The Utility of High Combat Skills

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

No... I get that. What I mean is "I'm not sure why Kromm would reduce Deceptive Attack from the option it is, being able to go down to skill 10 with it, to 'Nope, skill 16 minimum'."

That's a reduction of options, which is (IMO) anathema to GURPS.

I dont think that should be interpreted to mean its not an option, hes advising on the standard choice and what it should be. That 16 maximizes the chance to hit and even get a critical hit with no real drawback so should be a no-brainer type choice. Going lower than 16 involves trade offs so is less of a great idea and becomes more situational. Ie if your up against a high AD roll it might be better to lower odds of hitting to counter that defense roll even more.

[D10]

Originally Posted by Boge

I don't like it. Maybe it's just the campaigns I've played in, but it feels overpowered to me, especially if the other players aren't close to that. The GM needs to balance things, but if you get into combat and you have a 24 skill and the other players have 14 skills, the NPCs will likely be around 14 as well meaning you will cut right through them.

Failure is a good thing in these games. Without a real risk, the victory is non-existent.

Or the NPCs will be around skill 20 and harshly punish those PCs that arent up to snuff in combat.

In your case its not high skill unbalancing the game, its the distribution of people with high skill in the game setting.

In my gametable, I made a diplomat, but the campaign is heavily focused on combat, after getting my ass kicked a few times, I started investing all my points in combat skills until I was safe (we do have a soft cap of 40 pts invested into a single skill), and then I was back into getting richer, more charismatic, etc.

Its all about how the GM handles the distribution of high skill

[Fnordianslip]

Beyond utility, there's the fun factor. High combat skills also make combat infinitely more interesting for the PC. Instead of just, I roll to hit, they roll defenses, I roll damage, suddenly there are options. Do I try to take down two mooks with rapid strike, do I go deceptive, do I go for the eyes/brain/head/arm, etc. Disabling foes becomes a useful and viable option. Combat turns from checkers to chess and gets a lot more interesting.

[Gnome]

If your goal is to be better at fighting, skill is, all other things being equal, the best point-for-point investment you can make, at least in low-tech melee combat. High skill improves your chances to hit, reduces the enemy's chance to defend (due to Deceptive Attack), increases your damage (due to hit locations), and improves your defenses, all for a mere 4 pts/level.

Suppose fighters A and B, both equipped with chainmail, a Broadsword and a Medium Shield, have all 10s in attributes and 12 in broadsword skill, and they each wish to spend 40 more points. Fighter A buys ST+2 and Weapon Master (Broadsword), two of the best non-skill expenditures possible, while Fighter B buys ten more levels of skill. Who wins in a fight?

Fighter A does WAY more damage: 1d+5 cut with a swing instead of 1d+1 cut.
Nevertheless, I would argue that Fighter B wins this fight almost every time. An effective Parry of 16 makes him virtually impossible to hit. Meanwhile, the ability to use a Deceptive Attack, rolling against a respectable 12 while giving -5 to Fighter A's defenses, means that Fighter B hits with just about every attack. Granted, Fighter B has trouble penetrating the chainmail. But he has enough skill to hit an unarmored location, like face or eyes. If Fighter B uses his first turn to Feint, he can go for an eye shot on the second turn and end the fight. Fighter A has no reasonable way to counter this, and his only hope of even achieving a hit is rolling a 3 or 4 on attack (or the enemy rolling 17 or 18 on parry).

Is this a fair way to compare the two fighters? Not really. Fighter A might be better against, for example, a stone golem with so much DR everywhere that Fighter B can't penetrate. Fighter A has more hit points, so he will survive longer against attacks that cannot be parried, such as arrows, flame jets, or psychokinetic attacks. Fighter A can also carry more armor (due to higher BL), and is eligible to develop a few more tricks with Weapon Master.

And in general, if the two fighters started at skill-20 the answer becomes muddier, because Weapon Master is better once you can take advantage of reduced penalties for rapid strikes and repeated parries. But, all other things being equal, the best way to improve a melee fighter is usually to increase skill.

Ranged fighting is trickier to assess. Ranged attacks have to contend with range penalties, but ranged attack skills don't provide parries, and cannot be Deceptive (unless you're playing with "Prediction Shots" from MA121).

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Gnome

I

Suppose fighters A and B, both equipped with chainmail, a Broadsword and a Medium Shield, have all 10s in attributes and 12 in broadsword skill, and they each wish to spend 40 more points. Fighter A buys ST+2 and Weapon Master (Broadsword), two of the best non-skill expenditures possible, while Fighter B buys ten more levels of skill. Who wins in a fight?

Fighter A does WAY more damage: 1d+5 cut with a swing instead of 1d+1 cut.
Nevertheless, I would argue that Fighter B wins this fight almost every time. An effective Parry of 16 makes him virtually impossible to hit. Meanwhile, the ability to use a Deceptive Attack, rolling against a respectable 12 while giving -5 to Fighter A's defenses, means that Fighter B hits with just about every attack.

Fighter B's hits start out with no more than 3 out of 4 while Fighter A still Parries on an 11 or less (half of Skill-12+2 for Medium Shield +3) That would be about 65% of the time were it not for the Deceptive Attack. That does lower the number of hits parried down to c. 5% or 10 out of 216.

So out of every 216 attacks Fighter A does only hit with 4 but all of those are Critical. He also Critically misses 4 times. Fighter B has exactly the same number of Crits positive and negative. He does get 148 regular hits. Total % of hits is about 70%. Not quite almost always.

If fighter B was more strategic and only lowered his Skill with 6 pts of Deceptive Attack. He'd get 20 Critical Hits and only suffer one Crit Fail with 3 regular misses. Fighter A would still be parrying with an 8 or less. That would stop 50 out of the 192 regular hits.

Fighter B gets 20 crits + 142 regular hits. That takes his total hit % up to c. 75% and 5 times as many of his total hits are those unstoppable Crits. The benefits of lowering his Crit Fails by a factor of 4 is significant too.

So if you want a less formal Rule of 16 it's that once you get your success % up to 16 don't go back down below it.

[Black Leviathan]

We generally come from a place of very low skills. We most often play 100-125pt characters, ordinary folks with maybe a little experience in fighting, and even then most of our characters spend less than half their skill points on fighting skills. Our fighters have skills around 13 in their primary weapon. We often attack the body, shoot from short range, aim or all-out.

When I started looking at the templates for Dungeon Fantasy with their level 18-20 combat skills I was just at a loss for what to do with all that skill. It felt wasteful and extravagant when I was used to the strain of so much less. I targeted the eye almost exclusively at first. Later I started doing multiple parries. Later I found I could do cool thematic things like quick-draw Rapid Strikes targeting the left and right hand, or using Acrobatics to spring over someone and attack into my rear hex after I land behind them. When you push that big skill to it's limit it becomes a lot of fun.

[AlexanderHowl]

I generally have combat monsters coming in at around skill-24. Since I have a hard cap of Attribute+(Advantage-Disadvantage)+10, the average DX of combat monsters tends to be 14, though Talents like Mr. Smash allow for more versatility. When combined with ST 20, Two-handed Axe/Mace-20 gets really scary.