Number of parries with Martial Arts

[AlexanderHowl]

Look under Pak Hok on p. 188. As for offhand penalties, I believe that unarmed combat does not suffer from them because there is no fine motor control involved, which is why the rules for handedness are optional and introduced in page 124 in Martial Arts. Of course, untrained fighters are just flailing around, so applying an off-hand penalty to them would make sense (and removing the penalty would completely justify spending 1 CP on Brawling).

[Kromm]

For reasons tied to things like being very tired, I believe I was thinking in Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game mode in my earlier answer – sorry! In that game, the off-hand situation is spelled out clearly in Using the Off Hand (Exploits, p. 36):

You parry with the "off" hand at ‑2 unless using Main-Gauche or an empty hand.

Which is followed by:

If you have Ambidexterity, you may ignore the penalties above!

Not everybody wants the DFRPG in their GURPS, but this is the closest to an explicit statement I can find. If we stick to GURPS, there's at least this, in Harsh Realism for Unarmed Fighters (Martial Arts, p. 124):

The Basic Set treats unarmed combat favorably: there's no "off" hand . . .

That's inclusion by oblique reference, but as I said, it's in the rules. If you want even weirder support, check out Off-Hand Weapon Training (Martial Arts, p. 50):

You must specialize by skill; any one-handed Melee Weapon, ranged weapon, or Fast-Draw skill qualifies.

That's support by omission: You can't get OHWT for anything but weapon skills . . . unarmed skills specifically aren't Melee Weapon skills. This could be read as "it isn't available," but the intent is definitely "it isn't needed."

[Plane]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Look under Pak Hok on p. 188.

Ah thanks I didn't know this was actually based on a style in the book... definitely a broader application than MA51 implied.

I guess the benefit of Cotton Stomach unlike this is since it doesn't require specialization, you could perform torso-parries with ANY unarmed combat skill, whereas you'd need to buy Special Setup for performing torso parries based on different skills.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

As for offhand penalties, I believe that unarmed combat does not suffer from them because there is no fine motor control involved

Is there necessarily fine motor control involved in stabbing with reach C daggers and similar?

I understand how that comes into play better with longer-reach weapons since smaller wrist movements amount to greater changes in tip orientation, but it seems like it would matter less the shorter the weapon was.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

which is why the rules for handedness are optional and introduced in page 124 in Martial Arts.

I think it's acceptable to question the idea they were absent prior to MA124, due to perceived insinuations of Basic:

B182 "Roll against Boxing to hit with a punch."
B204 "Roll against Karate to hit with a punch (at no -4 for the “off” hand)"
B376 "parry with your “off” hand, or with a weapon held in it, at -4 to skill"

Ironically since unskilled parries don't have a skill to penalize (it's based on raw DX) there'd be nothing to apply the -4 to from which to derive a -2 to parry.

B14's "Handedness" similarly specifies "skill" and not "DX".

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

removing the penalty would completely justify spending 1 CP on Brawling).

This is the approach taken earlier in 06/08

Originally Posted by Kromm

Those without unarmed combat skills may parry at (DX/2)+3; see Parrying Unarmed (p. B376).
However, this parry isn't "ambidextrous" and doesn't allow you to parry one attack per hand at no penalty -- unlike Boxing, Brawling, and Karate parries.

Originally Posted by Kromm

It's the bit where Brawling is innately ambidextrous that makes it useful for parrying

though seems to have possibly shifted by 2010

Originally Posted by Kromm

There is no "off" hand in unarmed combat in GURPS.

Not sure if this '10 statement was meant to contradict the '06/'08 ones (no penalty for off-hand unskilled parries, so 1pt in Brawling no longer has this relative advantage) or if perhaps by "unarmed combat" Kromm intended to mean "skilled unarmed combat" in which case the -4 would apply to attacks/defenses based on DX instead of a skill?

Whatever the intent, the "Joe Blow with no special skills can parry unarmed with either hand at no penalty" in this thread (unless Joe Blow is ambidextrous since that's an advantage and not a skill?) sounds like it's taking the "10 overrides 6+8" path.

Originally Posted by Kromm

If we stick to GURPS, there's at least this, in Harsh Realism for Unarmed Fighters (Martial Arts, p. 124):

The Basic Set treats unarmed combat favorably: there's no "off" hand . . .

That's inclusion by oblique reference, but as I said, it's in the rules.

If you want even weirder support, check out Off-Hand Weapon Training (Martial Arts, p. 50):

You must specialize by skill; any one-handed Melee Weapon, ranged weapon, or Fast-Draw skill qualifies.

That's support by omission: You can't get OHWT for anything but weapon skills . . . unarmed skills specifically aren't Melee Weapon skills. This could be read as "it isn't available," but the intent is definitely "it isn't needed."

Any pre-MA references though? MA explicitly introduced a lot of new rules (full Move on AOA:Slam, sub Slam dmg for Thrust if greater on a Move and Attack) and omitting the application of some of basic's language can be perceived as a change even if MA doesn't acknowledge it was.

Like for example if the -4 to skill was never meant to apply to parries not using weapons, MA could've put it like...

Errata for B376 "Parrying with the Off Hand"

"You parry with your “off” hand (your left or “shield” hand if right handed; see Handedness, p. 17), or with a weapon held in it, at -4 to skill."

should instead be retitled "Parrying with Weapons using the Off Hand" and read:

You parry with a weapon held in your “off” hand (your left or “shield” hand if right handed; see Handedness, p. 17) at -4 to skill."

Basically making phrasing a singular "A" circumstance instead of an "A or B" circumstance. Maybe even with a note "there is no skill penalty for unarmed combat skills" for emphasis.

http://www.sjgames.com/errata/gurps/ only seems to acknowledge changes if they happened in a new printing, but maybe it could also list new intended changes like this that might appear in a hypothetical new printing if it were published?

If this did still apply (under basic/lite rules, not using MA realism options) to unskilled (DX) parries (only: not any unarmed combat skill parries) then it could addend, "or -4 to DX with unskilled off-hand parries" since there isn't a skill in question and explicitly saying "unskilled" would be a reminder not to apply it to box/brawl/karate/judo ones.

As for strikes/punches, it would seem like you'd want to either list "no -4 for off hand" in ALL circumstances (add to box/brawl and wherever punching at DX is listed) or remove it from karate, because solely listing it only under karate leads to assumptions of it being a special circumstance. Just a note that could help clarify in 5E circa 2025 or whenever.

[AlexanderHowl]

I would be quite willing to inflict off-hand penalties for untrained unarmed attacks and parries, since it is just flailing around.

[Boge]

Just to be clear, each hand counts as a "weapon" when unarmed fighting? So I can parry once with each hand without a penalty to either defense? Then the next one would be -4, but is that -4 to each meaning I could then do two more parries each at -4?

So 4 defense parries, two at no penalty and then two more at -4 each?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Boge

Just to be clear, each hand counts as a "weapon" when unarmed fighting? So I can parry once with each hand without a penalty to either defense? Then the next one would be -4, but is that -4 to each meaning I could then do two more parries each at -4?

So 4 defense parries, two at no penalty and then two more at -4 each?

This is explicitly addressed in each skill description. For Brawling, Boxing, Karate, and Judo, yes, you expressly parry independently with each hand.

There is no hard limit on total number of parries, though. The penalty for number of parries is cumulative, which gets bad fast in most cases, but you are allowed a third parry at -8, a fourth at -12, and so on.

(I'm not completely sure whether you actually get to roll for a defense with a target number less than 1, though you expressly are allowed to attempt a defense with an impossible target of 1 or 2 and still succeed on a rolled 3 or 4.)

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

(I'm not completely sure whether you actually get to roll for a defense with a target number less than 1, though you expressly are allowed to attempt a defense with an impossible target of 1 or 2 and still succeed on a rolled 3 or 4.)

B345 "You may not attempt a success roll if your effective skill is less than 3, unless you are attempting a defense roll (p. 374)."

B374: "An active defense roll of 3 or 4 is always successful – even if your effective defense score was only 1 or 2!"

Like 1 and 2, 0 and -1 (or -100) are also "less than 3" which sounds like success rolls can always be done for active defenses, and since they always succeed on 3/4, they can always succeed.

I think the question is what happens when an "always successful" condition coincides with "critical failure" condition:
B348 "Any roll of 10 greater than your effective skill is a critical failure"

A roll of 4 (which is always successful) is also 10 greater than an effective skill of -6, so if you active defense score has reached negative six, rolling a 4 is simultaneously in the range of a critical failure and in the range of a critical success.

I don't know if we've been instructed how to deal with that, but I'd favor the "cosmic v cosmic" approach like "crit cancels crit" and "always cancels always" and just allow that to be the sole circumstance you can have a normal non-critical failure.

Otherwise it's weird if the only possible outcomes are crit fail or crit success.

That's also why it'd be interesting if we had allowed for a MoS 10 to turn crit fails into normal fails for highly skilled people too.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Plane

B345 "You may not attempt a success roll if your effective skill is less than 3, unless you are attempting a defense roll (p. 374)."

B374: "An active defense roll of 3 or 4 is always successful – even if your effective defense score was only 1 or 2!"

Like 1 and 2, 0 and -1 (or -100) are also "less than 3" which sounds like success rolls can always be done for active defenses, and since they always succeed on 3/4, they can always succeed.

I'd argue that read literally, those lines actually suggest that non-positive scores don't allow a roll. The first says that you can only roll for scores less than three if it's a defense roll, but it doesn't say you can always attempt a defense roll with low values. The second specifically names two scores that are less than three for which that's true.

I suspect that the intent is indeed that non-positive scores work exactly the same as 1 or 2. But nothing in either quotation implies that. It's just that the alternative is silly.

[corwyn]

I don't use the "miss by 10 = crit fail" rule for defenses because once you get down to 5- you are more likely to crit fail than succeed and I don't like to discourage rolling defenses.

[corwyn]

Originally Posted by Kromm

For reasons tied to things like being very tired, I believe I was thinking in Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game mode in my earlier answer – sorry! In that game, the off-hand situation is spelled out clearly in Using the Off Hand (Exploits, p. 36):

You parry with the "off" hand at ‑2 unless using Main-Gauche or an empty hand.

Which is followed by:

If you have Ambidexterity, you may ignore the penalties above!

Is that errata? Because my Exploits says:"You parry with the "off" hand at ‑2 unless using Main-Gauche." Page 38 adds that "unarmed combat obeys all the rules in Melee Combat and uses the same modifiers".

Not everybody wants the DFRPG in their GURPS, but this is the closest to an explicit statement I can find. If we stick to GURPS, there's at least this, in Harsh Realism for Unarmed Fighters (Martial Arts, p. 124):

The Basic Set treats unarmed combat favorably: there's no "off" hand . . .

That's inclusion by oblique reference, but as I said, it's in the rules. If you want even weirder support, check out Off-Hand Weapon Training (Martial Arts, p. 50):

You must specialize by skill; any one-handed Melee Weapon, ranged weapon, or Fast-Draw skill qualifies.

That's support by omission: You can't get OHWT for anything but weapon skills . . . unarmed skills specifically aren't Melee Weapon skills. This could be read as "it isn't available," but the intent is definitely "it isn't needed."

I'll certainly concede that is/was the intent in Basic, but the rules I quoted earlier read that unarmed strikes (except Karate) have an off-hand penalty and, I believe, all unarmed parries have the penalty (with at least as much force as the oblique references in MA). Many players don't own, let alone use, Martial Arts for their games (not everyone wants Martial Arts in their GURPS, as it were), so it should be Errata for the Basic Set.