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Re: Rules Nugget (GURPS): What's a Miss?
Sat, 2008-01-19 23:39 — tbone> No opening: No "opening" assumes an actively defending opponent…
Not necessarily. A good guard can let you no opening to hit at without requiring any active defense.
Sorry, my meaning was: If we say there was "no opening", that assumes a foe who is in a position allowing active defense, though not necessarily performing one. Yet some foes won't be in a position to defend at all, and it wouldn't make sense to assume a "no opening"-based TH miss against such a foe. More on this below:
> IMO, taking the Evaluate action already does an okay job of simulating waiting for an opening, especially Evaluate followed by Deceptive Attack.
No, because the evaluate maneuver is taken by the attacker, when he wants and for as long as he wants. No opening means that he can’t do what he wants.
I should add that while Evaluate followed by Deceptive Attack makes for an acceptable simulation of "wait for an opening", it's not a great simulation of it. I'll officially lower my estimation of it a bit.
To elaborate: Using Evaluate followed by Deceptive Attack as "wait for an opening" is akin to saying that, if you wait for two seconds (+2 TH), your foe's guard will drop an appreciable amount (trade +2 TH for -1 AD) – no question about it, it will happen. Yet waiting for longer than two seconds brings no further guard-dropping (other than by voluntary choice, such as your foe getting angered by your waiting and choosing to AOA your hide : ).
None of which sounds too realistic as a way to handle the random changes in an opponent's defense readiness. So I stand by my statement that the mechanic can do a stand-in for "wait for an opening", but I hereby add the admission that it does so in a pretty inflexible and limited way.
My point is that the Evaluate + Deceptive Attack mechanic, imperfect though it be as a simulation of "wait for an opening", is better than taking a TH miss and tagging that with the description "you waited for an opening and didn't attack". As mentioned, the latter has results (ammo gone, axe unready, etc.) inconsistent with not attacking.
There's more to be said about inconsistency, covering that and all of the points below:
> Not counterattacking: Looks similar to hesitation or "no opening". Again, I'll note the same rules conflicts as hesitation carries, as well as note that taking Evaluate simulates this fine, IMO.
Right. As said above, there are some conflicts… But the GM can solve them easily. When the attacker hesitates or looses his counterattack because he is not in a position good enough to do it, he can be unready. So, even if his weapon is not unready, the GM can assess that he still can’t use it before rereading himself.
> "Opening? But he just did AOA; his defense should all be open!..."
As said in your conclusion, having several description possibilities let you use the one that best correspond to the situation. If the attacker defense is all open, I don’t use the no opening description for instance; I prefer something like: "His attack was so savage and brutal that it make you loose your balance for a little while… So, you don’t succeed to counterattack him this turn."
> "And if I didn't attack, why can't my axe Parry now?..."
"Your axe could parry, but your still hesitating / in a bad position to use it…"
The big-picture "problem" with all of the happenings handled by description above – hesitation for any reason, no attack due to "no opening", no attack due to momentary poor positioning – is that the game rules truly don't cover any of those situations. Which is precisely what makes them ideal targets for insertion via creative description, I'll happily grant you. But employing a TH miss as the trigger for those creative descriptions creates (admittedly minor) discrepancies with certain logical repercussions of a RAW TH miss.
I've mentioned the "consequences of a TH miss" example already – lost ammo, unready weapon, etc., even though the 'miss' is being described as no attack having taken place at all.
Here's another example: The description of a TH miss as "no attack due to no opening" isn't consistent with the difference between an opponent who's actively defending versus one who isn't. If some TH misses are due to "no opening" non-attacks, then you should score fewer TH misses against active but non-defending opponents who always allow openings, like those zombies pelting you with AOAs. Whatever percentage of 'misses' stem from "no opening" should all become hits when you face the non-defending zombies. Yet the rules grant you no lessening of TH misses when you face the brain-hungry hordes.
Likewise the axe example: If the axe's parry unreadiness is, once in a while, actually just user unreadiness or hesitation, then why does this happen specifically to axe users and not sword or knife users? It seems very unfair to the axe users, who suffer the axe's unique post-attack limitations even when they are described as not attacking!
In short, in all the cases, under RAW, the mechanical results of a TH miss are 100% consistent with "you attacked and missed", and are not very consistent with "you didn't attack". That's my only real observation here. Discrepancies and inconstencies, though certainly minor ones.
Believe me, during a fight, there are times where you are so much thinking about what you will do next that you can’t attack nor defend correctly… Learning to attack and defend fluently (i.e. without hesitation) is hard.
No argument there! I'll just note again that the rules don't cover this, or hesitating because of no opening, or momentary poor positioning. So what to do about that? I think we understand each other fully from there, and we see that we don't have a disagreement, just different preferences. Given an interest in drawing out some interesting combat result not covered by rules, yet for which we don't want to new rules, I think we both agree on considering creative description as the means of "simulation". Where our preferences differ: I look to see whether the chosen description has logical consequences that butt up against other generated results, and if so, throw away that particular description. Whereas you (I believe) say, "well, sure, throw it away if there's a major conflict – but if it's minor, so what, it's good enough and it's fun."
Assuming I have that correct, I have no complaint against your preference. I doubt many players would!