Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

Can you dodge reverse missiles?

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

Hits in GURPS don't guarantee damage. I don't see why you wouldn't get the same defenses you'd get if the missile had been fired at you, including Dodge.

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

The description doesn't say no active defense is allowed, so, low-tech weapons should be possible to dodge. Bullets, however, will ruin your day.

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

What difference does that make? Unless you are using Restricted Dodge Against Firearms or something.

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

Using Dodge against firearms doesn't mean you are actually dodging bullets. It just represents evasive movement.

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

IIRC, RAW only allows dodging bullets when you know that you're being shot at. The first use of a Reverse Missiles spell wouldn't qualify unless it's a very magically-savvy opponent.

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

I'd just use the rules for Reflective DR (considering this is basically that but only missile weapons).

The real question is, does the attacker also have the shield up? ;)

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

That's true of any attack.

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

If it's a missile that's slow enough to see, anyone with combat reflexes should probably get to dodge.

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

I was just thinking. Logically, using Reflection rules from DR, it makes sense someone could dodge a bullet at them because they can determine where it's going to go. I don't know that a spell would follow a physics determined path to allow dodging once reversed... then again, could just be assumed it does for the sake of allowing defenses.

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

Reverse Missiles attaches a "Return to Sender" to missiles. The only reason dodging bullets doesn't really work is that you can't actually see a bullet in flight. Arrows, knives, and wrenches are all visible in flight, so you can dodge those. The rules for dodging bullets even point out that you're really just trying to not be in line with the barrel of the gun when somebody pulls the trigger.

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

For the common meaning of dodge that means "see incoming motion and react specifically to avoid it". As you say, the GURPS "Dodge" is a technical term that doesn't mean that.

Perhaps a better name would be "Evade" or "Weave".

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

Sure if they know it's going to bounce back. But if they know it's going to bounce back, then why are they shooting?

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

Yeah. I think Craig had the right idea. If you had no idea you were shooting at someone with Reflect Missiles, you won't be expecting the attack. Unless you're ignorant of magic (in which case, there might be some Unusual Background required of the mage), then you'll probably figure out what happened and look for some other target, or another way to get at that one.

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

There's a case where I'd let a shooter try to dodge an unexpected Reverse Missiles. If you have and are using the Tracer Eyes perk (Tactical Shooting p41) and the range is great enough that the bullet will take a half-second or so to return, diving for cover seems plausible.

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

I feel Danger Sense also covers this, allowing you to dodge after a successful Per roll (IIRC at -2).

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

This is my feeling. If you shoot a bullet, you get hit. The spell is reversing it right at you so there's no way you could evade it. Basically, don't shoot is my feeling on bullets.

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

Unless magic is known, and you can load up some meteoric iron bullets. Won't that be a nice surprise for the mage?

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

I have to ask, because apparently the RAW is still the same as from 2e Magic (which is to say 3e GURPS) there was something that never made sense to me but it rarely came up in play so I just went with it.

How is the exception at all applicable?

If the attacker misses his "to hit roll", then isn't he missing the target protected by Reverse Missile and thus the Spell never "activates" against that particular shot? Even in if the attacker missed a roll against a different target, crashing into Reverse Missile by accident, the spell should return the shot along the path from which it came, in which case the original target should risk being hit (if still in the line of fire) and then the attacker should still risk being hit (again, if still in the line of fire).

I know it is "magic", but it strikes me as more complicated to have the Spell work in any fashion but reversing the missile and sending it back along the path from which it came at (roughly) the same speed at which it hit the Reverse Missile effect.

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

I can't find my copy of 3e magic at the moment, but IIRC it specified that you couldn't dodge the first reflected shot, but you could dodge subsequent reflected shots (why you are continuing to shoot at someone with reverse missiles is not addressed).

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

Testing for the duration to expire? Trying to still scare the protected target (people can still be scared by things they "know" they are protected against)? Protected subject leaping into the way of what would have otherwise been a successful shot against someone/something else? Failed "Curious" SC check?

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

Reverse Missiles is the maintained spell. There is also the Blocking version, and you don't know which is up until the second shot (or if they only have the Blocking one, to drain their FP).

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

My sense of the intent* is that shooting at a magic user protected by Reverse Missiles would indicate that he is so protected, even for unsuccessful attacks. That way, the shooter gets information, even on a miss. It doesn't make a lot of sense, unless you envision a big bubble of reverse-missile-itude around the caster.


*starting anything with a phrase like that makes it seem pretty suspect, but it does seem ambiguous and open to interpretation of what is supposed to be going on

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

The spell is intended to prevent projectiles from even touching the mage, so, the spell has to extend away from their body a bit. Reflecting missed shots is just a side effect, that occasionally works out nicely vs explosives.

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

That is just it... even if you miss the caster, in order for the spell to work you still need to be within its area of effect. I know in 3e it is treated as a regular Spell, and I think that is the problem; it strikes me as more of an Area Spell or some sort of cross between the two (an Area Spell that that can be centered on a moving subject). I am pressed for time so I will not be surprised in the slightest to find that such a thing is covered in material I already own.

So again... if I fire an arrow at a someone protected by Reverse Missile and I miss, it seems strange that the "area of effect" and mechanics involved in "reversing" the missiles are such that my missile isn't just... well... reversed back at me. I may have missed the subject of the spell, but if I still hit the area of effect, my missile should be reversed to follow its previous path right back at me... shouldn't it?

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

Even if it does follow its original path back to you, why would that guarantee damage (that is, no defense to the hit is allowed)? The shooter might well have moved by that point. Characters in combat are always moving. Also, the original hit might not have succeeded versus the target's defense, either -- and one valid way to interpret that is that the GURPS "hit" wasn't an actual contact of the missile. Similarly, neither is the return hit.

Or to argue in magical terms, the spell basically just symbolically replaces the caster with any shooter for the purposes of a ranged attack, so the shooter is really shooting at himself. The magic makes things such that that's the net effect. The exact physical details aren't even important for the similarities and correspondences involved. The only hit that gets rolled is the one versus the shooter.

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

Use the rules for the Reflection enhancement for Damage Resistance (p. B47); namely, "The attacker doesn't get an active defense against the first attack you reflect back at him, but gets his usual defenses against subsequent reflected attacks. Reflection only works vs. direct hits! It cannot reflect damage from explosions, fragments, poison gas, or anything else that affects an entire area." Reverse Missiles is specific protection against ranged attacks that trace a line from attacker to subject, and once it's no longer a surprise, the returned attack is no easier or harder to defend against than the original attack would have been.

In particular, note that "hit" in GURPS very often means "the attack roll succeeded." It doesn't say anything about defense rolls, DR, etc.

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

I think the problem is, how do you shoot a gun and a bullet is returning back to where you are shooting from and still dodge it, despite the fact that dodging bullets means not being where the gun is pointing? You couldn't be where you were shooting from essentially.

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

While not part of the initial question, my follow up and the subsequent discussion was wondering about the intended mechanics of the spell... because we do understand what "hit" often means in GURPS. Reverse Missile apparently affects "misses", based on the wording about an attack that misses still being "reversed" back at the firer, but not in a manner to hit whomever or whatever fired the shot.

This seems inconsistent with how I would expect things to work, unless there is some bizarre cosmic "fairness" law that states "They weren't trying to hit you, so we won't hit them!" If the spell just takes any incoming "missile" and "reverses" it, shouldn't it simply be a matter of something hitting the spell's area of effect versus not hitting it? An arrow that whizzes by your head (unless the effect of the spell extends out that far) shouldn't go flying back. If someone is firing from a moving position, the missile should fly back to where it originated, even if the firer is no longer present.

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

You get a dodge vs. bullets in GURPS because you are moving in a way your enemy cannot predict. If he's behind you or otherwise has the jump, it's assumed that he can predict you; otherwise, you may dodge. In the case of Reverse Missiles, you get to dodge because you are aware of the foe – you're shooting at him, after all! Your movement is therefore assumed to be evasive with respect to him; it isn't as though you wouldn't get a Dodge roll if you both had pistols and he shot 1/100 of a second after you did. An attack returned with Reverse Missiles is essentially indistinguishable from that case. Perhaps most important, the bullet has a finite travel time to and then back from the person with Reverse Missiles, during which time you may well budge . . . and of course you and your target don't have the same exact shape or profile, so a hit on him may well barely graze you.

As for misses, the idea is that for the sake of drama, you treat all misses as near-misses: hair-parting grazes, last minute flinches, etc. They would've hit but for random bad luck. The effect extends at most to the target's hair, clothing, etc. so that this can happen. Wide misses with more air between them and the target don't occur ". . . because magic."

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

I think I get it. This might not quite be a RAW accurate example, but a PC archer targeting an NPC mage he doesn't realize is protected by Reverse Missile rolls a miss by 1 for an area where that doesn't hit anywhere else. A generous GM could treat it as being so close of a shot that it triggers "Reverse Missile"; as the shot would have barely grazed the mage's hair or clothes, the GM has the returned arrow similarly barely miss the archer, who likely now realizes that the mage is indeed protected.

Am I close?

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

Targeting a hex with an area-effect or explosive attack gives a +4 bonus to hit a hex. It's not precisely apropos, but you could say that if you miss by 5+, you miss so badly that you don't trigger the spell.

Re: Reverse Missiles - Can you dodge?
 

Misses in GURPS are near-misses in almost all cases. I'd be extremely reluctant to hang a specific margin of failure on it. A miss by just 1 can still hit the target when attacking the eye, skull, face, groin, neck, or vitals; as DouglasCole says, a miss by 4 is canonically still in your hex; and even a miss by 9 when targeting the eyes (-9) might mean "just whizzed by the side of the head," because if you hadn't aimed there, you would've hit. Also, hitting the wrong target is restricted to a one-hex-wide strip for an arbitrarily large miss . . . if you have modified skill 6 and roll a 15, your miss by 9 still travels down a 3'-wide corridor mostly filled by you would-be target, meaning it zipped past mere inches away from a linebacker-sized warrior in armor. The exception is scatter, which only applies to attacks on areas with the sorts of weapons that don't attack point targets in the first place.

For most purposes, letting Reverse Missiles reflect misses isn't saying anything extravagant about the spell's area of effect. The difference between "me" and "me and an inch-wide fringe wide around me" covers a margin of failure of up to 9. It's really no different from saying the spell protects your gear as well as you.