Movement and attack sequence

[freid78]

I'm sorry to open up a new topic, there's a bunch of unfinished topic already, but i've come under some odd stuff in a battle that I want to share.

Since the character can both move and attack, in any order and even in the same time (using the spliting option), it gives a higher movement character a key advantage of making all the attacks while the opponent cannot land even 1.

Let's examine this situation. An elf character (move 14) is charged by a rat with a move of 6. The rat is unable to reach the elf, so make a second move (scraping his standard action) and is now in front of the elf. The elf make an attack, and then move out of reach. Next round, the rat is still unable to reach the elf, but doubling move with result into the same situation, where the elf will attack and move out after that.

Let say the rat will make a regular move. The elf is 2 hex away. This elf can still make a split move, attack the rat, and move away.

Hence, the rat will never attack the elf.

This seems counter-intuitive, and frankly game broken. Because that's what happens with an elf and a rat, but when you include mount, you get this effect all over again with any unmounted character. Should the attack/move be ordered into a battle sequence to avoid this abuse? Something like you can move and then attack, or if you attack, you cannot make a move.

Thanks in advance.

[Razan_GM]

While youre in close combat (close to each other) you cannot move away from combat. You need higher initiative to move away from combat, so you move and dont attack the enemy from who you "run", you still can attack some other enemy. At least thats how our group always did it. Not sure if in Ed4 book is that option included.

[Kasbak]

Splitting Movement does allow you to Move/Attack/Move, so yes, if you're the faster character and your opponent keeps using their full movement to get in melee range of you, you could declare your first movement to be 0, attack, then move away and force them to keep chasing you endlessly, so long as you keep winning Initiative. If the slower character wins Initiative while closed in, they can attack before the faster character flees again. If the slower character wins Initiative while separated, then this is where reserved actions come in. You simply reserve your action, then interrupt your opponent when they close in to attack and attack yourself.

Of course, if the faster opponent also has ranged weapons, then this makes them all the more deadly. Then they don't even have to split movement in that case; they can simply move and shoot. While it may seem broken, this is true to reality, and is why mounted archers were historically so highly effective. Your best option as the slower character in that case would be to take cover and/or use ranged attacks of your own. Or attempt to close and hope that you win Initiative the next round.

[Mataxes]

This is an extreme disparity, and I don't think it "breaks" the game at all.

Basically, you're saying that because one character has more than double the movement rate of another, it causes problems for the slower character.

Are you saying it shouldn't? Because, frankly, that stretches my suspension of disbelief more than your scenario.

What is the purpose of the encounter? Why is your example happening in a blank featureless plain? Are there advantages or tactics the slower character can bring to bear?

Is there a reason the rat (in your example) is just charging in, and not taking advantage of the option to reserve its action for when the elf closes in to attack? (Just like delayed actions, you can carry reserved actions over to the next round.) The rat might only get to attack every other round, but it still gives the rat a chance to attack.

There were also some optional advanced movement rules in earlier editions, where you compared Initiative results on a table to see how far one character could move before the other one acted (I know they were in the ED1 Companion, but I don't recall offhand where they might have cropped up elsewhere). It might be possible to adapt that in some way.

In the end, I don't see the issue you raise here as a problem. Certainly not a game-breaking one. With this extreme difference, and using these (less than optimal) tactics, the encounter favors the person with the advantage.

Of course it does.

So the character with the disadvantage should look for a way to overcome or minimize the advantage, rather than playing into it.

[Telarus_KSC]

Razan's response comes from "old-school" war-game/D&D type play. When units enter "melee" (touch bases) they can't break away unless they "flee" (free attack in D&D), or "fighting withdrawal" (walking, not running, lets you counterattack). That style has a lot of resources out there, and is kinda interesting. One thing also missing from this style of scenario is the random "appears at XX yards away" roll.... sometimes the Rat is close enough to attack the first round!


Earthdawn was always shown with more fluid movement (see Windlings, or Warriors with Air Dance), which brings up the old movement-by-initiative chart that Mataxes has mentioned. I've based my own house-rule off of that (a version of this was in Classic, I think):

Movement by Initiative: Namegivers moving 2 yards (1 hex) costs them -1 to their Initiative Result. Allow a character to move until another character with a high enough Initiative can act to interrupt (i.e. don't count Init down, just declare the move, ask if anyone wants to interrupt, then from the difference in their Init results, figure out how far to move Character A before Character B can act).

[cz1234]

In my game we started to see some degenerative behavior since you only need to move two hexes to get into blindside for any given opponent and it felt kind of dumb. Also my players seemed to want melee combat to be a bit stickier so we came up with two new combat options as a house rule:

1) Disengage as a standard action. You move as normal but use your standard action.
2) Disengage as a simple action. You take 1 strain and are considered harried for the round.

You only have to worry about disengaging if either of the two actually performed a melee attack.

[Mataxes]

[Utsukushi]

I find that pretty clear under the "fluid movement" aspect of Earthdawn's combat mechanics. For the same reason anybody within two yards can be counted as `in the way' for a missile attack, you naturally assume that if an attacker circles around their enemy, said enemy will keep turning to face them. It's not like people freeze while they wait their turn, after all. I've only ever seen it played that if two people are actually on opposite sides of an opponent, then one of them gets to Blindside them, because he has to face somebody -- generally, whoever he attacks when it's his turn determines his effective `facing' for the round.

[freid78]

Thank you all for your responses. There was a couple of factors I didn't put in, for simplicity reasons, and by doing that, it killed the idea. The rats were in the Poison Forest, a bit frenzied, I they weren't (and i guess should never be) intelligent enough to reserve an action. Rush and attack seemed a pretty good move for them, even if it's dumb enough to trap them into a situation where they would all be killed without attacking. The virtue of speed! Guess I was a little stuck with the concept of "opportunity attack" which is a pretty cool idea in another system

After your responses, and perhaps some time to reflect on the battle, it makes sense after all.

[cz1234]

1:1 it is all very straight forward and we went through many sessions without issue. Once we got to 3:4 and larger brawls is when the fluid movement thing just sort of broke down. Once there were several people in a melee against several others it felt less like tactics was winning the day and more like exploitation (even if it was RaW). For my players the lack of melee stickiness plus the odd feeling larger fights devolved into led to the creation of house rules.