[Last Gasp] Mighty Warriors: Which Advantages and Skills Count?

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

That's fair enough, but if your using reasonable human parameters as a way point that they can judge their abilities by how far they have moved beyond it rather than as some kind of limiting factors (even if a flexible one). Then I'd just go back to my first suggestion which is just allow as many extra AP to brought as fits your image of how these chaps should fight without worrying about what's a realistic number.

I do allow that, subject to the usual constraints of Special Exercises and Unusual Background for exceeding the human maximum.

That doesn't help Roman legionaries make efficient stabs or boxers jabbing at opponents to tire them out, however.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I do allow that, subject to the usual constraints of Special Exercises and Unusual Background for exceeding the human maximum.

That doesn't help Roman legionaries make efficient stabs or boxers jabbing at opponents to tire them out, however.

Legionary stabs are efficient because depending on what you're fighting a impaling thrust is often more efficient in terms of wound inflicted than a swing. And again there were other reasons for legionaries to thrust over swing as mentioned earlier, some already in RAW some not. I.e set up a shield line fighting in close formation a first rank crush and there are already several reasons to stab not swing in GURPS.

I.e stabbing is sometimes efficient for reasons other than conserving energy. And sometimes conserving energy is about how many attacks you need to make than how much energy each attack takes, e.g. if it takes two stabs to kill a Gaul, and three swings to kill a Gaul, then stabbing is going to save a legionary energy over swinging, even if both take 1AP to do.

I thought boxing might make an appearance in this thread.

to put some context regarding numbers of attacks this is the punches stats for Bradley vs. Pacquaio in 2012.

Two fast punching welterweights in good shape who fought for 12 three minute rounds (2160 combat rounds) Bradley throw roughly one punch every 2.6 seconds, Pacquaio one punch every 2.9 seconds. "Punches in bunches" definitely qualifying for being combos and multiple attacks in a single second. There would have been movement in there as well, but a lot of it would be single step (i'e boxer shuffle).

So even with a minute's pause every four minutes outside of this to recover in, they were still plenty of seconds in the rounds where they were not throwing punches.

Remember you're talking about 2-6 attacks and 2-5 defences a second. Just looking at attacks taking 4 as the average you talking about attacking at almost 11x the rate as Pacquaio/Bradley were (and at times you said it got faster).

You say throwing jabs to tire the other boxer out, this would be a function of the AP's lost when getting hit rather than those lost when throwing punches. Jabs I'd say are the quintessential defensive attack that you throw while still covering up and maintaining distance.

So basically as I said way back when the AP system is just a way of limiting how quickly you can do stuff, and the 1 second round is already doing stuff very quickly!

The above breakdown of the Bradley/Pacquaio isn't really a serious effort to GURPSify a boxing match (in GURPS no match lasts the first round ;-)). But to the make the point about just how frenetic GURPS combat is even at one or two attacks/defences a second, let alone the lean mean threshing machines your chaps are!

TL:dr You want to emulate legionaries being able to fight efficiently for long periods of time? Not having them make multiple attacks per second for extended periods is probably the most realistic first step. The whole context needs to be looked at here, one of the efficiencies of a shield wall and short stabbing sword is that you can get a lot stabbing swords in a small space as once. They tended to pace themselves, they didn't rely on shattering (and AP costly) charges, they covered each other and swapped out of the line etc, etc. As a well armoured disciplined defensive formation they tended to win by outlasting a more aggressive enemy and then gutted them as they ran out of steam. Thinking about it this ability to outlast you opponents formation while maintaining your own combat effectiveness is repeated throughout history (sort of an AP system on a larger scale)