[Martial Arts] Melee Threat area?

[laserdog]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Unless you chose Wait as your action, you aren't just standing around with a readied blade in your hand.

You might be moving around, attacking someone else or focusing exclusively on defence; but you are not standing still and preparing to attack someone who moves into your threat range.

That action is called Wait.

Since the GURPS combat scale is only one second for each round, there is no assumed extra time for observation, taking advantage of opportunities or standing around with weapons en-garde. If the player desires such actions, he has to explicitly choose to perform them.

All these comments are true. That is how you would do what I want in a realistic campaign.

However, my campaign isn't after simulating realism. I want to add a specific tactical component.

Some people make campaigns where guys shoot lasers from their eyes. I want to make one where people are encouraged not to run full tilt passed armed men.

I'm looking for comments from people who have experience with such house rules.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by laserdog

All these comments are true. That is how you would do what I want in a realistic campaign.

However, my campaign isn't after simulating realism. I want to add a specific tactical component.

Some people make campaigns where guys shoot lasers from their eyes. I want to make one where people are encouraged not to run full tilt passed armed men.

I'm looking for people who have experience with such house rules.

Allow players to buy Extra Attack with the appropriate limitation (Only when someone moves through their Reach in anything but a Step manuever -40%) [15]?

Make this Advantage standard for trained fighters in your world.

[arnej]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Allow players to buy Extra Attack with the appropriate limitation (Only when someone moves through their Reach in anything but a Step manuever -40%) [15]?

Make this Advantage standard for trained fighters in your world.

Now that's an interesting solution! Sounds like what Laserdog was looking for. I even like the pricing - seems on par with Combat Reflexes.

arne

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by arnej

Now that's an interesting solution! Sounds like what Laserdog was looking for. I even like the pricing - seems on par with Combat Reflexes.

arne

And a bit more than Extra Parry, which is the closest analog as a reactive thing vs an attack, plus a bit for being able to do damage.

[Kromm]

Did you look closely at the Trip technique (p. 81)? I'd say that an Armed Interdiction or Attack of Opportunity technique (heh) would use similar rules. Replace the "your rival trips and falls down" result with a roll to hit followed by weapon damage at -2 or -1 per die, whichever is worse, a lot like Aggressive Parry (p. 65). Then make the technique default an extra -1 harder to reflect the fact that you've extended an unarmed move to a weapon. The results would look like this:

Armed Interdiction*

Hard

Default: prerequisite skill Parry-2.
Prerequisite: Any Melee Weapon skill; cannot exceed prerequisite Parry.

Armed Interdiction lets you make a quick, low-damage melee-weapon attack against anybody who tries to charge past you in combat. To use it, your opponent must be running from in front of you to behind you (from your front hexes to your side or back hexes, on a battle map) and within your weapon's current reach. Thus, a greatsword (Reach 1, 2) could slash at anybody trying to flank you who passes within 2 yards, while a halberd currently at Reach 3 could only intercept such a foe if he were exactly 3 yards away at some point during his run.

Roll against Armed Interdiction as your opponent runs past. This counts as a parry with the weapon in question. Shield DB doesn't help, you can't retreat for a bonus (or use anything under Retreat Options, pp. 123-124), and special parry options such as Cross Parry (p. 121) are off-limits. Failure means your foe runs past untouched. Success gives you a roll against the underlying skill to strike your enemy.

Success on this skill roll means a potential hit. Your opponent defends normally. If he fails, then you inflict your weapon's normal damage at -2 or -1 per die, whichever is worse, on a random hit location. Skill bonuses to damage apply normally.

Failure on the skill roll means you didn't act forcefully enough to inflict damage.

If you do strike your opponent for damage, then this counts as a parry against a heavy weapon; see Parrying Heavy Weapons (p. B376). The charging fighter's "effective weight" equals his ST. It's very possible to snap off a weapon attempting this stunt!

You can attempt Armed Interdiction multiple times per turn, and mix it up with regular parries. The usual penalties for multiple parries apply in all cases. For instance, if you try Armed Interdiction and then have to parry, your parry is condsidered your second parry of the turn, at the usual penalties.

With the technique-design system, this starts life as Parry. Its basic effect is a special benefit:

• Parry counts as low-damage attack (-1)

It gets no offsetting consideration for low damage, since by precedent of Aggressive Parry, damaging defenses always do low damage. Further benefits are:

• Defense engages someone who isn't attacking (-1)
• Operates against a "runaround attacker" (-2)

The first is a benefit because it enables a defensive response without an attack, which lets a fighter benefit from his parry even on turns when he isn't attacked. The second is the usual -2 for parries against foes doing runarounds. Then there are a couple of drawbacks:

• Limited target selection -- only foes running from front to back within reach (+1)
• Most parry bonuses don't apply (shield DB, retreat, Cross Parry, etc.) (+1)

The first reflects the special-case nature of the move . . . really, it isn't that useful except when an enemy does something odd that he probably won't do if the GM allows this technique (especially at default!). The second compensates partly for the loss of common parry bonuses. Most of the remaining effects -- "Counts as a parry, with the usual penalties for multiple parries," "Opponent defends normally," and "Counts as a parry against a heavy weapon" -- have no effect. All parries count as parries, most hits let the target defend, and any parry against somebody's entire self risks snapping a weapon. This makes the final default Parry-2.

And yeah, this whole thing is cinematic. In real life, unless you're waiting, you won't be stopping people from running past. The realistic options appear under Dealing with Charging Foes (p. 106). As you can see, they all require that you be waiting (to do a stop thrust) or that your foe actually enter close combat with you (to slam, grapple, evade, whatever).

[laserdog]

Very nice, my thanks Kromm.

[laserdog]

One other point here.

I think another angle to approach this from would be that the space in front of an armed foe is just as easy to move through as an empty patch of grass.

What if you defined it more like a "difficult terrain" of sorts?

Just like you can't run through a forest full of low hanging branches without getting hit... What if you imposed a similar move penalty when stepping through spaces "guarded" by an armed man?

Something like:

You must spend 2 movement points when leaving one of the front hexes of an armed foe. This represents you moving cautiously around them and not giving them a trivially easy hit.

If you are truly in a hurry, you may spend just the 1 movement point, but will suffer a hit with their weapon, representing you carelessly barreling into it.

Any manuevers involving single steps are unaffected.

[Kromm]

Frankly, I don't think that "bad footing" makes sense. Unless someone is waiting, he isn't threatening anything. I realize that a lot of games -- and some military reenactors -- disagree, but on the GURPS timescale, an explicit Wait or some other form of explicit action like the technique I proposed is necessary to threaten an area. Otherwise, it really is just empty space.

Remember: A foe's weapon can parry attacks coming from anywhere in front of him, and then strike enemies anywhere in front of him in any body part, from the foot to the skull. This means that it could be anywhere in a huge forward cone, and more than likely in some guard position near the wielder most of the time. The odds that a weapon is in any given part of any given hex are rather remote . . . and given that even those who take flat-out Move maneuvers have full defenses, people running past can presumably use their weapons/shields as cow-catchers to push aside enemy weapons that aren't actually fixed against a charge (stop thrust) or actively out to brain them (my technique).

[nanoboy]

I have to say that this is an unusual request in a way. The ability to attack an indefinite number of people running by you isn't even cinematic. That is, I can't think of any characters doing such a thing in the movies, or books for that matter. It seems more like an attempt to simulate DnD (an idea which confounds me.) As such, I cannot see it as a deficit of GURPS at all, though the extra attack ability posited above is a nifty solution to this non-problem.

[Lonewulf]

Originally Posted by nanoboy

I have to say that this is an unusual request in a way. The ability to attack an indefinite number of people running by you isn't even cinematic. That is, I can't think of any characters doing such a thing in the movies, or books for that matter. It seems more like an attempt to simulate DnD (an idea which confounds me.) As such, I cannot see it as a deficit of GURPS at all, though the extra attack ability posited above is a nifty solution to this non-problem.

I agree with you, but I would like to add that DnD doesn't really allow an indefinite number of people to attack; you get one AoA, and if you have Combat Reflexes (I think it's called) as a feat, you get to attack the equivalent of your Dex modifier.

But yeah, the rules are still silly IMO.