Wait Maneuver clarification

[Adversary]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

And the princess is relevant to this story how?

It's pretty simple, really. It's because you don't have enough reach. You've got one yard reach advantage, and advancing one yard means losing one yard worth of standoff.

If you had a two yard reach advantage you could advance and still have a yard of standoff.


As Sir Pudding points out, the extra yard does give you room to have more favorable defenses against the Wait than you could afford to use if you only had a reach 1 weapon.

Because I like princesses? And also because she explains why Joe must stand and fight, and why Bill isn't playing a standoff game, but is advancing.

I don't think that "You've got one yard reach advantage, and advancing one yard means losing one yard worth of standoff" really explains anything. If Bill is two yards from Joe, and does a step-and-attack, he is now one yard from Joe--close enough to attack Joe but not so close Joe can attack him. The only way Joe gets to hit Bill first is if Joe can then suddenly step AND attack before Bill can complete his attack.

I mean, this could be easily tested. Just get a friend. Tie your arms behind your back. Then see if you can headbutt him before he can touch you with his hands. I bet that you cannot, not even if you are waiting for him and he moves toward you. And if you can, it'll be because he misses and/or you are much faster and more skillful than he is.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Adversary

I don't think that "You've got one yard reach advantage, and advancing one yard means losing one yard worth of standoff" really explains anything. If Bill is two yards from Joe, and does a step-and-attack, he is now one yard from Joe--close enough to attack Joe but not so close Joe can attack him. The only way Joe gets to hit Bill first is if Joe can then suddenly step AND attack before Bill can complete his attack.

I mean, this could be easily tested. Just get a friend. Tie your arms behind your back. Then see if you can headbutt him before he can touch you with his hands. I bet that you cannot, not even if you are waiting for him and he moves toward you. And if you can, it'll be because he misses and/or you are much faster and more skillful than he is.

To belabor the terribly obvious, it characterizes the difference between standing on the defensive and pressing the attack in terms of spacing.

But what it really seems you're not accepting is that Wait gives you initiative, such that you can interrupt an opponent and perform your wait action at that point.

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by Adversary

But all of these require the shorter fighter to do something, perhaps requiring considerable speed and skill, to deal with the other's reach. It isn't an automatic function of just choosing a wait maneuver.

The shorter reach fighter did do something, he took a Wait.

I'm not sure why people want it to be "Take a Wait, and do something else." The something he did was Wait, and specify a trigger, and his opponent can either act and set off that trigger or not. He's taking a risk that he's just hanging out and not getting to do anything on his turn. That may not be a big risk, or a real cost, in all circumstances, but so what? He's found the right circumstances to do this in.

Yes, this works really well vs. a timid attacker who doesn't want to trigger a Wait, and when you just want to stand someone off. It also means short-reach fighters are better off either really pressing the advantage, or doing a Wait and then doing so, against a long-reach opponent. But that's not unrealistic IMO.

If this really bothers you, just make all Waits into Cascading Waits. Having played in 3e with lots of Waiting fighters being basically out-beat by better fighters, I think this is a bad idea. But if it's what you want, why not just do it and report back on how it worked out in play?

[DouglasCole]

"No one takes Wait anymore. This game sucks."

:-)

[Adversary]

I'm not saying I have a better way to handle it. Maybe, for playability and balance's sake, this is how it has to work. But Gurps is supposed to attempt to simulate reality. It isn't realistic that, if I have a yardstick and my friend doesn't, that he can consistently touch me with his hand before I can touch him with the yardstick, as long as he waits and I advance on him.

There may not be a better way to handle it. But I don't see how you can deny that it is a problem.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Adversary

I'm not saying I have a better way to handle it. Maybe, for playability and balance's sake, this is how it has to work. But Gurps is supposed to attempt to simulate reality. It isn't realistic that, if I have a yardstick and my friend doesn't, that he can consistently touch me with his hand before I can touch him with the yardstick, as long as he waits and I advance on him.

There may not be a better way to handle it. But I don't see how you can deny that it is a problem.

He can't consistently touch you. He can consistently step right as you do and make the attempt to touch you, which you may defend against as usual. You can even Riposte and step back, I believe, as a normal part of the defense, maintaining your distance. You can also use Committed Attack to take advantage of the two steps rule, and back off even more, forcing him to close on you.

Getting past the tip of the spear (or the sword if you've got a Reach C knife) from the "just out of stabbity range" isn't really that difficult unless your foe is actively prepared for it. The mental hard part of this is that the GURPS rules are designed to enforce the reality of a swirling melee, which means many of our natural attempts to perform thought experiments that start with "consider two guys on a featureless infinite plain" are doomed to give misleading results, because we're throwing out one of the key assumptions of the combat system: that your attention is not fixed on your foe, but spread out among many threats.

I make the example in Technical Grappling that in GURPS terms, it would be as if each combatant in an MMA match could be attacked with arrows from the crowd, or have the ref pull a 9mm and try and shoot one of the two fighters at any time. Is it plausible that the Waiting character can leverage that distraction to step in? Much more so.

For game mechanical things, though, would you have an issue with the Wait if the advancing Reach 2 spearman was restricted to swings? Perhaps what we can do is give a bonus to the Reach 2 guy's defense if he's attacking with a thrust? Enough to counteract the usual penaly to Parry for Aggressive Parry, which would basically be "I impale him as I come in."

But if he takes his weapon out of line to make a swing, well, yeah, the Waiting guy should be able to enter. I've done it myself, and we do fight long vs short (both sword and spear, though not together usually).

But if you get a +2 to defend, so you get a full Aggressive defense vs. the other guy if you keep your weapon in line by thrusting, that would damp down the perceived incongruity without changing the basic fast that Wait guy gave up his entire turn to do just this move.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Getting past the tip of the spear (or the sword if you've got a Reach C knife) from the "just out of stabbity range" isn't really that difficult unless your foe is actively prepared for it. The mental hard part of this is that the GURPS rules are designed to enforce the reality of a swirling melee, which means many of our natural attempts to perform thought experiments that start with "consider two guys on a featureless infinite plain" are doomed to give misleading results, because we're throwing out one of the key assumptions of the combat system: that your attention is not fixed on your foe, but spread out among many threats.

I make the example in Technical Grappling that in GURPS terms, it would be as if each combatant in an MMA match could be attacked with arrows from the crowd, or have the ref pull a 9mm and try and shoot one of the two fighters at any time. Is it plausible that the Waiting character can leverage that distraction to step in? Much more so.

This argument wouldn't hold much water if the spearman was making an AoA. (Which in GURPS would be suicide, unless it was an AoA (long) which did not trigger the wait.)

[fifiste]

Not looking for the game balance at all.
But on the simulation angle - just giving up on other actions on your part does not mean that you automatically succeed into stepping aside and past from someones spear point. It's kind of ridiculous. Avoiding someones spear point - no matter who is advancing. Should be the matter of skills/speed etc. Maybe some actions and situations should give (large or small) bonuses or penalties but it should never be automatic.

You walk towards me with a spear. Well as long as I plan nothing than to avoid your spear and step aside the tip - then I will automatically succeed in that!

Id get if that'd be somekind of contest, and being the one pushing move or doing other thing, makes you crappier in it than the one focusing on stepping in.
Maybe it is all fine and dandy because of game balance and what not. really don't know. But talking that something is automatic - because realistically it is easier for someone concentrating on stepping in to do it does not make sense. Easier (or not even much easier) does not equal automatic.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

This argument wouldn't hold much water if the spearman was making an AoA. (Which in GURPS would be suicide, unless it was an AoA (long) which did not trigger the wait.)

I'm not sure I see your point here. AoA (Long) has been one of the things brought up consistently as one of the ways Reach 2 can maintain some advantage (or at least force his foe to do Move and Attack or something else), so I think we're in agreement that it's one way for high-reach guy to maintain distance and menace the Reach 1 guy. So your point is that if the spearman chooses the really bad idea of making an AoA (Anything but Long) against a Waiting foe, he's hosed? I'm not sure that's a bug.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

I'm not sure I see your point here. AoA (Long) has been one of the things brought up consistently as one of the ways Reach 2 can maintain some advantage (or at least force his foe to do Move and Attack or something else), so I think we're in agreement that it's one way for high-reach guy to maintain distance and menace the Reach 1 guy. So your point is that if the spearman chooses the really bad idea of making an AoA (Anything but Long) against a Waiting foe, he's hosed? I'm not sure that's a bug.

I'm saying that if the spearman is making an AoA, distraction from other participants is no longer a relevant factor. So there'd better be some other reason than baked-in worrying about whether the ref will pull a gun for the swordsman being able to get the first shot.