A less transparent Feint?

[Rabenrecht]

Now that I finally managed to actually play and run a GURPS game, my appreciation of the system has only grown :-)

But GURPS is a big system with many mechanics and rules. It is to be expected that not all of them are winners.

One of the duds is, in my view, the Feint maneuver.

I think on paper the mechanics are fine. Also, if a player uses Feint I don't see an issue either.
But if an NPC uses Feint against a player character things start to break down.

The issue in my mind is that the task resolution of a Feint is very distinct and thus clearly recognizable. In other words: it is very transparent for the players if their characters have been Feint'ed. This can (and will) inform their decision.

A player might have felt secure with an active defense of 14 or something. But seeing that they would get a massive penalty for being Feint'ed, they could go "Ah screw it. If I can not rely on my defense I will just go All-out.". Or try to foil the attack by moving away (so that the enemy would have to use Move-and-attack). Or any other decision informed by the fact that there is a looming penalty on defense.

While a successful Feint might still affect the battle in some way its transparent nature make it a poor representation of, well, a feint.


What is your experience with Feint against player characters?

Are there any ideas for changing the Feint rules to make it a better representation of feinting?

[kenclary]

Most "real world" feints (especially in the sport fencing sense) are better modelled as Deceptive Attacks (because they tend to be much faster than a full second). Similarly, All-Out Attack (Double) with a Feint + Attack removes the target's maneuver choice in between.

Martial Arts (MA101) has a "Spotting Feints" option where you still declare the feint/ruse publicly but don't roll the contest until right before the attack.

Lastly, consider: if you spend a whole turn feinting someone, and obviously succeed, and they respond by "turtling up" (choosing All-Out Defense), you've still forced their hand and had some control over the fight. Not really a bad thing. Experienced fighters tend to know when they've been put off-balance or had their timing thrown off...

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Rabenrecht

A player might have felt secure with an active defense of 14 or something. But seeing that they would get a massive penalty for being Feint'ed, they could go "Ah screw it. If I can not rely on my defense I will just go All-out.". Or try to foil the attack by moving away (so that the enemy would have to use Move-and-attack). Or any other decision informed by the fact that there is a looming penalty on defense.

I'm not sure why that's a problem.

In a real-life fight, once somone has feinted, the opponent will know it was a feint. They will know that they cannot take every move at face value. This makes it harder to defend against them. The Feint maneuver makes sense.

If one's opponent has decided that the Feints against them are too good, so they may as well make an All-Out Attack, then one no longer has to Feint at all, and can just Attack, since the opponent can't defend. Look at this sequence:

Fighter A: Attack.
Fighter B: Feint. (Succeed.)
Fighter A: Attack.
Fighter B: Attack, A has defense penalty.
Fighter A: Poor defense? May as well: All-Out Attack.
Fighter B: Attack, A has no defense.

Personally, I'd rather have a defense penalty than no defense at all.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

I'm not sure why that's a problem.

In a real-life fight, once somone has feinted, the opponent will know it was a feint. They will know that they cannot take every move at face value. This makes it harder to defend against them. The Feint maneuver makes sense.

If one's opponent has decided that the Feints against them are too good, so they may as well make an All-Out Attack, then one no longer has to Feint at all, and can just Attack, since the opponent can't defend. Look at this sequence:

Fighter A: Attack.
Fighter B: Feint. (Succeed.)
Fighter A: Attack.
Fighter B: Attack, A has defense penalty.
Fighter A: Poor defense? May as well: All-Out Attack.
Fighter B: Attack, A has no defense.

Personally, I'd rather have a defense penalty than no defense at all.

But that's not the way it typically would work at the table. When the foe throws a Feint, that doesn't mean the player suddenly doesn't know for certain whether each attack for the rest of the fight is a Feint - they know this attack was a Feint, but when the next one shows up, they'll know immediately if it's a Feint or an Attack. Additionally, in your above sequence, upon knowing the foe succeeded at their Feint Fighter A would have immediately gone for AoA, not defended at the penalty and then go AoA when there's no penalty to defense.


For addressing this issue, there are several options. As already noted, one option is to delay the resolution of the Feint until just before the follow up attack occurs - the player knows they've been Feinted, but doesn't have even an inkling of how much of a penalty (if any) they'll be under. They might still decide to do something that negates the Feint (get too far away to attack, use All Out Attack so the defense penalty doesn't matter, turtle up with All Out Defense, etc), of course. One option I've suggested in the past is an optional Feint and Attack rule - see this thread. Another option that I've also suggested, albeit in a different context, is to not tell the player if the foe hits or not with an attack until after they've decided if they'll defend - in fact, you may not even want to roll until they've decided. If the foe misses and they fail their defense, the means they've "used up" one defense (for purposes of iteration penalties and the like) but don't get hit. If the foe misses and they succeed at their defense, that means they were able to recognize it was a miss and thus don't actually waste effort defending against it. Under that paradigm, if the foe Feints, you can use their defense roll in place of their roll in the quick contest. If they win the quick contest, you tell them the foe attempted a Feint but the character recognized this and didn't fall for it; if they lose, you tell them the foe missed... and then hit them with the defense penalty next round.

You can also try to convince your players to not abuse player-knowledge - when a Feint occurs, they should act as though they thought the foe had just missed. But that's pretty difficult to do for many players.

[kenclary]

Note: this discussion repeats itself every few years (or more often), so I'll just list a few points I like to make:

1. Feints are not illusion spells. They won't convince you that someone has stepped in when they haven't, or that they've hit you when they haven't. You will know what happened.
2. If you make the target choose to defend or not before the success of the attack is determined, then every miss becomes a successful feint. This is poor game balance, and overly encourages attack-spamming.
3. Similarly, if every Feint can also "waste" a defense, then the mechanics are "doubled up": someone will waste a parry (and have a later penalty that round) and have a feint penalty.
   • consider: if the defender chooses to defend against a fake attack, it should nullify any other benefit to the feint. If you want to give them a penalty next turn you'll necessarily be obvious about it.
4. Lastly, GURPS combat just isn't a good model for the "two for flinching" game (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_for_flinching), but then such a game isn't representative of real, experienced combat.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by kenclary

Note: this discussion repeats itself every few years (or more often), so I'll just list a few points I like to make:

• If you make the target choose to defend or not before the success of the attack is determined, then every miss becomes a successful feint. This is poor game balance, and overly encourages attack-spamming.

I use a house rule that you need to declare a defense before the attack roll is revealed, but only on a hit or a near miss. If the defense succeeds, the defender doesn't even need to be told whether it was a hit or a miss. And now that they've made contact with the enemy's weapon, they have new options (blade binds, beats, ripostes, etc.).

Feint, though, I would never call for a defense. Feint can be used to represent too many things other than "fake attack" to use such a rule.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by kenclary

Feints are not illusion spells. They won't convince you that someone has stepped in when they haven't, or that they've hit you when they haven't.

A Feint that you are able to recognize as a Feint and have the time to react to and negate is a failed Feint. Because you're able to react to and negate it. Realistically, a successful feint is something that you either failed to recognize as such until the follow-up had already played out, or it's something you did recognize as such right after falling for it, but that you didn't have the ability to fully compensate for before the follow-up arrived.

Originally Posted by kenclary

If you make the target choose to defend or not before the success of the attack is determined, then every miss becomes a successful feint. This is poor game balance, and overly encourages attack-spamming.

You apparently missed the bit where, if you succeed at your defense and the attacker missed with their attack, you don't use up a defense at all. The actual houserule back when I proposed it even had an option to make you not use up your defense even if you failed at your defense, IIRC so long as you didn't fail by more than the attacker did (so if they had MoF 2 on their attack, you don't use up a defense if roll MoF 2 or better). I could be misremembering, it was quite some time ago I was thinking about this, but that's where I'd go with it currently. This does mean that it's possible for a failed attack to cause the target to use up a defense, but it's by no means guaranteed.

Originally Posted by kenclary

Similarly, if every Feint can also "waste" a defense, then the mechanics are "doubled up": someone will waste a parry (and have a later penalty that round) and have a feint penalty.

My suggestion wasn't for Feint to actually use up a defense - rather, the target still declares their defense and appears to roll for it, but the GM actually uses that roll as their roll to resist the Feint, and then either tells the player that it was a failed feint (if they won or tied) or that it was a failed attack and they didn't actually use up their defense (if they lost).

[kenclary]

Originally Posted by Varyon

A Feint that you are able to recognize as a Feint and have the time to react to and negate is a failed Feint. Because you're able to react to and negate it. Realistically, a successful feint is something that you either failed to recognize as such until the follow-up had already played out, or it's something you did recognize as such right after falling for it, but that you didn't have the ability to fully compensate for before the follow-up arrived.

Eh, disagree. Realistically, you're not going to be fooled into thinking you actually blocked/parried a sword when you just flinched.

A feint can easily (and obviously) represent "I faked high and you brought your guard up, so now you're overextended." (Technically, you get more overextended when you don't make contact, because contact pushes back.) Or other variations involving stance, footwork, balance, and other details below the resolution of maneuver choice. It's normal to notice these things, yet still not be able to negate them. And it's normal to make choices like "go all-in with a lunge" or "compensate by turtling up" in response.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Rabenrecht

Now that I finally managed to actually play and run a GURPS game, my appreciation of the system has only grown :-)

But GURPS is a big system with many mechanics and rules. It is to be expected that not all of them are winners.

One of the duds is, in my view, the Feint maneuver.

I think on paper the mechanics are fine. Also, if a player uses Feint I don't see an issue either.
But if an NPC uses Feint against a player character things start to break down.

The issue in my mind is that the task resolution of a Feint is very distinct and thus clearly recognizable. In other words: it is very transparent for the players if their characters have been Feint'ed. This can (and will) inform their decision.

A player might have felt secure with an active defense of 14 or something. But seeing that they would get a massive penalty for being Feint'ed, they could go "Ah screw it. If I can not rely on my defense I will just go All-out.". Or try to foil the attack by moving away (so that the enemy would have to use Move-and-attack). Or any other decision informed by the fact that there is a looming penalty on defense.

While a successful Feint might still affect the battle in some way its transparent nature make it a poor representation of, well, a feint.


What is your experience with Feint against player characters?

Are there any ideas for changing the Feint rules to make it a better representation of feinting?

Maybe the simplest change to the Feinting rules is to just change what the penalty from successful feinting does. Instead of subtracting your margin of success from your Feinted opponent's defenses, you may subtract your margin of success from your opponent's next maneuver. Thus whether your opponent All-Out Attacks, Attacks and Defends, All-Out Defends, (Aims, Fires, takes a Long Action, Moves [for Move, as opposed to Step, I might suggest making a DX roll to avoid losing one's balance rather than a penalty to movement], Waits or Does Nothing, none of which are really recommended reactions to being Feinted but if that's what the character decides to go for...,) he is at a penalty to do so because he is reacting in a defensively-minded way to your feint. I.E., he can All-Out Attack in response to your feint if he thinks that might be more useful than Defending, but he's still off-balance and wary due to the success if your Feint.

This change hasn't been play-tested, so there may be unforeseen problems with it, but as a quick, mechanically simple change, it seems likely to achieve the results you're looking for.

[kenclary]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Maybe the simplest change to the Feinting rules is to just change what the penalty from successful feinting does. Instead of subtracting your margin of success from your Feinted opponent's defenses, you may subtract your margin of success from your opponent's next maneuver. Thus whether your opponent All-Out Attacks, Attacks and Defends, All-Out Defends, (Aims, Fires, takes a Long Action, Moves [for Move, as opposed to Step, I might suggest making a DX roll to avoid losing one's balance rather than a penalty to movement], Waits or Does Nothing, none of which are really recommended reactions to being Feinted but if that's what the character decides to go for...,) he is at a penalty to do so because he is reacting in a defensively-minded way to your feint. I.E., he can All-Out Attack in response to your feint of he thinks that might be more useful than Defending, but he's still off-balance and wary due to the success if your Feint.

This change hasn't been play-tested, so there may be unforeseen problems with it, but as a quick, mechanically simple change, it seems likely to achieve the results you're looking for.

That could be a nice power-up.

As discussed, the problem is kinda two-fold:

1. Deceptive Attack and other options are just better mechanics that more closely model real-world feints
2. The GURPS feint isn't very useful unless there's already a big skill imbalance (which kinda makes sense for big, slow "fake attack" type feints, anyway)

Another option I've considered (even started outlining a pyramid article awhile back, but I don't have time for that kind of writing and they don't take pitches anymore) is to redefine the feint option a bit:

• Let a Feint work anywhere within Move and Attack range, not just Step range.
• Let the defender apply Retreat (and Slip/Sideslip when appropriate) bonuses.
• Keep the results public. You know, they know, you know they know, they know you know, etc.
• Rename it "Bait" and let it cover both DX-based and IQ-based (ruses) versions.

Combine that with Evaluate, and it could, perhaps, make a real tactical game of "two fighters circling each other." You Bait them, and they are incentivized to change things up: they change the range immediately with a Retreat/Slip; they keep circling with a Sideslip; they go all-in by following with a Move-and-Attack, All-Out Attack, or Committed Attack; they turtle up with All-Out Defense or Defensive Attack; etc.