using DX to implement Perception-based ruses

[Plane]

for example

1) per check "I notice a pile of newspapers on the ground"
2) IQ check "if I kicked the newspapers in the air, they would flutter around and briefly obstruct my enemy's vision"
3) DX check "actually kick the papers so they will go in the proper direction to best obstruct my enemy's view of me running at them"

Or something along these lines.

I got this idea from a brief moment during an anime fight scene (slight spoiler for Higurashi if anyone hasn't seen season 1, but it doesn't give away much)

https://youtu.be/I_1JgQZ-Hak

It's basically very ninja "use your surroundings as improvised weapons" kind of thinking which might not come up much for chars skilled in combat (especially if they are already armed with a taser)

It doesn't seem purely like a Feint with unarmed skill (ie pretending to throw a kick or a punch) or armed (pretending to thrust taser) but it doesn't purely seem like an intellectual "I'm smarter than you" thing either.

You clearly need DX to kick stuff accurately but DX doesn't guarantee you'd perceive your surroundings thoroughly or think of ways to use it.

To hazard a guess from Campaigns I'm wondering if this type of behavior would be covered under Improvised Weapons (B404) or Dirty Tricks (B405)

It's strange how "throw sand in the face" is talked about yet DT talks only about IQ checks (is accurate sand throwing really a guarantee if your DX is bad?)

"Liquids in the face" seems to assume something like "I'm holding a cup full of the liquid and flinging the liquid without flinging the cup".

If you don't have "cup of liquid" or "handful of sand" to do this type of thing, if you had a stack of papers you cuold probably throw that instead. Unlike a book (or stapled collection of papers) a loose stack would have less impact but also spread out to obstruct vision more.

Maybe it wouldn't stick in the eyes like sand would, but it could flutter in the air more due to currents.

Obviously "kick the stack off the ground to face level" should be a lot trickier than "fling the papers you're holding to your chest directly forward into the opponent's face" since there's a lot more lifting involved and the feet are clumsier than the hands.

B404's discussion of Cloak tactics actually makes me wonder if you could use "stack of papers" as a sort of "improvised cloak" purely for the purpose of "snap a cloak in your opponent’s
face or use it to block his vision" which in combat terms is a Feint.

The only difference is with a cloak you could keep using it for multiple feints whereas it's a 1-use only issue with the papers? Maybe at -2 to the throw skill if you throw stuff using a kick instead of a "shove with your hands" means of throwing paper?

[Anaraxes]

A "Ruse" is an IQ roll because the idea is the main thing, not the execution. If the ploy seems fairly obvious but it hard to pull off, then you might choose to make it DX-based.

From a purely gamist point of view, the point is to just have a term of art for the various forms of gaining a small advantage. If it's DX-based, it's a Feint. (Who says you can't Feint with that pile of papers, using your DX?) If it's IQ-based, it's a Ruse (even if it's not some sort of Einstein-level bit of cleverness). If it's ST-based, it's a Beat. Choose your good stat, and pick the game term that matches.

It's also a way to get more mileage out of floating skills to other stats, new to 4e. (Note that a Ruse isn't a Contest of straight IQ; it's a Contest of combat skills, but based on IQ instead of DX.) The straight IQ roll shows up in what's called a "Dirty Trick" on B405, which actually has a lot more improvised mechanics up to the GM, whether a Contest of IQ or execution or a save. If your players know that some of their combat rolls might float to IQ, they're less likely to think "eh, I'm a fighter, I'll make IQ my dump stat and just put an 8 there because moar points".

More narratively, it's a tool to help characterize the actors in the game. The slow, plodding ogre is too dumb to think of clever things to do, so he doesn't try Ruses (and is more likely to fall for them). The clever swashbuckler's much more likely to get away with that kind of thing. To have the mechanics support the narrative, IQ ought to have something to do with that. But the mechanics work to break the narrative if you or the players are having unintelligent but agile spiders or rabbits or whatever constantly executing DX-based Ruses because it's mechanically effective for them. Let the dumb-but-quick characters do something else, rather than giving them more ways to flog their one-trick pony stat.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

But the mechanics work to break the narrative if you or the players are having unintelligent but agile spiders or rabbits or whatever constantly executing DX-based Ruses because it's mechanically effective for them.

Let the dumb-but-quick characters do something else, rather than giving them more ways to flog their one-trick pony stat.

In the case of the rabbit even if they have high perception (I see the papers) and enough DX to kick it I can see some problems that might stop it:

1) not enough Basic Lift to kick the papers

2) not enough height (SM) to lift foot high enough to propel the papers into another's face

3) being horizontal they can only do back kicks not front kicks

4) not enough IQ to process the idea of using objects as weapons, thinks about combat more directly

Usually the reason we don't have animals using weapons is because they lack hands but there are cases of improvised weaponry (ie kick a door shut on a foe instead of kicking them directly) where I think human IQ plays a huge roll

Basically as tool-users even without hands I think our brains are wired to indirectly solve problems.

A rabbit would be less likely to "kick the bolder down the hill at the enemy" for example, even though it's technically capable of this since you don't need hands to push-kick a bolder.

[Paydalanw]

I'd treat it as combination of Proxy Fighting (MA, 132) and Dirty Tricks (MA, 76; B, 405).
So -5 for targeting face, -2 for kicking, -4 for proxy, and any range penalties.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Paydalanw

I'd treat it as combination of Proxy Fighting (MA, 132) and Dirty Tricks (MA, 76; B, 405).
So -5 for targeting face, -2 for kicking, -4 for proxy, and any range penalties.

And now I want to build a Jackie Chan type character with a wildcard technique to buy off the Proxy Fighting penalty.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Paydalanw

I'd treat it as combination of Proxy Fighting (MA, 132) and Dirty Tricks (MA, 76; B, 405).
So -5 for targeting face, -2 for kicking, -4 for proxy, and any range penalties.

Maybe ways to buy off the huge penalty would be to take damage penalties?

Since 'papers in face' doesn't exactly hurt anyone.

But you do get that automatic fliching penalty that MA introduced for 0-damage eye attacks.

[Varyon]

Either knowing the papers are there is just part of everyone having perfect situational awareness, or it's thanks to a good result on the Situational Awareness check from Tactical Shooting. Realizing you can use the papers to conceal yourself for an attack is part of the player who is playing the character, although if the GM thinks the character wouldn't think of that he might require a roll. Actually pulling it off would call for some sort of penalized DX check, as launching a large-enough-to-conceal-you stack of papers high enough into the air with your foot isn't exactly easy; I'd eyeball it at -4 or so (note if the launched stack of papers is a sizable fraction of your BL, a further penalty would be appropriate - and if it exceeds BL, this is probably impossible). Being concealed like this - where the foe knows where you are, but can't see you until just before you hit - would result in a defense penalty on the part of the target, but I'm thinking it's more akin to what happens if you keep your weapon concealed behind your shield, or use it in a reverse grip. In those cases, you impose a -1 to the target's defense so long as you're doing a Deceptive Attack. Here, I'd be willing to boost that to -2, but the additional penalty cannot exceed the penalty imposed by Deceptive Attack - so -2 to defense if you take -2 to attack (-1 from DA, -1 from concealment), -4 if you take -4 (-2 from DA, -2 from concealment), -5 if you take -6 (-3 from DA, -2 from concealment), -6 if you take -8 (-4 from DA, -2 from concealment), and so forth.

This is a cinematic option. Realistically, even if you somehow launch enough paper into the air to conceal yourself from your target (and have them conveniently arrange themselves in a manner conducive to this), you're also concealing your target from you, so any benefit would be lost by needing to reacquire the target once you push through the wall - each of you is on equal footing, here, not knowing what the other is doing while the wall of papers is in your way. You could probably use the "concealment" rules in cases where, for example, you're emerging from a cloud of smoke that is transparent to you but opaque to your foe, even in a realistic setting.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Varyon

even if you somehow launch enough paper into the air to conceal yourself from your target (and have them conveniently arrange themselves in a manner conducive to this), you're also concealing your target from you, so any benefit would be lost by needing to reacquire the target once you push through the wall

This could be a problem if you needed to target a hit location, but if it's something like "I'm doing a wide-surface slap to knock them down, and tasing ANY part of them" then you wouldn't need that accuracy.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Plane

This could be a problem if you needed to target a hit location, but if it's something like "I'm doing a wide-surface slap to knock them down, and tasing ANY part of them" then you wouldn't need that accuracy.

Even then, you need to adjust for any movements the target makes if you want any chance of hitting them. If you somehow manage to mentally stun them with your paper trick (which appears to honestly be the case in the reference clip), that's less of an issue - but if something like this can actually stun your opponent, they're so mentally unprepared for combat you probably don't need to rely on this in the first place.

An exception to that last bit is if you have some sort of power that makes your distractions particularly effective (even if that "power" is "This is the way things work in this setting, but I'm one of the few who actually exploits it"). In Assassination Classroom, there's a special combat technique for assassins - drop your weapon and clap your hands right in front of your target's face. This somehow manages to not only stun the opponent, but lets you treat the situation as though you had ambushed them (as an assassin should), so provided you manage to quick-draw a second weapon (or strike unarmed, although I don't recall any of the few characters to use this technique opting for that), you can attack them without them being able to defend. And this isn't just "oh, that was unexpected" - one case where a character knows it's coming, he's only able to defend against it by biting his own tongue hard enough to draw blood and focusing on the pain, IIRC (it might be some other self-inflicted method of pain).
(Of course, true masters of the technique could time it just right so that it interrupts the target's mental processes so effectively they are either paralyzed or fall unconscious)

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Even then, you need to adjust for any movements the target makes if you want any chance of hitting them.

B394 seems to imply you can attack at merely -4 in a circumstance like this.

Although that might be assuming they stayed in their hex and didn't retreat when the papers flew up, which you wouldn't know.

In that case it seems like you could opt to attack at -4 but if they weren't in the hex you thought they were in then it hits air regardless.

Also seems interesting someone is more likely to crit-fail (fumble their weapon, hurt themself) when attacking unseen foes.

Using the -6 rule also seems pretty interesting... it seems to imply (since -4 requires knowing the hex) that -6 means you don't even know what hex you're attacking into?