Clarification on Gurps combat turn rules.

[Boge]

Recently, our GM changed up the way we do combat. Originally we'd determine who goes first, then take turns deciding our moves and maneuvers...pretty typical.

Now he decides our turns happen at the same time. So we still determine who gets the innitiative. Then we all decide our moves and manuevers, and then act those out all together to see what happens. So for instance, I'm in a fight with someone. I have higher speed and get to act first. Both of us determine we're going to attack the other on our turns. So I swing first and knock the guy down. Since he decided he was going to attack me, he doesn't now get to change his action since he's lying on the ground. He has to stay with his attack.

Similarly, if two of us are attacking the same foe, and I attack first, killing the enemy, and my friend attacks just after me (having decided he was going to attack as well), he ends up swinging at a falling foe rather than being able to decide to change up his action on his turn.

So we're all queuing up our actions before the round starts and then pressing play basically rather than tactically on our turn deciding our action.

When I expressed my dislike for this "new" way of doing combat, he told me that's the way combat has always been done in Gurps. Looking over the rules again and again, I don't see it.

So, please, clear this up for me...and him. I mean, if he want's to change it up, fine, I'm not going to complain with his rulings. But if he's claiming it's the books ruling, if would be nice to have that clarified for us.

[ericbsmith]

GURPS Turns are simultaneous but overlapping. Your turn starts when the action is passed to you, but it doesn't end until the action is passed to you again. This means that each characters turn (including NPCs) will start and end at a different time. On the most fundamental level, if the turn sequence is:
Character A, Character B, Character A, Character B, Character A, Character B
Then after the very first turn combat should proceed as if neither one of them had any sort of advantage. Essentially, you could change the turn sequence to:
Character B, Character A, Character B, Character A, Character B, Character A
and the resulting rules wouldn't change how Characters actions are chosen or how outcomes are interpreted.

The way your GM is doing this fundamentally breaks for GURPS because it allows the person with the better initiative to always set the pace with the lower initiative Character never getting a chance.

In the example you gave - using the method your GM is using - if Character A knocks Character B down then Character B not only loses a turn getting back up he also loses a turn where he also loses the turn he was going to attack. On the other hand, if Character B (going second) knocks Character A down then Character A will only ever lose one turn getting up. He will never lose a turn where he was "supposed" to be attacking. That is a fundamental unfairness and makes combat initiative utterly unbalanced in favor the higher initiative Character at all times.

OTOH, the way GURPS rules are written and intended to work when either Character knocks the other down the one knocked down will only ever lose the turn getting up, and it doesn't matter if Character A knocks Character B down or vice versa.

In addition, in GURPS your combat turn actions are chosen and then executed immediately. Then you "pass the turn" to the next player; however, your turn doesn't officially end until the beginning of your next turn, meaning that consequences of your chosen actions continue to linger until the beginning of your next turn (such as All-Out Attack leaving you defenseless, or All-Out Defense giving you defense bonuses).

[ericbsmith]

Here's a timing diagram of a two-player turn sequence:

[Char A Turn 1][Char A Turn 2][Char A Turn 3][Char A Turn 4][Char A Turn 5]
      [Char B Turn 1][Char B Turn 2][Char B Turn 3][Char B Turn 4][Char B Turn 5]

Blown Out:

[Char A Turn 1]
      [Char B Turn 1]
               [Char A Turn 2]
                     [Char B Turn 2]
                              [Char A Turn 3]
                                    [Char B Turn 3]
                                             [Char A Turn 4]
                                                   [Char B Turn 4]
                                                            [Char A Turn 5]
                                                                  [Char B Turn 5]

And here's one showing a three-player turn sequence:

[Char A Turn 1][Char A Turn 2][Char A Turn 3][Char A Turn 4][Char A Turn 5]
    [Char B Turn 1][Char B Turn 2][Char B Turn 3][Char B Turn 4][Char B Turn 5]
        [Char C Turn 1][Char C Turn 2][Char C Turn 3][Char C Turn 4][Char C Turn 5]

Blown out:

[Char A Turn 1]
    [Char B Turn 1]
        [Char C Turn 1]
               [Char A Turn 2]
                   [Char B Turn 2]
                       [Char C Turn 2]
                              [Char A Turn 3]
                                  [Char B Turn 3]
                                      [Char C Turn 3]
                                             [Char A Turn 4]
                                                 [Char B Turn 4]
                                                     [Char C Turn 4]
                                                            [Char A Turn 5]
                                                                [Char B Turn 5]
                                                                    [Char C Turn 5]

And here's one showing 5 characters:

[Char A Turn 1][Char A Turn 2][Char A Turn 3][Char A Turn 4][Char A Turn 5]
   [Char B Turn 1][Char B Turn 2][Char B Turn 3][Char B Turn 4][Char B Turn 5]
      [Char C Turn 1][Char C Turn 2][Char C Turn 3][Char C Turn 4][Char C Turn 5]
         [Char D Turn 1][Char D Turn 2][Char D Turn 3][Char D Turn 4][Char D Turn 5]
            [Char E Turn 1][Char E Turn 2][Char E Turn 3][Char E Turn 4][Char E Turn 5]

Blown out:

[Char A Turn 1]
   [Char B Turn 1]
      [Char C Turn 1]
         [Char D Turn 1]
            [Char E Turn 1]
               [Char A Turn 2]
                  [Char B Turn 2]
                     [Char C Turn 2]
                        [Char D Turn 2]
                           [Char E Turn 2]
                              [Char A Turn 3]
                                 [Char B Turn 3]
                                    [Char C Turn 3]
                                       [Char D Turn 3]
                                          [Char E Turn 3]
                                             [Char A Turn 4]
                                                [Char B Turn 4]
                                                   [Char C Turn 4]
                                                      [Char D Turn 4]
                                                         [Char E Turn 4]
                                                            [Char A Turn 5]
                                                               [Char B Turn 5]
                                                                  [Char C Turn 5]
                                                                     [Char D Turn 5]
                                                                        [Char E Turn 5]

[smurf]

There is only one second to act. Therefore, determining actions prior to 'your' go is fair.

Also there is an alternative method for turns.

Roll a d6 and add the result to Speed and this ought to provide a variation in initiative in the turns.

[Anaraxes]

By RAW, individual player turns are considered to be happening more or less at the same time, but they don't all start together ("overlapping", as ericbsmith puts it).

The usual confusion is that GURPS does not have a formal combat "round" (often casually called a "turn" by players of many games) to describe the loop where each players gets a turn. There's not a 1-second clock ticking away global rounds. Everybody's turn is considered to take about a second until their next turn, but those clocks aren't all ticking at the top of the initiative order. Thus, there's no start-of-round phase where all players choose a Maneuver. Maneuver selection happens at the start of each individual turn (and the effects, say on defenses, carry over through everyone else's turn until you once again choose a Maneuver, which is to say the start of your next turn, not the start of a round). So that selection is staggered all though a hypothetical round, if there were such. These staggered clocks become important for things like grenades with a time fuse -- when _exactly_ does it explode in the middle of that non-existent round? -- or are the basis for 4e changes when it comes to spell-casting time, when those effects are resolved, and how you can interrupt a mage by hitting him while he's casting.

Combat effects (per RAW) are generally applied immediately. If you injure someone, they have a shock penalty on their next action, even if they're acting right after their attacker in the same "round" (which, remember, isn't a concept). If you knock someone down, they're on the ground when they take their turn. If you go below 0 HP, you must choose to Do Nothing to stay conscious or roll versus HT if you insist on keeping with whatever your previous plan was -- but you do get that choice.

GURPS has never had a requirement to pre-designate your action or plot your movement, apart from the Wait Maneuver. Your plans can change based on the fact that you now have a shock penalty, or are unexpectedly lying on the ground. (The 3e rules used to have a side comment recommending an All-Out Attack if you'd just been successfully Feinted and so weren't getting much chance of a defense anyway. The 4e rules recommend trying "flight or All-out Defense" as a reaction to taking a big shock penalty; See B419.)

Feints are probably the most common area for houserules to conceal your Maneuver selection (so the target doesn't know if you just missed, or he got Feinted), or delay the resolution so that the target doesn't know how bad the penalty would be. Similarly, some people have houserules to move choice of an Active Defense to just before an attack roll is made, rather than after that attack is known to be successful. (The distinction matters when you're under attack by several assailants and are counting Defenses, or for situations like attacking a spellcaster where use of a Defense requires a concentration roll to keep casting a spell.)

[Extrarius]

I don't remember which book/forum/website, but I have seen an optional/house[1] rule for 'realism' that suggested having players announce their character's planned action in order of lowest speed to highest. This allows high-speed characters to 'react' to low-speed characters actions in a way that isn't possible when each action is declared immediately before it is resolved. For example, if a slow character is going to all-out-attack, the faster character can choose all-out-defense for better survivability or perhaps a wait to attack when the opponent has no defenses.

If I were using this rule, I might allow players to roll against some speed-related formula to change their actions at the last second, but I'd probably insist it be a "small" change - all-out-attack to attack is fine, all-out-defense to all-out-attack not so much.

[1] If it is a house rule, it is from this forum or from the website of a prominent figure here, as that is the only place I could have seen it as a house rule

[Ulzgoroth]

To be clear, no, that's definitely not remotely the basic rule. I don't think that's even an optional rule in any of the books proper. Maybe a pyramid article.

[Brandy]

That isn't the rule, as others have said.

I'm not aware of any "official" variant, but I did it that way as a house rule for a while in my games under 3e. Here's how I handled it:

There were 5 phases that all characters went through simutaneously:

Orientation: Recover from stunning, rolls to stay up, morale checks, and so on.
Results of Magic: This was when spells cast the previous turn went off.
Declaration: Everyone selected and revealed their action for the turn.*
Execution: Roll initiative. Execute the maneuvers according to the sequence.
Results of Combat: Damage, stunning, unconsciousness, and so on.**

*This allowed me to have some actions affect the sequence (i.e. add two to your initiative roll if doing an all-out-attack, your initiative is zero if you concentrate, and so on). This was done using combat cards.
**This was really unnecessary, as I always did this stuff in the execution phase as they happened. However, without this step, my acronym failed. ;)

I liked it well enough but I doubt I would handle combat like this again.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by Extrarius

I don't remember which book/forum/website, but I have seen an optional/house[1] rule for 'realism' that suggested having players announce their character's planned action in order of lowest speed to highest.

If I wanted players to declare actions ahead of time to simulate the fog of combat I would simply have them declare their planned action for the next turn as soon as they'd executed their actions for the current turn, before they "pass turn" to the next player. Still, I think all that does is force players to waste turns, which slows combat, which is one of the gripes I hear about GURPS to begin with (mostly due to the 1 second turn length, often requiring several turns to kill even a "mook;" as an aside I once had a goblin with a parry & block of 8 retreat fully off the map backing away from a Dungeon Fantasy Barbarian who was using deceptive attacks, due simply to lucky rolls on my part and much to the frustration of the Barbarian player; the lucky goblin realized all his friends had died behind the Barbarian and turned tail).

[Kromm]

Declarations result in a lot of "Durrr, why did I do that?" moments that make highly skilled warriors look like idiots. It's a fairly huge stretch of plausibility to imagine that a trained fighter would swing at air because he declared an attack and his opponent ran away or fell down.

The existing system really isn't so implausible. Reaction times for humans in fights can be measured in 100s of milliseconds. It's only a slight stretch of plausibility that someone might be able to rethink their combat strategy in response to somebody else falling down or running away.

All told, while there are strange artifacts to slicing time into turns (and space into hexes, for that matter), these mostly show up in edge cases, whereas a declaration system makes each turn a little surreal.