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Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Alternative Feint - Feint Cap / Feint Attack - Revised

This is a second look at something I posted the other day:

Alternative Feint - Feint Cap / Feint Attack

The more time I took to mull it over, the more I think it needed a tweak, especially Feint Attack.

As written, if the attack would have been a critical hit, it's both a Feint (capped at -10, if you use the Feint Cap rule) and an Attack. Not a critical hit, but a normal hit.

I think that needs some modification to avoid, essentially, Feint-only approaches vs. skilled foes. It should still be a viable option to just straight-up attack. It also left open the question - does this attack benefit from a prior Feint? It's possible abuse to say yes, but it's also logical and sensible to say it does. You're banking on a good roll if you just string feints together hoping the next one will bring an attack that benefits from this one.

Still, getting a hit in on a 6 or less when you're a good feinter is probably not a good idea.

One way to avoid this is to say, "If the roll for the Feint is a 3 or 4, the Feint proceeds normally and you strike your foe - roll randomly for location and resolve defenses normally, unaffected by this Feint. Defenses are affected by a successful Feint done before this strike!"

I think that's a superior approach to what I had before.

You could equally supe this up and say a 3 on this roll is a critical hit and a successful Feint, or that a 3-4 on a Feint roll is a critical hit instead of a Feint. But in that case once you're highly skilled and regularly hit the Feint Cap of -10, you are generally better off doing the following:

Rapid Strike (-6/-6, -3/-3 with Weapon Master or Trained By A Master)
Split this into one Feint at -6 or -3, and one Attack at -6 or -3, per the Feint/Attack tradeoff approach allowed in GURPS Martial Arts.

This way you get a Feint and a potential critical hit, followed by an attack that will benefit from the Feint.

I can't think of a better combination off-hand, but I bet my players can. That's why "converts a 3-4 to a critical hit" or "adds a critical hit on a 3" seems abusive. If you really can't do much more than critical hunt on a target, well, why not do it this way, preferably with a Beat so others can take advantage of the move even as you hunt 3s?

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