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Old 08-24-2010, 09:39 AM   #31
Ze'Manel Cunha
 
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Default Re: Fighting machine with IQ=8 and Per=7?

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Originally Posted by zorg View Post
Sure, but there are lots of situations where you don't really have to roll at all whether you notice the enemy. With a low Per, you might be unable to identify someone (or someone's uniform), but you're not usually blind enough to completely overlook someone approaching you, imo. Especially when your fellows say something like "Now, look at that orc coming at us!".
You can give people omniscience all you want, but if someone says "Now, look at that orc coming at us!" in any sort of realistic situation that takes two seconds to hear, and a Perception roll to actually spot the orc while scanning the area, which even if the person is pointing will take another second or two.

So failing a Per roll means you can miss out on the first 4-5 seconds of combat, easily.

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Originally Posted by zorg View Post
In melee range, I'd only require a Per roll for someone who's coming up from behind... and I'd grant a bonus for trying a moderately easy task (unless the enemy was being stealthy, which is another matter entirely).
If you're walking down the street, scanning the around, someone lounging in the shade looking innocuous can both be missed altogether or simply ignored as harmless, if you're not looking at them when they swing a weapon up at you then you can easily be hit completely unawares.

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Originally Posted by zorg View Post
Granted, even a bonused roll might fail with a low enough Per, and under adverse circumstances (poor visibility, severe distractions), you'll be in trouble.
As an example, say I'm giving a +4 TDM for easily noticing the person across the clearing/street getting ready to attack you.

If you are a PC with a Per 12, then at 16- I don't make you roll and simply tell you that you see an orc getting ready to throw a spear at you, or a gang-banger getting ready to shoot you.

If you are a PC with a Per 7, then at 11- there's a 40% chance of having the spear or bullet hitting you be the first clue that you're in combat.

Per 7 is not combat or adventuring adequate Perception, you can feed your pigs and haul your hay bales, dig trenches and what not, with supervision, but if you get into combat situations you should die, period.
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Old 08-24-2010, 09:42 AM   #32
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Default Re: Fighting machine with IQ=8 and Per=7?

Someone with low Per isn't identical to someone whose Sense rolls are equally low due to specific sensory disadvantages. All people who lack Blindness, Bad Sight, or Acute Vision see equally well in GURPS, regardless of Per. All people without Deafness, Hard of Hearing, or Acute Hearing hear equally well in GURPS, regardless of Per. And so on. Per isn't a bulk-rate way to buy these specialized traits. There's a quantitative similarity in the area of Sense rolls, but not everything hinges on a Sense roll. There's a massive and very important qualitative difference; for instance, Bad Sight gives direct combat penalties while low Per does not.

What Per does is determine how likely your innate curiosity and pattern-recognition abilities are to cue on something of importance. It's a specialized mental capacity, which is why it's derived from IQ. Low Per doesn't prevent you from seeing or hearing combat threats that are right in your face. A guy with Per 6 has better active defense rolls against such dangers than one with Per 16 and Bad Sight. Where a threat is immediate and a split-second reaction is required, the signal bypasses this processing step (i.e., the Per roll) and reflexes kick in. All that matters is whether the signal went out, and that's limited purely by your eyesight, hearing, etc., as implemented through the special penalties for disadvantages like Bad Sight.

Where low Per does matter is when the reaction isn't split-second but considered. You want to look carefully at the enemy's sword to see poison? That's Per at work. You want to notice some sneaky guy circling the fight? That's his Stealth vs. Per at work. Your Bad Sight or Acute Vision will play a role here, too, of course.

But the real limit of low Per is all of the out-of-combat rolls it hurts. Just about all adventures involve espionage, investigation, loot-finding, scouting, survival, and the like. With low Per, many important skills needed for that – Detect Lies, Lip Reading, Observation, Scrounging, Search, Survival, Tracking, etc. – are crippled. The Per-based use of vital threat-finding skills like Explosives, Poisons, and Traps is also affected. For all intents and purposes, a low-Per character won't be finding camouflaged traps, concealed snipers, hidden loot, secret doors, etc. He'll be stepping on land mines and eating poisonous berries all the time. And he'll be worthless for standing a watch, taking point, or guarding the rear.

Remember that combat always occurs in a context. It isn't just "all these threats appear at arm's reach and you start fighting." Every enemy who beats your Per with Camouflage or Stealth gets at least one free shot at you from a doorway or up a tree. If the fight is on prepared ground, you'll end up stepping on a lot of punji stakes . . . indeed, you might trip mines in some settings, which won't help your friends any. And it can be important to spot the concealed pistol before you decide to punch some guy – or to notice who has the poisoned knife once the violence starts.
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Old 08-24-2010, 09:43 AM   #33
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Default Re: Fighting machine with IQ=8 and Per=7?

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Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha View Post
As an example, say I'm giving a +4 TDM for easily noticing the person across the clearing/street getting ready to attack you.
Something 'in plain view' is canonically +10 TDM. So to notice someone across the street, at 7 yds, is +10 TDM -3 range, meaning that it's a Per roll at +7. Normal people usually don't fail, but when they do, it's a doh! moment as it takes them an extra second to spot an old friend or something.

Adventurers, for whom an extra second to spot something can be fatal, should probably not aim to have many doh! moments.

This is not even accounting for the distraction if you're already in combat with someone at the time you have to spot a secondary threat. As I did earlier, I'll point interested folks to the upcoming GURPS Tactical Shooting, which really does have a worked-out system for 'Situational Awareness'.

Short version, Per is a warrior trait, every bit as much as ST, DX, HT and Will are.
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Last edited by Icelander; 08-24-2010 at 09:48 AM.
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Old 08-24-2010, 10:45 AM   #34
Ze'Manel Cunha
 
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Default Re: Fighting machine with IQ=8 and Per=7?

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Originally Posted by Kromm View Post
What Per does is determine how likely your innate curiosity and pattern-recognition abilities are to cue on something of importance. It's a specialized mental capacity, which is why it's derived from IQ. Low Per doesn't prevent you from seeing or hearing combat threats that are right in your face.
I hate it when you say stuff like this, I just know some kromm-head will misread that and start quoting it willy-nilly.

Perception isn't realistically related to IQ, it's instead "Mental Reflexes and Flight or Fight Pattern Recognition", otherwise you'd have made animals have Per 1-5, instead of having animals have Per 10-12 as GURPS does.

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Originally Posted by Kromm View Post
Where a threat is immediate and a split-second reaction is required, the signal bypasses this processing step (i.e., the Per roll) and reflexes kick in. All that matters is whether the signal went out, and that's limited purely by your eyesight, hearing, etc., as implemented through the special penalties for disadvantages like Bad Sight.
Perception is the "Mental Reflexes and Flight or Fight Pattern Recognition" stat, it's what sends the signal that a split-second reaction is required.
There is no other stat in GURPS which denotes whether that signal goes out.
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Old 08-24-2010, 10:54 AM   #35
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Default Re: Fighting machine with IQ=8 and Per=7?

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Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha View Post

There is no other stat in GURPS which denotes whether that signal goes out.
It's called "lack of specific sensory disads." If you're not blind or deaf, you always see or hear anything too obvious to miss. Your Per isn't relevant to this. However, if you are disadvantaged, then you suffer direct combat penalties, as noted under, say, Blindness.

This is different from indirect effects on combat, like not spotting ambushers so that you get a defense roll in the first place. But inasmuch as you're allowed to defend, Per doesn't affect defense rolls.
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Old 08-24-2010, 11:04 AM   #36
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Default Re: Fighting machine with IQ=8 and Per=7?

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Originally Posted by Kromm View Post
This is different from indirect effects on combat, like not spotting ambushers so that you get a defense roll in the first place. But inasmuch as you're allowed to defend, Per doesn't affect defense rolls.
I never said it affected defense rolls, I said you don't get any defense rolls if your Per isn't adequate.

That's why animals don't have Per 1-5, or Per 7 for that matter, anyone with Perception that low will be killed in combat in short order.


Seeing someone across the street level a weapon at you isn't an automatic for anyone, combat reflexes are irrelevant if you don't perceive the threat before the bullets start hitting.

Last edited by Ze'Manel Cunha; 08-24-2010 at 12:16 PM. Reason: clarity
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Old 08-24-2010, 11:21 PM   #37
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Default Re: Fighting machine with IQ=8 and Per=7?

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Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha View Post
Seeing someone across the street level a weapon at you isn't an automatic for anyone, combat reflexes are irrelevant if you don't perceive the threat before the bullets start hitting.
So... It looks like I didn't understand what you wrote very well... Or I didn't succeed to write clearly what I wanted to mean... Or both!

;-)

I will try again...

Of course Per affect combats in my games too. And, of course Combat reflexes are not omniscience!

But what I wanted to mean is simply that: it's not fair to require a Per roll for a character with a Per score of 7 when you don't require the same roll for characters with higher Per.

In the “seeing someone across the street level a weapon at you” situation, I perfectly do agree with you. A Per roll is required. And the character with Per 7 will probably have problems to react while a character with Per 13 won't...

But in such a situation, Per 10 characters (a lot of soldiers) will also have 50% chance of having the same problem that our Per 7 character. And even a character with Per 20 will fail his roll from time to time – deciding that he automatically succeeds is a house rule.

I was just talking about situations where things are more clear. The combat has began and the foes don't try to stealth. Or someone has clearly warned the Per 7 character: “Attack on your left!”.

If, in such a situation, a Per 10 character doesn't have 50% chance of being unable to react, why would a Per 7 character, with combat reflexes, have this kind of problems?

In GURPS rules, utterly trivial tasks don't require any roll. Seeing someone attacking you in plain sight when you look in his direction, even for a Per 7 character, is not a problem. Or it is also a problem for most other characters, half of the time.
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Old 08-24-2010, 11:33 PM   #38
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Default Re: Fighting machine with IQ=8 and Per=7?

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Originally Posted by Icelander View Post
Something 'in plain view' is canonically +10 TDM.
It is canonically an utterly trivial task, which doesn't require any roll. It's even easier than crossing the street or driving into town - which, in real life, are dangerous.

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Originally Posted by Icelander View Post
As I did earlier, I'll point interested folks to the upcoming GURPS Tactical Shooting, which really does have a worked-out system for 'Situational Awareness'.
It looks interesting... I will glance at it as soon as possible.
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Old 08-24-2010, 11:54 PM   #39
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Default Re: Fighting machine with IQ=8 and Per=7?

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Originally Posted by Gollum View Post
In GURPS rules, utterly trivial tasks don't require any roll. Seeing someone attacking you in plain sight when you look in his direction, even for a Per 7 character, is not a problem. Or it is also a problem for most other characters, half of the time.
Like I said, if I'm giving a +4 TDM and the character has a modified 16+ roll I don't require a roll, though I let the PCs roll anyway if they want.

So the Per 12 PC gets an automatic success, the Per 10 PC has a 90% chance of reacting, but the Per 7 PC only has a 40% of noticing the attack.

I don't see how any of that isn't RAW, and it's very realistic.

I implemented these Per rolls after the uberdodge thread, so characters don't get to dodge what they didn't see coming.
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Old 08-25-2010, 12:42 AM   #40
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Default Re: Fighting machine with IQ=8 and Per=7?

If you think about it, he'd be somewhat like an attack animal or a machine. Once he knows the enemy and has them in his sights, he can fight just fine, but he may need verbal direction from his handlers (in this case, the other PCs) from time to time. He'll be great at spotting things right in front of him and charging forth to confront them; he'll be terrible at seeing the trip wire across the floor that he''s charging into.
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