Knowing the outcome of an attack before choosing to actively defend

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

No. You have no way of telling which attack is going to be a good one or not. Using your suggestion you will have to allocate most of your skill to defense every turn ad infintum. The only alternative is to randomly pick a turn in which to reduce your defense and hope that he gets a low roll that turn. We quickly realised that it was a waste of time allocating anything to parrying and, instead, going for what GURPS would call an all-out attack every time. The only instance in which it was worth defending was when you had a buddy who could hit him while you were keeping him busy - and in that situation you may as well allocate all of your skill to defense.

To be honest this sounds like the paradox of defence to me. But TBF I think Tros was a better example of allocating resource between the two that RM/MERP* was, because you could build between turns. GURPS does building between actions in combat very well too

*I always thought they combined too many different things into too few system variables, I seem to remember it was pretty easy to do the maths and work out what was the optimal choice in a lot of different situations (because they weren't treated as being that different)

[Bengt]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

I played Rolemaster for over a decade and enjoyed it (we played it so much that most of us had memorised all the entries in the common critical hit tables) but that doesn't mean that the combat mechanic is realistic. It is silly to have to guess how successful an attack might be before deciding on a defense. In GURPS you know that the attack is going to hit when you choose how to defend but you don't know how effective the attack will be. It is a better approximation of how I invision realistic combat.

The micro-management in GURPS combat gives me a certain game-y feel, not that that is always bad from an entertainment point of view. To me it doesn't feel more realistic than modelling the overall effects over a longer time, just different. To each their own.

[Ultraviolet]

This 'feeling out your opponent', this is one reason I like The Riddle of Steel.

The mechanics would then be to choose 'white die' for defence, and then allocate a large amount of dice from the combat pool for the first exchange. Assuming the enemy chooses 'red' and attacks, you may get a good MoS and thus turn the Initiative around. And if you are clever you've chosen a defense than comehow gives you an advantage - some bonus dice - for the next attack. And that's how you get him!

But you could also go for a more aggressive approach and choose 'red' hoping the opponent wants to feel you out and chooses 'white'.
And then simply declare a weak attack hoping he wastes a lot of dice for dfence. Sure, he easily defends and wins initiative - but then you choose a nasty defence with all your dice, something that carries over to the next exchange.

After the first exchange you know his total number of combat pool dice, and can plan for the next round

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Ultraviolet

This 'feeling out your opponent', this is one reason I like The Riddle of Steel.

The mechanics would then be to choose 'white die' for defence, and then allocate a large amount of dice from the combat pool for the first exchange. Assuming the enemy chooses 'red' and attacks, you may get a good MoS and thus turn the Initiative around. And if you are clever you've chosen a defense than comehow gives you an advantage - some bonus dice - for the next attack. And that's how you get him!

But you could also go for a more aggressive approach and choose 'red' hoping the opponent wants to feel you out and chooses 'white'.
And then simply declare a weak attack hoping he wastes a lot of dice for dfence. Sure, he easily defends and wins initiative - but then you choose a nasty defence with all your dice, something that carries over to the next exchange.

After the first exchange you know his total number of combat pool dice, and can plan for the next round

Or if you both choose red, cross your fingers and hope you've done enough to gain enough of an advantage!