Exploiting weapon reach in GURPS

I once wrote a sample combat in GURPS between a spearman and a swordman. I was disappointed by the lack of advantage that wielding a longer reach weapon. First, if you haven't seen this video first, have a look:

Easily impressionable people like me will be intrigued by the reach advantage gained by the spearman. Here are some thoughts about making the best of this assymetry, or mitigating its implications.

The feint : turning what you are good at into a combat asset.

In this tactical tip post, I'm going over the feint and all of its nuances. Some characters in the Palantir Commission campaign would benefit from adding one of these sweet moves into their tool chest. The relevant sections in the GURPS sourcebooks is Martial Arts p.100-101.

All of these options are different flavors of the feint action. In order to do a feint, you must take either a feint action, or combine the feint with an attack in a all-out attack (feint).

Tactical Example : Out of the Inn

This scenario is similar, but more simple, than the engagement that took place in encounter 5 of the Palantir Commission Campaign. Some of the PC are omitted, and Sir Galdor doesn't have access to his bow (which he didn't use anyway). The charge was a cake-walk in large part because Finbert shot the crossbowmen in the face with a poison dart, causing searing pain to him for the whole engagement. I'm also removing the tresle table that Halin the dwarf used as an oversized large shield, or an undersize Pope-mobile. Arnadil is also removed to even out the odds in this battle.


Oh yes, the characters are stick figures. Please use your imagination: coming up with shiny, finely texture and rigged models would detract from what I want to do: learning about GURPS tactics.

Thanks goes to all commenting on this post, the comments are valuable: help me to learn the system and hopefully may help other get excited about GURPS tatical engagements.

Tactical Tips : Fighting like a man, or a woman.

For this article we'll pretend that Bob is ambushed by an highwayman (Burt). Bob has a mail shirt (DR 4/2 over torso only), a small shield (shield-14) and a broadsword (Broadsword-13) and otherwise wear heavy duty clothes (DR 1 to legs, arms, pelvis). The Highwayman wear padded clothes with hood (DR 1) and is wielding a spear (Spear-12) and has a dagger in his belt (Knife-10). For simplicity, lets assume that they are 10 yards apart in the open, in daytime, on smooth terrain, weapons ready, and both aware of each other.  

Tactical Tips : What to do with your next second

Fighting in GURPS is done in turn of 1 second. Yes, you heard that right, 1 second. You have to think fast or else the GM may just compel you to "Do Nothing" until you figure out what to do. During each turn, a player has a number of tactical actions to choose from. There is dozens of options: you don't need to use or even know them all, but at least, it is good to know that they exist and develop your own fighting style from a subset of them. A great digest of ALL options can be found here. In this tip, I focus on the basics.

Basic Actions that your must know about

In principle, you can go by with only these: Move, Attack, "Do Nothing" and Ready.

• Move : Move your figurine by a number of hexes equal of less than your base move. If anyone attack you, you may defend whichever way that you please.
• Attack : This is the run of the mill combat action (think D&D). With it, you get to pick a target and try to hit as hard as you can. You will still be able to parry, block or dodge normally. The most that you can move is a single hex (usually), which you can use before or after attacking.
• Do Nothing : No offense nor movement, nothing at all. You may defense using active defenses and take free actions such as talking, crying, and picking your nose. Will often be imposed rather than selected.
• Ready : Get something in or out of a sheath, change your grip on a weapon, picking something in reach of your hand (dropping is a free action). More technically, a ready action is required to change the reach of a weapon (if applicable, more on Reach later). Reloading a weapon may require one or more ready actions.
• Change Posture : Stand-up, crouching, sit-down, kneel, crawl, lying-down or prone. You cannot change from lying-down/prone to standing up in one action. Also, crouching is a free action.
• Misc actions: 
• Concentrate : Focus  on some mental task. 
• Wait : Waiting means that you chose to defer your action to a later point in the turn following some kind of trigger. Typically, waiting is used to attack an opponent in the middle of its movement.

Taking this to the next level

There is a lot going on here, but lets just consider the salient points. You can check the details in the linked document above.

• Move and Attack : Go on for up to a full movement and attack (or vice-versa). The Attack will be done with a stiff penalty, and you can't parry and attack with the same hand. But you can slam, and generally take a chance to spoil an opponent's defense for an allies to exploit later.
• All-out Defense : You waive your chance to attack and commit all efforts to defense. It comes in two flavors: two active defense per attack, or an enhanced dodge allowing 1/2 move as withdrawal (which is likely to break contact with your opponent).
• All-out Attack : There are many flavors of the full attack, but the general idea is that you waive any active defense so that you can strike better/harder/from afar/twice/with a feint. This is the thing to do when offense is a better defense, or you know for sure that no one will be trying to hit you for the rest of the turn.
• Feints, beats and ruses : These three variants aims to penalize the opponent's next active defense roll by using your weapon's skill (feints), ST (beats) or IQ (ruse). There is more to it that this one liner, but these maneuvers are useful to defeat opponents with very high active defenses.
• Aiming/Evaluate:  When you aim a ranged weapon, you gain its accuracy rating as a bonus when you shoot. If you aim for 2 turns, your add +1, and another +1 for 3+ turns aiming. As you can see, taking your time pays off when shooting. Bracing a crossbow to a wall, table or the ground gives you another +1. You now know who to give the "Moe Green treatment" to your foes. Evaluate is the melee combat equivalent of aiming: you pause and look for the best angle and timing: You get +1 per turn examining up to a bonus of +3. 

Beyond these, there is a lot more to consider. However, I'd be tempted to say that the full range of actions are there for you to develop a personal style. 

Tactical Tips : Active defenses.

It's not what you fight with that matters, it is where you will fight.

When someone strikes at you, you've got many options: Dodge the blow, Parry with a weapon or block with a shield. From these three options, you can always yield back by one step and get +3 to Dodge, or +1 to parry/block. Remember that a medium shield gives a +2 to any types of defense, not just block. This means that for as long as you can give away terrain, a fighter with a shield has a +5 bonus to dodging. For a "normal" person with some encumbrance and a Dodge of 7, this means a final Dodge of 12, or 75% chance to avoid being hurt. This also applies to your opponents, so there is value in trying to corner your foes as soon as possible (where they will Get Dodge-9, or 37% chance of success). 

Against missiles

Against arrows and bolts, you can always "hit the dirt" and dodge with a +3 bonus  (plus shield bonus). The downside will be that you will find yourself prone on (-4 to attack, -3 to defend, but from now on at -2 as you are a smaller target). Getting back up will cost you two turns, and this can be a long time in some situations.

Getting Fancy: parrying and blocking

Parrying and blocking can each be used only once per turn (1 second). They usually will be more potent than dodging since they are not affected by encumbrance. The down side is that both your weapon and your shield may get trashed in the process. Weapons made of steel shouldn't break unless parrying a critical hit kindof blow, or a very large and spikey weapon. A typical shield could get dinged when blocking strong blows, and require that you fix them up every now and then. It is unlikely that a shield will fall apart without any kind of warning, unless you block a battling ram with both hands. Also, unbalanced two handed weapons can only parry OR attack in a given turn. 

Of course, working as a team to use up the better block with one allies and forcing a dodging of the second attack is even better. But fighting as a team is a whole story in itself.