Protect
Stop a bullet with a bulletstopper

Probably the best way to do it is to have a protect command (with a two-way agreement like escort) where one person is able to protect another. It should persist if the two characters are moving around.

I think the ideal way to do it would be to test the attacker's weapon skill/stats against the protector's weapon skill/stats on every attack, similar to the way human shields work, but possibly favoring the attacker a bit more. Having a bodyguard should be helpful but not as sure of a thing. If the attacker fails their roll to get past the bodyguard, then their attack is calculated against the bodyguard instead of the target for that round, and so on.

Someone suggested using evasion in the calculation but some builds that make perfect sense for bodyguards won't be as good at that skill. Someone else suggested multiple bodyguards but that sounds like a coding nightmare.

The bodyguard's pose should be set to make it clear who they are protecting so that any potential attacker knows what they might have to contend with. Bodyguards probably should need to be unstealthed as the job is kind of the opposite of stealth.

The person being protected should probably not be able to attack. They're relying on their bodyguard to intercede and trying to stay out of the fight. If they choose to jump in it should break the protection status.

Weapon type (gun, shovel, etc) should offer no particular benefits beyond what they already have. Bodyguards should be able to block snipers.

thank you and god bless

Still better you than the target.

There is also a question, how will being protect affect your ability to attack? I think the protected person should be limited to guarded posture unless the bodyguard drops dead. Otherwise, I can see quite a few scenarios where protection can be used for advantages in the offense, and that's a bit silly.

From a gameplay perspective, arbitrarily making an already oft-neglected combat skill unnecessary would disproportionately advantage certain kinds of characters for no real reason other than a certain kind of simulationism. Since you can't really change your build in Sindome and can be locked into one character for years, all that would do is unnecessarily remove some people from the pool of potential bodyguards.

Sniping could be fine either way. It is kind of underutilized so making it a countermeasure to bodyguards seems fine.

Since Slither mentioned this in the thread in which I brought the concept up- I don't think there is a need to add a new, additional skill for this. If there was one skill existing today that this could checked against (and again, with the requisite stat checks) I would think it would be dodge.

If you can handle yourself in combat to such a sufficient degree that you can dodge blows and shots made at you, I would expect that you should be able to do the precise opposite - to intentionally attempt to intercept a blow or shot intended for another target.

I would also expect that the Protect / Bodyguard verb should be physically strenuous, since you are going out of your way to attempt to protect another. I'd also say that bundling it with movement so that it functions similarly to escort would probably be wise. We'd need to be able to move as closely to the guarded target as possible so that general foolery such as grabbing someone while they're guarded because one player was room transitioning would be problematic.

In addition, I think that there would need to be some flat percentage chance to intercept at the skill floor and have it scale accordingly to investment and stat gains. The reason I say this, is that having a slightly inflated floor for the skill is of no benefit to older, more skilled and statted characters in terms of their ability to guard another. Should we wish to employ others and make this a viable career/job, then I don't think simply checking an attack roll from a mid/old character against the dodge skill of a new/mid character as the would be terribly useful. But that's just a suggestion on my part.

Making it tied to any (every?) attack skill means that by default, anyone who can blast a heater or swing a bat would be a good bodyguard, and I'm not entirely sure that lines up. On the flip side, I think there's probably an argument to be made that the same is true of dodge.

But there could (perhaps should) be a subsequent check dependent on what's being used by the bodyguard and attacker.

Is the attacker a gunman? Well the best you can hope for is sponging bullets.

Is the attacker wielding a sword? Well you've got a bo out, so the secondary check of if you block the attack goes into effect.

I could imagine this becoming quite problematic in the event we are talking the guard getting a defensive check on top of the guarded getting one as well. In certain circumstances, such as melee combat.

Also, thank you Vera for bringing this thread to life. I had intended to do so after the previous thread had gotten derailed, but the dreaded RL had other ideas on what to do with my time.

I've played other Mu*s that have a rescue command which I think could also be a dynamic usage of protect. There's not many ways to save somebody in a combat situation other than grappling them out, as far as I'm aware.