If a character affected by Ensnare is successful with their Athletics check to break free, can they still perform their maneuvers, or have they been lost for the round?

I'd say they probably can.

Don't have my book with me, but isn't it technically that this is one of those systems where you actually have to declare all your maneuvers and actions before you actually attempt to resolve them? Thus, if at the start of your turn you can't take maneuvers, that affects your entire turn. That GMs often let players ignore this is more a niceness on their part.

I.e. you can't attack, then do the defensive stance maneuver.

Don't have my book with me, but isn't it technically that this is one of those systems where you actually have to declare all your maneuvers and actions before you actually attempt to resolve them? Thus, if at the start of your turn you can't take maneuvers, that affects your entire turn. That GMs often let players ignore this is more a niceness on their part.

I.e. you can't attack, then do the defensive stance maneuver.

I haven't seen that restriction. I let my players use Guarded Stance (I'm assuming that's what you meant by Defensive Stance) after their attack. The wording on that particular ability is that it adds a Setback until the end of their next turn, so they'll still suffer the penalty imposed.

This actually just happened in my game last weekend. The player used her free maneuver to aim, missed but generated a bunch of Advantages, then spent some of them to gain Guarded Stance. On her next turn I imposed the Setback to her combat check.

We've never played that way, and a quick look-through of the combat rules don't mention it, either. There's also no particular order for actions and maneuvers, so you can shoot, then move, or move, shoot, and move, or whatever.

If, say, a character performs an action to unlock a door, and the skill check fails, he might want to stay where he is and try again next turn. If he succeeds, he might want to use an incidental to open the door and a maneuver to walk through. You couldn't do this if you had to declare everything up front.

Don't have my book with me, but isn't it technically that this is one of those systems where you actually have to declare all your maneuvers and actions before you actually attempt to resolve them? Thus, if at the start of your turn you can't take maneuvers, that affects your entire turn. That GMs often let players ignore this is more a niceness on their part.

I.e. you can't attack, then do the defensive stance maneuver.

You might be thinking of resolving Combat checks, where technically Advantage/Triumphs/Despairs/Threat all need to be spent/allocated first before seeing even if the attack breaks through their Soak. Which can cause some issues like for instance with criticals being wasted either because the character doesn't even land a point of Wound to be able to do it, or because they would've killed the character anyways.

Incorrect. In resolving a combat check step 3 is calculate damage and apply soak. Step 4 is resolve advantages and triumph. Step 5 is resolve threat and despair. So you will know if you deal damage to the target before you choose to crit.

We've never played that way, and a quick look-through of the combat rules don't mention it, either. There's also no particular order for actions and maneuvers, so you can shoot, then move, or move, shoot, and move, or whatever.

If, say, a character performs an action to unlock a door, and the skill check fails, he might want to stay where he is and try again next turn. If he succeeds, he might want to use an incidental to open the door and a maneuver to walk through. You couldn't do this if you had to declare everything up front.

This is how all the games I've played interpret the rules as well.

So, I guess the question is, 'Does Ensnare enforce the lost maneuvers at the beginning of the turn or not?'

I'd have to agree with 2P51, if successful, maneuvers are allowed, but I'm interested to know if anyone has a different opinion/interpretation.

Incorrect. In resolving a combat check step 3 is calculate damage and apply soak. Step 4 is resolve advantages and triumph. Step 5 is resolve threat and despair. So you will know if you deal damage to the target before you choose to crit.

Step 3 applies success and failure to the hit; which means you'll know if you failed or not at the actual check and how much damage you'll be doing before Soak. Step 6 is when damage gets reduced by Soak (and thus can fail that way), damage gets applied if at all, and Criticals are applied.

Actually, I think I'm just confusing it with Mutants and Masterminds, which is a system where the player is supposed to describe the actions they take on their turn first.

I do know I'm not confusing it with the way rolls are resolved. This is distinctly a belief about the action economy of a game and a rule system that requires a player to dictate their actions before resolving their effects. It just might not be EotE.

I'd say they probably can.

You know what I might do? I might use the HERO system guideline for entangles. If a character beats the body of the entangle (basically the strength of the entangle), they are free and can do their action next turn. If they manage to do more than double the body of the entangle, they can act in that turn as normal.

So in Star Wars terms, if you get juuuuust enough successes to beat the ensnare, you are free but you took the whole turn to do so. If you beat the ensnare escape number by double, or you have some advantage to spend you can get out as a maneuver. Or if you had a triumph to spend, you could get out as an incidental. From there, you can use up the remainder of your turn as normal.

I've allowed them their maneuvers in the past. I don't see why not.

I'd say with standard Ensnare you could take Maneuvers after freeing yourself. With the Triumph result on a Bola, that's where you are really jammed up. You can't take any Maneuvers and the only Action you can try is to free yourself. It mentions that specifically where Ensnare/Immobilized does not, I believe it's because they wanted that distinction with the Bola/Net.

Incorrect. In resolving a combat check step 3 is calculate damage and apply soak. Step 4 is resolve advantages and triumph. Step 5 is resolve threat and despair. So you will know if you deal damage to the target before you choose to crit.

Step 3 applies success and failure to the hit; which means you'll know if you failed or not at the actual check and how much damage you'll be doing before Soak. Step 6 is when damage gets reduced by Soak (and thus can fail that way), damage gets applied if at all, and Criticals are applied.

What it actually says is that you then apply the damage, it does not say you don't know whether you inflicted damage prior to that.

The rule for triggering a critical hit states you have to exceed the Soak threshold to roll one, so you have to know if you exceeded Soak.

What it actually says is that you then apply the damage, it does not say you don't know whether you inflicted damage prior to that.

The rule for triggering a critical hit states you have to exceed the Soak threshold to roll one, so you have to know if you exceeded Soak.

RAW, you're not actually factoring Soak in and applying actual damage until Step 6, which occurs after you've already spent up all your Advantage and Triumph. So while you don't roll for the crit unless actual damage has been done, you've already spent the cost to trigger it without knowing if you've done damage first. Step 3 is entirely only about seeing if you've got uncancelled success and then applying it to your damage.

Step 6 is where you are applying Soak in order to do the math for Wound Threshold. Step 3 tells you that you can't trigger a critical hit unless you got at least a single point of damage past Soak, so in order for a PC to trigger a critical hit they have to know if they're it exceeded Soak. You don't have to tell them what Soak is, you don't have to tell them how many Wounds they inflicted, but you do have to tell them if they inflicted damage in order to trigger the critical hit.

Step 6 is where you are applying Soak in order to do the math for Wound Threshold. Step 3 tells you that you can't trigger a critical hit unless you got at least a single point of damage past Soak, so in order for a PC to trigger a critical hit they have to know if they're it exceeded Soak. You don't have to tell them what Soak is, you don't have to tell them how many Wounds they inflicted, but you do have to tell them if they inflicted damage in order to trigger the critical hit.

Ah, now I see, you've been meaning Step 4 (Step 3 is entirely about Success/Failure calculating); and I do see your point now as I was more focusing on the criticals blurb in step 6 as opposed to the specific phrase in Step 4 about critical triggering; but players would only know if they successfully passed wounds if they were actually triggering a critical, it would still be an unknown element to them otherwise. And RAW, since you're spending criticals (or other Active effects) before actual application of damage (which can take out your opponent) it can lead to a waste in that Active effect, and most GMs will tend to let players know beforehand if that would be unnecessary (mainly for a minion/Rival), which was the point of my original post that led to this tangent.