Combat - Quick Contest of Attack vs Active Defense

[corwyn]

Originally Posted by martinl

Most attackers that use natural weapons (including monks!) should be aiming for reach C when possible. Quite a few traditional delver weapons perform poorly or not at all in close combat, and natural weapons almost always work.

Many of the default delvers in the boxed set are surprisingly bad at this out of the box. (2018 thread)

Unfortunately, animals (even impossibly large ones) perform rather poorly in gurps vs. melee fighters. The defender gets free attacks against attacking limbs. Unless the delver starts with his back against a wall, or is attacked from ambush and gets no defense, the attacker is going to run out of limbs pretty quick. Though admittedly, the swashbuckler is not so great at crippling wounds, his turn will usually end with a poked out eye. Against a knight, barbarian or holy warrior, the spider is kinda screwed.