See now I don't feel I am messing with the definition of engaged and that my interpretation of its use is far simpler than going to the extent of creating new monster abilities on the fly to preserve some definition I don't believe is right to begin with.

Haha, well said !! I did say that I found your argument solid

I just don't agree that the interpretation is correct - insofar as I do believe RAW intent is "engaged with one, is engaged with all". And personally I think this side of the argument is far better supported.

My point is that it was NOT impossible, as you stated, to create those scenarios under those restrictions.

Some very good points in this discussion that I hadn't considered. However I still feel that engage one, engage all is still the defacto correct method, if A is engaged with B, and C wants to engage B, then C must also become engaged with A, even if A and C are allies and are trying to flank, because the creatures are not static like the stand ups would represent, the fact that A B and C are now close enough with each other is perform melee combat is really the pressing issue, even though for most of the fight, A and C would want to be on opposite sides of B, during the course of moving around to gain advantage and such they would at times be close enough to one another to exchange blows, or perform beneficial actions upon one another.

I think the point that overly large objects or creatures may require exceptions to this is important to note, and as always the GM should allow for both his/her own and the players imaginations.

Using to demo, if the Rutger and the Gor are engaged with one another, and the coach, then I believe that Klaus who is also engaged with the coach is also engaged with both the Rutger and the Gor, however he would suffer misfortune dice if he tried to attack, since he is inside the wagon, and those outside would suffer misfortune dice trying to attack him, however they are all close enough to attack one another in melee, which is the whole point of being engaged in the first place.

I can very easily see ruling that Klaus is not part of the engagement however since the coach itself would be providing a barrier keeping him separate from the engagement. I don't see the RAW saying either is wrong, but in fact I believe the RAW clearly states that both are equally correct. It would all depend on the "intentions" of the characters involved, the condition and specifics of the terrain, and the GM's discretion.

I would agree with BCA. I would say that if the coach is engaged, then everyone engaged with the coach is engaged with each other. I would actually add <P> for Gors attacking Klaus, or Klaus attacking out of the coach (without opening the door) rather than a . However, the fact is that Klaus is close enough to attack/be attacked with those fighting around the coach.

Now, exceptions do occur. Especially in the case of a large obstacle like the coach, if you look at opponents on opposite sides that want to fight each other. However, remember that positioning and distances are approximate, so just because the stand-ups are positioned on opposite sides of the coach does not mean the combatants are actually that way. They are moving around the coach and attacking/defending the whole time, so they could indeed come into contact with each other.

official reply from the designer in the other thread

Answers to your questions below:

1) How many maneuvers does it take to safely disengage from multiple engaged opponents? [in other words, is one maneuver to safely disengage the "engagement" or is it a maneuver per opponent with which you are engaged]

One. For greater clarity, the Engage or Disengage Manoeuvre description on page 52 could read:

Engage or Disengage from an opponent. If a target is already within close range of a character or engagement, the character can perform a manoeuvre to engage that target. Once engaged with one or more opponents, a character must perform a manoeuvre to safely disengage, otherwise they may be attacked. Characters do not need to perform this manoeuvre to leave an engagement consisting only of friendly characters or allies.

2) Is it possible to leave an engagement without spending the maneuver to Disengage? The wording of the rules seem to indicate that Disengage is an action that you perfrom to "safely" move away from an opponent [a cautious retreat], implying that there perhaps is an unsafe way to leave combat [Run Away! Run Away!]

No. A character must perform a manoeuvre to disengage from an opponent or an engagement with one or more enemies. The "otherwise they may be attacked" portion of the description is flavour only, to illustrate why a manoeuvre is required. However, GMs are free to tailor this rule to their tastes if they wish to offer their players more options.

Regarding engagements overall – it's helpful to think of an engagement as a rugby scrum. Everyone in the engagement is technically adjacent to everyone else. In smaller scale encounters, this means a single engagement could reflect as few as two characters, upwards of a dozen or more. For larger encounters with even more participants, a GM may wish to break engagements into smaller clusters to better reflect where the focus of the participant's attention and actions are at a given time.

I'll add these clarifications to the FAQ.

deprecated

Hedge, is this you deprecating the official clarification or you pointing out that the official clarification has deprecated the alternative interpretation.

Just curious as to your opinion because throughout all of these discussions I've seen my interpretation of the rules corrected. What I saw as a rich and complex combat environment seems to be much more straightforward and streamlined by the rules. That's not necessarily a bad thing at all, its certainly clean. But I still like the interpretations that require the PCs to use more of their resources to get around in battle and do different things. Just curious about your thoughts on it...

Just as a side note to mac40k, in all the searching through the rules I've been doing over this stuff I didn't run across an interesting piece of information. You had mentioned earlier, I'm pretty sure in this conversation (didn't bother to look back in detail) that you used touching bases as a means of signifying engaged. I mentioned the illustration as showing that the engaged members clearly aren't touching. Anyway, you didn't just imagine that because it actually specifically mentions the bases touching in another paragraph of the text. Thought you'd be interested...

Yep, I quoted it up thread.

However, as I said, I'm using the base-to-base contact as a simple reminder of the intent to be engaged. I also don't use the tokens for range markers in the same fashion as described in the game. I don't place a token for close range. So if two figures have no tokens between them, but aren't in base-to-base contact, they are at close range. This reduces the need for tokens on the table since it's easier to note engaged by simply moving the figures into base-to-base than to use tokens to denote close range. Then I use tokens to represent maneuvers between range, so 1 token for medium, but 3 for long since it takes 2 to move between medium and long. That way a player can indicate that he's halfway to completing a long to medium move when they don't spend 2 maneuvers in a single turn. I suppose that would make extreme 6 tokens, but I haven't had that range come up yet, so it's been a non-issue.

Sounds like good methodology mac, I like it...