Failed attack rolls

[Gigermann]

Originally Posted by hal

I probably should build a "Modern Bow" and use it for a cyberpunk campaign.

Originally Posted by hal

My GURPS Pyramid selection is VERY SPOTTY

Given that, it may interest you to know (if you didn't) that Pyramid 3/96 Tech and Toys IV has an article, "Arrow of Progress," detailing Ultra-Tech (TL9+) bows and arrows.

[hal]

Originally Posted by Gigermann

Given that, it may interest you to know (if you didn't) that Pyramid 3/96 Tech and Toys IV has an article, "Arrow of Progress," detailing Ultra-Tech (TL9+) bows and arrows.

Ironically enough, I do have that article, but I had purchased that issue strictly for David Pulver's armor rules. The joke is on me that is for sure! My God! Thanks for the shout on it.

The problem with being a GM who gets into an ideas exchange - is that sometimes the ideas may not be ones the players will want to have to deal with. I still rewatch NEXT OF KIN to enjoy those scenes in the cemetery where the archers go up against the goons.

:)

[tbone]

Originally Posted by lwcamp

The main thing I can think of is that newbies are not just attacking every second, either. Even people without training spend a lot of time hesitating and looking for an opportunity. Maybe even more than experts, who have the experience to know when to take the risk and training to make them more aggressive.

I think the discussion overall – definitely including my own contributions – conflates two types of "hesitation": 1) newbies hesitating due to uncertainty and failing to recognize a good attack opportunity, etc.; and 2) experienced fighters holding back due to expertly recognizing a poor attack opportunity.

If one really wanted to finesse these things, they should probably be handled separately through checks that'd be hard for newbies, easy for veterans. Like so:

• Every attack i preceded by a check to see whether the fighter perceives the opportunity, has the nerve to attack, etc. On a failure, the fighter hesitates, and the attack doesn't happen..
• Every miss is followed by a check to see whether the fighter perceived the poor opportunity or the poor attack in time to avoid a whiff. On a success, the fighter held back in time, and the attack didn't happen (with no consequences of a miss).

And I expect the reaction to all that would be a great big "Yechh." No one wants more rolls for every attack.

A "miss by x = hesitation" rule is good in that it adds no extra rolls, but it doesn't differentiate between the above two types of "don't attack", or allow for miscellaneous factors that would affect the likelihood of each occurring.

Then again, regardless of why a fighter didn't attack, the end effect is the same: no attack. So I remain good with the "miss by x = hesitation" idea (should the GM care to model hesitation at all). But, taking experienced fighters into account as well as newbies, I really should think of it more as "withhold attack" than necessarily as "hesitate".

Originally Posted by hal

The maximum draw time (time the bowstring is fully drawn back) is equal to ST+Skill Bonus + 3 less the minimum ST required for the bow.

Some sort of rule for max reasonable draw time sounds fine. And for the bow example I mention, it could prevent the oddity of archery hero guy being able to hold his shot until he's (probably) guaranteed a hit under your rule idea.

But FWIW, that leaves the oddity unsolved for ranged weapons like crossbows, or any thrown weapon. In my target competition example, replace bow with dart, or javelin, or anything else thrown, and you get a highly skilled fighter who, by an oddity of the proposed rule, can only hit the bullseye, or crit miss, but can't score a plain old "normal miss" that strikes outside the bullseye.

So. Your proposal remains interesting, but maybe it's more a rule for melee than for ranged attacks. Would have to play with it more to offer more than that –

[hal]

In thinking about it some more, something as simple as holding your arm straight out for any length of time tends to be fatiguing as well. So firing a rifle or a crossbow might not be able to be held for extended periods of time either. If a weapon is braced, then there really is no reason to try and limit whether or not one has a decent shot or not, but here is where we may be looking at the wrong stat...

Ranged fire and recognizing a bad target solution is more of an IQ issue than it is a DX issue. What if...

Any roll outside of both the DX+Skill and the IQ+Skill determines whether the shot is taken or not? For braced shots - the shooter SHOULD be able to hold their shots. So what margin of "missed by" should determine whether or not the shooter hesitates?

For those who have to hold their weapon up at the ready to fire, the problem becomes one of "how long should they be able to hold their weapon ready? Too long at the weapon's sight picture begins to waver. I think that maybe one of us should mention this to Doug Cole and see what he thinks would be reasonable. The man has more experience with shooting than I ever will.

[Gigermann]

It's been my experience with shooting that you're more likely to take a shot you know is bad (in immediate retrospect) without thinking about it than to hesitate. I assume crossbows are similar in that respect—my experience there being rather limited (but not none). I would tend to feel the same way of bows—you get in a hurry because you're tired of holding it.

Overall, I don't think the hesitation thing works as well for ranged attacks. Well, maybe for thrown types.

My 2¢

[Plane]

Originally Posted by tbone

I expect the reaction to all that would be a great big "Yechh." No one wants more rolls for every attack.

More blech for IRL play with physical dice, using computer rollers which read and total up your 3d6 for you speeds things up where it's less frustrating.

I like your idea of perception checks, but rather than failure being "the attack doesn't happen" I'd just apply MoF as a penalty to the attack. As in you do perceive an opening, but you perceive it late so it's tougher to capitalize on.

Part of the problem with the 2nd "perceives the poor opportunity" thing is it isn't purely mental. Opportunities change in motion, there could be a decent opening as you begin to swing your sword but that opening might vanish mid-swing, when you've already expended energy and also need to deal with counteracting the momentum you've already generated.

I think the way to work that would be to use my idea of a DX-based parry to stop the attack, but to roll your 2nd perception check first. Apply MoS as a bonus to that parry, and apply MoF as a penalty to it. This way, people who are more perceptive will begin to pull back their hopeless attacks sooner, and those less perceptive will begin to pull back their hopeless attacks later.

3 rolls is eve more yechh though, it'd be most tolerable if you had a computer script which would do all these for you.

[Anthony]

I would rather move Perception to DX (there's a decent argument for this for a lot of positional and timing related tests) than move combat skill checks to Perception.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by hal

I think that maybe one of us should mention this to Doug Cole and see what he thinks would be reasonable. The man has more experience with shooting than I ever will.

Without cheating too much, "On Target" from Pyr 3/77 takes this into account explicitly - it's very much designed to handle wavering Aim and occasionally just mashing the trigger and firing when you shouldn't.

[Plane]

You're referring to result 1 of 6 on page 25's "Aiming Critical Failure Table" right?

The closest equivalent for melee attacks is probably Evaluate, so with some tweaks this could be changed to "Retargeting the Evaluate Maneuver" with "Evaluate as a Skill Roll", maybe Acc 1 for arms (range of 1-3 using Variable Accuracy) and Acc 0 for other body parts (range of 1-2 from Variable Accuracy)

Then we could change your All-Out Aim / Committed Aim into All-Out Evaluate and Committed Evaluate.

Instead of a hard cap of B325's "a visible opponent close enough to attack or reachable with a single Move and Attack maneuver" what about range-based penalties like -1 to the skill roll per 20% of your Move the target is from you? Applying the standard penalty for hitting invisible enemies to the roll could also make it possibly (but very difficult) to use evaluate against non-visible enemies too, evaluating their movement and habits by your other senses like you normally would do to some degree with targeting them.

Getting "Evaluate as Attack" from page 27's "Aim as Attack" also keeps Evaluate appealing for people with Extra Attack.

Adapting "Quick Aim" to "Quick Evaluate" would make it workable as a free action to get a bonus, but the huge penalty on a failure would compel someone to choose to attack.

Unless you actually critical fail an Aim skill roll, is there any downside to using Quick Aim and failing normally?

It doesn't appear to force you to make a different maneuver like how a failed Quick Draw forces you to make a Ready and a failed Acrobatic Stand forces yo to make a Change Posture, since it mentions being able to make a shot on that turn at a penalty.

"Wobbly Aim" on 28 seems like a necessity to create consequences for normal failures. So "Wobbly Evaluate" could penalize your very next combat roll, unless you reset it by making a successful Evaluate.

In this case, it's a person perceiving "my skill is too low, I shouldn't risk choosing to attack" and not making the attack roll at all though, not someone failing the attack roll and not attacking anyway. So anyone who chose not to Evaluate would still always whiff, and someone who chose to Evaluate would just be less likely to whiff by getting a bonus, or choosing not to attack if they didn't get a sufficiently nice bonus.

I still like the idea of using non-contact parries (B401 Defending Your Weapon, MA122 What Is . . . a Parry?) for the idea that you begin to commit to an attack, but then dissipate it before fully committing. Expending a parry to do that seems like a fair cost since you should be partially thrown off by having to alter it.

This also deals with weird situations like "I'm throwing a punch at his face, expecting him to dodge it, but I see he isn't dodging, so I want to stop my punch" so you would choose to do it after the target chooses whether or not to attempt an active defence.

If you can choose to do it after the active defence is actually rolled, there should probably be some kind of penalty for waiting, because there's a difference between "I won't punch guys who don't try to dodge" and "I won't punch guys who fail to dodge" or "I don't commit to punches that people try to Aggressive Parry" and "I don't commit to punches that people successfully try to Aggressive Parry". Perhaps the margin of success on a successful defence should be applied as a penalty to the parry roll, or the parry gets a +1 if you choose to do it before the parry roll, or +2 if you choose to do it before the target chooses an active defence (like if you miss).

Since the normal effect of a critical success (changing the attacker's roll into a critical failure) wouldn't make sense (you'd be harming yourself) the substitute reward could be the choice between either not expending the parry or transforming the attack into a free Feint with the weapon.