This situation came up last night, basically a Mexican standoff with two combatants standing on each side of a door. I could not find a rule for allowing a combatant to hold their action, dependant on a situation occurring before they act, ie waiting for someone to come through a doorway before they attack.

I figured these quick rules would work.

Character 'A' declares that for his turn this round he will wait and save his turn on 'overwatch'. They can hold their turn for the round until this slot comes up again in the order, or they abandon their previous initiative slot to take a new slot in the Rota, thereby losing and wasting their previous opportunity to act.

Now Character 'A' can attempt to take their turn at any time out of the normal initiative order, to attempt to 'interrupt' an opponent they must succeed in an opposed cool check vs the opponents vigilance, if they succeed they may act first and resolve their turn as normal, after they complete their action the opponent continues and the initiative order returns as normal.

What do you guys think?

Also is there any ruling for breaking away from melee combat during your action? Ie opponent gets a free attack? As RAW, it is possible to move to a target, strike it and move away in a single turn without the opponent reacting.

There is no hold action. It's not required either.

And for a Mexican standoff you need 3 parties. Furthermore the showdown rules for duels should work just fine for something like this. They are in Fly Casual and come down basically to an more elaborated Initiative roll, which is very fitting for the system as determining who comes first is basically just common init rolls.

Besides, characters don't have their own Initiative slots in the first place. Each involved party can freely distribute their Initiative slots among their members. If you want to prevent another one from acting, if you want to "interruppted" him ... spend advantages. plenty of options to stagger an opponent as well. No need for an extra rolls.

For the moving in and out of melee range. Count the maneuvers required to do this. ?

If neither is shooting or moving, then you are not really in structured time.

So start initiative at the point where someone rushes the door, with the rusher rolling cool, and the rushee rolling vigilance.

4 hours ago, Darzil said:

If neither is shooting or moving, then you are not really in structured time.

So start initiative at the point where someone rushes the door, with the rusher rolling cool, and the rushee rolling vigilance.

What if this is in the middle of combat with several other parties on either side, going on around these two combatants. You can't drop out of structured time for just these two.

If i'm understanding this right are the two in the standoff kind of separated from the main fight even though it's all going on at once? If one is an NPC and the other a Player I would be tempted to just let the player do an Opposed check against the bad guy and consider the event simultaneous. If the PC wins then he resolves damage, if the check fails then he misses the NPC despite reacting quickly. If it's bad enough the NPC Fails count as successes for him and he gets an attack on the PC.

As for the thing where you are engaged in close combat with an opponent, this is where the time thing breaks down because even though the game is resolving in turns in reality someone in melee with you isn't gonna helplessly stand there while you take your move. Some games have Attack of Opportunity for this, or some other consequence for breaking contact (loses next attack, flees at full speed, etc.), and that works out pretty well but I don't remember such a mechanic in this game. I think it comes down to maneuvers spent as far as outdistancing yourself from an opponent.

To me that sounds like a very dangerous situation for both of them.

I'd just let the player use a maneuver to set it up.

The thing that driving at is that the RAW doesn't allow for the blocking of terrain, say for instance you have NPC 'A' guarding a bridge in structured combat rounds, during Player 'A's turn they can just use a maneuver to walk past the NPC, no roll, no chance for combat, nothing.

The second point is, that two characters can be in a Melee combat, engaged range, the active character just decides to walk away, breaks combat and uses a maneuver to stroll casually away without consiquences. Character B stands there and thinks about waving goodbye, RAW cant actually wave.

It doesnt matter how many slots the PCs or NPCs have in the list and that all of the characters involved can pick when they chose to act in a PC or NPC slot, it still doesn't alter the examples above. The RAW do not take denying an area into consideration, no matter how many advantages they may have rolled, there is no RAW for acting out of turn.

59 minutes ago, SirSaiCo said:

The thing that driving at is that the RAW doesn't allow for the blocking of terrain, say for instance you have NPC 'A' guarding a bridge in structured combat rounds, during Player 'A's turn they can just use a maneuver to walk past the NPC, no roll, no chance for combat, nothing.

The second point is, that two characters can be in a Melee combat, engaged range, the active character just decides to walk away, breaks combat and uses a maneuver to stroll casually away without consiquences. Character B stands there and thinks about waving goodbye, RAW cant actually wave.

It doesnt matter how many slots the PCs or NPCs have in the list and that all of the characters involved can pick when they chose to act in a PC or NPC slot, it still doesn't alter the examples above. The RAW do not take denying an area into consideration, no matter how many advantages they may have rolled, there is no RAW for acting out of turn.

Yeah and to me it's one of the few weak points of this game that they went with D&D's cadence. The initiative system is good in this game, and it's supposed to address the out of turn issues you mention. They do build some out of turn things into some Talents if I remember right, but not common actions. I prefer systems that allow for a lot of simultaneity and reaction in the combat exchange, so I play this game a bit like that when I can't without torturing RAW to the point of death.

To make matters more interesting you have the pool results giving the possibility of extra maneuvers, and some people afford a Triumph the power of a limited wish, so a lot is possible. One thing I meant to ask in my first post is if you guys are waiting til after the roll to describe or doing a lot of forecasting with a dependent result? This game seems to favor a post roll description rather than the forecasted one like in other games.

I am going to try out the following structured combat changes.

During structured combat rounds, on the characters turn, they may take an action to 'prepare', the action may be taken at a later time during the initiative sequence. I.e 'To strike the next enemy combatant that comes through the door', when this criteria is fulfilled, roll an opposed Cool vs Vigilance check, the winner of the test acts first. If there is no enemy to roll against, it is a simple roll, failure means the character hesitates and no action is taken, the action is lost or activates early or late, GMs fiat.

To break away from a melee combat, the character attempting to leave receives an attack of opportunity.

13 minutes ago, SirSaiCo said:

I am going to try out the following structured combat changes.

During structured combat rounds, on the characters turn, they may take an action to 'prepare', the action may be taken at a later time during the initiative sequence. I.e 'To strike the next enemy combatant that comes through the door', when this criteria is fulfilled, roll an opposed Cool vs Vigilance check, the winner of the test acts first. If there is no enemy to roll against, it is a simple roll, failure means the character hesitates and no action is taken, the action is lost or activates early or late, GMs fiat.

To break away from a melee combat, the character attempting to leave receives an attack of opportunity.

I like the Test for acting first.

For the melee thing, do you think there might be other options in addition to the AoO? A successful roll on their Melee/Brawl skill to effect a safe withdrawal? Or an Opposed Check to see if it works and the character withdrawing does so successfully?

If I wanted an area denied I wouldn't handle that with the combat order, I'd just have the gunner lay down area fire on a constricted area, like a bridge crossing, and tell the PC they'll be getting a Purple Heart and Medal of Heroism, if they survive.

In regards to melee there are Talents to keep folk from escaping, but honestly if someone doesn't have someone pinned, grabbed, whatever, there isn't anything stopping an opponent from just running away in reality.

20 minutes ago, Archlyte said:

To make matters more interesting you have the pool results giving the possibility of extra maneuvers, and some people afford a Triumph the power of a limited wish, so a lot is possible. One thing I meant to ask in my first post is if you guys are waiting til after the roll to describe or doing a lot of forecasting with a dependent result? This game seems to favor a post roll description rather than the forecasted one like in other games.

The extra maneuvers from advantages are an interesting concept, but you are still limited to a maximum of 2 per activation, I do allow Triumphs a very hefty leeway with regards to player autonomy even more so with 2 or more, so indeed a lot is possible, but i feel that waiting with a raised vibro ax inside a door, ready to strike the next head that pokes its way in, should be easier to achieve than rolling a Triumph.

My group always uses the post roll result to describe how their pre-roll planned action turns out, it is the most interesting and powerful aspect of this system, everybody who stays with it and learns to interpret the results loves it .

3 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

If I wanted an area denied I wouldn't handle that with the combat order, I'd just have the gunner lay down area fire on a constricted area, like a bridge crossing, and tell the PC they'll be getting a Purple Heart and Medal of Heroism, if they survive.

In regards to melee there are Talents to keep folk from escaping, but honestly if someone doesn't have someone pinned, grabbed, whatever, there isn't anything stopping an opponent from just running away in reality.

Firearms make area denial a simple task, but im imagining more of a character waiting to brain anything entering a doorway kind of scenario during an ongoing structured combat.

You are correct in regards to stopping someone from escaping using grappling or locks, but im talking about breaking away from an unhindered engagement in hand to hand, i have a lot of experience in full contact armed and unarmed combat in real life, i know for a fact that if you try to turn and run from a Longsword engagement there is a good chance that your opponent will cut you down from behind.

It just gets to me that characters can just walk into combat, strike and walk away again unhindered for just 2 strain and there is nothing the average opponent can do about it.

6 minutes ago, SirSaiCo said:

Firearms make area denial a simple task, but im imagining more of a character waiting to brain anything entering a doorway kind of scenario during an ongoing structured combat.

You are correct in regards to stopping someone from escaping using grappling or locks, but im talking about breaking away from an unhindered engagement in hand to hand, i have a lot of experience in full contact armed and unarmed combat in real life, i know for a fact that if you try to turn and run from a Longsword engagement there is a good chance that your opponent will cut you down from behind.

It just gets to me that characters can just walk into combat, strike and walk away again unhindered for just 2 strain and there is nothing the average opponent can do about it.

Why would I turn my back to you? Why wouldn't I run right past you and make you turn?

I have 25 years unarmed combat experience in multiple countries and continents against people who wanted to get away and/or kill me. If someone scoots and you don't have hands on, you're running in the real world.

That's why I suggested several different possibilities for what to do if someone bails while engaged. The thing with sparring is that the pressure to stay engaged and win is about winning as opposed to trying to keep on living, so I see the argument there. Also if the weapon is a long reach weapon, or something that is thrown that can be a factor. The worst case scenario for the squirter is that they lose their s#it and do something out of fear that compromises them. That can happen too because as 2P said weird stuff happens.

But you also don't want strategy gamer guy doing something that is dumb just to get the advantage, and also see the point about not wanting people to use the weird time simulation to do things that are kind of blatant exploitation of you-go/I-go.

3 hours ago, 2P51 said:

Why would I turn my back to you? Why wouldn't I run right past you and make you turn?

I have 25 years unarmed combat experience in multiple countries and continents against people who wanted to get away and/or kill me. If someone scoots and you don't have hands on, you're running in the real world.

I respect your experience, but its not so easy to run past someone when they have 5 feet of steel to stick into your neck, and I imagine that its whole lot worse if thats a vibro weapon ?

Also I just saw Solo and I think its a great movie, way, way better than tFA and tLJ, imho.

I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole with this topic again. Someone decides to run and you don't have hands on them, you're already on the wrong end of the ooda loop and you're running. There's no such thing as opp attacks.

22 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole with this topic again. Someone decides to run and you don't have hands on them, you're already on the wrong end of the ooda loop and you're running. There's no such thing as opp attacks.

Agreed. It's a very tricky subject. Physical area denial and opportunity stirikes vs ease of movement in a they go, you go system can never be representative of a real world situation, but i do think the RAW is far to open to godlike movement and abuse.

Yeah I think this problem is less about realistic combat reactions and more about realistic physical simulation. In real life we don't wait for each other's turn, and the game is depicting actions that are happening nearly at once in some cases as sequential and in personal vacuums. The interpretation at the table is often the problem as it is described as being sequential and with each character acting like quicksilver on their turn.

9 hours ago, Archlyte said:

Yeah I think this problem is less about realistic combat reactions and more about realistic physical simulation. In real life we don't wait for each other's turn, and the game is depicting actions that are happening nearly at once in some cases as sequential and in personal vacuums. The interpretation at the table is often the problem as it is described as being sequential and with each character acting like quicksilver on their turn.

But that is exactly not what the system is doing.

Here is a common thing my character has done at least a dozen times already:
I take my init slot, I start shooting and I keep shooting and giving a fist full of setback dice to an enemy by providing cover fire for my group.
Or I maneuver my cruiser in away which makes getting shot at hard and thus reacting to dozens of shots fired at us.

And technical, you could just make an attack roll, spend two maneuvers and describe the scene as shooting the first guy going through the door. ?

Simplest solution: use the tried and true L5R system - declare actions from slowest to fastest, resolve actions from fastest to slowest. That way the character with the highest init can react to everyone else’s actions. If the mechanics of what he chooses to do aren’t explicitly described in the rules, the GM tells you what to do. Rinse and repeat until combat is over.