Dodging and combat questions

[Mister Negative]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

Ah, good to know. So you use it for both melee and ranged defenses? How well do you find that works? Can skilled fighters "read" an attack as it's coming in, knowing whether it will hit (ie, declaring after the attack roll) by accepting a penalty to defend?

So far, no one has been willing to try! It seems people would rather duck unnecessarily than risk an axe to the face that they were wrong about. I suspect this is true a lot of the time in real life. If someone asked, I think I would allow it at a -2 to the defense roll, considering it roughly analogous to the hesitation required for determining friend or foe when covering an area. That's off the top of my head, though. Given that dodges are free and unlimited, most people just go with that if they don't want to spend a parry or block.

I'm also not sure that someone who is Aiming should be allowed to split their focus enough to also meaningfully evaluate whether an incoming attacker would hit. I mean, they are deliberately focusing on something else!

What pleased me was that it worked seamlessly. People immediately cottoned onto to "You tell me what my enemy is doing, and I tell you what I am doing, and THEN we roll." Despite all of them but one being experienced with GURPS, we didn't have any hiccups.

The wizard was pleased that he could use his "Fumble" spell, whether or not his opponent would have hit, and one of the more skilled fighters was pleased with a critical parry that ended up disarming his opponent (despite his opponent missing entirely!). GURPS as written means that exceptionally useful defenses (such as ripostes, Fumble spells, and weapon parries vs. unarmed opponents) are able to be used LESS against unskilled opposition than highly trained fighters, as the clumsy opponents make their attack rolls less often!