Arion Games Forums

I had a battle with multiple combatants today and all of them were in melee combat. I had trouble figuring out which characters should move first or how the order should progress. Some players were trying to flank the enemies but the enemies wouldn't let them. I had a player who moved back 2 meters to try to drink a potion, but the enemy was sticking to him. I wasn't sure if I should let the player move back and drink the potion or have the enemy move with him and only let the player successfully drink the potion if he survived an attack round against the enemy.

How does everyone else deal with this?

I am thinking that I'll just let players an enemies choose whoever they want to go first with players or defending characters getting priority.

Does anyone have any opinions about this? How has it been treated in everyone else's games?

IMO attempting to drink a potion while facing a combat-ready enemy is a fatal error.

How long an action takes to complete is often important. The potion needs to be in hand, opened and consumed before it can take effect. The attacker needs to get in range and attack an opponent who is not putting up a defence. It's a easy target with a damage or knock down option, I think.

Mr Nibbs wrote:IMO attempting to drink a potion while facing a combat-ready enemy is a fatal error.

How long an action takes to complete is often important. The potion needs to be in hand, opened and consumed before it can take effect. The attacker needs to get in range and attack an opponent who is not putting up a defence. It's a easy target with a damage or knock down option, I think.

The player who was being attacked was a sorcerer who was down to 2 Stamina. The orc was bearing down on him and I decided to let him try to drink the potion but he had to succeed on a opposed skill test.(No
dodge allowed). He ended up testing his luck instead. I know that the player would have to look in his backpack, find the item, open the potion, but I decided to base it on both D&D and the FF gamebooks which allow a player to drink a potion in combat.

The potion problem has gone hand in hand with the movement problem I'm having.
I'm thinking of trying the following.
1-I choose enemy actions.
2-Players choose and declare their actions.

Players can choose to stick or follow a player or opponent. So if the opponent tries to move 2m back they move 2m back. This also means that a player can try a pushback effect and then move back 2m giving them space.

3-Enemy declares actions.

Once actions are declared they can't be unchanged. So if 2 characters attacked one opponent, even if the first opponent kills the enemy, the 2nd character is committed to the same target still.

The 2nd issue I'm trying to resolve is long range movement.
Players were in an open space being attacked by crossbow men but they also wanted to run at a group of melee fighters 50 meters away.
I let players make opposed tests of SK + Dodge + fighting defensively if they wanted to move away at 2-3m per round.
or
They could make a 7 meter run, attacker makes an unopposed check.
Maybe I should let them make an opposed test allowing them to use their dodge and adding penalties for armour?
Or maybe just do the movement/running away rules for them to get cover.
Any suggestion?

How about managing this as fleeing from combat + drinking a potion? It will probably take two rounds, however...

Hullalla wrote:How about managing this as fleeing from combat + drinking a potion? It will probably take two rounds, however...

I really like that idea because it allows me to incorporate the movement table.
In the case with the player, he was being forced into a corner. So even if he did flee he only had 5m of space behind him. I'll be using the fleeing from combat table for now on.

On another note. Based on this
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympi ... un-it.html

Im going to say that my players can run 70m in 1 round. I realized the other night that I was only letting them move 7m a round at full run. I had the math all wrong.