08-24-2010, 09:39 AM | #31 | |||
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Stuttgart, Germany
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Re: Fighting machine with IQ=8 and Per=7?
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So failing a Per roll means you can miss out on the first 4-5 seconds of combat, easily. Quote:
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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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08-24-2010, 09:42 AM | #32 |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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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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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
08-24-2010, 09:43 AM | #33 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: Fighting machine with IQ=8 and Per=7?
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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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Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! Last edited by Icelander; 08-24-2010 at 09:48 AM. |
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08-24-2010, 10:45 AM | #34 | ||
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Stuttgart, Germany
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Re: Fighting machine with IQ=8 and Per=7?
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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. Quote:
There is no other stat in GURPS which denotes whether that signal goes out. |
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08-24-2010, 10:54 AM | #35 | |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: Fighting machine with IQ=8 and Per=7?
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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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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
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08-24-2010, 11:04 AM | #36 | |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Stuttgart, Germany
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Re: Fighting machine with IQ=8 and Per=7?
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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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08-24-2010, 11:21 PM | #37 | |
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: France
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Re: Fighting machine with IQ=8 and Per=7?
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;-) 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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08-24-2010, 11:33 PM | #38 |
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: France
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Re: Fighting machine with IQ=8 and Per=7?
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.
It looks interesting... I will glance at it as soon as possible. |
08-24-2010, 11:54 PM | #39 | |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Stuttgart, Germany
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Re: Fighting machine with IQ=8 and Per=7?
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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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08-25-2010, 12:42 AM | #40 |
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Pennsylvania
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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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Tags |
combat, kromm explanation |
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