If a close combat character and a gun wielding character start a fight, its always the same:
engage, disengage, engage, disengage

Our group wants to spice it up with the well known "attack of opportunity", so if you want to disengage, your opponent may take 2 stress and gets an extra attack with with a difficulty of 3. What do you think about this?

AOO is one of the d20 items that I do not miss. Consider modifying the environment so it is harder to maneuver away (difficult terrain requiring 2 maneuvers to disengage) or changing up the NPC tactics to include ranged and melee enemies that present threats at the same time.

I'd say no, it would be unbalancing. Disengaging is enough of a penalty, because you haven't really gone anywhere. If you really want to leave the scene, you only get one more Maneuver to get further away, which means spending Strain so you can still shoot (which minions can't do), or skipping the Action entirely.

If you're having this issue, then you need to spice up the terrain with difficult areas, cover, cul-de-sacs, etc. The players also need to get more creative about how they handle kiting, by double-teaming, grappling, using Brawl with 2A to trigger a knockdown, investing in Talents to do the same, and just passing benefits around to team members, etc.

The mechanics don't really deal with control zones and reach and double-teaming, so there is some room for flexibility. If my PCs had cornered somebody against impassable terrain, I'd make the NPC do a contested Athletics or Coordination roll to Disengage (with boosts or upgrades for the PCs based on how many were directly involved). Failure would mean the NPC didn't get anywhere, and perhaps on 3 Threat or a Despair one of the PCs could make an attack.

You could also change up their tactics and have the enemy holster their pistol and break out their vibro-knuckles.

I do agree that this creates a kind of weird narrative to a fight, which is also the way I would suggest resolving it (narratively).

If you just step back for a minute and consider, who in their right mind tries to melee in a shootout? I mean, this is just not a particularly logical thing to do unless the conditions of the fight make it impossible to have a shootout. Jedi's are of course an exception, but its why lightsabres are used to deflect shots, as this is also a narrative solution to that problem... melee fighters getting into scrapes with shooters.

General rule of thumb for me as far as Star Wars fights goes is, keep it in the spiri of the movies, so in this case.

If a player gets into a melee with an NPC, keep it in the melee.. Another words, the NPC just punches, kicks, pulls out a melee weapon.. but basically, once its a melee that the PC initiated, you keep it there.. It becomes a melee scrape. This is true to the movies.

If an player is avoiding melee (shooting) then keep it a shootout, have the NPC pull out a blaster and start shooting. Again, this is just a way to keep it in the spirit of the movies.

The exception here is Jedi's and again, here you have an out, Jedis can deflect shots and such so the flow of combat is a bit more natural and makes narrative sense.

We just added a house rule that if you want to remain in engaged, declare a target, spend a maneuver (beyond your normal move to engage), then that target needs to spend an extra maneuver to disengage. Nicely represents the melee character keeping the pressure on a single opponent (or minion group).

Why not have the enemies do the same? Or they could close distance and pin the PCs, preventing such action. There are a number of options a GM can use., particularly around rolled Advantages and Threats.

When I find the perfect book on small unit tactics for RPGs I will definitely share, it's one of my current lines of study. I gladly solicit suggestions!

11 minutes ago, themensch said:

Why not have the enemies do the same? Or they could close distance and pin the PCs, preventing such action.

Key point: whatever the PCs can do, the NPCs can do. So if the PCs ever want to do some kiting themselves, they'll be subject to the same rules.

If they're spending a maneuver to disengage then they're not spending that maneuver (or are having to spend strain) to Aim. That's already a win for the melee attacker, especially with talents like True Aim floating around.

My group has always viewed it as since your spending a maneuver to disengage, you move out of their reach in such a way that it negates their ability to attack you at any time during the process. One time we had a house rule that you could get out of engaged without spending a maneuver, but the enemy you were engaged with got to attack you. I think we only used it once or twice, and since then I can only remember any of us using a maneuver to disengage/engage.

So why isn't the close combatant knocking them down?

Using results on 6-2?

Quote

When dealing damage to a target, have the attack disable the opponent or one piece of gear rather than dealing wounds or strain. This could include hobbling him temporarily with a shot to the leg, or disabling his comlink. This should be agreed upon by the player and the CM, and the effects are up to the GM (although the Critical Injury table is a good resource to consult for possible effects). The effects should be temporary, and not too excessive.

Going for Talents like Pin or Grapple?

Using a Bola, Glop grenades, or one of the whips?

There are a lot of options that don't require wrecking the maneuver rules with meta stuff like AOO.

3 hours ago, Greyxi said:

If a close combat character and a gun wielding character start a fight, its always the same:
engage, disengage, engage, disengage

Our group wants to spice it up with the well known "attack of opportunity", so if you want to disengage, your opponent may take 2 stress and gets an extra attack with with a difficulty of 3. What do you think about this?

The opposite side of this argument is why wouldn't the guy with a (ray)gun get a free shot on the fool charging up on him with a (vibro)knife? If you give a bonus to the melee guy to keep an engagement, you should give a bonus to the ranged guy to avoid the engagement. Or, you can do neither and keep it balanced as the RAW currently sets.

4 hours ago, Greyxi said:

What do you think about this?

Why not just spend advantage or threat to do a knockdown (or other immobilization color description) to keep them from moving? "Sorry, but the Tuskens have you surrounded and backed up against the canyon wall, slowly closing in with their Gaffi. . . "

Why not just say that the guy with the gun still has the melee penalty? It would stop the disengage cycle.

6 hours ago, BigKahuna said:

If you just step back for a minute and consider, who in their right mind tries to melee in a shootout?

Chirrut.

@2P51 Too soon.

Also, the massive explosion had nothing to do with his melee prowess.

I'm looking forward to trying and introduce using a despair as the AOO mechanic, both for NPC's and PC's. I feel for brawlers and purchasing talents such as Dodge, and Defensive Stance, it would be akin to a well placed counter attack.

Was something I wanted to talk to my GM about, but I rarely get to play with anyone these days, so sometime in the future perhaps.

On 04/10/2017 at 3:17 PM, Edgookin said:

We just added a house rule that if you want to remain in engaged, declare a target, spend a maneuver (beyond your normal move to engage), then that target needs to spend an extra maneuver to disengage. Nicely represents the melee character keeping the pressure on a single opponent (or minion group).

That kind of hoses Grapple which does exactly that. (except to all those engagd. This is what knockdown is for, you force your opponent to spend a maneuver getting up. I play a Warden in the game I play in and the movement debuffing available is quite large, between knockdown, grapple, no escape, spending advantage/destiny points to just either create or flat out say there is problematic terrain , there are already a lot of options for hosing movement in the game(and a lot of options for getting out of them, esp in F&D)

As for using melee in a shoot out, this is a cinematic game and there are plenty of cinema scenes in which melee/brawl characters fight armed fighters, bulletproof monk, bourne, etc, however even in real life, isnt it a tactic that within a certain range , someone hand to hand had the advantage over a gun user.

On 10/4/2017 at 7:17 AM, Edgookin said:

We just added a house rule that if you want to remain in engaged, declare a target, spend a maneuver (beyond your normal move to engage), then that target needs to spend an extra maneuver to disengage. Nicely represents the melee character keeping the pressure on a single opponent (or minion group).

22 minutes ago, syrath said:

That kind of hoses Grapple which does exactly that. (except to all those engagd. This is what knockdown is for, you force your opponent to spend a maneuver getting up. I play a Warden in the game I play in and the movement debuffing available is quite large, between knockdown, grapple, no escape, spending advantage/destiny points to just either create or flat out say there is problematic terrain , there are already a lot of options for hosing movement in the game(and a lot of options for getting out of them, esp in F&D)

My immediate response would be where is the new maneuver for the gun user to lay down suppressive fire and inhibit someone from being able to close distance?

46 minutes ago, syrath said:

That kind of hoses Grapple which does exactly that. (except to all those engagd. This is what knockdown is for, you force your opponent to spend a maneuver getting up. I play a Warden in the game I play in and the movement debuffing available is quite large, between knockdown, grapple, no escape, spending advantage/destiny points to just either create or flat out say there is problematic terrain , there are already a lot of options for hosing movement in the game(and a lot of options for getting out of them, esp in F&D)

You're right on Grapple. I did not realize that talent was there. The only difference is that grapple applies to all enemies, my rule was only a single enemy. But I will have to think about it.

24 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

My immediate response would be where is the new maneuver for the gun user to lay down suppressive fire and inhibit someone from being able to close distance?

I might be tempted to cause a fear check to engage a person hosing with automatic weapons.

18 minutes ago, Edgookin said:

I might be tempted to cause a fear check to engage a person hosing with automatic weapons.

That's still unbalanced.

To me Melee Weapons (besides lightsabers) are big risk for big reward. Engaged range is Melee range. Everything else is better for guns (although most guns would actually be better at engaged but the rules don't reflect this).

I like the idea of adding some out of turn things anyway so this appeals to me. I would say that AoO never seems to be something that people are excited about unless it is working in their favor, and when it doesn't they complain about it. I think that there is a reason that guns became eminent in battlefields, and unless you want to not have the realistic effect of being shot at nullified I would say that melee guys should not be dealing with gun opponents from anything other than engaged range unless they are Jedi.

But, if a gun wielder is facing a melee guy in Engaged Range, and the Gun Defender wants to run he is really going to be putting himself in a bad spot. You can't run fast backwards so your back is going to be to the melee attacker, he is charging you and unless there is a great speed difference it makes sense that closing the distance will happen unless the Gun guy got a big head start time wise. It makes sense to me that an Athletics check should be made for the Gun Defender to be able to get away from the Melee Attacker without getting hit. This is a Skill Check though and I would count it as Gun Guy's Action. Meanwhile if Gun Guy fails Melee Guy gets his attack. I think I would allow an AoO as an Incidental for the melee character. No blues for Aim or other conditions, and as it is a hasty attack I would upgrade the difficulty by 1 for the Melee Attacker. I would give setbacks for unwieldy weapons, but reach weapons could get a boost.

Melee has initiative: Starting Range = Engaged - Melee Character attacks as normal

Ranged Character has initiative: Starting Range = Engaged - Ranged character elects to run and must make an Athletics check against Melee character being able to catch Ranged Character. Ranged character makes an Athletics check.

Success = Ranged character makes it to Short Range without suffering an AoO from the Melee Character

Failure = Ranged character will face a possible AoO by a melee character that is engaged with that specific ranged character before he can move out of range. Acharacter making an AoO cannot then pursue until their next turn.