Dodging Difficulty
 

So I'm walking to dinner tonight and I think to myself... hmmm... are all attacks equally tough to dodge?

Are thrown baseballs, thrown axes, sword blows, crossbow bolts, rifle fire and laserbeams all equally as tough to move out of the way of.

I realized I could make a reasonable case that they aren't.

Slow moving stuff is easier to see coming. It is easier to react to. Perhaps it should get a bonus. to dodge. If you have sufficient levels of ATR or even ETS (to see it coming) maybe you should be able to more easily dodge fast things too (maybe only for the first one for ETS, I don't know).

If a guy with a laser pistol with some kind of mind controlled trigger is drawing a bead on me... should I get to dodge as easily? probably not in my mind. It's impossible to tell when he's going to fire, and I certainly can't 'see it coming and get out of the way'.
I know we aren't representing actually dodging rounds, but it seems like there might be good reason why some attacks would get bonuses or penalties to dodge.

Any opinoins?

Is this already a well established rule and I am totally brain dumping it?

Re: Dodging Difficulty
 

If you only started dodging when the attack had already been launched, you left it until too late.

Re: Dodging Difficulty
 

There's still a massive difference between the ease of getting out of the way of a swung stick and a bullet, in real life.

Re: Dodging Difficulty
 

With human reaction speeds, dodging is less reactive "I see where that arrow is going, now I move." and more proactive "I'm guessing he's gonna shoot there, so I'm gonna go this way." making the speed or size of the projectile fall below GURPS resolution until it is really fast (lasers! pew pew!) or really slow (that rock will hit me in a second or two). At least, that's how I see it.

Re: Dodging Difficulty
 

Isn't this the point of the Dodge nerfing optional rule that first appeared in Martial Arts and was refined somewhat in Tactical Shooting?

Re: Dodging Difficulty
 

Since only an idiot (or a comic book character) would bring a stick to a gun fight, and parrying works better than dodging against such attacks anyway, I don't think it much matters.

Re: Dodging Difficulty
 

Good to know no one ever attacks someone with a gun with a melee weapon in the real world. I'm sure every police officer that's ever been stabbed will be relieved to hear that.

More importantly, even if your assertion were true that such situations never arise, this doesn't mean if we have the same characters operating under the same rule system and it is realistically harder to do one thing compared to another, that those things should be the same difficulty according to the rule system.

Re: Dodging Difficulty
 

Dan Daly got his first MoH, in the Boxer Rebellion, when his lightly defended position was attacked by hundreds of mostly unarmed guys. By the end of it, he too was fighting in hand to hand combat. He probably killed about 200 people that day.

Dan Daly.

That is all.

Re: Dodging Difficulty
 

Amen. He was like 5'6" and 135 lbs, too. Scary mofo.

Re: Dodging Difficulty
 

I did not make that assertion. To clarify, the disadvantages of being armed with a stick or any other melee weapon in a gunfight are so gigantic under the normal rules, that I don't much care if the miniscule chance of dodging a stick is even more miniscule when you are dodging a gun. Which would only be actually true at certain engagement ranges anyway. Of course technically with dodge and retreat, your chances of dodging a stick really are better under the rules.

Re: Dodging Difficulty
 

Since when is ~25% minuscule?

This is true. Still leaves a gap between someone throwing a baseball at you v. shooting a laser at you, however.

Re: Dodging Difficulty
 

A six or less comes up 25% of the time?

Re: Dodging Difficulty
 

BS = 5, Dodge = 8. Most people aren't tooling around with Medium encumbrance. Cops are probably at Light at the most. Soldiers might be at Medium if they're still carrying packs, but they tend to drop those once rounds start flying. Gangbangers/criminals are probably at none.

Re: Dodging Difficulty
 

I've toyed around with givings guns 1 point of free Predictive Attack, and energy weapons 2 free points - essentially, a -1 or -2 to Dodge. It makes firearms and lasers harder to dodge than bows, but not so much harder than people can't dodge them entirely.

Re: Dodging Difficulty
 

The issue would soon become one of playability.

Take a simple reach 2 weapon, a swing coming in at an angle can often be dodged or side-stepped, on the other hand, a long center mass sweeping horizontal swing, which is easily blocked/parried, is impossible to dodge/step out of the way of, unless you dive/drop, or go all matrix acrobatic like.

Or take a stream of fire sweeping across horizontally at center mass height, other than dive/drop, or matrix acrobatics, no dodge should ever work.

Re: Dodging Difficulty
 

Those are very good points, and if a GM were to say 'you cannot dodge that swing without droping prone... what do you do?' I wouldn't have an issue. What I wanted to suss out was if there was a RAW or houserule or general incluination that would allow some attacks to be dodges more or less easily than the standard MV+3 assumption.
It appears that there may be.
Need to go look at predictive attack. Anyone happen to know what page it's on?

Re: Dodging Difficulty
 

It's basically just deceptive attack, but it only works v. dodge.

Re: Dodging Difficulty
 

What about the Dodge vs. Firearms optional rule from Martial Arts/Tactical Shooting?

Re: Dodging Difficulty
 

Well, that's certainly not true, since you could have a shield and succeed by less than the DB.

Re: Dodging Difficulty
 

I don't like the fact that it's only v. one shooter personally. I don't see how "moving evasively" shouldn't work against anyone in the same general direction as the shooter you're trying to dodge.

Re: Dodging Difficulty
 

As I've suggested before, I don't see any reason not to either treat every firing element as a single shooter, allow you to dodge multiple shooters but with Situational Awareness penalties, or both.

Re: Dodging Difficulty
 

I do agree with Crakkerjakk here... Chance to dodge are not low. To the contrary, they are quite high.

Suppose that Average Joe is walking on the street - like almost everyone does it, that is without encumbrance. A bad guy walks in front of him, draws a knife and says "Give me all your money, bastard!" Joe refuses and the bad guys attacks. Joe's effective dodge is 8 + 3 (retreat), that is 11. 62.5% chance of avoiding the blow without the least training!

Now, suppose that this bad guys has a gun instead of a knife. If Joe dodges and drops, following the Basic Set rules, Joe's chance of avoiding the bullet are exactly the same... 62.5%.

Every one with common sense would say that it is far much easier to dodge a knife blow than a man who has just to pull the trigger of his gun... And this is, to my mind, what Benz 72 was meaning.

But, as Sir Pudding said it, there already are optional rules for those who want more realistic dodge. Limiting Dodge, in Martial Arts, pages 122-123, for instance. Or those in Tactical Shooting - which I didn't buy yet.

And remember that the GM may always give extra modifiers for specific situations. No matter how comprehensive a role playing system can be, it can't anticipate every contingency.

Hitting a foot is easier with a spear than with a knife, for instance. Likewise, dodging some blows is easier than dodging some others. So, the GM is free to add a task difficulty modifier if he fit that they are appropriate. See Basic Set pages 345-346.

Just don't forget to divide them by 2 for defense rolls.

Re: Dodging Difficulty
 

I have read it that Dodging represents anything an untrained person can do that will cause an attack to hit.

The bit that seems screwy to me is the extra's you can choose to add retreating and dropping. They both should be decision that you make on your turn rather than as a reaction.

Worked examples

DX 10 1point of skill in either knife or gun gives a 50% chance of hitting.

Does the attacker have a 50% chance of missing if the defender does nothing?
I don't think that fits so we need some tactics.

With the knife he telegraphs +4 to hit and +2 to dodge and uses an all out attack determined (it could be AoA strong for more damage).
Retreating makes sense here it's a perfect example of the "eek a pointy thing" response.

Result
Skill 18 and +2 to dodge or skill 14, +5 to dodge and +2 damage.

Now for the gun
A couple of seconds pointing the gun at the target probably counts as aiming.
Add an all out attack determined.
Would you really throw yourself to floor in front of a man threatening you with a gun instead of running away or attempting to fight back? I wouldn't.
So skill 13 to 15 and no bonus to dodge.

We could run the percentages but I am pretty sure the knife is less likely to connect.

Re: Dodging Difficulty
 

If I don't make any mistake in my calculation...

The bad guy with the knife
Skill 18 (Average Joe's dodge 8 + 3 + 2 = 13): 15.89% chance to hit.

The bad guy with the gun
Skill 13 to 15 (Average Joe's dodge without dodge and drop): 62.09% to 70.69% to hit.

The bad guy with the gun, if Average Joe is dodging and dropping
Skill 13 to 15 (Average Joe's dodge without dodge and drop): 31.42% to 35.77% to hit.

Following GURPS rules, Average Joe wold better dodge and drop than try to run away... But, of course, the problem with dodging and dropping is that he would be prone just after... Which would reduce drastically his chance to survive a second shot.

Re: Dodging Difficulty
 

Thanks for doing the maths.
I didn't like the AoA determined for the knife because I thought it pushed the to-hit chances to far apart and the strong attack would guarantee the knife did some real damage.

If the target has committed to dropping to the floor, that's a lot more movement for the shooter to react to than normal.

It's the choosing to drop that seems weird to me.
Using a wait action to drop on being shot at makes more sense to me.

Re: Dodging Difficulty
 

The Limiting Dodge option accounts for this. You only get the dodge and drop bonus if you go prone on your turn. Really I think the only problem is restricting it to a single shooter. Instead try it with the Situation Awareness penalty for multiple shooters.