Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 09-17-2022, 12:40 PM   #1
Inky
 
Join Date: Sep 2019
Location: UK
Default Can a Slam be Parried?

Basic Set seems a bit confusing about whether a Slam, or one of the various other moves that use the same rules as Slams such as Flying Tackles and Pounces, can be Parried or not.

The Slam rules on Basic Set page 371 say
Quote:
Your foe may block, dodge, or parry (but your body counts as a heavy weapon; see Parrying Heavy Weapons, p. 376).
But the "Parrying Heavy Weapons" rules say
Quote:
For the purpose of these rules, treat a punch, kick, bite, etc. as a weapon with an effective weight of 1/10 the attacker’s ST. Use his full ST if he made a slam, flying tackle, pounce, or shield rush!
and
Quote:
Regardless of the weight of your weapon, if you are parrying unarmed or using a one-handed weapon, you cannot parry a weapon heavier than your Basic Lift – or twice BL, if using a two-handed weapon. Attempts to parry anything heavier fail automatically; whether or not your weapon breaks, the attack sweeps it aside and damages you normally. If your weapon does not break, you drop it; if you are unarmed, you are knocked back one yard (make a DX roll to avoid falling over).
Which seems to imply that, since with a Slam the attacker's body is counted as the weapon and is usually going to weigh a lot more than twice your Basic Lift, you can't parry a Slam. Unless that's not what it means. Anyone know?

The context was I was wondering what you'd call this rather silly move from Girl Genius in GURPS terms. (Besides a rather drastic case of "Talking is a Free Action"! :-D ) I thought it might be a Flying Tackle and a Parry, but I'm not very well up on the complicated bits of GURPS combat rules.
(It's pretty confusingly drawn, but it seems like what's meant to be happening in the pictures is that Vole (the blue guy) hurls himself through the air and Gil grabs him in mid-air and whams him against a table).
__________________
Looking for online text-based game at a UK-feasible time, anything considered, Roll20 preferred. http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=168443
Inky is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-17-2022, 12:53 PM   #2
Plane
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Default Re: Can a Slam be Parried?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Inky View Post
Which seems to imply that, since with a Slam the attacker's body is counted as the weapon and is usually going to weigh a lot more than twice your Basic Lift, you can't parry a Slam. Unless that's not what it means. Anyone know?
ST 10 has a Basic Lift of 20 meaning you could use a 1-handed parry to stop a Slam from someone with ST 20, so it's something which probably won't come up unless there's a huge difference in ST.

I think a Pyramid article somewhere suggested a tweak for this but I forget where

Shield Rush is an interesting situation since Basic Set shields were heavier (this was lowered in Low Tech) so a Shield Bash using the shield's weight would weirdly be harder to parry than a Shield Rush which combined both the shield and the user's weight.

I've never liked the hard-capped system on parrying, I'd rather a kind of soft-capped system where you just get progressive penalties, either to the parry roll or maybe in how much damage you can reduce the incoming attack by.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Inky View Post
The context was I was wondering what you'd call this rather silly move from Girl Genius in GURPS terms.

(It's pretty confusingly drawn, but it seems like what's meant to be happening in the pictures is that Vole (the blue guy) hurls himself through the air and Gil grabs him in mid-air and whams him against a table).
Just looks like a tall guy trying to set up a grapple to me.
__________________
what this forum is
(17 March 2020 forum rules from Hackard)
Plane is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-17-2022, 02:43 PM   #3
Inky
 
Join Date: Sep 2019
Location: UK
Default Re: Can a Slam be Parried?

Ah! So a number of lbs equal to the attacker's ST, rather than the actual body weight corresponding to their ST. That makes more sense.

Quote:
Just looks like a tall guy trying to set up a grapple to me.
Looked at it again, could also be that, yeah. (Vole is excessively tall). If that was the case, Gil somehow swinging him up over his head from a standing start would be even more startling, especially if he's as big as he would have to be to have his feet on the ground in that shot, but then Gil apparently has some kind of berserker thing going on in this scene and normal rules may not apply. Honestly, it's a pretty mixed-up scene - people mostly seem to be facing the wrong way anyway - and it seems like the only thing you can be sure of is that people are fighting loudly :-D
__________________
Looking for online text-based game at a UK-feasible time, anything considered, Roll20 preferred. http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=168443
Inky is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-17-2022, 03:30 PM   #4
Donny Brook
 
Donny Brook's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: Snoopy's basement
Default Re: Can a Slam be Parried?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Plane View Post
ST 10 has a Basic Lift of 20 meaning you could use a 1-handed parry to stop a Slam from someone with ST 20
Which is clearly absurd.
Donny Brook is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-17-2022, 07:13 PM   #5
mlangsdorf
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Austin, TX
Default Re: Can a Slam be Parried?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Plane View Post
ST 10 has a Basic Lift of 20 meaning you could use a 1-handed parry to stop a Slam from someone with ST 20, so it's something which probably won't come up unless there's a huge difference in ST.

I think a Pyramid article somewhere suggested a tweak for this but I forget where
My group set the effective weight for a slam to attacker's BL/2, and the effective weight for unarmed attacks to BL/20. It keeps the same values for ST 10, but it makes stronger creatures hard to parry.
__________________
Read my GURPS blog: http://noschoolgrognard.blogspot.com
mlangsdorf is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 09-18-2022, 03:16 PM   #6
mburr0003
 
Join Date: Jun 2022
Default Re: Can a Slam be Parried?

Quote:
Originally Posted by mlangsdorf View Post
My group set the effective weight for a slam to attacker's BL/2, and the effective weight for unarmed attacks to BL/20. It keeps the same values for ST 10, but it makes stronger creatures hard to parry.
I like this... consider it yoinked.
mburr0003 is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
combat, flying tackle, parry, slam

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 07:01 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.