Altering the Initiative Order

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

So why should you be allowed to use a lower Basic Speed at all, ever, instead of taking Waits?

Because it allow non interrupting correlated action basically 'only the count of 3' stuff. That need more action choice than what Wait allows

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

So why should you be allowed to use a lower Basic Speed at all, ever, instead of taking Waits?

Because it can resolve a few, rare, issues of Turn Sequence[1]. Lowering your place in the Turn Sequence, once, and for the entire combat, doesn't entail the mess that doing so every turn would entail.

[1]Such as the one where the Wizard's spells have an effect and the Fighter wants to take advantage of them before the enemy reacts. If the Fighters place in the Turn Sequence is before the Wizards this will mean he would be forced to take a Wait maneuver every single turn, which significantly reduces his fighting options. If the Wizard and Fighter fight together all the time they should, logically, be able to time their offenses better than that; and the Fighter, having the Advantage of higher Basic Speed, shouldn't be penalized for it.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Hohenstadt

Being so new to GURPS (got about 12 books 4e and haven't even GM'd/played yet. Been reading thru them and making characters) all this discussion about simply going when you want to in a round/turn is really starting to put me off GURPS. If this is an example of what goes on in a game session over just this one issue, what else have I to face?

Isn't this supposed to be fun to play?

It is supposed to be fun to play. Part of that fun in this certain self-selected group is to understand and discuss (and obsess over?) minutiae of the rules.

Because GURPS uses a one second turn that is functionally interleaved with other people's turns, it often occurs that what happened during a round can only be narratively described once a turn is over, and everyone else has gone.

Also as a side effect of this interleaved turn, some things that fall out naturally in other systems (or are forced to happen through things like Attack of Opportunity, if I understand it correctly) require a bit more consideration when done in GURPS.

Mostly, I think what goes on in these forums is people try and understand what the canonical rules are supposed to be, so they can determine if they like it that way, and where they want to deviate (pretty sure even the line editor has house rules). Some of that (less and less every year; 4e's been out for a while) is leftover from years of 3e rules. Some isn't. And some have different levels of willing suspension of disbelief and different thresholds for what makes them say "No Fun!"

What GURPS turns seem to be designed around is a fixed turn order that's established at the beginning of combat. After that, the "decision order" is fixed until that combat ends, but the "Wait" maneuver complicates this by allowing a character to decide what he'll do at the beginning of his turn ("I'll Wait until X happens, and IF it does, do Y"). This changes the order that the characters ACT in, but not the TURN order. So no one ever gets "two TURNS in a row," but you may effectively ACT twice in a row without another character getting to call out an action (of course, if you do that, some other character likely gets that opportunity on YOU, if they're in a position to take advantage of it).

There are some really cool things that can be accomplished with Wait, and some "no frackin' way!" items that are prevented by its use. One of which might be a character with a machine gun pointing it down a ten foot wide hallway. Without Wait actions, unless some poor schleb is caught utterly in the open in that three yard space (and that would be dumb), Mr SMG can NEVER hit any of them. Because Joe Average has Move 4 or Move 5, and can go from cover through the hall back to cover on his own turn. Without Wait, this can happen all day long.

OK, so that all seems great . . . but then some edge cases come up where it starts to feel like "not sure that guy coulda done that in one or two seconds without his poor hapless victim doing SOMETHING."

If it works for you, and you're having fun, do it. If you ask the way the game designers intended it, you'll often get an answer from Sean (Kromm) or Reverend Pee Kitty. As you've seen, that doesn't always clear things up for everyone. If you have particular questions, you can always Private Message one or both of them; they won't always get to you right away (or may be too busy to respond at all at times), but they do answer questions that way, and often dont' mind, or even ask that the responses be posted to the forums anyway!

Hope that helps. Welcome to GURPS; it's a great system, and no matter what we say here, if you're having fun with it, you're doing it right enough for your group!

dhc

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by Kazander

That would be a Custom Spell, AFAIK. There is no existing spell that changes Basic Speed. This is for same reasons as have been stated in this thread: to prevent abuse of the double-turn.

The attribute boosting spells explicitly do not affect Secondary Attributes like Basic Speed.

Would that that were true. All The Attribute Boosting (and Penalizing) Spells explicitly do increase all Secondary Attributes, including Basic Speed. As one of many examples:

Originally Posted by Magic, p. 37

Vigor Regular
Raises the subject’s HT temporarily.
This affects his Basic Speed, FP,
and ability to resist trauma and disease.

Me, I simply stick by my earlier assertion from the Turn Sequence rule, it's set once at the beginning of Combat and lasts for the entire Combat, regardless of anything that could theoretically affect it.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

So why should you be allowed to use a lower Basic Speed at all, ever, instead of taking Waits?

Either way would probably be OK so long as it's consistent within the group. Lower basic speed is more or less a broader case of Wait, with fewer restrictions on what can be done.

[Hohenstadt]

DouglasCole, thanks for that explaination. It helped me alot. :)

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Either way would probably be OK so long as it's consistent within the group. Lower basic speed is more or less a broader case of Wait, with fewer restrictions on what can be done.

Which makes it a potentially useful House Rule, but I'm still not seeing it the RAW.

I don't think I personally could use it, because I'd likely get bit by the logical paradox and oh-so-clever players. I think I'd rather just be more lax about what Wait lets you do if you aren't interrupting someone.

[Figleaf23]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

If characters can set their sequence at any number up to their Basic Speed only at the beginning of combat because they can choose to slow react slower, why can't they later decide to react faster? If a character punches at partial ST one turn, they can choose to use full ST next turn; if the situation with Basic Speed is analogous to the ST one, then it should allow you to return to full speed. It doesn't make any sense that a human being could really "dial down" their reaction speed or that they'd be trapped at the lower speed so long as interpersonal violence was occurring in the vicinity.

I guess I was imprecise. What I don't see the problem with is characters resetting their effective Speed from one round to the next, so long as a double-up is prevented.

As I said before, I am aware of that post but I am not reading what you guys are into it.

Of course you're free to have whatever views you like, but what you said was that you didn't know what post we were talking about.

Nowhere does he say you can change your sequence at any time and nowhere does he say anything about being able to set Basic Speed at the beginning of combat but not later.

It says you can choose to operate at a lower Basic Speed if you wish, but it doesn't say when the choice must be made or for how long it must stay in effect.

AFAICT the paragraph about operating at lower Basic Speed is the explanation as to why you can use Waits to go later without the same rigor that other Waits require in triggering conditions. If a character wants to delay his reactions he needs to take a Wait.

Did you have an opportunity to peruse the counter-rationale I provided to you in post #164?

[Figleaf23]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Which makes it a potentially useful House Rule, but I'm still not seeing it the RAW.

Denial is not just a river in Egypt, I guess.

[OldSam]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Which makes it a potentially useful House Rule, but I'm still not seeing it the RAW.

Well, the only difference to the totally normal way of everyone going with (max.) Basic Speed, is that a character can go at a lower speed all the time, with all it's good and bad sides... no complications ;)

And as we all know, having a higher value of Basic Speed is an "advantage", that costs points. Now, if I'm in the rare case that my character works in a team where in a given fight it would usually be better if he constantly acts after another character with lower speed and I can't choose to do so - then that's effectively limiting that character (more a kind of disadvantage).
Of course he could still use "wait", but being in the need to use it all the time (with limited possibilities), is also a bit disadvantageous.

Fortunately that's really a rare case, though ;)