Default rolls vs. skill rolls replacing attribute rolls

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by VIVIT

Thank you for tautologically restating the definition of Basic Move. I realize that Speed and Move are different stats with different meanings. I realize that you can buy them up separately. However, my intuition is that, except for purposes of tactical combat, where distances are measured in discrete, one-yard increments, the rounding operation should come last, right?

Your rude sarcasm aside, I don't believe you do fully understand the difference between Basic Speed and Basic Move, as evidenced by your idea that how far you can move is measured by your Basic Speed plus all other factors and then rounded off.

Thus, I quoted the definitions of Basic Speed and Basic Move to demonstrate that that is not what the rounding is for. Your ability to move a certain distance is not your Basic Speed plus all other factors, rounded off. It is your Basic Move plus all other factors, rounded off. Basic Move is defined as a rounded-off number. You don't need to be concerned about losing the precision of Basic Speed because Basic Speed doesn't measure your movement. It measures your physical reflexes. Your ability to move is only grossly related to the speed of your reflexes.

Someone with Basic Speed 5.25 does not move faster than someone with Basic Speed 5.00. They react faster, they probably move first, but they don't move faster. These two people moving though difficult terrain move through it at the same rate, regardless of fractional modifiers. They move the same rate in long-term travel as well. Basic Speed simply doesn't measure movement rate in the fourth edition of GURPS.

[RedMattis]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Would that human have the physical capacity to kill that horse he just caught?

Also, marathon runners usually don't carry any gear. Those horses are carrying a total of 300 lbs of rider and gear plus stopping for mandatory vet checks. An unladen horse runnng for its' life should be significantly faster.

Really, human endurance gets exagerated a lot.

Usually yes. Prey animals will typically work themselves to the point of a panicked collapse which makes poking down down with pointy sticks fairly easy. Or that is what I've read about endurance hunters and their prey anyway.

As for human endurance, who knows, the man vs horse is probably the closest thing we've got to a proper test of the man vs horse thory. Endurance trained horses and endurance trained humans seem to compete fairly evenly. The horse is carrying a rider, but on the other hand the rider probably helps the horse pace itself. We are also talking about a half-ton animal carrying a ~70 kg human, probably makes a difference, but might not be a huge one.

In a real-life situation I'd imagine a human endurance hunter would also try to get the horses to run through unfavorable terrain and deliberately stress the animal into overexerting self by shouting, throwing rocks, etc.

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by RedMattis

In a real-life situation I'd imagine a human endurance hunter would also try to get the horses to run through unfavorable terrain and deliberately stress the animal into overexerting self by shouting, throwing rocks, etc.

Yep, the human hunter isn't just casually jogging along chatting to the horse while it's trotting just out of range.

The idea is to spook the horse into "running". After a while it stops and the human catches up. Rinse and repeat. The horse is very unlikely to work out that if it just trots along all day it will stay ahead of the human. If it's genuinely spooked and thinks it's under attack and decides to flee, it's going to likely canter (it would be unusual to gallop unless the predator kept pace with it cantering, which a human can't do, but any amount of galloping will significantly reduce the distance it can go before it's tired).

That sort of effort can't be maintained, even with the breaks provided in the time it takes the human to catch up. Most riding horses can't canter for more than a few miles. So long as the human can track it, eventually the horse will be tired and unable to flee.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by RedMattis

We are also talking about a half-ton animal carrying a ~70 kg human, .

No we're not. The endurnace racing rules put the horses at loads of 300lbs or approx. 140 kg.

Looking at the game rules that puts a ST 21 horse at Heavy Encumbrance and only 40% of its' Basic Move. That's why it's not moving any faster than a human at No Encumbrance. The unencumbered horse is going to move much faster.

Go chase an antelope or some other sprinter.

There may be some cave art of primitive horses but I'd bet they were being driven over cliffs as small herds or some other tactic.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Farmer

Yep, the human hunter isn't just casually jogging along chatting to the horse while it's trotting just out of range.

The idea is to spook the horse into "running". After a while it stops and the human catches up. Rinse and repeat. The horse is very unlikely to work out that if it just trots along all day it will stay ahead of the human. If it's genuinely spooked and thinks it's under attack and decides to flee, it's going to likely canter (it would be unusual to gallop unless the predator kept pace with it cantering, which a human can't do, but any amount of galloping will significantly reduce the distance it can go before it's tired).

That sort of effort can't be maintained, even with the breaks provided in the time it takes the human to catch up. Most riding horses can't canter for more than a few miles. So long as the human can track it, eventually the horse will be tired and unable to flee.

A fit horse will recover a lot of stamina in the time it take the human to catch up, and after a few cycles it's probably going to realise it doesn't have to charge off off out-pace the annoying human.

What's really going to be the decider is that the annoying human probably brought friends, and those friends can circle round the not-currently moving fast horse, and either ambush it or force it to run longer and in directions it doesn't want to. Also, having friends greatly improves the odds of the horse being turned into dinner, rather then the hunter meeting an early end with a hoof to the liver or head.

[Witchking]

Originally Posted by Rupert

A fit horse will recover a lot of stamina in the time it take the human to catch up, and after a few cycles it's probably going to realise it doesn't have to charge off off out-pace the annoying human.

IME neither cows nor horses are, in the main, very bright. I wouldn't say they would never learn, but for the middle of the bell curve; I would expect it would be more cycles than 'a few'.

YMMV.

P.S. The stall was IME invented to keep the domesticated ones from literally crapping on their own food.

[VIVIT]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Your rude sarcasm aside, I don't believe you do fully understand the difference between Basic Speed and Basic Move, as evidenced by your idea that how far you can move is measured by your Basic Speed plus all other factors and then rounded off.

I apologize for my sarcasm. I'll be more direct: I don't appreciate your pedantically legalistic replies about what the rules are in the context of my wondering about teleologically why the rules were written that way to begin with.

Thus, I quoted the definitions of Basic Speed and Basic Move to demonstrate that that is not what the rounding is for.

But you haven't demonstrated that. You haven't said anything at all about why movement shouldn't take into account the fractional part of Basic Speed in contexts where your movements aren't confined to a hex grid. All you've pointed out is that it doesn't.

You don't need to be concerned about losing the precision of Basic Speed because Basic Speed doesn't measure your movement. It measures your physical reflexes. Your ability to move is only grossly related to the speed of your reflexes.

But it isn't just reflexes:

Originally Posted by B17, emphasis mine

Your Basic Speed is a measure of your reflexes and general physical quickness.

Implicitly, this includes quickness of movement. If it did not, Move wouldn't be based on Basic Speed. Reflexes and locomotion shouldn't be directly related at all; the connection only makes sense because the attributes that Basic Speed is based on—DX and HT—make sense for locomotion as well as (if not even more than) they do for reflexes, since they respectively represent agility and endurance. Endurance and agility are not "only grossly" related to how quickly you can move from point A to point B, and even if they were, that wouldn't explain why you can buy three whole levels of DX and not see any improvement in your 5k time. The real explanation for this is what Kromm has been telling us for years: GURPS ain't no reality simulator. Realism doesn't come into it. Whole numbers are easier to deal with at the table than fractions, so 4e tells you to do the simple, easy whole-number math rather than the comparatively complicated and fussy math with fractions…

…and then, for some reason, turns around and instructs you to increase your already-rounded-off-Move by tiny increments of 5 percentage points for your Extra Effort, after multiplying it by 1.2 for sprinting and possibly dividing that result by 2 for paced running. That's what I find weird. If you're going to be bothering with this high-precision math, why wouldn't you take fractions from your Basic Speed back into account?

"Because the rules don't work that way," is not an answer to "Why don't the rules work that way?" Somebody wrote those rules. Someone decided they should work the way they do. And, whether they realize it or not, every GURPS GM is faced with the very same decision; choosing to use the rules as written is still a choice. That choice, and the design reasons behind it, are what I'm wondering about. Sorry if I haven't framed the discussion clearly enough.

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by Rupert

A fit horse will recover a lot of stamina in the time it take the human to catch up, and after a few cycles it's probably going to realise it doesn't have to charge off off out-pace the annoying human.

Not really. Horses take quite a long time to replenish glycogen stores. After a few cycles it's not likely to have learned much and a rock or spear near it will almost certainly spook it again. And it will be getting tired and without time to eat (they normally spend most of a day foraging) they will end up unable to flee.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Witchking

IME neither cows nor horses are, in the main, very bright. I wouldn't say they would never learn, but for the middle of the bell curve; I would expect it would be more cycles than 'a few'.

YMMV.

P.S. The stall was IME invented to keep the domesticated ones from literally crapping on their own food.

Cows, like sheep, have quite good memories.

Horses can learn to work farm gate latches, so to horse-proof them they have to be designed so they they can't work them with their mouths.

Also, domestic animals are not as intelligent as wild ones, as a rule - in the process of domesticating them we also select for lower intelligence.

Originally Posted by Farmer

Not really. Horses take quite a long time to replenish glycogen stores. After a few cycles it's not likely to have learned much and a rock or spear near it will almost certainly spook it again. And it will be getting tired and without time to eat (they normally spend most of a day foraging) they will end up unable to flee.

Spooked by a rock or spear means a short run. To get it to run a good distance you'll have to actually chase the thing.

What will work to making a horse panicky and willing to run longer than it should is that you've presumably separated it from its herd, and being threatened and alone makes them good and jumpy. Of course, for that to work you have to keep it away from its herd. Again, bring friends - it makes all this much easier (but rather ruins the narrative of the unstoppable Human single-handedly running down their prey).

EDIT: Besides, if you can toss a rock or spear close enough to spook it, just toss the spear at it - if you hit it and injure it, the chase becomes a whole lot easier for you.

[Varyon]

For Running, part of the issue there is that it's an Average skill, when arguably it should be Easy - running is instinctual, like brawling and basic grappling. I suspect the primary reason it isn't is because sprinting and endurance running are distinct, and thus excellent candidates for Optional Specialization for the overall Running skill... but there's nothing below Easy. Thus, Running must be Average so the Optional Specializations exist. Changing Optional Specialization to mean you get a +1 to effective skill level, rather than having it make the skill one category easier, would allow Running to be Easy. Then it functions similarly to Brawling - you can use it untrained just as you can now, the first point has some marginal utility (better at racing for Running, able to access advanced parts of the combat system for Brawling), and from the second point onward it makes you better at the core task.

That said, I wouldn't be entirely opposed to having the roll to avoid fatigue while running be at HT-5 or HT-4 (depending on where you set the difficulty for Running skill) for someone who is untrained. The kind of things you can do with "DX or Acrobatics," however, are things that I feel it would be inappropriate to be DX-6 - but something like "the higher of DX and Acrobatics+2" might work (that means DX+0 with no Acrobatics training or with only [1] in it, DX+1 with [2] in it, and so forth).

EDIT: As for Basic Speed vs Basic Move, I agree with VIVIT that it makes more sense to retain fractions and then round down at the end for hex-based combat. It seems odd to have Basic Move only have integer values when it adds very little difficulty to just retain fractions until the end.