A less transparent Feint?

[kenclary]

Note: this discussion repeats itself every few years (or more often), so I'll just list a few points I like to make:

1. Feints are not illusion spells. They won't convince you that someone has stepped in when they haven't, or that they've hit you when they haven't. You will know what happened.
2. If you make the target choose to defend or not before the success of the attack is determined, then every miss becomes a successful feint. This is poor game balance, and overly encourages attack-spamming.
3. Similarly, if every Feint can also "waste" a defense, then the mechanics are "doubled up": someone will waste a parry (and have a later penalty that round) and have a feint penalty.
   • consider: if the defender chooses to defend against a fake attack, it should nullify any other benefit to the feint. If you want to give them a penalty next turn you'll necessarily be obvious about it.
4. Lastly, GURPS combat just isn't a good model for the "two for flinching" game (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_for_flinching), but then such a game isn't representative of real, experienced combat.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by kenclary

Note: this discussion repeats itself every few years (or more often), so I'll just list a few points I like to make:

• If you make the target choose to defend or not before the success of the attack is determined, then every miss becomes a successful feint. This is poor game balance, and overly encourages attack-spamming.

I use a house rule that you need to declare a defense before the attack roll is revealed, but only on a hit or a near miss. If the defense succeeds, the defender doesn't even need to be told whether it was a hit or a miss. And now that they've made contact with the enemy's weapon, they have new options (blade binds, beats, ripostes, etc.).

Feint, though, I would never call for a defense. Feint can be used to represent too many things other than "fake attack" to use such a rule.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by kenclary

Feints are not illusion spells. They won't convince you that someone has stepped in when they haven't, or that they've hit you when they haven't.

A Feint that you are able to recognize as a Feint and have the time to react to and negate is a failed Feint. Because you're able to react to and negate it. Realistically, a successful feint is something that you either failed to recognize as such until the follow-up had already played out, or it's something you did recognize as such right after falling for it, but that you didn't have the ability to fully compensate for before the follow-up arrived.

Originally Posted by kenclary

If you make the target choose to defend or not before the success of the attack is determined, then every miss becomes a successful feint. This is poor game balance, and overly encourages attack-spamming.

You apparently missed the bit where, if you succeed at your defense and the attacker missed with their attack, you don't use up a defense at all. The actual houserule back when I proposed it even had an option to make you not use up your defense even if you failed at your defense, IIRC so long as you didn't fail by more than the attacker did (so if they had MoF 2 on their attack, you don't use up a defense if roll MoF 2 or better). I could be misremembering, it was quite some time ago I was thinking about this, but that's where I'd go with it currently. This does mean that it's possible for a failed attack to cause the target to use up a defense, but it's by no means guaranteed.

Originally Posted by kenclary

Similarly, if every Feint can also "waste" a defense, then the mechanics are "doubled up": someone will waste a parry (and have a later penalty that round) and have a feint penalty.

My suggestion wasn't for Feint to actually use up a defense - rather, the target still declares their defense and appears to roll for it, but the GM actually uses that roll as their roll to resist the Feint, and then either tells the player that it was a failed feint (if they won or tied) or that it was a failed attack and they didn't actually use up their defense (if they lost).

[kenclary]

Originally Posted by Varyon

A Feint that you are able to recognize as a Feint and have the time to react to and negate is a failed Feint. Because you're able to react to and negate it. Realistically, a successful feint is something that you either failed to recognize as such until the follow-up had already played out, or it's something you did recognize as such right after falling for it, but that you didn't have the ability to fully compensate for before the follow-up arrived.

Eh, disagree. Realistically, you're not going to be fooled into thinking you actually blocked/parried a sword when you just flinched.

A feint can easily (and obviously) represent "I faked high and you brought your guard up, so now you're overextended." (Technically, you get more overextended when you don't make contact, because contact pushes back.) Or other variations involving stance, footwork, balance, and other details below the resolution of maneuver choice. It's normal to notice these things, yet still not be able to negate them. And it's normal to make choices like "go all-in with a lunge" or "compensate by turtling up" in response.

[Anthony]

The realistic purpose of a feint is to get your opponent out of position; thus, your follow-up attack must be fast enough that your opponent lacks the time to get back in position. As GURPS permits a full reset (recover your active defenses, etc) in a turn, a feint should be faster than that. Which basically means deceptive attack.

The other problem with feint is that most of the time it's just a bad maneuver, you'll be better off taking the attack action twice instead of one feint and one attack. There are edge cases (double-dagger weapons, aiming for difficult hit locations) where the math can work out, but in routine situations it doesn't.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The other problem with feint is that most of the time it's just a bad maneuver, you'll be better off taking the attack action twice instead of one feint and one attack. There are edge cases (double-dagger weapons, aiming for difficult hit locations) where the math can work out, but in routine situations it doesn't.

The case I found where Feint was useful was when you're more skilful than your opponent, but they have very high active defences for some reason other than high skill. In that situation, it works better than Deceptive Attack, but this is rare.

[pawsplay]

According to Miyamoto Musashi, you should never feint. Every attack, even a deceptive one, should be an attempt to land a blow. So, he would probably go along with the advice that deceptive attack is a better representation of most skilled feints.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by pawsplay

According to Miyamoto Musashi, you should never feint. Every attack, even a deceptive one, should be an attempt to land a blow.

To be effective, a feint has to look like it will work, and that typically means that if the target doesn't respond it will work. You just aren't terribly committed to your attack.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by kenclary

Eh, disagree. Realistically, you're not going to be fooled into thinking you actually blocked/parried a sword when you just flinched.

If you just flinched and then have the opportunity to attack, move out of the way, activate your forcefield, etc, then that flinch shouldn't have any impact on your defenses. As Anthony notes, the way GURPS typically handles Feints doesn't make narrative sense - there's simply too much the target can do between you throwing the Feint and actually attacking. So you generally have to require Feints to be done on the same turn (or maybe as part of a Wait that goes off after the target has acted), get rid of Feint altogether, or you've got to fudge things some. The suggestions I've made here fall under the first (the Feint and Attack option) and the last (the defend-against-misses option); the middle option would replace Feint with Deceptive Attack (in turn representing feinting and attacking in quick succession). The idea of making a Feint into a general "unbalance foe" option probably would fall into the "fudging things" category; it's an interesting option, but may be a bit too powerful.

[kenclary]

Originally Posted by Varyon

The idea of making a Feint into a general "unbalance foe" option probably would fall into the "fudging things" category; it's an interesting option, but may be a bit too powerful.

A point of mine is that it's already a viable interpretation of the GURPS mechanic, as written. It is perhaps ironic/unfortunate that it's a better match than what usually comes to mind with the label "feint" but I chalk that up to the history of how GURPS' mechanics were assembled more than anything else.

The problem with feint isn't that it doesn't make any sense or isn't realistic; it's that it's not optimal/tactical to use the mechanic under many circumstances. (There are better options, like Deceptive Attack et al, under some of those "many circumstances" at least.)

Were I to try to improve Feint-the-GURPS-rule (a pipe dream, as it is for ~all of us), I would personally lean in to the "get them out of position" interpretation instead of the "make them believe something happened" interpretation, because I think it makes for more dynamic and playable gameplay, and because it wouldn't lean on "hiding" more table information from players/characters. And I would avoid more steps and back-and-forth to the core gameplay mechanics (like declared defenses and such), because GURPS is already "a lot" in that regards.

LATER EDIT: another analogy occured to me. I think both Feint and Deceptive Attack are examples of "exploiting your opponent's OODA loop." However, Deceptive Attack is "getting inside it" whereas Feint is out-maneuvering it. Which really does illustrate why Deceptive Attack is "better" and Feint implies/requires a big skill differential.