Combat Reflexes and Enhanced Dodge

[Jeminai]

Combat Reflexes gives +1 to all active defenses (Dodge, Parry, and Block), +2 to resist fright checks, +6 to recover from surprise, and +1 to fast draw. Your side gets a +1 to avoid surprise or +2 if you are the leader. You NEVER freeze in a surprise situation.

Enhanced Dodge gives +1 to dodge.

They are both 15 points.

Is there some reason for this that I am not understanding? Has anyone decided to change the cost of these advantages in their games? If so have you raised the cost of Combat Reflexes or lowered the cost of Enhanced Dodge?

I'd love to hear from the line editors. Maybe there is a real justification for this and I am just not seeing it.

Thanks in advance.

[Kalzazz]

Its because Combat Reflexes is intended to be a cool thing people are encouraged to actually buy

[Dalillama]

And also because it helps combat survivability a lot, and most gamers find not dying constantly to be more fun, so the cost is reduced.

[Culture20]

Because Enhanced Dodge is a leveled advantage while Combat Reflexes isn't? Combat Reflexes is like the first level, then you buy further levels of Enhanced Dodge or Parry.

[Blood Legend]

Its meant to be the first real trait any reasonable warrior buys. Gurps is lethal and combat reflexes along with fairly robust healing advantages are meant to keep players playing. Kromm mentioned something addressing this specific question an age ago. Someone with a blackbelt in search-fu may be able to help you.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Jeminai

Is there some reason for this that I am not understanding?

Combat reflexes is deliberately underpriced by a significant margin. Enhanced dodge is probably overpriced.

[Purple Haze]

Advantages are not priced by utility, advantages are priced by the frequency the designer wishes them to appear.

[borithan]

Well, a combination of factors, wished frequency of appearance being one of them. Utility does have an impact on the pricing, just it isn't the only thing.

As said, it would be presumed that if you buy enhanced Dodge you probably bought Combat Reflexes first, so Enhanced Dodge should normally be thought of +1 to Dodge over and above Combat Reflexes. Seeing as base Dodge is hard to improve otherwise, is not penalised by repeat defence rolls (in the basic rules at least), and the bell curve effect of rolling 3d6, this could be seen as more valuable than the initial +1 you get from Combat Reflexes.

Probably still is overpriced, and it is pretty much confirmed that Combat Reflexes is deliberately under-priced, especially considering all the other stuff you get from it, as it is considered an essential buy for any combat character (and probably even non-combat focussed characters in campaigns where combat is an important part).

[weby]

The "correct" price for combat reflexes would be 70+ points.

Components are about:
dodge: 15
parry: 10
block: 5
limited IQ: +6*20 -80%(only for rolls to wake up,or to recover from surprise or mental “stun.”) =24
initiative: no official price but about 10 points minimum. Perhaps something like alternate powers with speed +1 with affects others and speed +2 affects others with the accessibility "must be leader" and a base penalty of maybe -60 to -80% "initiative only"
fright bonus: 4
fast draw: 2

So yes, it is "slightly" under priced...

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Purple Haze

Advantages are not priced by utility, advantages are priced by the frequency the designer wishes them to appear.

Well, there is some utility, in the sense that things like DR need to be balanced against Innate Attack, but even that is arguably "how often they want it to appear."

A better explanation would be that "game balance" is art rather than science. The mechanics in the GURPS book are building a particular sort of gameplay the designers want. The easiest way most people understand "balance" is "everything is priced the same," or it's all wrapped around some core element, the game-unit of usefulness.

This is not the case, though (because there's no such thing as a "game-unit of usefulness"). "Balance" is about creating interesting gameplay. If you have interesting gameplay, then you have a good game. "Balance" is arguably about ensuring that multiple possible strategies (a core element of good gameplay) are viable for success.

Consider rock, scissors and paper. Let us say that you need to win 3 out of 5 matches to "win the game." It's a perfectly alright game, though ultimately rather random, but I doubt anyone would argue that it was unbalanced. Now, let's muddle with it. Let's say we added "gun," and that "gun" defeated everything. The net result? Either you throw gun and I do not and you always win, or we both throw gun and we always tie. That's not very interesting: bad balance (gun is too powerful). Let's say that we make it so that gun defeats everything but paper ("treaties can overcome guns.") The net result is that paper beats gun, scissors beat paper and gun beats scissors. We've really just replaced rock. This is "balanced" but not an interesting choice.

But let's say we make a victory with "gun" worth twice as much as a victory with scissors or paper (that is, two victories with gun is sufficient to win the match). We would seem to have lost our balance again... but that's not necessarily true. It makes the most sense to throw Gun at all times, and thus ensure quick victory... but knowing that, I might choose to throw paper instead, because then I actually win that round. Knowing this, you might throw scissors. So we're back to the randomness... except there's more deliberate choice here. What sort of man am I? What sort of situation am I in? If I have won one round, I'm very pressed to use Gun. If I've already won two, then I'm better off throwing something else. We have strategy, consequences, psychology. I would argue that we have a better game.

(It's also the principle behind Yomi, by the way)

By weighting some things, you can emphasize them, shape choices, direct people in certain directions.

GURPS works like this too. Why is Combat Reflexes so cheap? "To increase survivability," is the pat answer. Okay, but if that's so, why not just make characters more survivable? Why even have the base defense at X+3? Why not set it to X+4? Or X+2? Why not let everyone recover swiftly from stun? Is it because we want mooks to be surprised? Well, you already have mook rules, so that's not the reason.

Perhaps it's meant as a campaign switch? In combat-oriented campaigns, you defend at X+4, and in non-combat campaigns... well, it's not relevant what you defend at. But perhaps in games with high levels of vulnerability, like horror games, you want characters who are easily stunned or more easily frightened. That makes sense... but a switch shouldn't need people to pay points for it. After all, if I set the campaign at TL 3 or TL 10, I don't give you a Low TL [-25] or high TL [10]. I just set the campaign TL.

No, it's there because it's a choice: You can take it or you can leave it. For a combat character in a combat oriented-game, the choice is obvious: take it. But what about non-combat characters in a combat oriented-game, like the field medic, or the science officer in a space opera? Should they take combat reflexes? For 16 points, they could get +4 to their specialty. Or for 15 points, they can be better at combat. Which should they go with? If they don't expect to fight, or when a fight breaks out, they intend to run or take cover and let other people do the fighting. That's their strategy, and in some cases, it's a perfectly viable one.

Then why is Enhanced Dodge so expensive? Because there's a continuum. On the far end, you have things like Combat Paralysis and Post-Combat Shakes, which represent characters who are really bad at combat. On the other end of the spectrum, you have enhanced defenses. To Combat Reflex or Not To Combat Reflex is at the center of this continuum. The game seeks to discourage you from moving too far from its center, where its gameplay is strongest and makes the most sense (if everyone had defenses of 20+ on 3d6, the game would get weird, same is true if everyone had defense -5 to 5. They just don't make sense). So you want to keep people near the sweet spot. Note that Combat Paralysis is worse than the loss you take from simply choosing not to have Combat Reflexes (an additional -2 to fright checks and you're checking for stun "for free" once a fight), but it's worth the same (-15 points).

The game is encouraging you to stay near the Combat Reflexes/No Combat Reflexes baseline. If you want to be even better at defending, you need to pay more and more* the farther you get from this baseline, and the worse you want to defend, the less and less* you get for your troubles. The only reason, then, to make these choices are if you're building your character around them.

That's why.

*Well, the price stays the same, but you get less and less benefit: the jump from 9 to 10 or 10 to 11 is less than the jump from 17 to 18, but costs the same. This is also why they probably discarded the scaling attribute costs they had in 3e, because going from IQ 15 to 16 is already worth less, for the same cost, than going from IQ 10 to IQ 11.