A less transparent Feint?

[Anthony]

The realistic purpose of a feint is to get your opponent out of position; thus, your follow-up attack must be fast enough that your opponent lacks the time to get back in position. As GURPS permits a full reset (recover your active defenses, etc) in a turn, a feint should be faster than that. Which basically means deceptive attack.

The other problem with feint is that most of the time it's just a bad maneuver, you'll be better off taking the attack action twice instead of one feint and one attack. There are edge cases (double-dagger weapons, aiming for difficult hit locations) where the math can work out, but in routine situations it doesn't.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by kenclary

Eh, disagree. Realistically, you're not going to be fooled into thinking you actually blocked/parried a sword when you just flinched.

If you just flinched and then have the opportunity to attack, move out of the way, activate your forcefield, etc, then that flinch shouldn't have any impact on your defenses. As Anthony notes, the way GURPS typically handles Feints doesn't make narrative sense - there's simply too much the target can do between you throwing the Feint and actually attacking. So you generally have to require Feints to be done on the same turn (or maybe as part of a Wait that goes off after the target has acted), get rid of Feint altogether, or you've got to fudge things some. The suggestions I've made here fall under the first (the Feint and Attack option) and the last (the defend-against-misses option); the middle option would replace Feint with Deceptive Attack (in turn representing feinting and attacking in quick succession). The idea of making a Feint into a general "unbalance foe" option probably would fall into the "fudging things" category; it's an interesting option, but may be a bit too powerful.

[kenclary]

Originally Posted by Varyon

The idea of making a Feint into a general "unbalance foe" option probably would fall into the "fudging things" category; it's an interesting option, but may be a bit too powerful.

A point of mine is that it's already a viable interpretation of the GURPS mechanic, as written. It is perhaps ironic/unfortunate that it's a better match than what usually comes to mind with the label "feint" but I chalk that up to the history of how GURPS' mechanics were assembled more than anything else.

The problem with feint isn't that it doesn't make any sense or isn't realistic; it's that it's not optimal/tactical to use the mechanic under many circumstances. (There are better options, like Deceptive Attack et al, under some of those "many circumstances" at least.)

Were I to try to improve Feint-the-GURPS-rule (a pipe dream, as it is for ~all of us), I would personally lean in to the "get them out of position" interpretation instead of the "make them believe something happened" interpretation, because I think it makes for more dynamic and playable gameplay, and because it wouldn't lean on "hiding" more table information from players/characters. And I would avoid more steps and back-and-forth to the core gameplay mechanics (like declared defenses and such), because GURPS is already "a lot" in that regards.

LATER EDIT: another analogy occured to me. I think both Feint and Deceptive Attack are examples of "exploiting your opponent's OODA loop." However, Deceptive Attack is "getting inside it" whereas Feint is out-maneuvering it. Which really does illustrate why Deceptive Attack is "better" and Feint implies/requires a big skill differential.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The other problem with feint is that most of the time it's just a bad maneuver, you'll be better off taking the attack action twice instead of one feint and one attack. There are edge cases (double-dagger weapons, aiming for difficult hit locations) where the math can work out, but in routine situations it doesn't.

The case I found where Feint was useful was when you're more skilful than your opponent, but they have very high active defences for some reason other than high skill. In that situation, it works better than Deceptive Attack, but this is rare.

[pawsplay]

According to Miyamoto Musashi, you should never feint. Every attack, even a deceptive one, should be an attempt to land a blow. So, he would probably go along with the advice that deceptive attack is a better representation of most skilled feints.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by pawsplay

According to Miyamoto Musashi, you should never feint. Every attack, even a deceptive one, should be an attempt to land a blow.

To be effective, a feint has to look like it will work, and that typically means that if the target doesn't respond it will work. You just aren't terribly committed to your attack.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by pawsplay

According to Miyamoto Musashi, you should never feint. Every attack, even a deceptive one, should be an attempt to land a blow. So, he would probably go along with the advice that deceptive attack is a better representation of most skilled feints.

Originally Posted by Anthony

To be effective, a feint has to look like it will work, and that typically means that if the target doesn't respond it will work. You just aren't terribly committed to your attack.

I wasn't going to bring this up on account of it being another "just don't use Feints" option, but this is too perfect of a (heh) setup. Pyramid #3/52 has an article by Douglas Cole called "Delayed Gratification" which introduces Setup Attacks, which are exactly this - attacks that throw off the foe's defense against later attacks, but are still capable of hitting and causing injury on their own. The basic mechanic is that you take a penalty, as with Deceptive Attack, but rather than it penalizing the foe's defense against this attack, it penalizes their defense against the next one - but if they do successfully defend against the Setup, the penalty is reduced (potentially negated if they roll well enough on their defense). It typically works out that you want to do the Setup Attack against the Torso (which is the easiest to hit location) and the follow up against a higher-value target - because if the foe fails to negate your Setup penalty, then the Setup Attack would have actually just hit in the first place if you'd done it as a Deceptive Attack instead.

Personally, I like the Setup Attack mechanics a bit better than the Feint mechanics, and even suggested (and discussed with the author) some ideas on how to replace Feints with Setup Attacks here.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Varyon

It typically works out that you want to do the Setup Attack against the Torso (which is the easiest to hit location).

That's a bit mechanically unfortunate. Typically what you're doing is attacking in a way that pulls their weapon away from a central position, then shifting your attack to the position that was opened up by their initial response. This means things like 'feint towards legs, then shift to attack head'

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Anthony

That's a bit mechanically unfortunate. Typically what you're doing is attacking in a way that pulls their weapon away from a central position, then shifting your attack to the position that was opened up by their initial response. This means things like 'feint towards legs, then shift to attack head'

The Coup de Jarre probably went the other way with something like feint high and after getting the buckler to co0me up protect the Head switching to a Targeted Attack to the Leg or even a Leg Artery. That at least we know is where Jarre's blade ended up.

Feinting to the Head is probably one of the stronger options as defending the Head is usually both a natural and a trained reflex.

Also, in the Gurps ultimate level of combat realism it would have been done as a Combination. Jarre had hired a devious Italian sword master to prepare him for the duel.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Anthony

That's a bit mechanically unfortunate. Typically what you're doing is attacking in a way that pulls their weapon away from a central position, then shifting your attack to the position that was opened up by their initial response. This means things like 'feint towards legs, then shift to attack head'

It could be modified to make targeting a location other than the Torso worthwhile. Setup Attack is normally -2 to skill for -1 to defense. You might say that every -3 taken for hit location is automatically worth -1 to defense so long as you target a different hit location for the follow up. So targeting the Leg at -2 means you can then take a -3 as a Setup - total -5 - and impose a -2 to defense, rather than having to take a further -4 for that -2 defense. Another idea I had to make Setup Attacks potentially more useful was to have it be that, if you have a high MoS on your attack, you can inflict an additional -1 to defense per MoS 2, to a maximum equal to the penalty you inflicted (so if you do a -6/-3, MoS 0-1 means a total -3 to the enemy's defense, MoS 2-3 means a total -4 and MoS 4+ means a total -6 - but if you only did a -2/-1, the best you can do is a -2 at MoS 2+). The idea was to make it so that you aren't in a "if I keep any of the defense penalty at all, I would have hit had I used DA instead of SA" situation - because you could have a case where you take -6/-3 for SA and have MoS 4, for a further -2, and your target only defends well enough to get rid of the initial -3 - had you done a DA, they still would have defended, but now you still have a -2 to their defense for your next attack. But maybe instead of having the cap be based on the penalty you're starting with, make it based on half (round up) the penalty of the hit location you're targeting. So targeting the leg for the Setup Attack lets you impose up to a further -1 with MoS 2+, while targeting the Face could go up to a further -3 with MoS 6+. Or even use the whole penalty, so Face could potentially give a further -5 with MoS 10+.