A less transparent Feint?

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Rabenrecht

Now that I finally managed to actually play and run a GURPS game, my appreciation of the system has only grown :-)

But GURPS is a big system with many mechanics and rules. It is to be expected that not all of them are winners.

One of the duds is, in my view, the Feint maneuver.

I think on paper the mechanics are fine. Also, if a player uses Feint I don't see an issue either.
But if an NPC uses Feint against a player character things start to break down.

The issue in my mind is that the task resolution of a Feint is very distinct and thus clearly recognizable. In other words: it is very transparent for the players if their characters have been Feint'ed. This can (and will) inform their decision.

A player might have felt secure with an active defense of 14 or something. But seeing that they would get a massive penalty for being Feint'ed, they could go "Ah screw it. If I can not rely on my defense I will just go All-out.". Or try to foil the attack by moving away (so that the enemy would have to use Move-and-attack). Or any other decision informed by the fact that there is a looming penalty on defense.

While a successful Feint might still affect the battle in some way its transparent nature make it a poor representation of, well, a feint.


What is your experience with Feint against player characters?

Are there any ideas for changing the Feint rules to make it a better representation of feinting?

Maybe the simplest change to the Feinting rules is to just change what the penalty from successful feinting does. Instead of subtracting your margin of success from your Feinted opponent's defenses, you may subtract your margin of success from your opponent's next maneuver. Thus whether your opponent All-Out Attacks, Attacks and Defends, All-Out Defends, (Aims, Fires, takes a Long Action, Moves [for Move, as opposed to Step, I might suggest making a DX roll to avoid losing one's balance rather than a penalty to movement], Waits or Does Nothing, none of which are really recommended reactions to being Feinted but if that's what the character decides to go for...,) he is at a penalty to do so because he is reacting in a defensively-minded way to your feint. I.E., he can All-Out Attack in response to your feint if he thinks that might be more useful than Defending, but he's still off-balance and wary due to the success if your Feint.

This change hasn't been play-tested, so there may be unforeseen problems with it, but as a quick, mechanically simple change, it seems likely to achieve the results you're looking for.