Flash Step

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I disagree. You're taking characters who can move at blinding speed and then "re-appear" to attack and trying to jam both things into one Step and Attack. This looks like doing things the hard way to me.

What appears to be the effect in most media is that the character can travel a long distance with what GURPS would call a Step. Unless they are speedsters (in which case, as I noted, ATR is a great fit), such characters also seem to only be able to do this for short spurts, again akin to a Step, and in fact the Chambara Movement rules work well for cases where characters chain Flash Steps together (well, except for the fact that such characters would undoubtedly have TbaM or WM, and thus the Extra Attack one needs to do a lot of them in a round would be typically be a poor choice to pick up; maybe some rules akin to Quick Drawing Bows to be able to turn the extra attacks afforded one by Rapid Strike into Steps, but still require a roll against skill to do it, wouldn't be out of question). I can certainly see ATR (Move Only) potentially working, but I feel ATR is a bit too much to use as a starting point here (it's an advantage that allows for a lot of different ways to use it - and could probably stand to be modified a bit to flow better, as the fact that it functions as multiple back-to-back turns seems not to quite fit how it's typically depicted in fiction).

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Flash Steps don't always set up attacks but when this happens you would seem to have characters doing Step and Do Nothing which is not a thing. If they do nothing other than move during their Flash Step it's just a Move Action and your Power wouldn't work in that situation because they aren't taking a Step.

I mean, in combat they could be doing a Step as part of an Evaluate (if you allow that from a distance, but with characters being able to Flash Step that seems like a good idea) or All Out Defense. Or just use the Chambara Movement rules to take an "Attack" action that consists of a normal Step and then sacrificing their Attack for another Step. Outside of combat (or if sufficiently desperate - or protected - in combat), with the Chambara Movement rules the character could sacrifice their defenses (which don't matter when not in combat) to do three Flash Steps each second - All Out Attack (Double) would allow for a normal Step (in place of half Move, but for someone with Flash Step using that is a better option), then two more by sacrificing the two attacks. Of course, arguably they could just use Committed Attack for that, getting two Steps and then sacrificing the attack for a third (maybe let going All Out give you four Steps?).

Originally Posted by zoncxs

Basic Move +10 (Accessibility, Only for determining step length, -60%...) [10/level]

I'm not a huge fan of that for increased Step distance, and I think it still overcharges when applied to Enhanced Move. Having a longer Step is useful, sure... but I'm not convinced it's worth [20] per +1 (or even [20] per doubling; [10] honestly sounds like a more fair price). I recognize I'm deviating from RAW for this, however.

Originally Posted by Mark Skarr

I created a whole thread on the Warp advantage being awful and rebuilding teleportation as a significantly more useful advantage that is in-line with other movement abilities here.

It seems like my version of teleportation is more what you're looking for.

Hey, you were even in that thread! I thought so.

Oh, hey, would ya look at that? Young Varyon, thinking maybe he'd found a good scaffolding for stuff like this. But you see, he failed to account for one minor little detail - we've got a memory like a sieve. I'll look back through that when I have some time, thanks. I'll note this thread was an off-the-cuff thing that I suddenly thought up when reading through the Martial Arts thread and wanted to write down and discuss.

Originally Posted by monstrous engineer

I'm with Fred on using ATR and some limitations to bring down the cost. Any movement that takes less time than the blink of an eye (1/10th second) is effectively invisible, so you don't need to tack on any additional stealth or invisibility.

So you're suggesting the character take ATR 9 and then only get to turn one of their 10 maneuvers into Movement to count as a Flash Step? Because that's what you'll need for your movement to occur in 1/10th of a second - unless you restrict yourself to Steps, but then you aren't going very far in that 1/10th of a second and still probably need a few levels of ATR to justify it. Also, you'll need to time yourself to only move when everyone watching you happens to blink - good luck with that (to actually move faster than the human eye can track, you need to get your movement done in something like 1/60th of a second, as the eye seems to have a frame rate of roughly 60 frames per second).

Do note that's also ignoring the general GURPS philosophy of You Get What You Pay For. ATR 59+ doesn't come with free Invisibility, it just lets you do 60 Manuevers each time your turn comes around.

Originally Posted by Refplace

Though the Vanish technique would be cheaper but requires a distraction or something for them to look away.

Part of what I'd like to discuss is how to be able to use Vanish (which really is a better name for it than Backstabbing) without needing to duck into some cover or have the targets look away. Flash Step's momentary invisibility needs to work even when the target is looking right at you and you're in a featureless plain (but, again, the target should be capable of seeing you move if they have good enough stats and/or roll well enough). Obviously Obscure 10 would work (it completely blocks the target's sightline), but how much weaker of an effect can do the trick? Can someone with Chameleon 1 [2] attempt to Vanish in plain sight, for example?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Varyon

What appears to be the effect in most media is that the character can travel a long distance with what GURPS would call a Step.

No, this really is doing things the hard way. Just because Bleach put "Step" in the name does not mean it's a "Step" in Gurps terms.

So what if they move and then do stuff? There's no reason to try and limit these kinds of characters to one Maneuver per second. Give them another Maneuver that can only be used for movement and you're covered without game mechanical complexities or stretching Step all out of shape.

[sir_pudding]

My version uses ATR, but in retrospect uncapped Move and Attack is just cleaner.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

No, this really is doing things the hard way. Just because Bleach put "Step" in the name does not mean it's a "Step" in Gurps terms.

So what if they move and then do stuff? There's no reason to try and limit these kinds of characters to one Maneuver per second. Give them another Maneuver that can only be used for movement and you're covered without game mechanical complexities or stretching Step all out of shape.

It's possible I'm just being stubborn here (in which case, my apologies; additionally, I suspect the two of us may simply have different ideas of what a "Flash Step" should be), but the more I think on it, the more I like Flash Step being, well, a Step. It allows for chained Flash Steps to be handled under Chambara Movement, lets Flash Step be used as a part of a Retreat, and so forth. It does call for some modifications to the rules, but I think these would actually be useful even without Flash Step. Notably, I'd allow the Half Move associated with All Out Attack to be traded in for two Steps*, Full Move (for Move and Move and Attack) to be traded in for three Steps*, and for additional attacks gained via using Rapid Strikes to be able to be traded in for more Steps, but a penalized roll (the same penalty as for Rapid Strike) would be necessary, just as it is to trade in an attack for a Ready with Fast Firing Bows. Using a weapon skill doesn't sit right with me; I'm thinking there should be a new DX/E skill (which defaults to DX) for this, and you'd roll against that.

And I can think of other uses for that skill. When using a Flash Step for a Retreat (or Slip/Sideslip), you can roll against that skill to get a +2 to your defense, much like for an Acrobatic Defense (and just like there, a failure results in a -2 to defense). It could also serve as a limiter for Stealth (for the Vanish attempt) and Acrobatics (for a tighter turn radius or similar; replace with Aerobatics for flyers and Aquabatics for swimmers; note Perfect Maneuverability removes the need for this roll). You could probably even use it for a Feint (with an appropriate Perk).


I'm now thinking my pricing is too low, however, after reviewing a bit of Mark Skarr's thread. Compared to his Teleport, mine has the advantage of being a Step (and with the modifications above, that means it can be used with Move to travel up to 3x its nominal distance) and the disadvantage of requiring the character to actually traverse the intervening distance (so you can't use it to cross a chasm unless you could leap across anyway, for example). I think that works out to Teleport being a bit better at 3x the nominal distance for Flash Step, but if I go with my initial thought of [10] for a Move equal to half a Step, that's something like Flash Step [10] vs Teleport [40] + Enhanced Move 0.5 (Teleport; Reduced Time +10%**) [11], which is more than "a bit" (it's [10] vs [51]) Flash Step 2 [20] (full Move) vs Teleport [40] + Enhanced Move 1.5 (Teleport; Reduced Time +30%**) [39] is similar, although the difference isn't quite as pronounced ([20] vs [79]). So I'll need to give that some further thought (and dig a little deeper into Mark's thread).

And please, don't forget the question of breaking the foes' sightlines to allow for Backstabbing/Vanish to be used.

*I should note here that I personally prefer to recalculate Step to be "Move/5, round down, minimum 1." I rather dislike the decision in Basic Set to set it to "Move/10, round up," as that essentially puts a standard GURPS human as having twice the Step they should due to rounding issues. So rather than going from 50% Move to a nominal 20% Move in Steps, it's more 50%->40%; similarly, instead of 100% Move going to 30%, it's more 100%->60%.
**Enhanced Move (Teleport) normally takes a second per level, so half a level would take half a second; getting rid of this would call for a half level of Reduced Time, hence +10%. This is similar for EM 1.5.