of -7 to defense, and +3 to my own parry. OR, it's the same skill level (20) with Will+7 Power Blow. Or...

Well, you get the idea.

Incidentally:

This concedes my point. You're better off stacking deceptive attacks with a feint after using mobility to gain an edge on your opponent than you are mowing into them with a Feint + Rapid Strike combo. You'd be better off LEADING with this (the Evaluates defend against Deceptive Attacks too, so I'd be effectively at +6 defense against you at this point)

I'm better off not feinting once you've evaluated enough that you're probably neutering the benefits of feint and deceptive attack? obviously. However, I can only make a single rapid strike, so if I've got skill to burn with the first attack, why not use it with a deceptive attack?

[Kuroshima]

Continued from the previous post

EDIT:

That won't save you. Luck is good for getting rid of bad rolls, it's not good for giving you great ones. My approach is about flooring your defense SO much that you need an amazing roll to successfully parry. You can't rely on luck to get a 7 or less. You can rely on luck to wipe away a 13+, though, and that's what YOUR technique relies on: One bad roll in the mix. You're throwing a sheer volume of crappy attacks at me that you're hoping, paired with the feint, that my chance of failure will be high enough to snake in a hit. Luck is great at defeating that. My strategy is to hope that you won't roll a 7. Luck is very bad at defeating that.

Luck can be used to make sure I win that feint by a lot, once you roll badly. I only need to be lucky once, while you need to be lucky many times. You need to be at least as lucky as I on the feints (if I roll at 7 on my feint, and you roll a 13, you're SOL). You need to not be unlucky on your defenses (that you're making a great amount) and you need to use it against my crits. Me, I only need it to make sure one of the feints counts, or to defend against your attack. It can be used so my retreating dodge or parry has a good chance to succeed. If I'm using katana+wakizashi (I'm not using it to attack, just to set up cross parries, and do use it at default from broadsword. I don't even need Off Hand Weapon Training, and in a non-asian setting, I would be using a shield for extra defense benefits), I can retreat (+1), Cross parry (+2), Feverish Defense (+2), coupled with my base defense of 14, gives me a final defense of 19. If I dodge, I have a base of 10, +3 for retreat, +2 for Feverish Defense, and maybe an extra +2 if I have acrobatics, for 15-17 if you're giving more penalties to dodge than to parry. How many defensive penalties are you imposing on me? (and this is assuming that I fall in your trap, and don't disengage once you've finished evaluating)

Originally Posted by Mailanka

You know, the more I think about it, the more it bugs me:

You said this, but now you're shifting goalposts. Your'e saying "Mailanka, I've GMed 500+ points Dungeon fantasy and 1k+ supers, and I must say that Feint and high mobility and enough strength to defeat DR and extra attacks and luck and high base skill level for a solid defense, reign supreme."

I mean, the case you're ACTUALLY describing doesn't center on the feint-and-grind, does it? It starts with it, but then flows into other techniques as soon as that doesn't work. It's a tool in your belt, but not the only one.

And that's not really a case of "reigning supreme," at least in my book. So even in YOUR game, while it maybe an SOP, it doesn't exactly dominate the game, does it?

It's obviously another tool in the toolbelt. It is, however, the shiniest, most widely applicable tool in it. It dominates low skill high ST foes. It works wonders in both single combat, and against multiple foes. It is almost always a good aperture, and many times, the aperture becomes the closure. It doesn't require you to invest in things you would not otherwise get, as the Feint technique also doubles as a defense against feints, beats and ruses. Is it an "I Win" button? no! But it does not need it to reign supreme. You use it every combat, and sometimes more than once per combat. It works most of the time, and complements the other options nicely.

As for the games, the DF game started at 250 points, and reached almost 600 points, while the Supers game started at 500 points, and reached 1500 before I reset it. Still, a dedicated fighter may be able to pull it out at 150 points.

[trooper6]

Originally Posted by makke

I guess a backup is too much to hope for, eh? :) This sounds highly interesting.

Originally Posted by Deadite

The campaign I'm currently creating is mostly focused on dueling and raising an NPC to replace your character when it's in its old age, in the game. The disadvantages and advantages are a huge part of the game, but mostly it's all about competitive dueling.

So if you can give some of the example that happened in your arena play it will help my campaign a lot.

The game was in 2010, and once it was over, the GM deleted it, and after a half a year RPoL deleted it from the servers. So it is gone, sadly.

As for examples...I can't really give them...there were over 100 matches, and while I was the statistician--meaning I can tell you the rankings of the fighters, how many unarmed fighters there were, how many group fights there were, how many fights in various arenas, how many maimings and killings, even who fought against whom in any given match...yet I can't give the turn by turn details of the matches...there were too many and it was too long ago. Heck, my first fighter was in the most bouts out of any...with 17 matches...there is no way I can remember all the details of all of my bouts, let alone the ones I wasn't even involved in.

But it was a great game!

[ErhnamDJ]

Kuroshima, couldn't your Feint guy lower his ST to 11 and increase his skill by 5 more?

In the game we're talking about, he said he'd allow up to skill 30. Why not take Feint to 36? Use a Defensive Feint every turn with that Extra Attack. What are they going to do when your Feint is 15 or 20 higher than their skill? Then they can't even hit you with a crit, since you've lowered their skill so much.

[Kuroshima]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

Kuroshima, couldn't your Feint guy lower his ST to 11 and increase his skill by 5 more?

In the game we're talking about, he said he'd allow up to skill 30. Why not take Feint to 36? Use a Defensive Feint every turn with that Extra Attack. What are they going to do when your Feint is 15 or 20 higher than their skill? Then they can't even hit you with a crit, since you've lowered their skill so much.

I'm speaking about what I have personal experience on. If you use a swing weapon to get the most out of Weapon Master (Get an edged rapier if you're in a setting where you're allowed to use them, a longsword or a katana if not), you need ST 13. ST 11 is for people that rely on thrusts. In my game, the Swashbuckler character started with effective Striking ST 13/Skill 20/Feint 24, and ended up with effective Striking ST 21/Skill 30/Feint 36...

[Anthony]

My experience is that feint isn't overpowered per se, but weapon skill is grossly more powerful than anything else you can do with the points unless your basic damage is very very low.