Room for Maneuver?

[jacobmuller]

With all this talk about Wait and Evaluate, and prior discussions of how to simulate pauses in fights, and accepting that it is realistic that many fights are over before the victim has even realised there was a fight:
Is there any need/ use/ functional existential applicability for another maneuver in the Combat Turn options?
What would you want and what would it do?



"And, remember, I am recording this, for posterity, so, please, be honest..." The six-fingered man.

[PK]

Sure, why not? I introduced one completely new maneuver (All-Out Concentrate) and one new variant (All-Out Defense (Mental Defense)) as optional rules in Psionic Powers, because either I or the playtesters felt that they were needed. I could certainly see room for other specialty maneuvers, as long as they were balanced against the existing ones.

[jacobmuller]

seems a lot of folk want something to create a reason to pause-for-effect during a fight. A variant on Evaluate with more oomph.

Weigh the Odds(?): a concentrate style maneuvre allowing you to assess your opponents tactics/ style. Make an IQ-based combat skill check and treat him as if you have Style Familiarity (+1 to defend/ attack?). Movement: step; Defence: Any. The All-Out version gives +4 to the skill-check but no defence.
Or skill-check at -3 if you have to defend and unmodified if All-Out?
And
How about All-Out-Move. Sprint grants +20% but you keep your defences. AOM grants +50% but no defences?

[The Benj]

Originally Posted by jacobmuller

seems a lot of folk want something to create a reason to pause-for-effect during a fight. A variant on Evaluate with more oomph.

Weigh the Odds(?): a concentrate style maneuvre allowing you to assess your opponents tactics/ style. Make an IQ-based combat skill check and treat him as if you have Style Familiarity (+1 to defend/ attack?). Movement: step; Defence: Any. The All-Out version gives +4 to the skill-check but no defence.
Or skill-check at -3 if you have to defend and unmodified if All-Out?

This has LESS oomph than Evaluate. Regular Evaluate gives you +1/turn to both attack the target and defend against their Feints or Deceptive Attacks. Style Familiarity only does the latter (it gives no bonus to attack).
Unless the benefit of this is meant to last longer than Evaluate? The rest of the combat? Forever? MoS seconds?

The idea of a souped-up, skill-based version of Evaluate has some appeal.
Personally, I side-stepped the issue by just making Evaluate better.

How about All-Out-Move. Sprint grants +20% but you keep your defences. AOM grants +50% but no defences?

Meh. Doesn't grab me.

[jacobmuller]

Originally Posted by The Benj

This has LESS oomph than Evaluate. Regular Evaluate gives you +1/turn to both attack the target and defend against their Feints or Deceptive Attacks. Style Familiarity only does the latter (it gives no bonus to attack).
Unless the benefit of this is meant to last longer than Evaluate? The rest of the combat? Forever? MoS seconds?

Yes, less oopmh but the benefits of a Perk/s you don't have, at least vs that opponent/ trained unit.
But I'm really just playing devil's advocate here.

[Darekun]

Originally Posted by jacobmuller

Is there any need/ use/ functional existential applicability for another maneuver in the Combat Turn options?

I think this can mostly be achieved by using a less-violent focus than is usually assumed. EGS, for example, is a low-lethality setting; death is either offscreen or climactic, you can usually win by talking if you're good, and it generally conforms to the principle "nothing says "this is serious" like a body on the floor". In a GURPS EGS campaign, accordingly, fights led to a sort of Debate And Evaluate exchange, which could either lead back to a flurry of attacks, or end the fight.

I don't think military combat involves lulls and flurries in the sense usually implemented by such rules; soldiers use things like stealth and cover to break lines of fire. Military combat is serious. A soldier is expected to be ready to die for their country, and attitudes like "with your shield or on it" reasonably lead to "attack every second if exposed" in GURPS. In a gang/playground fight, not requiring the enemy to put you down is a more-viable result, as is the enemy not requiring you to put them down.

You could also get a useful effect by hiding information, letting Evaluate benefit rolls to suss out the enemy's traits, and letting Evaluate boni carry over through All-Out Defenses. Then you can get gang-level fights often consisting of circling until superiority is established, with a few probing attacks for more boni, then one side retreats. You could alternately/also interpret this as free Intimidate attempts as part of Evaluate.

One of the factors leading to lulls in playground combat at least is that a failed attack can so easily go wrong. GURPS seems to prefer implementing such things as improved things you can do after a successful parry, but I don't think the average bully is using any of the existing ones. If this isn't interpreted as some result I don't see from low skills, it seems like it should be Evaluate boni applying to defenses against your Evaluate target, and/or something like a missed/defended attack making a counterattack easier(especially if "easier" means "double Evaluate boni"). With both, +3 from Evaluate not only means +3 to hit, but +3 to defend, and the +3 to defend makes it more likely that you get further plusses to attack.

You could implement a lot of these with new maneuvers, but I don't see much point; you end up with the realistically-weak Evaluate taking up space.



Alternately, make shock penalties fade at -1 per turn instead of vanishing immediately. That sort of doubles the benefit of Evaluate, or grants it free as part of All-Out Defense, when used after taking damage.

Finally, I've done this sort of thing by assessing FP costs for a fight after every N seconds of high-adrenaline maneuvers, resulting in "lactic acid breaks" every few seconds, but while nice in theory it was clunky in practice.

Originally Posted by jacobmuller

A variant on Evaluate with more oomph.

Awesomeness By Analysis(20/level) [Cinematic]

Multiply the benefit you gain from the Evaluate maneuver by [Level + 1].

Totally digitus ex recto, but seems to be a better GURPS implementation of cinematic circling in melee. (3sec is faster than it should be, but three turns is good.) The drawback is that the combatant with a lower level of Awesomeness By Analysis has a seriously inferior motive to lull, but a 400-point action-movie campaign with a max of 2 levels could end up with all the important characters getting ×3 Evaluate.

You could also allow a further 20 points or so to get un-multiplied Evaluate boni after the usual time is up, until the camera gets bored.

[Kromm]

All-Out (*) is a reasonable expansion. The bonus depends on what * is. As a general rule:

+1 for feats based on IQ, Will, or Per. For this purpose, treat ranged attacks as an application of Per. Examples: The +1 that All-Out Concentrate grants psi use (Psionic Powers, p. 11); the +1 to hit that All-Out Attack grants ranged attacks (p. B365).

+2 for defenses or resistance rolls, or feats of ST or HT. Examples: The +2 that All-Out Defense gives regular (p. B366) or mental (Psionic Powers, p. 11) defenses; the +2 that All-Out Attack gives to use ST offensively or to break free in close combat (Martial Arts, p. 114).

+4 for feats of pure agility based on DX. Examples: The +4 to hit that All-Out Attack grants melee attacks (p. B365) and DX-based close-combat moves (Martial Arts, p. 114); the +4 to Acrobatics for an all-out Acrobatic Stand (Martial Arts, p. 98).

You could call these things All-Out Move (to get +4 DX when a roll is needed to navigate terrain), All-Out Change Posture (as for the Acrobatic Stand example), All-Out Ready (to get +4 DX when a roll is needed to ready an item, or +2 ST when what you're readying is too heavy for you), etc., as needed. The game effect would be a bonus at the expense of giving up all active defenses.

And you could certainly allow Committed (*) for the second and third cases above, giving half the bonus (+1 or +2) in return for the drawbacks of the Committed Attack maneuver defined in Martial Arts.

[Kromm]

And to answer the obvious: I'd probably allow All-Out Evaluate to count as a feat of Per and have each second of Evaluate without any defenses give +2 to hit, not just +1, to a maximum of +6. Probably followed by an All-Out Attack at +4, for +10. ;)

[munin]

There have been a few attempts on the forums to define a Move and Concentrate maneuver, and I think that is worth continuing. A regular Concentrate maneuver well represents standard concentrating on a mental task while moving at a measured walk (a typical human can move at 2 mph while concentrating), but fiction (especially comics and tv shows) are full of people activating mental abilities while moving faster than that.

[jacobmuller]

Originally Posted by munin

There have been a few attempts on the forums to define a Move and Concentrate maneuver, and I think that is worth continuing. A regular Concentrate maneuver well represents standard concentrating on a mental task while moving at a measured walk (a typical human can move at 2 mph while concentrating), but fiction (especially comics and tv shows) are full of people activating mental abilities while moving faster than that.

Move and concentrate, -1 to IQ (and related) activity, -2 to DX etc?