Mobile combats

By ErikModi, in Star Wars: Force and Destiny RPG

So, a thought I've been having, that I think I'll spring on my group when we meet Sunday. Using the fluidity of this system, especially the range bands, to have combats that move around an environment, rather than stay in one place. Since maneuvers are really only counted for moving between range bands, one could assume the characters are always moving, and keeping within relative distances to each other. So, for instance, if a fight takes place in a starship hangar, the GM could show locations for fuel tanks and such (I like using a battlemap and minis so everyone's on the same page about relative locations), and players could spend Advantage (or Threat on an opponent's roll) to move them to different spots, say, a square or two at a time. You could maneuver someone near a power line, then push them into it with a good roll or use of a Force power, for instance.

Or take a corridor battle. The player characters and allies could advance relentlessly, driving their enemy before them, or fall back in the face of a relentless enemy advance. This could shift back and forth, with good rolls rallying the retreating party to counterattack, driving the enemy back and beginning a counteroffensive. . . or could cause reckless characters to advance too quickly into the enemy and find themselves surrounded, cut off from their still-retreating allies.

Thoughts?

So. . . nothing?

Narratively, you can easily assume the combatants are constantly on the move in a fight, effectively granting everyone a free maneuver each round that has to be used to move from location to location.

You could probably also incorporate the chase rules, or at least elements of them, though I'm not 100% speed on those to be certain.

As Dono said, the chase rules might be a good place to start for ideas but it would need to be tweaked - it assumes a common goal/outcome of catching the "prey" or escaping the "hunter". It allows for combat checks. The chase rules basically let PCs make skill checks and accomplish something towards the goal (in the chase getting closer to the prey or getting further away from the hunter) and allow for a lot of narrative room to push the action. A Pilot (Planetary) check might mean you're racing through a busy street and success means you find a ally way that lets you advance or failure means that you took a dead end. An Athletics check might mean you're trying to traverse the terrain Jackie Chan style. In other words a single check per round changes the scene and sets up the next one and the results can be interpreted to determine how much distance is covered and if range bands closed etc. It expands the typical scope of a skill in an turn/round based encounter to include accomplishing bigger things.

You also might incorporate the Mass Combat rules to allow skill checks and actions to flavor and alter the environment and encounter - with PC/NPC actions adding boost/setback dice to the Mas Combat check and the result of the Mas Combat check determines what happened for that phase. All while a "normal" round based combat encounter is going on. You would need to break out the encounter into identifiable phases. And there'd be some separation between the meta-environment controlled by Mas Combat checks and the round-based environment controlled by round-based rules.