Do Feint and Deceptive Attack maneuvers produce cumulative defense penalties?

[Gudiomen]

Originally Posted by Captain-Captain

Sheer speed is best represented by rapid attack or upwards on the multiple attack chain, not as deceptive which pretty much includes faking out your oppoent so it does overlap with the Feint mechanic.

I think you're reading it wrong. Although the name is "deceptive attack" it doesn't reflect merely trying to deceive your oponent, wich I agree, would be a feint. In that case a deceptive attack would be the equivalent to a feint+attack AoA, all wraped up into one and pretty cinematic. This is not so, however.

Not all the attacks that are tricky to defend are atempts to mislead your oponent. And the speed of an attack is not the general speed in wich you can make attacks that's your "rate of attack" so to speak. What kromm means by speed is for instance a 20 mph punch versus a 30 mph punch. It's harder to defend only because you need to act faster, get your defenses up and in place faster... and thats trickier. Likewise an attack from an odd angle can be dificult do defend, even if it's obvious you have to twist yourself to defend, and thus defense becomes less practical and less instinctive. There are numerous ways in wich an attack can be deceptive to the defender, this doesn't mean that the attacker is trying to "deceive" him, he's just trying to get past the defenses. Past the defenses, not around them. This is the main difference between DA and Feint... one is meant to get through the other to weaken or to circumvent the defenses indirectly.

The difference can be subtle, I agree, but I don't see it as cinematic. There are several instances in wich a tricky attack lands withing 1 second, in real life martial arts or swordplay that doesn't require a "faked attack", a feint is a pretend attack, while a deceptive attack would be an attack that does land but may describe an awkward path to it's target. In this sense it can be deception, but it isn't a feint, it isn't a false attack... it's real, it will land and it's that much dangerous for it.

Most people that seem to have trouble with this sort of attack seem to be the ones using cinematic levels of skill (16+), while even 14 should be considered veteran. On the other hand, we have very high defenses if used properly, so the mechanism brings combat back down to more realistic levels where people don't spend an hour not hitting each other.

[mcv]

Originally Posted by Kromm

@mcv: What Peter and I are saying isn't "every feint is effective." We're saying that neither the person doing a feint nor the person receiving it really knows a darned thing. Did you really fake him out, or is he playing along to suck you in? Did he really miss, or was that a fake? It's a mind game, and short of reading minds, you don't know . . . so it's often a good idea to throw an attack, just to keep the other guy honest. Obviously, if you believe you can read the other guy or sense his chi, none of this will ring true. But it's the baseline assumption in GURPS, unless you actually have special, rubber-realism abilities.

Experienced fighters actually can read their opponent reasonably well. It's why experienced kenjitsu practitioners wear a hakama: to hide their leg movement and make them harder to read. As far as I know, real fights are mostly about finding a hole in the enemy's defense and finding the moment when you can attack without opening yourself up to a counter attack. Experienced fighters don't just hack at their opponent hoping he'll mess up.

I think convincingly pretending to be off-balance without actually being so would be pretty hard, and require either a much higher skill, or some pretty decent luck.

[*]Feints aren't merely fakes. I was sloppy in my usage. As far as GURPS is concerned, any ploy done preparatory to an attack in order to make it harder for your target to defend is a "feint."

That was my impression too. That would mean maneuvering, circling around each other, trying to find a hole in the other guy's defenses, could probably also be represented by feints, although idealy you'd also need some kind of penalty on defense if you attack, and the enemy would need to get a penalty on his attack if you manage to get a particularly successful feint. But simulating combat in such detail would probably slow it down too much and make the game quite unplayable. GURPS strikes a pretty good balance in that regard.

Note that I don't actually have any experience with sword fights. My experience is entirely with nunchakus, which are kind of a weird weapon, so it's quite possible I'm extrapolating for more than I should.


mcv.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by Toadkiller_Dog

Well please note that I don't think stacking Deceptive Attack with Feint is unrealistic at all!

Just to add a comment in support of the combination: I was using the combination of Feints + Deceptive Attack in games for years before 4e. (I called the latter move "Fast Blows"; 4e's Deceptive Attack expands the definition of the move to include fast attacks and more. I like the 4e name and definition.)

The combo has always played nicely IMO, and the game play can always be described in sensible terms, as Dr K and Toadkiller have been doing here: typically, some "setup" or "misdirection" that requires extra time on the attacker's part, followed by a speedy or otherwise tricky attack that requires no extra time (but is more difficult to perform).

Whether a fighter performs only a Feint or a Deceptive Attack, or stacks them both to really blast a foe, the moves let him really put high skill to proper use. Half of that picture was missing in 3e; good to see it completed in 4e.

[rosignol]

Originally Posted by Toadkiller_Dog

Not according to GURPS Martial Arts, which discusses what a Deceptive Attack is.[...]

Is MA:4th ed out?

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by rosignol

Is MA:4th ed out?

It's written, post-playtest, and being edited. I don't know the release date yet.

[Wedhro]

Originally Posted by mcv

As far as I know, real fights are mostly about finding a hole in the enemy's defense and finding the moment when you can attack without opening yourself up to a counter attack. Experienced fighters don't just hack at their opponent hoping he'll mess up.

I guess you're right. That's the main difference between normal Attack and AOA maneuvers: I think that a real fight is better depicted by one or more Evaluate maneuvers followed by an Attack, while "hacking at opponents" is just an AOA. By the way, I think Attack maneuver should be read as a general willingness to hit your enemy, not as an actual attempt to land a hit, no matter what (that's AOA): I treat missed Attack rolls as "you totally missed him" only on a bad failure, otherwise I treat'em as "you couldn't find a hole in his defense so you didn't even try to hit him". That's not exactly RAW, but I feel it adds flavour to a combat.

Back to the main subject...
Should Feint and Deceptive Attack stack? Why not? You're just triyng to lower you're enemy's guard and then using your most tricky attack against him. Since you're "wasting" a turn and lowering your to-hit roll just to make him lower his defense (a lot), I can see this "combo" worthwile only in a fight between very skilled characters.

Should more subsequent Feint stack? Well, no! A skilled fighter could keep feinting for several turn and then attack, with his enemy having no more active defense at all. Looks a bit silly to me... By the way, I think that subsequent Feints may be useful, because you can keep feinting until you get such an high margin of success that you can attempt your best attack with no fear of seeing it stopped.

[rosignol]

Originally Posted by Toadkiller_Dog

It's written, post-playtest, and being edited. I don't know the release date yet.

That's what I thought. No fair referencing something that isn't in print yet. ;-)

While I expect the vast majority of it will be about unarmed combat, would someone who generally plays characters who wave around a shart pointy thing find it worth buying? Or is the subgenre popular enough that it's worth producing a book specifically for them?

[Mehmet]

From what I have gathered from little teasers from the authors and playtesters over the long waiting period, I understand that the book, Martial Arts, will be dealing with martial arts, all of them, and not only unarmed combat.

Cheers...

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by rosignol

That's what I thought. No fair referencing something that isn't in print yet. ;-)

The theory is - don't leave a poster hanging if we already know the answer - and where the poster can find it. Especially if the answer really is in BASIC SET, but is just explained in MARTIAL ARTS!

Originally Posted by rosignol

While I expect the vast majority of it will be about unarmed combat, would someone who generally plays characters who wave around a shart pointy thing find it worth buying? Or is the subgenre popular enough that it's worth producing a book specifically for them?

Check out fnordcast #3 (there's a link somewhere the fnordcast forum) - Kromm addresses this very topic in his preview. There is a lot of unarmed combat material, as you might expect, but there is also a LOT of material aimed at people using sticks, swords, shuriken, bows, knives, polearms...there is a much better armed/unarmed balance, and every rule we wrote was looked at from both an armed and unarmed perspective. No need for a seperate book - this one is about all forms of muscle-powered combat.

[Midelvia]

Originally Posted by Gudiomen

I'd avoid the "getting back" mentality when GM'ing or as a player. It's not GM vs. players, and they are all working towards a common goal: to have fun in the most distributed manner possible.

It's neither a question of "being mean" any alteration of the rules is going to change game balance. But your statement makes me think that your reasoning is that allowing cumulative feint penlaties favors the players in some way. It doesn't, their adversaries will have the same benefit. If their adversaries don't use their heads... well, maybe they should.

I was going for the humor..... There are 6 GMs in the group and we all use the same rules.... You should here the rules arguements.