Feinting with a Slam attack.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Molokh

But with zero damage I still make contact, even if the enemy doesn't parry. Can I also voluntarily make sure the attack misses?

Sure . . . but then the defender won't have to parry. You can't do "an attack that can't possibly hit, but that counts as an attack for me and a defense for him" under the rules. Either you have to commit enough to the attack that, if your foe doesn't defend, he's touched (albeit for 0 damage) or you must pull back from the attack at the last moment and give your opponent the luxury of not having to defend. There is no "use up enemy's defense with no contact" maneuver. That's not kosher.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Molokh

But with zero damage I still make contact, even if the enemy doesn't parry. Can I also voluntarily make sure the attack misses?

I get what you're trying to do. However, I think the problem here is that if you throw an attack that misses, even if you veer away at the last moment then:

1. Under game rules, if you throw an attack that misses, for any reason, there's no compelling reason for the defender to use a defense. Under rules as written, where defenses are always retroactive to the determination of an attack's success.

2. If you are inventing new rules (no problem with that from me), then you need to allow that a sufficiently skilled combatant has a chance of reading that your intent is not to strike, and then not react. OR, the attacker, getting something (burn opponent's defense) for very little (he's still capable of defending, if his weapon doesn't require a turn to re-ready, he doesn't miss a beat, etc).

Seems like what you're describing here could be, potentially, modeled as an All-out-Attack (Attack and Feint) rather than the usual Feint and Attack.

So, first you roll an Attack to see if you threw a blow that your opponent realizes is capable of hitting. You then roll a Feint (probably based on IQ) to see if you fake out the defender.

Result matrix:

1. You miss your initial attack roll: you biffed the approach; he's not buying it no matter what.

2. You make the attack roll, but lose the Feint: He sees your ruse, and doesn't burn his defense.

3. You successfully attack, and win the Feint. You cause him to burn a defense.


Thoughts: Margin of success on attack applies to feint. A blazing-fast guy can probably chop-kick to a dupe's head and stop it a hair's breadth short, forcing both a defense/retreat AND a non-contact situation.

Second: the fact that you have to seriously counteract your own momentum is why you probably have to do this as an AoA.

Third: I don't buy the "I don't damage him!" as a trade-off for "burning a defense," as presumably one of the reasons you'd do this is when you're fighting as part of a team.

Fourth: a skillfully executed move like this could count as a bonus to Intimidation, I'd think.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Sure . . . but then the defender won't have to parry. You can't do "an attack that can't possibly hit, but that counts as an attack for me and a defense for him" under the rules. Either you have to commit enough to the attack that, if your foe doesn't defend, he's touched (albeit for 0 damage) or you must pull back from the attack at the last moment and give your opponent the luxury of not having to defend. There is no "use up enemy's defense with no contact" maneuver. That's not kosher.

But how does the opponent know whether the attack is real early enough to make the decision? I start the attack, he sees a thrust coming his way; he starts the arm movement to defend; I pull back the trust at the last moment (wasted an attack on this thrust); he puts his blade back nto its earlier position. How does it happen that I waste an attack on an active movement, but he wastes nothing on a reactive movement (which doesn't have the luxury of planning or choosing)?

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Molokh

But how does the opponent know whether the attack is real early enough to make the decision? I start the attack, he sees a thrust coming his way; he starts the arm movement to defend; I pull back the trust at the last moment (wasted an attack on this thrust); he puts his blade back nto its earlier position. How does it happen that I waste an attack on an active movement, but he wastes nothing on a reactive movement (which doesn't have the luxury of planning or choosing)?

The situation you just described is a "pulled" attack for zero damage. I'm not sure what you think that means, but to me, throwing an attack designed to draw a response and then checking your momentum is just a zero-damage attack. Possible outcomes:

1. You miss. He isn't threatened and doesn't try to defend.
2. You hit, but he defends. Goal met. You used up an attack, he used up a defense. No damage delivered.
3. You hit, he fails to defend. Goal met. You used up an attack, he used up a defense. No damage delivered.

By all means, if you pull your blow to zero damage, state that you didn't even make light contact in case #3. That's just a special effect. I wouldn't require a special skill roll or added penalty to do "no contact" instead of "light contact." Indeed, I believe that "light contact" for exactly 0 damage is, if anything, harder than pulling short of the target.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Kromm

You miss. He isn't threatened and doesn't try to defend.

How does he know that I'm going to miss before deciding whether he should defend?

"If the bullet hits me, I Dodge; otherwise I keep Concentrating on my spell."

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Molokh

How does he know that I'm going to miss before deciding whether he should defend?

"If the bullet hits me, I Dodge; otherwise I keep Concentrating on my spell."

That's just how GURPS works. Play another game if you don't like it. ;) After lots of testing, "you only need to think about your defenses if your foe's attack could kill you" proved to be easiest to remember, easiest to use, and most balanced. If nothing else, it keeps die rolling down.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Molokh

How does he know that I'm going to miss before deciding whether he should defend?

"If the bullet hits me, I Dodge; otherwise I keep Concentrating on my spell."

I don't know how much martial artsy experience you have, so if I come off as patronizing, I don't mean it.

Some attacks that my sparring partners throw, both as real and set-up attacks, you can tell from moment one that you're in no danger. Maybe they start too far away, or the angle of the blow is wrong, or you can tell that with the position they're in, they can't make any contact worth worrying about. One reason for this could be they're throwing an attack directly into your guard, and so you don't need to do anything but "take" it (in GURPS, this might still be a Parry or Dodge; probably closer to Dodge).

Anything that's serious enough to make me take action is going to look pretty convincing. In fact, it has to be fully convincing, which means it has to be a real attack.

Of course, real attack/defend with tricky stuff can be:

My opponent fakes low kick, I start to defend, he then switches to middle kick or upper punch, and I'm a beat behind, but I still try and defend against it.

That reads as "Deceptive Attack" to me.

Now, to your exact Thread title, doing this with a Slam...this means you have to rush your opponent with full force. You then have to STOP, which will be a neat trick, and probably visible to Defender because it's a whole body that has to stop.

So, that's why I suggested Attack-and-Feint, above. The Slam/Fake soundsl ike an AoA to me, because the effort to stop the attack is going to make it hard to do anythign else. If it's NOT that hard, it's probably not that tricky.

[Lord Carnifex]

I'm with DouglasCole here, with an addendum: There is the third class of attack, which involves starting a movement - it could be a movement of the arms, legs, a shift in weight, a shift in timing - that signals the opponent that you've started an attack. The opponent doesn't know right away if it is the percursor to an effective attack, or the precursor to an ineffective attack, or what. However, just in case, the opponent shifts to be ready to defend once the attack comes. He doesn't commit fully to the defense, because there's no attack yet - he's just ready to defend a certain attack. If you don't complete the attack as advertised, your opponent's defenses are out of place. He's less ready to defend. This is a Feint in GURPS.

One of the things Feint covers is the "faked" attack. But the fake "attack" covered by feint isn't a full attack - it isn't meant to connect in any way, shape or form. The feinter isn't fully committed to the attack. In the same way, the opponent starts a defense, but doesn't have to follow through on it - he moves his sword to parry, starts to shift to dodge, perhaps takes a step in preperation to retreat- then discovers that the initial attack motion wasn't followed through with and attempts to recover to a position ready to attack or defend. That moment is when the attacker can launch the real attack and take advantage of limited defenses.

A good attacker feinting against a poor defender can stack up enough of a Feint bonus to make the active defense pretty much worthless. But you can't trigger a full Active defense with a faked attack under Feint - because you're not comitting fully to the attack, even a faked out defender won't commit fully to the defense.

[ravenfish]

I really don't see the problem here. If you want to, by the rules as written, pull off an attack that doesn't hit but makes the foe defend, pull Kromm's 'strike for zero damage and define it as non-contact' thing. Is that not what you want?

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by Lord Carnifex

A good attacker feinting against a poor defender can stack up enough of a Feint bonus to make the active defense pretty much worthless. But you can't trigger a full Active defense with a faked attack under Feint - because you're not comitting fully to the attack, even a faked out defender won't commit fully to the defense.

Actually, they might fully commit - in fact, they might overcommit, in such a way as to be especially open to your next followup shot. This is why you can utterly flatten someone's Active Defenses with a good result on a Feint, giving them more of a penalty than if you had done an additional attack to just give them the accumulated penalties for multiple defenses.

Doesn't always work, though - hence the contest of skills. I suppose GURPS could have taken the approach of saying a Feint is a contest of skills, and if the defender loses he expends an active defense. But that would make most feints meaningless ("Okay, I Dodge!") or weak ("I'm a TBAM fencer, I'll take that -1 to Parry without worrying"); you'd almost always be better off actually attacking and hoping for a missed defense. It would also fail to simulate all of the other things that Feints can represent - the myriad of options for drawing a defender into a bad position to stop your next attack. Some of those options are faked attacks, but far from all of them.