Combat- Why not contests of skills?

[lawman]

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.

It took me a while to fully understand this, and why this is different than just a contest of skills.

It is different than a contest of skills when you consider Hit Locations and the options available in 4th Edition, such as Rapid Strike.

With a called shot to the head, the penalty is -5. If you used a contest of skills, instead of the existing rules, the Expert (skill 15) is reduced to the level of the novice (skill 10), just as Kromm said.

The reason why this is silly, is because of how much the expert is reduced. Yes, the head is easier to defend, but how much easier. In the above example, the novice is able easily fend off blows to the head (assuming they hit at all). The expert should be penalized for aiming for the head, but how much is he penalized?

I think this is the silly part that Kromm mentioned.

However, I'm not sure deceptive attack relieves this much. First, we have to recognize that no one has said deceptive attack was meant to change this.

In the above example, the novice has a better chance to defend an attack against the head (assuming it hits) because he doesn't have to beat the expert's degree of success. However, the odds play out slightly different, but the end result appears to be basically the same, to me. I'm not an odds expert; this is merely a layman's appraisal.

Further, it seems to me that the current system makes more sense for ranged attacks. Either you dodge the projectile/aim or you don't dodge it. Where the contest of skills, seems more appropriate (with modifications to get rid of any silliness) for melee and close contests. This would be klunky, in my opinion. Especially since it seems to imply multiple hit location tables, too.

In the end, it seems to me that it all evens out. Either way, there are drawbacks that I don't like.