[Plane]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Ah, I missed that. Checking Aggressive Parry and Jam, it looks like Grabbing Parry just failed to make mention of the roll against skill - and that the modifiers it lists apply to that, not to the defense.

Not sure if it's failure to make mention, I'm thinking perhaps it was intentional removal of that step.

Originally Posted by Varyon

As for my mention of defense, I was under the impression the target of an Aggressive Parry was able to make a defense against it, but I see now that is not the case

I have no concrete answer for this since they went and took out the explicit note Basic set had for weapons. Despite the comparison they make to that, there are other critical differences AP has (can target extremities or weapons) that make me hesitant to assume it follows Basic Set policy for "free aggressive parry".

Originally Posted by Varyon

(and for good reason; the last thing we need is an endless exchange as two characters keep trying to use Grabbing Parry or similar on each other over and over and over and...*).

*EDIT: Now that I think about it, I've seen something like this in a video game, and it was incredibly annoying there. In Ehrgeiz, throws can be reversed with the right timing, but unless the result is the character simply breaking the grapple (which does happen with a few throws), the throw that it gets reversed into is also reversible.

Playing against the AI on the highest difficulty renders throws unusable, as they will always reverse whatever you try - indeed, I once put two max-difficulty AI opponents against each other in training mode, and once it came to a grapple they basically danced until I got tired of it and exited training.

I don't think GURPS has to worry about the endless exchange problem. In most cases you'll just hit a failure wall due to cumulative -4. It might go a bit further for TBAM with their smaller -2 cumulative, but it will still happen.

Eventually the penalties will be so bad you won't bother doing GPs you'll just do normal parries to guarantee success.

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

The rewards for it are low, and the expectation is that you don't have to "waste" an attack achieving a grapple on your own turn, not that you parry and lock 'em up super tight ready for destruction.

That makes sense for 2H GPs done by wrestle/sumo (half as much as CP as you'd usually do) but not for the 1H judo ones since you get 100% the CP you normally would when using a 1H grapple, so it's just as effective as opting to attack w/ 1 hand.

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

And note that even if the grab is successful, and the person who parried goes to develop the grapple on their own turn . . . the now-defender can use Escaping Parry on p. 36...which allows 0.5 x Trained ST (slightly better than the Grabbing Parry's 0.5 x ST) to shed the (probably weak) grapple.

TG4 "For techniques, this is relative to DX, not to the skill it defaults from"

TG48 the unarmed skills are listed under note 1, slow progression, so you need to buy skill up to DX+4 just to get +1 to ST...

getting your parry up to DX+4 would be especially difficult since it's based on 1/2 skill.

Originally Posted by Varyon

the only difference is that the damage penalty is in the form of using 0.5xST rather than taking a -3 to damage).

That's not even a penalty at all unless you actually have incredibly beyond-DX training in your skill though.

-3 to damage is like -6 to striking ST.

By comparison to get +3 to trained ST via high skill (at ST 19 or less) via the slow-progress skills people normally use requires DX+19.

To get up to DX+19 on a baseline use such as an attack first requires (for Hard-difficulty Judo) spending 4 points to buy it up to DX, then 4*19=76 points to get it up to DX+19.

This still only gives you a (DX+19)/2+1 Grabbing Parry, meaning to get your Grabbing Parry technique 19 points higher than your DX is going to require you to get your base skill up to DX*2+37.

That strangely would require more skill investment to get a ST bonus the higher your base DX is.