Flash Step

[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.