Combination Attack Techniques: Ready Maneuvers

[Pseudonym]

I put together my thoughts and some of the information from this thread, and I composed this post.

http://pseudoboo.blogspot.com/2016/0...gineering.html

Do the resulting point values sound appropriate?

[Christopher R. Rice]

That's pretty clever, Pseudonym - I approve. :-)

[evileeyore]

Ooh, very nice. I'd like to see a Pyramid article on this, maybe with expansion on using other "non-attack" maneuvers in Combinations?

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Pseudonym

Do the resulting point values sound appropriate?

One data point you appear to be missing is GURPS Martial Arts, which is where Quick-Shooting Bows first appeared. That gives us the -6 per roll (Heroic Archer halves this penalty), and can be used as precedent to allow Ready to be an Attack (using a straight skill roll) rather than, well, a Ready maneuver, so we shouldn't need that instance of Cosmic.

With that in mind, in a cinematic campaign, simply replacing Ready with an Attack but requiring a roll should be available. This means you could pull it off at full skill with an appropriate Extra Attack or with All Out Attack (Double), could draw a weapon with one hand and attack with the other as a Dual Weapon Attack at -4/-4, or Ready and Attack (or Attack and Ready) as a Rapid Strike at -6/-6 (or -3/-3 with an appropriate Advantage). If your attack goes after a specific hit location, that's simply a Combination - your axe swing to the Vitals is going to cost [9] ([4] for the first +1, [5] to buy off the remaining -5). Something involving nothing but Readies doesn't need to worry about hit location at all, so just pay the normal cost - your Frantic Reload* is going to cost [15].

Now, getting rid of the need for a specific hit location is a bit dicier. With a typical Combination, getting rid of the need for a specific hit location is equivalent to grabbing Extra Attack (Single Skill -20%, Multistrike +20%) [25], so a mere +50% - boosting cost to [14] - is clearly insufficient. However, so long as you've only got one attack involved amongst, perhaps, a multitude of Readies, it really isn't abusive. In fact, the DF Power Up implies you can actually get away with not having any degree of Cosmic for buying off the penalty - it doesn't treat it as a Combination at all! Still, I'd say that +50% is fair, with bows being treated as a special case.

With that in mind, you can "upgrade" any Combination that has only one Attack with the rest as Readies for +50%. A strike-anywhere version of the pick swing is going to cost [14], and your whip attack is going to cost [23].

Note in all these cases, the price is going to be reduced if you have an Advantage like Weapon Master that decreases your Rapid Strike penalties. Apply a -3 per additional attack to the base price, and recalculate from there. So the pick swing is [6] with a specific hit location, [9] without one; the whip attack has a new base cost of [9], so it's [14] for the strike-anywhere version; and finally a Gunslinger can pick up Frantic Reload for only [9].

*Note Frantic Reload may well be worthwhile for a character who already has Fast-Draw and the Quick Reload Perk. For example, a cinematic rifleman using a muzzleloading flintlock could take his reload time from the default of 60 seconds all the way down to about 5 seconds - 30 seconds by using paper cartridge, 20 seconds for Fast Draw, 15 seconds for Quick Reload, and with 3 Readies per second, that's 5 seconds total.

[Pseudonym]

Originally Posted by Varyon

You said a lot here, but I think it's pointless to repeat it all if I am replying almost immediately after.

Ah, those are interesting thoughts. I've updated the post with a paragraph explaining the bit on Martial Arts, I added costs for Weapon Master users in the worked examples, and I discussed in the closing paragraph the possibility of waiving the 50% for allowing readies in a combo.

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

That's pretty clever, Pseudonym - I approve. :-)

Thanks! It's mostly because I was able to bounce some ideas off of the smart people here though!

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Varyon

With that in mind, in a cinematic campaign, simply replacing Ready with an Attack but requiring a roll should be available.

This is what I do in my ACTION! games: Aim, Ready, and Concentrate are all on the list of "Attack Action Swap Out Maneuvers".

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

This is what I do in my ACTION! games: Aim, Ready, and Concentrate are all on the list of "Attack Action Swap Out Maneuvers".

Fundamentally, that's what I did in two instance:

1. "On Target," Pyr #3/77 allows substituion of Aim for Attack, and Extra Attack gets very powerful in that case.

2. Technical Grappling: the box on doing multiple things in a round has some similar analogs.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Fundamentally, that's what I did in two instance:

1. "On Target," Pyr #3/77 allows substituion of Aim for Attack, and Extra Attack gets very powerful in that case.

That's where I got the idea! I figure if it's good enough for Aim, it's good for all sorts of other Maneuvers!

[Kalzazz]

I'll admit, between buying Extra Attack I'd rather just sink 24pts in my favorite gun skill

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

I'll admit, between buying Extra Attack I'd rather just sink 24pts in my favorite gun skill

This is the Gunslinger problem, sure enough. But the thing about Extra Attack - and more so if you pay the 30 points instead of 25 to include the multi-strike option - is that it applies to all of your skills. So if you JUST want to be amazing with a pistol (and very good with a rifle b/c defaulting is at -2, and some others are -4) then that sort of focus is right on.

But for 30 points, you get it for fists, guns, pointed sticks, sharp swords, and harsh language.

It lets you do amazing things in multiple categories; if you want to be a one-hit wonder (and that's an excellent character concept), I think you're right and it's hard to beat +6 or +7 to skill.