Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?

[Plane]

One thing I think we're overlooking here is that if this rich dude has enough wealth to buy armor (and prep to armor up ahead of time) he probably also has the wealth/prep to get on horseback for superior mobility than the spear guy.

This would be very different on horseback since you could have your horse charge the spear guy and using spears in close combat gets pretty tricky.

A spear wielded 2H is reach 1,2* which means it takes a ready maneuver to change reach, so if you're stuck at reach 2 then you're -8 to skill to use it in Close Combat until you make that ready maneuver.

Originally Posted by Aldric

Fighting blind is not really a great idea

usually not, though the armor makes it a lot more feasible to do

B394's visibility rules make it only -6 if you can still see your surroundings (buckler-over-face guy still can see up/down/left/right just not front) and a mere -4 to hit if you still have an idea of where the person is (ie you know they are in the hex ahead of you because otherwise you would be able to see them coming around the left/right of your buckler)

You get -4 to defenses in this situation but if you're already doomed due to Deceptive Attack then you're probably just going to make All-Out Attacks anyway.

AOA:double where 1st is a DWA (shield bash + sword) and 2nd is another sword hit could be pretty effective - if you're purely relying on your high spear skill to parry this stuff then that 3rd parry is going to be at -8

Using that spear to parry also sets up rich guy to use his ST 12 for a Bash as well which is going to penalize parries coming in the following turn.

Your basic spear also weighs only 4 pounds (B273) so it risks breaking if you use it to parry an attack 3x that (12+) per B376, so ST12 guy making a slam would be adequate to do that.

This would also apply if using the 15lb medium shield on B287 (2 in 6 chance of breaking) and using a Shield Bash w/ a 25lb heavy shield has a 5/6 chance of breaking the spear if it parries.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Plane

in the case of unparryable (deceptive -10) attacks to the eye, can't you just opt to hold a buckler in front of the eye slit as cover (have to strike THROUGH it) to stop this?

Deceptive-10 to the Eye (-10) is a -30 penalty, so to keethe effective skill at the minimum (12) for a deceptive attack you need Spear-42, not 'merely' Spear-27. That's another 60 points that I'm sure the knight could do something useful with.

[RGTraynor]

As far as "hard caps" go, I don't have a bright-line rule. My character creation handout has the following:

In general: a skill level below 11 is unreliable;
* Skill-11-12 is fair, in the "it’s good to have someone in the party who knows something about literature" camp, and where an average craftsman is;
* Skill-13 is good, and where a talented craftsman is;
* Skill-14-15 is quality, and is the floor where you want the make or break ability upon which your character relies;
* Skill-18+ is expert ... a level which I will not let a new character exceed, and am very unlikely to allow a new character to reach without an outstanding explanation on the part of a player.
* Skill-21 is the best in all the land, while Skill-25 is the best in all the world. Getting to -21 requires a dedicated focus incompatible with the adventuring life, along the lines of spending five hours in the dojo each and every day.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by OddGamer

Is this correct, or am I missing something?

I'd say you got it right. Spear Guy is the way to go, for featureless combat units optimized for featureless gladiatorial pits, where nothing but a single weapon skill is likely to matter. He'll be a lousy adventurer, and even in straight-up combat will be vulnerable to single points of failure like a broken spear, but I expect he'd be amazing in most fights.

That said, it's arguably an unrealistic build - Skill-27?? He picked that up while never having gained an iota of general athletic ability (ST, DX, HT), or anything else? It's perfectly rules-legal, AFAIK, so you did nothing wrong. But, somewhere out there, if players were actually vexing a GM with builds like this, I think it'd be time to step in with some rules to keep things sensible (even if as simple as "no skills at level twice as high as the controlling attribute" or other limits on point allocation).

Still, your build is a fun look at extreme (ab)use of chargen rules, Maybe Spear Guy isn't a realistic character, but imagine a magic/divine/cosmic foe creating automatons like this to send against the PCs...

[Farmer]

Apart from the comments already made, where is the knight's block skill? He has a shield. That DB also adds to other defences. If he shield rushes and knocks the spear guy down, it could turn the tables, even against the unrealistic spear skill.

Basically, though, it's a study in unrealistic optimisation of a single factor against a more realistic and broadly competent opponent.

Also, on average 4.5 damage isn't going to hurt the knight (due to DR4) whereas the sword is doing an average of 6.5 points of damage * 1.5 = 9.75 points of damage, which means if it hits first, he basically wins because it's likely a knock down or a cripple etc. The knight also goes first due to higher basic speed.

I think if you actually played this out rather than a straight number comparison, you'd find the knight, even against such an optimised opponent, does a lot better. With Comfortable Wealth the knight could possibly also have a balanced broadsword offering +1 to skill.

[Anthony]

Maxing a single weapon skill is a pretty consistently superior optimal way of building a character in GURPS. It loses to certain things, mostly hard counters that make your weapon skill unusable and thus irrelevant, but if you want to keep your game functioning in a sensible way you generally have to hard-cap skill.

[Plane]

DX 10 and Spear 27 means he has it at Attribute+17, per B294 (an optional rule which helps keep things realistic) if it's above skill+10 you need to either use it "in the field" (ie fighting every day, combat) or spend an hour of practice (doesn't count as study hours) to maintain it

That's a pretty big Duty (to yourself) either way. Either a lot of time, or the risks that come with real combat like crit fails and breaking your gear or yourself.

Would love to see more of a soft cap to the "Maintaining Skills" rules though, like a gradual slide up to that 1 hour time attribute+10, and a clearer idea of how 'in the field' substitutes for that time in shorter intervals.

Also more of a gradual slide from "once per six months" to "once per day" would be good. Like what if we start from "once per never" to maintain your defaults (unless we treat Incompetent like the true default) and then as one gets Dabblers up to 1pt and beyond we incur progressively higher periods of daily investiture to avoid losing the point.

Like for example, if you were training, can you just be doing spear katas alone in your backyard, do you need a training partner, etc.

That kinda thing probably ought to apply to attributes too though, like if you don't lift heavy stuff your Lifting ST might go down, if you don't challenge your mind your IQ degrades, etc.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Plane

Would love to see more of a soft cap to the "Maintaining Skills" rules though, like a gradual slide up to that 1 hour time attribute+10, and a clearer idea of how 'in the field' substitutes for that time in shorter intervals.

Like most things, I would instinctively use the SSR scale. Something like:

skill  hours/week
att+5  1
att+6  1.5
att+7  2
att+8  3
att+9  5
att+10 7
att+11 10
att+12 15

At att+17, you're basically spending every waking moment practicing.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Anthony

[...] but if you want to keep your game functioning in a sensible way you generally have to hard-cap skill.

Pretty much the official answer, by the way.

—

GURPS is a toolkit. To get the look and feel you want – in terms of genre, realism level, and power level – you must turn the dials to suitable settings.

Skill levels don't have a hard cap because unlike, say, self-control rolls or rolls for Patron, skill rolls have no hard floor on penalties . . . a skill roll at -10 or even -30 is perfectly possible under the rules. Which said, p. B172 is fairly clear on pointing out that skill 20+ is masterful, and suggests a cap of 20-25. There's also ample advice there and on pp. B447-448 that "normal" people have skill 12-14, whatever the rules allow in theory.

So . . . the observed behavior in the example isn't surprising. The example depicts a moderately realistic professional warrior vs. a cinematic peasant-hero type. Power level might be comparable, but realism level sure isn't!

I see those 58-point heroes and raise with this. That's an example where both realism level and genre are out of whack. You can get similar results by creating a 0-point person with enough disads to afford the Wealth to own a nuke, then setting it off remotely.

The point being that the original example, while less extreme than mine, isn't comparing like with like at all.

[David Johnston2]

What happens when someone shoots a bow at spear guy? Or sneaks up on him and stabs him in the back? Or fights him under the influence of a Shield spell? Incredibly mediocre knight is better prepared for each of those eventualities. That is the peril of choosing to be a one-trick pony quite apart from the uproarious laughter from your DM when you present such an unbelievable character.