I might not remember but can a character hold his action until later in the round?

For instance, a character has his blunderbuss loaded on his initiative (maneuver) and says he wants to fire (ranged attack action card) once the beastmen enter close range. Later in the round, on the beastmen initiative, they make a maneuver to enter close range - can the character fire his weapon now? In our session today we ruled that yes, he can, but I wanted to be certain if there's something in the rules on this...

Thanks

Roy.

Well, first off player's decide which initiative token they want to participate in, so they could just pick to go after the beastment if they rolled lower initiative than the beastmen. Otherwise, they can just wait for the next round or intentionally delay their initiative token. At any rate, there's no "hold action" in the rules as written.

Personally, I'm more inclined to tell them they can delay their initiative token, move it below the beastmen's but it will stay there for the duration of the encounter or they can wait until the next round.

Thanks for the reply

In the example I gave, if the beastmen had their full turn to play, they would have reached the character before he could shoot, even though he was aiming the firearm at them, waiting for them to come closer. I understand that's how the rules are written but it doesn't seem logical. He just stood there waiting.

Maybe there could be a special maneuver, like 'prepare' that allows the character to hold his action card until later in the round. Then, when he eventually uses his action, the initiative token he used is lowered to the turn order it was used on for following rounds. If he didn't use his action till the end of the round then it's wasted and he starts the next round normally, initiative unchanged. Sounds simple and logical to me.

Any other ideas?

How about a "Prepare Conditional Action" card instead?

The player states up front what the conditions for this action are and if they're met he gets to react in accordance. For example, the player would say "If the Beastmen gets into close range, I shoot him". So if the Beastmen doesn't get into close range the character doesn't get another action, he's spent his turn waiting for the beastmen's actions to qualify with the conditions he specified. In this case he's stuck around with his weapon aimed at the Beastmen, waiting for them to close in.

If you want to keep it fair, have the player write down the condition in a piece of paper that's not revealed to the GM. If the GM's actions cause the reaction to trigger the player can show the paper to the GM and roll as the case may be.

The problem I see with a Hold Action card is that it allows the characters to delay themselves with no penalty in the next turn. It also allows them to react immediately, thus destroying the purpose of an initiative system to begin with. This is specially powerful, because it gives reaction powers to whatever action the players want to use, which is a huge tactical advantage.

If you'd rather players just jump up and announce "I act now!" instead of using initiative, then by all means go ahead. With the current system, If he wants to wait then he can wait by delaying his initiative token and act after the Beastmen. He'll be up again when an equal amount of time has passed for all participants. It should be noted that only one tracking token needs to be delayed, unless you're only playing with one PC then they can still react quickly on the next turn.

I see where you are coming from, I mean, its a classic sceen, the hero draws his weapon, gun, bow, sword, whatever...and waits dramatically as the baddies rush forward, waiting until the last possible second before disaster strikes to unleash his hellish furry upon them with the greatest devistational might possible!

As far as the RAW goes, I think the best your gonna get is that the play who had the blunerbuss could spend a fatigue and move closer to the the baddies to fire at them before their turn, otherwise he's kind of SOL, the biggest problem I see with your example situation is that even though the baddies all go at the same time, they, as figures, don't all move together at once, so even though they might all be charging forward, your hero's blunderbuss will never hit more than 1 target even if he interrupts their turn to fire.

Blunderbuss Man (BBM) starts his turn, spends a maneuver to load his weapon and wait,

Beastmen 1-5 (B1-B5), start their turns

B1 leaves the Beastman engagement and move from medium range to close range from BBM

BBM takes his readied action and fires, striking B1 and slaying/wounding him (or whatever)

B2, B3, B4, and B5 then take their turn, move to close range and feast on the flesh of the poor hapless BBM who blew his whole (Blunderbuss) load on a single beastman.

See even with allowing a readied or delayed action, it still doesn't solve the problem, the beast don't all move as a single unit, just as the PC's don't move as a single unit, character A takes his turn, then B, then C, just because the beastmen only have 1 initiative token doesn't excuse them from the normal sequence of turns in the game. So though I totally see what you want to do, and agree there should be a way of doing it, the mechanics of an initiative ordered turn based system don't really allow for it, it has been a problem that has plagued tabletop systems for decades. Turn based actions don't allow for a flowing sequece of a group battle. If you want to allow it, then I think it will have to be on a more case by case basis.

In your example if the battle starts with beastmen at medium range, or farther away, and all of the PCs agree that they want to wait until the beastmen have closed to short before they start acting, then that would work just fine. Roll init, just like normal, and instead of starting the fight with the beastmen at medium, just have them start at short, since the PC with the Blunderbuss is going to start out the fight, let him act on the first PC init token, and start the fight from there down, once PC's start opening fire with any kind of weapons, the beastmen aren't just going to sit in a tight formation and wait to get blasted at short range, so if the Blunderbuss user isn't the first to act, then there really isn't much point to letting him delay in the first place, and he will just have to wait for an opening in the action to allow him to use it effectivley.