Feints dominating fights?

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by makke

@Riposte: I don't think this technique is very effective against a foe that is as skilled as you are. Assume your mirror-image that makes frequent use of deceptive attacks to lower his skill to say 12. That makes your tactic nigh impossible or at least extremely risky.

Don't dismiss it outright without trying it. Not everyone goes for it, but it provides another way to gain those penalties while still keeping your skill high for attack. Consider Kuroshima's example, and how much more lethal that character would be after a riposte: Feint for -4 defense, Riposte for another -3, and then make 3 attacks. That's devastating, if pulled off correctly.

@The Executioner: Too be honest I don't think DR 8 is that impressive. I've just looked up one of our warriors and she would deal an average of 19 to 20 points of dmg to that guy with a single attack to the vitals - without any magical abilities or anything at all but a simple committed attack.

I'd like to see her stats, but I want to point out that this wouldn't even stun him. He'd have a major injury, but he'd pass his roll and keep going. And he's more than just a pile of hit points. You also have to find a way past that defense (harder, if you want to target his vitals) and not get hit by his doom weapon, while dealing with fear checks.

@Circumstances: I find it hard to imagine that ppl happen to frequently stumble into situations in which they are not able to take an extra second to feint. I'm actually aiming to lengthen the time a typical fight needs in my current campaign since I don't think that a fight between a dozen combatants should last only ten or twenty seconds.

Fights come down to a single hit in GURPS. If a ninja pounces you from behind, you don't have time for multiple feints. If you're fighting multiple opponents who are circling around you to get at you from behind, you don't have time for feints. If you're in an iajutsu duel where a fast-draw roll is the difference between being able to parry and not being able to parry, you don't have time for a feint. I actually run into this a lot.

@Using combat options: If I'm not overlooking anything obvious the fighter that uses feint to prepare an attack has largely the same combat options as the one who doesn't?!

The point is that other options might be more attractive in different situations.

I think my point about feints is something like this. Assume two equal fighters that can spend 8 CP and have to fight a head on duel in an arena ("Gladiators"). I'm not able to come up with a better option than "increase skill by two levels or, in case you have not maxed the feint-technique yet, max that out and invest the rest in the skill" (if you want, you can vary the available points - I just wanted to exclude extra attacks and stuff like that).

The first answer is "Don't put them in arenas." Arena fights are boring and deliberately tests of skill. If you set up a fight so that Karate Sport is the only viable technique, then unsurprisingly, the person with the highest Karate Sport will win. I don't mean to be facetious when I say that a good GURPS fight must be dynamic.

But I also understand the other perspective: You might have these alternatives well in hand, you just find that in this particular situation, which comes up often, and you want to find a way out of it. But examine my discussion with Kuroshima, the different rules we're using and the different tactics we're taking to win, and note that "Feint" isn't the end-all, be-all of the discussion, by any means.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Kuroshima

Not 3 chances to crit, it's 3 chances to crit per round, or 4 if I decide that you're turtling too much.

Any tactic that relies on crits is doomed to failure. Period.

If instead of attacking at skill 14, I decide to go with skill 17 and only two attacks with the rapid strike, I have a 10% aprox chance with each.

Or even just one attack at my vitals! Shifting goalposts.

If you could go first, and instead start evaluating, and I then rush in, I get three rounds of raining attacks on you. If your single attack doesn't manage to put me down, I get 4 more rounds. If I happen to roll low on any of the feints, you're in for a world of hurt. If I roll a crit, you're in for a world of hurt. If you miss a single defense, you're in for a world of hurt. If once you evaluate me thrice, I retreat and disengage, you've wasted your evaluate.

You don't lose the evaluate unless you're vastly more mobile than I am. It's not like a feint, so that tactic doesn't work. It's more like aim.

And all of the reverse applies too. You talk about high likely you are to get a critical success, but how likely are you to get a critical failure? The moment it becomes clear that you've screwed a roll, I can move in and take advantage of your weakness. You're relying a lot on luck here, and that means your strategy amounts to "I have 30 points more than you, and I'm sure to roll well eventually!" with a dose of "And if you NEVER EVER change, I can change, and beat you!"

That's not really a discussion of the merit of your strategy at hand. In fact, this is the result of your competitive, tactical instincts kicking in. The rest of your discussion isn't actually about the topic at hand, except for this:

It's obviously another tool in the toolbelt. It is, however, the shiniest, most widely applicable tool in it. It dominates low skill high ST foes. It works wonders in both single combat, and against multiple foes. It is almost always a good aperture, and many times, the aperture becomes the closure. It doesn't require you to invest in things you would not otherwise get, as the Feint technique also doubles as a defense against feints, beats and ruses. Is it an "I Win" button? no! But it does not need it to reign supreme. You use it every combat, and sometimes more than once per combat. It works most of the time, and complements the other options nicely.

The topic at hand is not whether your build could beat mine. That's a distraction, something more suitable for a tournament thread. The topic at hand is whether feint dominates fights. By your own admission, it does not. It's a powerful tool, but according to you, so are Rapid Strikes, high mobility high DR and and Extra Attacks are highly valid tactics and, if you build your character around feint, you can be highly effective.

And that's true, but it's not really pertinent. The question is: Do feints dominate fights, and both you and I are saying that they don't.

[Deadite]

Originally Posted by trooper6

The game was in 2010, and once it was over, the GM deleted it, and after a half a year RPoL deleted it from the servers. So it is gone, sadly.

As for examples...I can't really give them...

But it was a great game!

Maybe you can give a hypothetical example, I need something to varibulate my players dueling's decision-making.

I did a quick read through on the Combat Steps in the basic set books, still, a campaign based on building an ability from your character's Character Sheet, I would really like to hear someone's experience in a dueling system they played in.

A made-up example, like the knight choose to ____ instead of Feinting because he has_____. That would really move me forward on creating my world.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Deadite

Maybe you can give a hypothetical example, I need something to varibulate my players dueling's decision-making.

I did a quick read through on the Combat Steps in the basic set books, still, a campaign based on building an ability from your character's Character Sheet, I would really like to hear someone's experience in a dueling system they played in.

A made-up example, like the knight choose to ____ instead of Feinting because he has_____. That would really move me forward on creating my world.

The knight chose to Evaluate instead of feinting, because he has lots of time (and THEN he feints).

The knight chose to Beat instead of feinting, because he has lots of strength.

The knight chose to attack instead of feinting, because he has no time to feint.

The knight chose to riposte (with lots of defensive additions) because his skill is inferior to his opponent, but his defensive capability is higher (defense bonuses, retreats, defensive grip, cross-parries, whatever)

Another point that's being lost in this discussion, though, is not that feinting is so bad, it's what you do with it afterwards. A feint never killed anybody. That's not what it does. In fact, in my tactical discussion with Kuroshima, the point isn't actually about the feint (I feinted too!) the point is about when we feint and what we do after.

I evaluate because I tend to use combos in my game, and if I combo too often, my opponent will get a bonus to my defense, and evaluate is a good choice in my game for many reasons, so I retreat and evaluate while building up skill for a good feint and then I make a single, highly deceptive attack because defeating high defense is my priority

Kuroshima is dealing with another situation, one where his skill is often higher than his opponents so feints will almost always result in a benefit, and he doesn't have to deal with people seeing through his repetitive tactic (Incidentally, if you want to avoid repetitive tactics, you need to institute some kind of rule that makes them easier to defend against), and he often faces piles of hit points, so multiple attacks makes more sense because the feint reduces the defense to a non issue, but a single successful hit is unlikely to be enough to floor his opponent well enough that Kuroshima has basically won the fight. Moreover, in DF, you often face multiple enemies, so you don't have time to dick around with Evaluates (while CBR often breaks down into duels, where Evaluate is much handier).

The bone of contention between us actually has nothing to do with feint at all, but everything else. We're arguing about what you do before the feint (KUroshima: Nothing, Me: Evaluate), what you do after (Kuroshima: Rapid Strike, me: Deceptive Attack) and how you build your character to take advantage of this (Kuroshima: Extra Attack and Feint, Me: Counter Attack, Grip Mastery and lots of defensive options)

You can't really look at the feint and say "But people will do it all the time!" They won't. They must do other things to win. Namely, they must attack. Feint is just a very useful way of getting past defenses, which may or may not be an issue, and certainly won't be the only thing they do. Consider that everyone also Moves, Waits and All-Out Defends under certain circumstances too.

[makke]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

The first answer is "Don't put them in arenas." Arena fights are boring and deliberately tests of skill. If you set up a fight so that Karate Sport is the only viable technique, then unsurprisingly, the person with the highest Karate Sport will win. I don't mean to be facetious when I say that a good GURPS fight must be dynamic.

I'm just trying to reduce possible variables - the problem comes up in the simplest setups imaginable (an arena fight) therefore I think its enough to look at that. Why introduce complications when they are not needed to prove the point?

Originally Posted by Mailanka

But I also understand the other perspective: You might have these alternatives well in hand, you just find that in this particular situation, which comes up often, and you want to find a way out of it. But examine my discussion with Kuroshima, the different rules we're using and the different tactics we're taking to win, and note that "Feint" isn't the end-all, be-all of the discussion, by any means.

But it's too close for my liking. I think Kuroshima nailed it when he said the following:

Originally Posted by Kuroshima

Is it an "I Win" button? no! But it does not need it to reign supreme. You use it every combat, and sometimes more than once per combat. It works most of the time, and complements the other options nicely.

The way I see it feint should be something that should have its uses but should not be as universally useful as it is at the moment. As I said before I see no reason for a character not to take it. It costs only a few points to get that technique up and it's basically never wrong to do so.

[Deadite]

I'm looking more at building your character 'during combat' to play something that's advantageous to their maneuver. These are all pvp, by the way.

And feinting is, your ___ skill vs Jamie's ___skill. So everyone is essentially

building their characters to have a better feinting ability?

If I, say, force players to build their special ability into one of the poorer combat maneuver, like AoA or Do Nothing, do you think it's a good way to increase varieties in player's dueling decision-making?

Or there's already a better way to avoid this, things like deceptive attack and combos, they're not in my basic set books, they sound like something that could really varies players decision making, I would love to know what they are.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by makke

The way I see it feint should be something that should have its uses but should not be as universally useful as it is at the moment. As I said before I see no reason for a character not to take it. It costs only a few points to get that technique up and it's basically never wrong to do so.

You're talking about the technique, right? Realize Kuroshima is talking about Extra Attack and how useful that is combined with Feint (specifically, the fact that one feint applies to all of his extra attacks). He's found a way to multiply an effect, and he likes it. But that's more of a function of Extra Attack than it is of Feint.

Take that Extra Attack away, and you need a spare turn to feint. Your opponent can walk away from feints. It slows your kill-count down, and it's often overkill. Kuroshima doesn't care because he can afford to feint and then mow into an ogre with 3 rapid strikes, which is a worthier use of Extra Attack than simply mowing into an ogre with one attack and three rapid strikes, but if you don't have Extra Attack, this sort of thing doesn't happen.

This is why I dislike Kuroshima's contribution to the thread. He makes it sound like Feint is more powerful than it is, but if you actually examine the discussion and mechanics at hand, he's talking about the convergence of Feint with Extra Attack. THAT, together, is what he means in your quote.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by makke

I'm just trying to reduce possible variables - the problem comes up in the simplest setups imaginable (an arena fight) therefore I think its enough to look at that. Why introduce complications when they are not needed to prove the point?

Because removing variables removes effective options cutting it down of course you are going to get your preselected tactic showing up as the best option, because you end up stacking the deck for it.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Deadite

If I, say, force players to build their special ability into one of the poorer combat maneuver, like AoA or Do Nothing, do you think it's a good way to increase varieties in player's dueling decision-making?

Or there's already a better way to avoid this, things like deceptive attack and combos, they're not in my basic set books, they sound like something that could really varies players decision making, I would love to know what they are.

Deceptive Attack IS in your basic set (B369). The rest is in Martial Arts, which is your go-to book if you want more detail and nuance to your melee combat.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Deceptive Attack IS in your basic set (B369). The rest is in Martial Arts, which is your go-to book if you want more detail and nuance to your melee combat.

Further more not on is Deceptive Attack in the basic set it is considered by the Authors to be a key component to High Skill melee combat in 4e.