How easy is it to tell combat maneuvers apart?

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by seycyrus

This whole discussion also begs the question... what about the combatant who is trained to disguise his maneuver as something else?

Quick Contest between the tricky fighter's Acting (Combat) skill and his opponent's combat skill. And if you're being that tricky, then you probably don't want the rolls in the open, which means the GM treats it as a hidden information roll, rolls the dice himself, and announces what sort of Maneuver it is.

(Next up, someone asks "what about my skirmish where seven fighters on one side are watching Tricky Guy, and some succeed and some fail?" So the GM can't announce "the" Maneuver, but everyone has to resort to passing notes to the GM for their choice, followed by each player getting an individual note back (or whisper, for you VTT users).)

Or you trust your players to firewall and have their character make choices based on the information they believe, willing to be tricked even when that information is false.

[Kax]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

So how does being ready to defend look different than being ready to defend?

Given that neither of those latter circumstances are defensive in any way....

[Kax]

Originally Posted by seycyrus

This whole discussion also begs the question... what about the combatant who is trained to disguise his maneuver as something else?

Deceptive Attack. Or Feint.

[seycyrus]

Originally Posted by Kax

Deceptive Attack. Or Feint.

Not addressing the question asked.

A skilled fighter can certainly disguise his posture so that a novice misreads his intent. It doesn't play out the same way either of those two options.

[Mr_Sandman]

Originally Posted by seycyrus

This whole discussion also begs the question... what about the combatant who is trained to disguise his maneuver as something else?

Mostly, I think the fact is that the main reason for maneuver choice being obvious is playability, not verisimilitude, so arguments about changing the rule to be more realistic need to gain something big to make up for the overhead they could add to play. Since maneuvers are abstractions anyway, and the characters have more information about the posture and actions of their opponents than can be conveyed to the players, I'm ok with giving them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to them being able to recognize and appropriately react what's going on in a fight.

On the other hand, if you are talking about All Out Defense, I think the point is that it is All Out, just as much as All Out Attack. All you are focused on is defending yourself to the exclusion of all else, therefore not trying to deceive someone into thinking you are doing anything else.

I suppose that if you wanted to allow it, a character who had chosen to Wait could try to fake an All Out Defense or Do Nothing, or a Concentrate as Do Nothing, maybe Ready as Do Nothing if they are trying to ready a weapon surreptitiously. I can't see either much possibility or point to trying to disguise any other maneuvers as each other. That said, there are already rules for purposely trying to deceive opponents in a fight, those are Feint, Ruse and Dirty Tricks.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Mr_Sandman

I suppose that if you wanted to allow it, a character who had chosen to Wait could try to fake an All Out Defense or Do Nothing, or a Concentrate as Do Nothing, maybe Ready as Do Nothing if they are trying to ready a weapon surreptitiously. I can't see either much possibility or point to trying to disguise any other maneuvers as each other. That said, there are already rules for purposely trying to deceive opponents in a fight, those are Feint, Ruse and Dirty Tricks.

And Kromm ruled the burden is the person faking the action to fool other not the other way around.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by seycyrus

This whole discussion also begs the question... what about the combatant who is trained to disguise his maneuver as something else?

Isn't that covered by Deceptive Attack?

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Isn't that covered by Deceptive Attack?

Not necessarily. There are tactical reasons to conceal the nature of the maneuver you're taking even if that maneuver isn't an attack. Someone taking an All-Out Defense, for example, might want to hide that fact to prevent an enemy they're facing from deciding it was safe to turn their back on them and going after someone else. Or someone doing an Evaluate might want the target of it to not realize, and move out of range.

Personally, for this kind of "conceal your true intentions" trick, I'd call for an enabling perk, and an Acting roll, opposed in a Quick Contest by the enemy's Per, Observation, or Body Language. If you win, you fool them, if not, they remain aware of what you're doing. I'm not sure if I'd require only a single perk, or perhaps multiple perks, either one perk per manuever you were concealing, or one perk that let you conceal any type of maneuver as a single type.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

I've fenced competitively, and if you were doing either of those you'd go nowhere quickly. I think having your weapon cocked to commit is the definition of a Telegraphic attack.

This is one of the problems with the way GURPS handles Swing vs Thrust. A weapon that is in position to defend against a thrust is also in position to thrust, but the same thing is not true for a swing (yes, you can swipe from a forward position, but you won't get much power out of it).