TheDarkness

https://parahumans.wordpress.com/

An example of what the key problem in that video is, and is directly tied to the habit of failing to train against a skilled opponent versus unskilled, is that the knife wielder literally drops his free hand on every attack. If that doesn't occur, the defender's technique would not occur as it is in the video, and that is a mistake that someone with even meager skill would not be guaranteed to make, and someone trained would certainly not make under most circumstances. Aside from the attacker dropping their guard, it's a technique I think everyone I know who has trained martial arts has trained, but the ones with the most knife experience consider it to be last resort in usage, that's been my experience, so I'll default to them. If the attacker drops their guard, yes, take advantage of it, but this is kind of why technique videos against knife are not the same as evidence for how it goes in a real situation, it's a training drill where the person on the receiving end knows exactly what is coming against an attacker is basically doing one attack and then is done, that's a stark difference from reality. Is it worth training such? Sure. Is it a reflection of reality? Of course not, it is scripted for safety. It has to be. Basically, empty hand against knife drills are sort of like practicing explaining why one needs to buy something borderline unnecessary to their spouse. The practice may pay off, but one should not be surprised when the plan doesn't survive contact with reality.

Equals in skill. To be clear, moves like that in krav maga are most likely by way of things like aikido, judo, and karate, whose techniques are well known to be implemented into krav maga. The fact is, similar techniques were developed in Western sources, but approaches teaching such in the West died out and, until recently, were not practiced, and even then, mostly it is armed techniques that fell out of use that are trained most in groups like hema. Given that the technique above is a common variation found in Japanese styles, and since krav maga teachers generally are open about the influences of the Japanese styles to krav maga, it is most likely that it came to krav maga from those sources, as boxing and modern wrestling don't. Essentially, it came to krav maga by way of samurai arts, and those sorts of techniques were always looked at as a far distant second best from having a weapon.

The problem is, there is a huge difference between single technique practice and actual knife defense situations. Not saying training those single techniques is without merit, but, for example, if all things are equal, there are knife responses to the defense above that will cut the defender after the block. As soon as you are in contact, the knife is very close to you, and a trained knife fighter is capable of angling that knife into the blocking limb. Most people who train knife extensively seem to agree that getting cut is a high likelihood, even in situations where the defender succeeds. Essentially, assuming two equals facing off(which, training wise, should always be one's assumption), one of those equals has longer reach and a razor sharp weapon, and so has an advantage. Further, the knife wielder does not need to commit nearly as deeply as the example above shows, literally they only need to get the edge or point to intersect with almost any part of their opponent. People will tend to cut the leading extremity long before they commit to an overhand stab if they feel they are 'facing off' against someone at all prepared, some people will leave the knife in their rear hand, and because of the nature of a decent knife, they need not commit nearly as much force as an empty hand strike to cause damage, and so can play a much more conservative game than is possible for the person without a weapon. Historically, the styles that techniques that that exact technique came from(not meaning krav maga, those techniques are older than it) taught empty hand as a last resort against weapons for a reason.

A while back, on a recommendation from here, read one online called Worm.

What do you have against Steve Reeves?

I think it's the same practice, it's just that this is the first time kids have been so at the forefront, and the pundits are acting exactly how they have been acting for some time now. Recently had a coworker listening to a local conservative radio station. Now, I'm in Kansas, so it is far right, I have perfectly reasonable republican friends who don't listen to these stations and don't buy into the approach this station uses. I am tempted to sometime listen to it again and just put a check on a piece of paper every time someone says something or someone is an existential threat, evil, or part of a conspiracy. It was a near constant.

I tend to view rules on a spectrum that ranges between simulation and cinematic. As such, I am not in love with approaches that either fail to do both, or are too convoluted or costly for no reason. In my experience, a lot of times, such approaches are bells and whistles that break balance and fill gaps poorly. Just explaining why I can be nitpicky on some things, I don't expect others to share this. My main reason for not viewing acting and feints as the same skill is that acting is a broad skill, feints a very narrow subset of a different skill. One should be able to have a high level of skill in feints and little or no skill in acting, I think most people would agree this fits their view of both things, so I would favor simply recognizing it as another skill, perhaps a subskill under martial arts, since it gives none of the other benefits of the acting skill. As a result, I don't think its cost should be the same. Now, if I wished to model it to be more simulation, then I would model the fact that the feint attack, to be effective, must be a valid attack if continued, and so I would work from there, so that either the initial attack or the second attack, but not both, are used, depending on some initial result. As such, since it really is one attack, I would have it resolved in the phase it took place in, but any advantage would entirely be dependent on the result of the feint roll's success, and its failure would just make it a normal form of whatever attack is being done, no specific advantage. This completes the entire process in one phase, which I find to be a better fit cinematically(the speed chart, and the splitting up of attacks, often kills the cinematic aspect; by going for a smaller immediate effect instead of a bigger one that gets stretched to another phase, I think feint has greater cinematic and simulation value, since a feint is just the hint of another attack, not an actual action that would take the time of a full attack). Where simulation takes away from game play, I totally agree that it's probably not going to be the best standard practice. For example, I might build a character's counter-strike through powers in order to make a good simulation of what one really is, but the complexity of that build wouldn't be the best practice for a standard martial maneuver or necessarily be good to replace it because the system doesn't really facilitate that build outside of building it as powers. However, builds close to simulation are not, by default, better or worse for game play, sometimes they are better, sometimes worse. Further, given that many are not using the move, I think there is value in asking if there's a way to build it that is balanced and might prove more useful to players and GMs.

I think it's an unfortunate and standard practice. Pelosi, Obama, the Clintons, I think there is a contingent in conservative media who pretty much consider anything less than lifelong spite for political opponents as being a RINO. There's zero middle ground whatsoever in that circle, someone can't be like 'I don't agree with their policies, but I don't think they're evil' without taking a big hit.

For me it's a combination of not wanting to endlessly run or play the same campaign, I like having a beginning, middle, and end, which means more campaigns have to be set up, which life makes difficult, and system aversion. I really can't see myself playing D&D again, the system is just too ad hoc. Really the same with Warhammer and 40K, love the figs, despise the constant rehab of the system to deal with the fact that ad hoc systems unbalance with every new iteration. Likewise, I don't care for class-based systems anymore, for a lot of the same reasons. It becomes like a lot of video games, a hunt for unlocking things from the same lists every other person in the same category is picking from, with little escape because the system is balanced by categorizing, not by itself being balanced. Also, although I like the idea behind some of the 'narrative based' games a la FATE, I find the lack of definition sometimes doesn't achieve the goal. I think creativity is not unbound by the concrete reality of a situation, but, in fact, often made more meaningful by the fact that me and my friends can't just change that concrete reality because we want one particular narrative. I like Hero for these reasons, though it has the down side of being really time consuming on the front end. We tend to cope with this by sometimes just doing board games, sometimes doing card games, sometimes doing war games, sometimes doing RPGs.

My view is, the game has skills, they add to it, and the GM's job is making room for that to happen in a fun way. IF the skill based character is making way for more fun for the fight-based characters, my experience is they love that character.

It makes the most sense to just call the skill 'feint', since it doesn't tend to bleed over into other skills at all, judging from most fighters turned actors!

Totally agree, good points.

You could always make it so that they have nearly continuous fun unleashing power on the henchmen/villains the villain behind the scenes sends their way, but are continuously missing him or her because finding him or her requires a variety of skills they haven't tried. That way, you can occasionally have the villain leave smug messages asking when they plan on stopping him.

And actually, that's why feints are more effective and necessary against people who have trained the 'right' responses. The feint is intended to summon up the correct response to the move that appears to be coming, only to then switch to something that capitalizes on that. If you feint with a jab, and I do something that is totally ineffective against a jab, but happens to block the line of attack of a hook, and your real attack is a hook, the hook will fail, irrespective of the fact that my response to your feint was totally wrong for what I thought was coming. Well trained techniques are a double edged sword that way.

Actually, it's the opposite. In many boxing and fencing manuals, they are quite clear about the fact that the less training an opponent has, the less likely that the response to a feint will fit a rational response against that attack, and so the openings desired might not occur at all. They often recommend sticking to straight up techniques against the less trained, as they do not have good responses to attacks anyway, and using draws and feints to make opportunities against equals, as they are harder to find an opening against. That said, because of the fact that the timing of these don't really fit well in the speed chart(as most of the time, the next phase, in real time, would be way too late to take advantage of most openings created by a feint), I'd almost feel better making a build based on two attacks, one being the feint, so that the worst scenario is potentially aborting twice for only one real attack, but I like to overcomplicate things.

A couple thoughts: Unless dealing with a group of coders, the steps needed to successfully hack a system don't need to be uber realistic, hollywood gets away with this all the time That said, the suspense is not from 'will I get past this firewall', the suspense is from the need for whatever is in that system, how quickly it is needed, what the repercussions are for not attaining it, and what the repercussions are for getting caught trying to attain it- if those four are not things that have an effect on the action, then the entire skill and roll adds nothing to the excitement of the game, and can too easily become a GM exposition power paid for by the player Every round of combat contains the possibility of strong consequences, if every roll of a skill manages to lack the same, players won't enjoy that part of the game because there's zero suspense in that. I also tend to view past successes on certain skill rolls as actual development of an item. If, using his forensics skill and his profiling and criminal psychology skill, dark detective has repeatedly had to study the crimes of the Deadly Mum, a mime who copies the crimes of others(technically a mimeograft), the developed profile is an actual item with an actual value based on the rolls(including failed rolls that lead to incorrect assumptions about the Deadly Mum). Mind you, he needs somewhere to store this profile, and it can be lost or even purposefully destroyed. The same could apply to dealing with a known hacker or system, and give advantages in that case, but, likewise, too often using such a profile might clue that hacker in to change their MO, reducing the bonus.

Actually something that I'm using for a system that I'm designing, but that I think is totally workable with Hero and was inspired by conversations here on non-combat skills and how often they get cheesed by way of 'six rolls define this one phase of this one combat, one roll often resolves, for good or ill, many other skills'. Find ways to break it into more than one roll. Further, if it's important to a character or NPC, find ways beyond the skill to define it, perhaps more specific specialties that are higher level than the general hacking skill. Bonuses for time, of course. Lastly, gear, even if that gear is a program, adds to this and to the suspense. By making it a process against an unknown opponent, instead of a roll, with more than one element, suspense can be built. By defining different elements, some of which you, as GM, know must succeed to break into the system, and other rolls whole failure is only important if some other event occurs(but the players don't know this), they will wonder, does this obviously failed roll mean discovery? This other, mediocre roll, the one that appeared to succeed, did it, or am I being led along by someone into believing I succeeded on cracking the password, but actually everything I'm looking at is a trick? By expanding it in a way that builds suspense, the droid trying to trick the system into opening the door and letting allies in faces as incremental and suspenseful a role as the two allies trapped in the building with him facing stiff odds so that he can get them help. As an aside, I tend to view difficulty as more usable a concept for things that are environmental, including stress, but also including a slow connection in the case of hacking. Having the feeling of an actual opponent who you cannot touch has a value, though, if it is not a prepared session where I expected hacking, and does not represent a highly secure target, I would totally just go with difficulty. Otherwise, I might invent a few layers of security, some of it actually seeking to shut down the hero's system, and thus requiring responses. That said, it's much more usable for either a well prepared session, or where the write-ups for the system being hacked and its tools and the hero's is all there. Otherwise, I'd keep it simple, but still probably not default to a single roll except for the simplest thing.

As far as the movies go, the Skywalkers are the only important lineage, without exception. For my own viewing pleasure, correlation is genetic, causation is the force. They have genetics in common, but, barring acceptance of midichlorians, a coincidence that Skywalkers just are super delicious to force cooties, the actual cause is the will of the force giving them all force powers, not genetics. I mean, skill with the force starts with mindfulness, does this sound like a trait any Skywalker other than Leiah, the only one raised by non-family, had any measure of in their youth? If it isn't a tendency to traits one associates with jedi, but it's genetic, then it's force cooties. It's either midichlorians or the will of the force, so thematically the will of the force is so much better an explanation. Conversely, one could say that the midichlorian theory is it, and that the jedi sought to end their own genetic lines specifically to spare others the danger of accumulated power and knowledge in powerful lines. My biggest problem with the movie, however, is one line. In the bomber attack, the bombers were told to keep a tight formation. I'm not sure why, that seemed to be a bad idea.

For me, the problem is, in a galaxy wide story, bloodlines are irrelevant. Literally, if the jedi are dependent on bloodlines, there is no way they could have ever been as influential as they are. And, to top it off, if one accepts bloodlines as relevant, then why aren't the cloners the most powerful producers of jedi and sith? Even in the stories with Thrawn, the clone sith was substandard, when, in reality, breeding programs and cloning would be the only efficient way to make either the sith or jedi anything but a tiny, tiny fringe too small to preserve their own traditions. And the new movies seem to be accepting the limits of that. Luke and Annakin never equaled Yoda, and yet, there is little focus on Yoda's lineage. Even the Emperor could not best Yoda. There is literally no consistent logic with an order dependent on transferring genetic potential to maintain effectiveness to be a celibate order. The OT never actually states that it is genetic. It is far more thematically and philosophically(in a jedi sense) useful to view the fact that Vader's two children had congruence with the force to be the will of the force, that Vader's power became balanced by the force settling around those most likely to finally balance him as an individual. Everything one would expect to be at play in a universe where family lines carried seriously relevant force potential is absent in the Star Wars universe for everyone but the Skywalkers. Yes, that's likely a result of poor world development matched by pop philosophy's influence on how the jedi were written, but it is what is written. There is absolutely no need for the idea that the existence of the jedi without sith would lead to a new sith/dark jedi, and vice versa, through some convoluted rule or mechanic. The allure of the dark side already guarantees the tendency for some force users to turn to evil just like normal people do, and the depiction of the heartbreak and self delusion required to pursue the sith way already guarantees the seed of redemption. When Yoda says that the dark side forever clouds one's destiny, Vader proves that Yoda misinterprets this idea by showing his destiny to end through redemption; yes, a redemption that means his own destruction because of his dark past, but ending as a jedi capable of moving past death. This is actually something I like about the new trilogy. Many complain about Kylo Ren being a brat, but honestly, sith are brats, evil is pretty much selfishness taken to its extreme, which is likewise why I find the idea of grey force users silly, the jedi's problem was not their central philosophy whatsoever, but their execution of it, the idea that more ideas that are merely steps toward the dark would make for a less destructive order. Taking children, acting as a police force working in a regimented way, these are not central to jedi philosophy, but customs they came to accept to their detriment. Vader and Palpatine hid the bulk of their baseness, but when their goals are observed, they are as childish as Kylo Ren's. Kylo Ren, in real world terms, acts out of rage far more purely than either did, and it is unseemly, because rage is unseemly, but that is supposed to be the source of their power. This is why I think the final movie might prove interesting. We are in no doubt of what Ren is, he cannot play the role of mysterious villain like any of the others did, and it seems like the new movies are already specifically playing against types. Whether they pull it off or not is yet to be seen. And Ren did claim to see Rey turning to the darkside in his vision. As for using the originals as templates, getting into a debate about how derivative they are, or whether their interpretation is novel in its own sense, gets messy. I'm sure there are more than a few that would sum up the OT as samurai movies set in Flash Gordon.

In Empire, the plans of the characters, especially at the end, come to naught. Luke interrupts his training to save his friends, yet his actions have no bearing on their rescue, Han takes them all to Bespin to lay low, and is led right into an Imperial trap, threepio discovers the trap early only to be taken out of commission so that he ends up being unable to reveal this until it's too late, Han pays for choosing Cloud City by being frozen in carbonite(and that fate is specifically tied to his not settling his debts earlier in the movie because of acting as the hero). Luke loses his hand. In the new movie, the bad planning does not succeed, but is generally tied to character development, much like Empire, and likely as a thematic homage. The idea that sci-fi fantasy or fantasy requires all plans to be heroic and successful is at odds with a lot of cornerstones of the genres. Moria was a clusterf$%#$ that further established the stupidly incautious behavior of one hobbit. Sirius Black dies because Harry was impetuous. It is very hard to establish a threat if the heroes never fail of their own accord. That said, I strongly believe that the only course open in the new trilogy is one in which the very context of us vs. them is eroded, which would be in keeping with what they've done so far. Kylo Ren is an enemy we understand too well to provide the kind of drama necessary as an inscrutable adversary, so Kylo's redemption or ultimate fall, not the focus on an enemy, as well as the fall of the dynamics at play that drive the constant war, seems the likely theme. And, for the record, the constant need to have force powers fall into family lines and tied to genetics should be called midichlorian theory, and I am quite happy that Rey is not somehow yet another skywalker, that she's not a clone of a jedi, etc. You'll note that, at the end of the movie, a slave kid moves a broom with the force after listening to the story of the fall of Luke. Just some slave kid, not a kid made in a vat by Palpatine, or the long lost line of Darth Bane, just a kid who happens to have force abilities, which would seem to be a prerequisite for any organization that once was able to staff a force large enough to police the galaxy with a host of non-skywalkers/palpatines, etc. Forgive my curmudgeonness, it's ironic that I dislike making everyone related to a past major character, but could care less about midichlorians, since the latter is the only actual explanation ever provided for the former in force sensitives.

Think I've found it, p. 147 CC, Unequal Reach, basically the one with the shorter weapon has an OCV penalty until they succeed with an attack roll, at which point the penalty falls on the person with the longer weapon(the assumption being that the short weapon bearer moved into their ideal range, and past the long weapon). Is that correct? Seems a perfectly good mechanic for it, with the caveat that, when the situation begins in the ideal range of the shorter weapon, the process reverses, with the longer range weapon bearer having to succeed on an attack roll in order to lose the penalty. Ah, rereading the entry, I believe they imply that that is exactly how it works, cool! If that's the case, for the crazy good knife fighter, I'd also focus on making them stealthy and/or with good presence, so they could often get their way close-in before combat even begins and be the one to benefit from range at the outset.

Sadly, I only have access to Champions Complete right now, I'll see if I can find it in there.

And actually, contrary to my original post, I now think that, for ease of play, splitting the difference between long swords and two handed swords should not be the focus. It is specifically the knife that the mechanics cheese badly, but the only reason is because there is no penalty for the longer weapons in close that I am aware of.

I think discussions like this are fun, because, as a bit of a tinkerer who is designing an rpg, they raise questions that fall into a spectrum of 'is the best solution for me and my games essentially builds, tinkering with the game mechanics, or a combination of the two?' In this sense, while it may or may not be true that the mechanics are or aren't immediately suited to the task, this doesn't mean there's no value in tinkering with them if one feels they aren't, and it's probably good for the system itself to have people attempting to do so, even if more often than not, the attempts fail. I don't view any game mechanics as self-referential in any useful way. In the case of Hero, I think they are referential to: What players will see as sufficiently realistic to not suspend disbelief Modes of play that are cinematic A balance between executing the previous two without making gameplay burdensome In this sense, using the example at hand, rules for weapon length work well for the two handed sword at its ideal range, but inside of that, likely due to number 3 above, I'm not aware of the mechanics that fulfill number 1, which is, while there are a few moves a two handed weapon can do in close range, the vast majority of their repertoire is actually not useful in that range, whereas in close range, knives are superior because they do retain all possible attacks. Oddly, short weapons not having their own range reward seems to not be in keeping with #1, realism, or #2, cinematic feel(since movies have always included a ton of people pulling the knife or shorter blade in-close, such as Aragorn in LOTR, Commodus in Gladiator, far back into movies starring folks like Basil Rathbone and Errol Flynn). I'm not even sure the reason for its exclusion in many games is tied to #3 as much as being something to do with rpg history, and that the granddaddy pretty much relegated the knife to a sad position. It would be an added mechanic, but oddly, the cost and burden of modelling is often put on the knife, not on the long weapons intrinsically being more limited in close range. As a base, I tend toward seeing the reach rules sufficiently representing the difficulty of getting to the inside of someone using a longer weapon than your own when action is occurring at the ideal range for that weapon. It's a decent mechanic. Now, if, from the outside, one wants a knife fighter who can bypass a two-handed sword at that range, I think that is the perfect sort of case for 'you are wanting something special, and so you should build it and pay for it'. But I do not see it as fulfilling the spirit of what the mechanics are meant for, fulfilling 1,2, and 3 above, to make that knife wielder pay for a bonus that really should be the two-handed sword's limitation in close range. So, my view on the original question is, reach rules work well as the base mechanic for the two-handed sword at it's range, but applying a limitation to long weapons(which would also lower their cost) that reduces their DEX or DCV/OCV or some combination when closer is the appropriate mechanic that places the cost where it should fall, which should not be on the knife. From their, the superb knife fighting character would then spend points to capitalize on this, but not be forced to create a mechanic that shouldn't be his or her burden to bear.