A less transparent Feint?

[Rabenrecht]

Now that I finally managed to actually play and run a GURPS game, my appreciation of the system has only grown :-)

But GURPS is a big system with many mechanics and rules. It is to be expected that not all of them are winners.

One of the duds is, in my view, the Feint maneuver.

I think on paper the mechanics are fine. Also, if a player uses Feint I don't see an issue either.
But if an NPC uses Feint against a player character things start to break down.

The issue in my mind is that the task resolution of a Feint is very distinct and thus clearly recognizable. In other words: it is very transparent for the players if their characters have been Feint'ed. This can (and will) inform their decision.

A player might have felt secure with an active defense of 14 or something. But seeing that they would get a massive penalty for being Feint'ed, they could go "Ah screw it. If I can not rely on my defense I will just go All-out.". Or try to foil the attack by moving away (so that the enemy would have to use Move-and-attack). Or any other decision informed by the fact that there is a looming penalty on defense.

While a successful Feint might still affect the battle in some way its transparent nature make it a poor representation of, well, a feint.


What is your experience with Feint against player characters?

Are there any ideas for changing the Feint rules to make it a better representation of feinting?