Moving from Long Range to Engaged in a single turn

[Moving from Long Range to Engaged in a single turn]

 Unfortunately we were also half dead, after a couple of rough previous encounters. In addition we where outnumbered (4 PC's to 5 Beastmen), had only one martial character in the group (one soldier, along with a thief, student and burgher), and the beastmen were heavy hitters (gor's led by a wargor - not even henchmen or ungor!).

Let's just say it didn't end well.

To his credit the GM did eventually realise it was a mismatched fight, and fudged it so the surviving beastmen departed without finishing us off. Unfortunately by this point only the student was left conscious after wisely fleeing, the remainder of the group scattered in crumpled heaps along the road, the burger and soldier critically wounded and the thief half mad from stress.

[Moving from Long Range to Engaged in a single turn]

 A few dozen paces is still approx 180 feet though (assuming a few dozen is 36, and a pace is 5ft). It's a lot of ground to cover, even running very fast, without your opponents getting a chance to react.

I guess at the end of the day as it is an abstract system, there needs to be a fair amount of GM interpretation to ensure the spirit of the rules is upheld, rather than the letter.

 

 

[Moving from Long Range to Engaged in a single turn]

Kryyst said:

 

Long to Medium = 2 Manoeuvers

Medium to Close = 1 Manoeuver

Close to Engaged = 1 Manoeuver

So they'd only need to burn 4 wounds to get into range then use their basic 1 free manoeuver to attack.

All perfectly legal and realistic.  Beastmen are friggen fast and in a full on charge could possibly catch ranged combatants off guard as they try to get their weapons out, loaded and aiming at a pack of charging gor.

Had the characters been walking around with their weapons out and drawn and looking for danger then I would allow a free round of actions from the PC's before the beastmen can start their charge.

 

 

Taking the example to the extreme, what of an opponent at extreme range? If they are willing to burn the 'wounds' they can move from extreme range to engaged before the victim gets to act, even if they have a weapon primed and ready.

It appears that the ability to move any distance in a turn and still act with the appropriate spend of fatigue/wounds is at odds with the rather simplistic initiative system. There's only so many times you can say "Um, you were caught off guard/distracted/indecisive."

Leaving such situations up to the GM to interpret isn't always ideal - in the previous example I was actually one of the players, and the GM saw nothing unusual in letting the Beastmen run up to us and kick our asses while we stood frozen, even though we had actually spotted them first and had our weapons primed and ready. When we questioned this, the reply was "that's what the rules say".

Definitely something to be clarified in any future editions - even a simple rule like "the maximum number of manoeuvres that can be spent on movement in a single turn is equal to the characters Agility score" would help limit odd situations like this. Indeed, as the system currently stands, an Agility 1 Toughness 4 Dwarf in Platemail can disengage from an enemy, move from extreme range to engaged with an opponent, and strike, while an Agility 4 Toughness 1 Elf in a thong can't even get from extreme range to long in a single turn without passing out.  

[Moving from Long Range to Engaged in a single turn]

 Scenario:

A group of PC's spot a group of beastmen at Long Range. The PC's are armed with missile weapons. They presume that they can shoot at the beastmen at least a couple of times before they cover the distance between them.

The beastmen act first as they get good initiative rolls.

The beastmen decide to burn 5 wounds to get a total of 6 maneuvres, allowing them to go from Long Range to Engaged in a single turn, also attacking the PC's in melee who are only armed with crossbows and sling staffs.

Is this valid? It seems all perfectly legal in the rules, but when rationalised in terms of what actually happened in the game world, it's as if the Beastmen teleported to the PC's, allowing no chance to actually shoot them (even though they must have covered something like 150 metres or so).

 

Am I missing some rule that prevents this kind of situation?