[Martial Arts] Melee Threat area?

[laserdog]

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.

My bad, my real goal is to make run arounds harder. I'll take any solution that accomplishes that.

I view run arounds as a pure relic of the turn based system.

As I think a realistic fencer would simply step to cut off an attacker trying to run all the way around him, and or use his/her sword to deny the avenue.

Since allowing yourself to be surrounded is often as bad as an attack, it seems like there should a way to actively to deter or stop it.

But, in any case, I'll playtest the technique suggested by Kromm and see if it results in the type of feel I'm after.

[hal]

Some thoughts on the matter...

If someone is running to get past you (say in a 2 yard wide hallway), and you choose to take a wait option, can you as a waiting individual - step in front of your opponent, and use their built up momentum to act as a "Charging" situation?

Lets say for the sake of example, the following situation is occurring in game play:

Fighter A is facing fighters B and C, who are intent only on getting past A who is 3 yards in front of them, who is in turn, 2 yards in front of a doorway that is 3' wide. The corridor is 2 yards wide, and A is currently adjacent to the south side of the wall (the corridor runs east/west). Both B & C intend to race past A who is waiting in his hex, by slipping past him at the Northern side of the corridor. B intends to move his full 5 movement (speed 6.0 adjusted to 5). C intends to follow B, his movement is 4 (speed 5.0 adjusted to 4). A waits, with a speed of 6.25, adjusted to 5.

Situation as it unfolds:
B moves one hex towards A and is now only two yards away. A waits. B moves one more hex towards A and is now in A's frontal hex. A uses his step manuever to step in front of B and declares "I"m using a rapid strike thrust into B - he's charging me by definition, and I am attempting to hold him off with my thrusting weapon (a blunt tipped broadsword). Rolling against his rapid strike skill needing a 9, our hero misses B. Now, what happens at this point? B wasn't expecting A to move in front of him was he? Either he had intended to move forward, or he had intended to move into A's original hex properly anticipating that A would side step. Me? IF I were the GM of this situation, I'd require B to make a perception check to anticipate A's intentions. If B failed, he would either have to come to a dead stop or attempt to evade A and enter his hex. If B succeeded, I'd have him be able to change his move to enter where A had originally occupied just a split second prior, and continue his move.

Question: does A's rapid strike from a wait mean that his second "Strike" is still in "wait mode"?

Me? I'd rule that the answer is yes, as A intends to use his second strike against C when he gets into reach - this is still a function of the wait manuever itself, and should continue as such. Kromm however, might not agree ;)

Question: C had intended to follow B's path. If B suddenly stops unexpectedly, what happens to C?

This is the aspect of perfect tactical intelligence and an issue with "turns" of action. The player gets to chose the action of C AFTER knowing what is going on. I would as GM rule that since C had intended to follow B, which I would only know if the actions were declared before they were implemented, that C would have to make a perception roll just like B had to, and require that C end his movement if B had to end his movement.

Now, here is a different outcome of the situation described above. A waits, B manuevers towards A. Knowing that A might attack him, or might step in front of him, or what have you, uses a Feint to draw out A's actions before A does them, and plans on moving into the hex that A vacates as a result of the Feint.

The old "Football" jink manuever as it were...

Now it becomes an issue of feint, response to feint, and the resulting events that follow subsequent to it. As GM, I always like to think that if you can imagine doing it in real life, that it can be done with GURPS. This is how I'd handle that issue.

[KlausPrinceOfTheUndeads]

Originally Posted by Lonewulf

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.

Which allows your typical DX 18 rogue to make more attacks of oppurtunity than the regular attacks he could ever make in 20 levels.

[khorboth]

If you just want a quick-and-dirty rule without rolling, you could simply let char's designate "stop-hexes" Let everybody designate one hex (more if they can reach more with the weapon) within reach in which movement is stopped. People simply can't move through the hex. into or out-of is fine, but not through.

This would let a person block a 3' hallway just fine. One person with a 6' hallway would have to keep backing up to keep people in front of his stop-hex unless he has a polearm. With only one opponent, they could just move from side to side to keep the person from flanking. You would probably want to make an exception for charging the person in question.

Not too realistic, but I think it'll give you the feel you want with no extra point cost and no extra die-rolls. It also doesn't affect the balance of combat attacks and damage.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by laserdog

Because that will put 3 PCs to his backside.

So this character is fighting four competent, armed opponents? The technical term for that, even in cinematic settings, is usually "screwed". Having one of them nip round him and deliver a quick stab while the other three keep him occupied, strikes me as entirely plausible.

Of course, if he's adequately cinematic, he waits until his environment is adequately target-enriched, and then executes a Whirlwind Attack and takes all of them down in one blow.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by laserdog

I view run arounds as a pure relic of the turn based system.

As I think a realistic fencer would simply step to cut off an attacker trying to run all the way around him, and or use his/her sword to deny the avenue.

You have to be a little careful with this . . . As has been said repeatedly, the turn-based system has an entirely workable, playable solution: Wait.

In any one-on-one fight, you can either commit to action or you can Wait. You can get realistically long bouts simply by having fighters stand off and take Wait maneuvers, hoping for the other guy to commit. And when the other guy finally acts, your declared Wait response certainly can be "I step into the path of his attack and make an Attack maneuver." What prevents this in duels is the players, not the rules or the turn-based system. Most players prefer to act, so they don't Wait. I can promise you that if some deadly NPC takes Wait after Wait and then clotheslines a charging PC, the players will learn to Wait, too.

Thus, in a one-on-one fight, you can pretty much always step to intercept your foe. The only time you can't do so is when you fail to Wait. This is realistic . . . somebody can shoot past you when you're running or pressing along a predictable path (All-Out Attack, Attack, Move, Move and Attack, etc.), when you're not ready to move because you're crouching behind your shield (All-Out Defense) or not fully on your feet (Change Posture), or when you're simply not paying attention (Concentrate or Ready). In a duel, your best bet is always "circle and wait for an opening," which is Wait on a one-second time scale. Anything else is essentially the Give Foe an Opening maneuver.

Now in anything but a duel, this becomes less useful. You can still Wait. You can still specify a step and Attack on the first person to charge you. But then other people can swarm past you, because you're committed to just one attack. And? That's realistic, really. If you step into one guy's path, his pals can and will swarm you. In particular, if you're outnumbered, this is just what happens . . . As Phil noted, the highfalutin martial-arts term for this is "screwed."

This next part deviates from hack n' slash games a lot: Nothing changes when the outnumbered fighter is a monster that's more than a match for a party of PCs! Against 4:1, 6:1, or worse odds, a monster is going to be flanked, as he can at most stop one person from running around him, and if he turns to face those running around him, he's putting his back to the others. The moral of the story is that monsters cut out to face entire groups should either have eyestalks or psionic perception or something that justifies 360° Vision, or they should be tough enough in terms of DR, HP, and other "grit" traits that they don't defend anyway, and simply take shots from behind. If neither approach suits the monster . . . then it needs friends or fodder, or it will be swarmed and backstabbed to death. Much like a human who's badly outnumbered in a brawl, really.

And of course in the duel or the melee, for people or monsters, there's always the option of getting your back to a wall. You give up your retreat, but losing a defense at +1 or +3 is often better than making lots of defenses at -2, or simply not getting a defense.

Actually, I'm getting the distinct impression here that the real problem is foes built around defense rolls. These are the wrong foes to take on parties of PCs in one-on-many fights. In fights like that, sacrifice defense altogether and go for a mixture of devastating offense and insane toughness. I've seen my wife's PC do this rather a lot: he's a ST 24, HP 30 ogre-descended fellow with high HT, Hard to Kill, Hard to Subdue, High Pain Threshold, etc., and he clanks around in an iron stove with a ruby-lensed steel bucket on his head. When he wades into NPCs doing All-Out Attacks and just taking damage is when the NPCs fall like cut wheat. Sure, Leif (the PC) ends up bleeding and hurt, but he basically doesn't pass out and rarely gets hurt enough to risk death, and mere HP loss is what magical healing is for.

[Lonewulf]

Originally Posted by KlausPrinceOfTheUndeads

Which allows your typical DX 18 rogue to make more attacks of oppurtunity than the regular attacks he could ever make in 20 levels.

Well, d'uh. I just said that it wasn't indefinite. There's a difference between "too many" and "infinite"...

[Lonewulf]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

So this character is fighting four competent, armed opponents? The technical term for that, even in cinematic settings, is usually "screwed". Having one of them nip round him and deliver a quick stab while the other three keep him occupied, strikes me as entirely plausible.

Of course, if he's adequately cinematic, he waits until his environment is adequately target-enriched, and then executes a Whirlwind Attack and takes all of them down in one blow.

There are many other options, really.

Arm-Lock someone into position, so opponents have to try to strike at you past him (lessening the total arc people can attack), use Rapid Strike with a VERY high skill, or Rapid Strike with a significant skill and Trained by a Master, and take wait maneuvers or All-Out Defense followed by a counter-attack of some sort; although it's better to take a wait in this situation, getting that free strike on that guy running past you.

Personally, I think that an all-out defense against a group should be able to change to a wait. Even if you aren't entirely prepared to act, you ARE in a position to act, and you certainly haven't committed yourself beyond adopting a more defensive position... but I'm sure people wouldn't like that conclusion, so I don't mention it much. Plus, honestly, it makes the books messy; you get that +2 to parry, and THEN act as if you had a wait, would invalidate the action (as you focused on the parry/dodge as the equivalent of focusing on an attack).

[Kromm]

Actually, All-Out Defense means you are fully committed to defense. You are doing some combination of holding your weapon in a close guard position, raising and crouching behind any shield you have, moving all your weight onto your rear foot to enable a quick dodge, and ducking and zigzagging like mad. You're not carefully watching one foe -- that's Evaluate or Wait. You're acting like a drunk fly to make it hard for any number of foes to get at you.

[Lonewulf]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Actually, All-Out Defense means you are fully committed to defense. You are doing some combination of holding your weapon in a close guard position, raising and crouching behind any shield you have, moving all your weight onto your rear foot to enable a quick dodge, and ducking and zigzagging like mad. You're not carefully watching one foe -- that's Evaluate or Wait. You're acting like a drunk fly to make it hard for any number of foes to get at you.

Heh heh... "drunk fly"...

Hm, I guess those times I thought I did the AoD in my fencing bouts were really actually just Waits. Well, that makes me feel better... those dons killed me in one blow, after all.