Combat- Why not contests of skills?

[S41NT]

yes, attacking is a lot easier. But shouldn't be easier to defend against an untrained opponent? Should a kung-fu master or a 7 year old hit the character, his defense is still the same; unless, of course, the kung-fu master feints, which consumes an action. Shouldn't a punch from the martial artist be harder to defend against than the 7 year old punch?

[Luther]

Originally Posted by S41NT

yes, attacking is a lot easier. But shouldn't be easier to defend against an untrained opponent? Should a kung-fu master or a 7 year old hit the character, his defense is still the same; Unless of course the kung-fu master feints (which requires an action...). But shouldn't a plain punch coming from a martial artist be more difficult to defend then the 7 year old punch?

I agree, but GURPS wasn't designed with the concept of margin of succes built-in.
Changing this would require a major rewrite, something I would LIKE to see.

However Steve Jackson isn't going to stop writing card games, and back to serious RPG work ;)

[Recnam Orcen]

When you target a body part, there is a good chance that your attack will be lower than the defence especially if the other retreats and even more if he all-out defends at + 2.

Both karate 12, attack head 7 or less; other parries at 9 + maybe (3 +2) for a max 14
Both karate 20, attack head 15 or less; other parries at 13 + maybe (3 +2) for a max 18

So a low skill seems to be advantageous for the defender and a high skill for the attacker. You add high skill + deceptive attack and it is quite deadly. We have already tested the improved combat system with our 400 converted to 500 points characters in Kromm’s campaign and it went very very well. I am quite happy about it because IMO it has improved a lot of issues I had with gurps combat.

[S41NT]

Originally Posted by Luther

I agree, but GURPS wasn't designed with the concept of margin of succes built-in.

Which is the opposite of the new (and crappy if you ask me) Vampire The Requiem system. It all resumes to one single roll! Even damage!!! I think that's just plain wrong.

But in a game where if you don't feint you don't hit, this makes combat a lot longer. I don't have the 4th edition yet (should arrive next week), but if there's an easier way to reduce defense (someone mentioned a -1 defense per -2 to hit), it's certainly interesting. GURPS assumes you defense score is the score to defend against the child. It's be best you can do against the easiest possible enemy.

But all problems aside, I like the way it is with gurps. Can take some time (calculating by how much the chars made their feints and all, subtracting from defense, etc) but in the end, its fair and stimulates my players do say more than a boring "I'll hit him."

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by stilleon

Why does the attacker have a better chance to hit? I agree with fire arms, but man to man it is different. When you learn a martial art you learn a lot of defense before you begin to learn your offense because if you are hit you lose. I think most trained combatatant's melee skills should have the defense at least as high or higher than his offense.

Do the numbers. Skill/2+3 is the base for a block, and once you count retreating (+3 for Boxing, Judi, or Karate) it's Skill/2+6. That means a Karate-12 guy (who, if he's an average person, has put 12 points into the skill - 2400 hours training - he's dedicated) has defence equal to his skill as long as he keeps backing away. Less dedicated people have higher defence than skill. My concern is more that defence is likely to be too high than too low - I expect any half-way competent character to manage defence-12 or more for their best defence, and Dodge-10-12 won't be unusual for PC-grade characters, I think.

The new rules about -2 attack for -1 defense helps, but it is not the solution. The solution is to make your rules follow the same logic throughout. GURPS needs to bring combat on par with the skill ststem and add this as an optional system.

IIRC Douglas Cole tried this back before G4 was announced, and found there to be some issues with play speed, and so on.

I looked at it, and decided I didn't like the likely effect on damage vs armour, and on gun-damage (which really is independant of the attacker's skill, aside from carefully aimed hits to vital locations - something GURPS already covers well).

[tbone]

Originally Posted by Rupert

IIRC Douglas Cole tried this back before G4 was announced, and found there to be some issues with play speed, and so on.

I was part of that discussion w/ D Cole, and replied to him that it seemed strange that the -2 TH/-1 AD rule would cause any slowness of play. IIRC, he then reviewed the games in question, and allowed that the slowness actually stemmed from a handful of additional house rules he'd implemented at the same time, not the above rule.

There's no reason why the above rule would slow play; it's just a pair of modifiers like any other, with no bookkeeping between rounds -- and by addressing "unbeatable" defenses, makes combat run more *quickly*. I've spoken in favor of it for a long time, and am glad to see it in 4e.

[DreadDomain]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Mainly because it gets silly, fast when modifiers come into play. Consider a trained attacker (skill 15) vs. an average defender (skill 10). If the attacker goes for the head (-5), he's suddenly the defender's equal. That makes no sense. One of the benefits of skill in real life is that you can reliably hit high-value targets.

GURPS implements skill-on-skill effects via Feint and Deceptive Attack.

In my mind, being able to hit the head once every two try on average while your opponent can only hope to hit *you* once every two time is a tremendous advantage. The kind of advantage that a well-trained soldier would get over an average Joe. So I believe your example makes perfect sense.

In real life, an opposed skill is always relative. Even if expert swordman can touch everytime normal Joe (like in your example if the torso is "aimed"), that same expert swordman will hit a lot less often against a clone expert. Now this seems to work perfectly in GURPS but if you think about it the other way around, expert swordman can almost always parry average Joe but can only parry expert clone 50% of the time. Then you realize in GURPS it doesn't matter if your opponent is good or not (I am not bringing feint into the equation there) if you have a 13 parry, you will have 13 against everybody may he be abysmally poor or a sword wizard. This is exactly why GURPS needs the feint maneuver.

But then we can try to push the enveloppe. What about master swordman (skill 36 with a parry at 19 with Combat Reflexes) battles master clone? This fight will drag on forever even with feints. I mean on a feint, if the attacker wins by 5, the defender still has 14 to parry. If he doesn't retreat.

On a relative system, it would matter because expert sworman versus espert clone (skill 15-) or master swordman versus master clone (skill 36-) would still get a 50% odd of hitting and whatever difference in skills (your skill is 4 higher than mine) would always mean the same along the line.

Edit because a post made me realize I didn't talk about deceptive attack here. My bad.

Then GURPS 4e brings Deceptive attack. I will not talk about it much because I already did in a following post on this same thread. With a Deceptive attack an attack/defense contest becomes a contest of skills (the defender must succeed by more than the attacker) except that the attacker decide before hand by how much he must succeed. So I am a little bit surprise that you believe contest of skills for combat "silly" and that they "make no sense" since you (or maybe Pulver) felt necessary to include just that option.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by DreadDomain

So I am a little bit surprise that you believe contest of skills for combat "silly" and that they "make no sense" since you (or maybe Pulver) felt necessary to include just that option.

It isn't the same thing, however. First, it's not random -- you pick a fixed margin ahead of time, in effect setting the "stakes" for the combat. Second, the penalty assessed applies to active defense, not to skill.

[DreadDomain]

Originally Posted by Kromm

It isn't the same thing, however. First, it's not random -- you pick a fixed margin ahead of time, in effect setting the "stakes" for the combat.

Yes, I made that distinction somewhere in one of my posts. If fact, I quite like that it is a conscious choice. More tactical choice to the attacker.

Deceptive attack was a very good addition (at least I don't remember this option in 3e) but it was a necessary one. In fact, Deceptive attack is a given as soon as your effective skill is 18 or higher. I don't see any reason not to use it beyond that point. I am not sure it it is good or bad.

Originally Posted by Kromm

Second, the penalty assessed applies to active defense, not to skill.

Only because GURPS makes a difference between skill and defense. But effectively, the effect is the same.

In any case, like I said, my surprise was in the "silly" and "makes no sense" expletive while mentioning "Deceptive attack" almost in the same breath (:-))

What about range attacks? Is there a way for the attacker to diminish the active defense in that case? If not, the problem remains the same if the defender has a high dodge. I agree though I have a hard time to picture a "deceptive" range attack... Look, it can only be a cinematic rule, something to provide for it in high powered games. I didn't find any in Basic Set 1 or 2.

[S41NT]

I just wanted to say today I got back to this issue and made a very very simple matlab program (LOL) to calculate the probability os an attack hitting (the attacker being successfull and the defender not) considering just the skill difference and the toHit chosen by the attacker (supposing the rest of his skill goes to a deceptive attack.

I don't have a good place to post the pretty 3d surface the script generates, but I will post the maximum possible chance of hiting a blow for each difference in skill :)

The difference is added to the attacker, so +10 means the <attacker skill> is 10 + <defender skill>

Difference :: Best to hit :: probability

-10.0000 8.0000 0.0241
-9.0000 9.0000 0.0349
-8.0000 10.0000 0.0465
-7.0000 9.0000 0.0608
-6.0000 10.0000 0.0810
-5.0000 11.0000 0.1013
-4.0000 10.0000 0.1295
-3.0000 11.0000 0.1619
-2.0000 12.0000 0.1919
-1.0000 11.0000 0.2344
0 12.0000 0.2779
1.0000 13.0000 0.3142
2.0000 12.0000 0.3705
3.0000 13.0000 0.4190
4.0000 12.0000 0.4631
5.0000 13.0000 0.5237
6.0000 14.0000 0.5669
7.0000 13.0000 0.6210
8.0000 14.0000 0.6721
9.0000 15.0000 0.7069
10.0000 14.0000 0.7601


I was a bit affraid of posting this because if it becames common knowledge, the game looses something, cause everybody will allways use the best value. But i thought you experts of this forums could find it interesting. If you think its a bad thing, please tell me and I will erase this table :o)