Changing combat time to more than 1 second/turn

[Pahn]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Is your concern that you don't think multiple attacks per second are realistic, or that you don't think maintaining such a pace is realistic?

A bit of both. While things like RS models the difficulty in landing two blows a second, it seems to me (though IANAP[hysicist]) that you would also lose some strength and/or defense as a result. Sort of like a Committed Attack, and then some. But as has been pointed out, GURPS favors the heroic.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by fartrader

If you want an even more realistic combat system, The Riddle of Steel, IMHO, has the best. It's actually somewhat similar to GURPS' in that it's based off of performing combat maneuvers, but in TRoS, you've got specific maneuvers for specific weapon combos and even specific reactions to other specific maneuvers - that is, there are tons more maneuvers making the sytem somewhat unwieldy for the GM if he has multiple types of fighters on the table (players have an easier time with their single character).

The thinking I employ in Sagatafl's (combat) design, to avoid combat being (more than minimally) player skill dependent, is to allow characters to specialize in specific maneuvers prior to combat, so that in essence in the heat of battle the character is not faced with a "flat" menu of 30 or 40 different options, but rather with a menu that contains a few options that he has in some way become especially good at, and then another about 30-35 options that he'll only use when situationally necessary. For instance, if the character faces a heavily armoured foe, then the character may be situationally forced to employ Precise Strike, Feint or Trip, even though he hasn't trained to improve any of those, because those manuevers he has trained to improve can't be meaningfully used against heavily armoured foes.

In Sagatafl, you learn binary skills to speed up actions (Speed Factors that stack to lower the AP cost), or give Roll Difficulty bonuses, or do other things (e.g. increase the hex range of your Charge).

GURPS offers similar options, in the forms of Techniques, and probably also various Perks. Any such kind of pre-combat training can, like in Sagatafl, be used to simulatively reflect both the character's career (e.g. a cop who's trained to be especially good at the Double-Tap (Revolver) maneuver) and cultural background (the manly - but ofte short-lived - Keltic warriors of my Ärth setting disdain not only helmets and mail, but also shields, and so their combat style puts some emphasis on parrying, unlike other medieval cultures, since the average medieval sword isn't durable enough for sustained parrying use).

One would assume that TRoS has a similar mechnic, to "pre-shape" the maneuver landscape. Unless of course the whole point is to emphasize player skill at the expense of player freedom to choose what kind of character to play.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by hal

Good luck finding a copy of it these days :(

Pretty sure SPG is rarer than PCCS Hand to Hand. It also has the dubious honor of being the only game system I know of with time increments of 1/12 of a second.

[namada]

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[Anthony]

Originally Posted by fartrader

...nor Sword's Path Glory. A quick search tells me it was published in '86 - so, before my time. ;)

Heh. It's the same publisher. It's most notable for damage tables that show exactly what internal organs your attack penetrated...

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Pretty sure SPG is rarer than PCCS Hand to Hand. It also has the dubious honor of being the only game system I know of with time increments of 1/12 of a second.

A friend of mine started designing one with increments of 1/50 of a second. But he got better.

Personally, I can easily believe that GURPS turns are variable in a range from about 0.8 to 1.5 seconds.

[namada]

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[Gollum]

Originally Posted by Pahn

But as has been pointed out, GURPS favors the heroic.

Yes, unless you limit players to realistic abilities (both with attribute caps and limited starting character points).

In that case, player characters won't use rapid strike because the penalty will be to huge for them (especially if they try to aim at a specific part of the body, which already gives a quite huge penalty).

Thus, the choice will be:

• either one attack
• or two with no defense: all-out attack (double).

Which is exactly what you find realistic, isn't it?

Actually, the realism of GURPS may be about the one of the movie Lord of the ring, something which falls exactly between the harsh realism of Band of Brothers and the funny heroism of Rambo, to take another game world as example...

But since GURPS is really generic, you can make your games more realistic than Lord of the Ring, or more heroic. It all depends on what abilities you exactly give to your player's characters, because their skill level will govern what penalties they can afford during combats...

And since almost all GURPS rules are optional detail, you can even forbid rapid strike by saying that it is not realistic... Which is probably true (unless you use very specific techniques which link several attacks in a raw but which have to be learned with a lot of training before you can use them*).

* I'm thinking about techniques like morote tsuki (two punches at the same time on the same foe's torso) or golenda (five very fast strikes with a staff) here. These are real techniques, very fast, but they require a lot of hours of training before being done well enough to be effective.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Pahn

A bit of both. While things like RS models the difficulty in landing two blows a second, it seems to me (though IANAP[hysicist]) that you would also lose some strength and/or defense as a result. Sort of like a Committed Attack, and then some. But as has been pointed out, GURPS favors the heroic.

Something that could be adapted from my initiative system into RAW GURPS would be the idea of being able to "trade in" damage to reduce the RS penalty - -1 damage (or -0.5/die, whichever is worse) per +1 to skill, negating up to half the penalty. That will frequently work out to "half damage, -3 to skill" for rapid strikes, so if you'd like you could even require realistic characters to take this option if not using Committed Attack (in which case they can opt to use the normal "full damage, -6 to skill").

[Terwin]

Originally Posted by fartrader

GURPS' combat system is generic, universal, realistic-enough, yet heroic (as said above). If you want to tweak it to be less heroic and more realistic, you're going to need to employ many of the optional rules in the Basic Set and Martial Arts. One thing that is still going to be lacking though is lulls and movement.

The only way to get this in GURPS (there's nothing official, as far as I know, nor anything like this fan-made either, again, as far as I know) is to force movement. Left to their own devices, players will stand there like a brick and attack every turn during combat, so force combatants to take the step if the maneuver allows a step. Before or after, doesn't matter, but you must take it.

From what I have seen, if you have miniatures and you are not attacking from ambush, then you will probably be using at least your free step every turn.
This might be moving to where it is easier to get to the next guy after this one goes down, or keeping him between you and some other guy trying to get at you.

On a complex battlefield(even with few obstacles) a single step can easily mean that at least one of your assailants next turn now needs to do a move or move and attack to stay in range.

If you want movement, you just need to have a battle mat out so that everyone can see the opportunities available if they take one or two steps.

And if your players are still not moving much, add in more terrain and have the bad-guys show them why standing still is a bad idea.