Realistic Human DR

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Does that ever happen asynchronously? Or are you talking about lulls where both fighters simultaneously stop actively fighting?

I've watched LARPers do the latter a fair bit, and asked them about it. They do it without consciously knowing why, but tend to describe it in terms like "wanting to recover their balance." Some have described going up against more skilful opponents, who don't need to recover so often, and thus have a big advantage.

Now, in GURPS terms, these guys are mostly using default skills and telegraphic attacks. The first-time newbies are also suffering unfamiliarity penalties, and tend to lose very quickly. If the "more skilful opponents" I've heard described have actual points in Combat (Sport) skills, they have significantly higher hit probability and can thus deal with penalties.

So you might model this with -1 to all skills per second of continuous attacking, recovered at the same rate while not attacking.

For example, a pair who are attacking each other with default DX/Easy skills telegraphically are rolling DX on their first round, DX-1 on the next round, DX-2 on the second, and so on. They'll probably want to start recovering from their penalties once their rolls get down to 8 or so, which they'll do approximately simultaneously, if they both have DX 10.

But put one of these up against someone with a point in the skill, and it's very different. He starts out non-telegraphic attacking at 10, to avoid giving defence bonuses, but switches to telegraphic after a few seconds when he's worn down their defences. He has four seconds longer "combat endurance", before his telegraphic attack number gets down to 8, and is making his opponent defend with greatly penalised skills.

If this isn't clear, I can do a full example. I have no idea if it's representative of skilled hand-to-hand combat.