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Re: (TFT) Twisting the Knight Away
At 01:47 PM 12/3/06 +0000, John wrote:
But that all only applies to melee, not HTH, since a run around HTH
attack never came up in my years of gaming. As I said, I would presume
that an attacker who could do a run around to get a rear HTH attack
could also just initiate HTH by virtue of a higher MA.
No, a figure with higher MA will still be stopped by Front hexes and be
forced to attempt HTH as an action in DX order, giving the opponents some
chance to disengage or cut him down before he can tackle them.
My guess is it never came up because your players were roleplaying and/or
thinking of the situation and not gaming the rules, and so it never
occurred that something so silly would give such an advantage.
One example of the problem is like this:
__ __ __ __ __ __
/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__
\__/ \__/vK\__/ \__/ \__/ \__/
/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__
\__/ \__/ 1\__/ \__/ \__/ \__/
/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__
\__/^X\__/ 2\__/ \__/ \__/ \__/
/ \__/ 3\__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__
\__/ 4\__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/
/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__
\__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/
Xygor is an Elvish swordsman at X facing north, with DX 18, MA 14,
Alertness, and Unarmed Combat III.
Kog is a hobgoblin with a dagger facing south, with DX 8, MA 10.
Roll for initiative - Kog wins 50% of the time.
In the case where Kog wins initiative, he chooses to move first via the
hexes marked 1, 2, 3, 4, and then enters Xygor's hex via the rear,
initiating HTH instantly, and receiving everyone's generic 4/6 + re-roll 6
chance to succeed, knocking Xygor down, etc. None of Xygor's abilities nor
Kog's incompetences are taken into account.
If this doesn't seem like a problem yet (perhaps one might think at first,
because Xygor is supposed to never start a turn in open terrain in that
proximity to any MA 10 foe who might HTH him?), then consider a slightly
different situation:
Same map, but K is now a decent polearm user, who chooses to charge attack,
and chooses to move first and by the same path. In this case, Xygor gets to
move before the attack is resolved, say, turning to face, and/or perhaps
choosing to disengage or to defend. If K had a sword rather than a polearm,
Xygor would likely get to swing first (DX order), and in fact there would
be no real effect of K moving to Xygor's rear.
* That is, winning initiative in situations besides HTH initiation, means a
choice of whether to move first, but not whether to move and mess up
enemies before they can do anything at all. Usually the only way to get
around a single opponent to attack them normally is to let them move first
and then take advantage of their carelessness or a situation where they
decide to expose their side/rear hexes (e.g. because there are multiple
threats or something, or they have lower MA than you and they want to lure
you with a +2 attack so they can engage you next turn).
* So why should any old figure get to use HTH as a way to shortcut the
whole initiative system?
I'd say it should not, and so I would advise just ignoring the idea of
entering HTH during movement, and make it only be an action, because it
solves these problems.
PvK
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