Hi, I am just curious to hear what GMs do to simulate the difficulty of:

1) Doing a ranged attack while being engaged? Yes, I know a PC can disengage as a manoeuvre then do the ranged attack, but do you add any difficulty?

2) Doing a ranged attack from afar into an engagement on enemies and allies? What difficulty do you add, and how do you simulate a potential failure hitting a random target?

Thanks in advance

Ceodryn

Ceodryn said:

I don't add any modifiers. Most ranged actions don't allow the user to be engaged. For ones that do it's a feature of the card, so adding difficulty there seems to miss the point.

Ceodryn said:

Personally, I don't add difficulty. Sometimes I'll make a chaos star turn into damage for an engaged ally, but I don't have any hard and fast rules for those situations.

Since there's an action card for shooting into engagements, with allies, I add 1 challenge dice.

Ok, so as an example of why I am asking:

Situation 1: We have a hunter engaged with 3 ungors henchmen. During his turn, he disengages (free manoeuvre) , then use his Ranged Shot action (requirement: not engaged with an enemy). He has no penalty doing either the disengagement or the ranged shot action. When it's the Ungors turns, they will use their manoeuvres to re-engage, and the scenario can repeat.

Situation 2: We have a hunter engaged with 3 ungors henchmen. During his turn, he use his Close-Quarters Shot action (requirement: close range or engaged with target). He has to add 3 misfortune dices to his dice pool, because he is engaged with the 3 ungors, as per the action card. When it's the Ungors turns, they don't need to re-engage, and the scenario can repeat… probably with a dead hunter soon since 3 misfortune dices is hard to overcome.

So, why would a PC stay to choose engaged, when disengaging is a free manoeuvre, and there are no penalty for disengaging.

By the way, I am not criticizing the system, it makes figthing faster without bothering with lots of modifiers or free attacks on disengagement. I am simply curious as to what GMs end up doing, either sticking with the rules like Doc and Spivo (and myself so far), or adding modifiers to the Ranged Shot action in situation 1, or else?

Cheers
Ceodryn

Well, I think the 3 ungor henchmen would be considered 1 enemy (they act as 1 unit and roll as 1) so you'd add only 1 misfortune per henchmen group. (i could be wrong about that but I don't think so. someone correct me.) Also the results of success are different on the two cards. You only need 1 boon to get a critical with Close-Quarter Shot where as with the standard Ranged Shot you cannot get a crit unless rolling trained yellow dice and get a comet. So, there are benefits to both cards. 2 successes also allow you to disengage for free with Close Quarter Shot. I'd say situation wise both choices have their benefit.

As for the question about adding misfortune or difficulty dice to situations like this. To me, every situation is susceptible to the GM deciding any given action requires the addition of dice to the pool and these additions do not mean everytime you encounter 3 henchmen and do the same thing you get the same dice pool. Where is the encounter and what lead up to it? Is it dark, is it raining, are you injured, are you ill, is there freezing rain pelting down or are you fighting on a narrow ledge in the wind, are perhaps you could be distracted by the decapitated head dangling from the ungors belt that you're certain is or now was the peddler who recently sold you your shoes? I don't think these kind of questions can be answered cut and dry.

I'd still say there is a definite hole in the combat rules here. I've mostly just chosen to ignore it, but it seems silly that you can have a combat go like this:

Melee Fighter: Engage -> Melee Attack

Ranged Fighter: Disengage -> Ranged Attack

Melee Fighter: Engage -> Melee Attack

Ranged Fighter: Disengage -> Ranged attack

Repeat until one of them dies.

The ranged fighter is fighting as if he was at ranged, despite actually being in melee.

I honestly don't have an answer I think is neat enough, so I'll just let it slide in my games, or introduce additional obstaclesto prevent this kind of playstyle.

Ceodryn said:

As far as I know, when disengaging from an enemy or an engagement including enemies, Players must perform 2 manoeuvres (thus suffer 1 fatigue). First one is required to move to the close range from the target and the second one is needed to do it safely (to not being attacked).

As for what Ralzar said, I would just throw some Fortune Dice to the Melee Fighter's dice pool and/or grant the Ranged Fighter a fair amount of Misfortune Dice to his dice pool. Or the Melee Fighter could just grab his opponent's bow/handgun, or even he could try to smash it with his sword - bows aren't suitable for blocking blows That's why I love WFRP 3.

Cheers

Well that scenario exists in pretty much all RPG's. The ranged fighter gets engaged in melee and resorts to "kiting" (to use the WoW terminology). Kiting is where you have a ranged combatant constantly attacking and backing away without the enemy every being able to stop him or really damage him.

As for what I would do in this scenario? Normally any player that would dare to spam an action like this deserves to be punished for their lack of creativity. If the player isn't thinking logically, and is simply relying on the game's rules to justify his actions, then I would probably have the beastmen surround the player so that he is either forced to engage the monsters in melee, surrender, or resort to something else drastic. Just tell him that the beastmen surround his character and he cannot disengage them until he kills at least one of them. He also won't be able to block or parry with a bow, so he only has one active defense to rely on (dodge).

Also one thing to note is that the ranged basic attack has a side effect that if they roll two banes, an enemy within close range of you can immediately engage you. If they rolled a chaos star on their attack I would probably have all of the enemies engage the player.

Armoks said:

I don't think that is correct. All that's needed to move from Engaged to Diengaged is one Manouvre, which is free. There are no "attacks of oppertunity" or similar rules, as far as I know.

In addition, when comparing the basic ranged shot and close quarters shot, it's best if you compare the overall effects of the cards and not just part of the action. In this case, when looking at the cards there are two things to consider.

1. The player that is surrounded by beastmen can still perform a close quarters shot, and possibly disengage for free if he rolls two successes in conservative stance. In this case this is the player's only option if he were surrounded.

2. The close quarters shot has the chaos star result on the card, which says you drop your weapon. Ranged basic shot doesn't have the chaos star listed, so the GM is free to apply whatever penalty he deems appropriate. In this case, I'd apply a more severe version of what happens if the PC rolls too many banes, and hence gets stuck with more beastmen rushing him.

1) Doing a ranged attack while being engaged? Yes, I know a PC can disengage as a manoeuvre then do the ranged attack, but do you add any difficulty?

A: Keep in mind that it is up to the GM to determine the difficulty of any action. The default for attacks might be 1d, but the GM is supposed to alter this by adding challenge and misfortune dice depending on the difficulty of the situation and the environment. Personally, shooting a ranged weapon while in melee is a more difficult action than normal. I therefore rule it adds 1 challenge die to the action.

2) Doing a ranged attack from afar into an engagement on enemies and allies? What difficulty do you add, and how do you simulate a potential failure hitting a random target?

I add a misfortune for every ally in the engagement (assuming the shooter cares about missing his allies). If they choose not to take this penalty, a failure or a Chaos Star represents a hit on an ally.

Re: Disengagement -- A simple 'fix' (house rule) is to have disengaging to require a maneuver per opponent to perform. So, if the archer is facing a single enemy, it is no problem to disengage and then shoot. Facing 3 enemies, that's 3 maneuvers … i.e. it costs him 2 fatigue. Doable once or twice, but those will build up fast.

Ralzar said:

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.

There is nothing written here about moving automatically to the close range when DISengaging from an opponent and, as far as I know, there isn't any range band called "disengaged" between "engaged" and "close range". Thus, when a character disengages from an enemy, he have to perform 2 manoeuvres, as I wrote earlier.

As for the "attacks of opportunity":

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.

Ah, ok. I read the exact same quote in my book and couldn't see what you meant. Having re-read it a couple of times I'm really unsure of wether your or my interpretation is correct.

It's another example of badly explained rules though. It's sort of implied that you'd move to Close Range when performing the disengage manouver. Because if you're not moved to Close Range, where do you go if you JUST use the disengage manouvre but don't follow up with a second move manouvre to move to Close Range? And if you only performed the disengage manouvre, does the attacker have to make a manouvre to engage you again? Even though you're not at Close Range?

The rule only talks about one manouvre to move out or into an engagement. It would seem natural that they'd mention that it would take you two manouvres to actually get out of the engagement and to Close Range.

Armoks said:

I think Ralzar is right.

It clearly says that a character must perform 1 manoeuvre to disengage. Where the character ends up after the disengage manoeuvre does not even matter, since he is no longer engaged and therefore he can use a ranged action card. Although, I bet once you disengage from an engagement you are within close range of it.

Cheers

I decided to send in a rules question to make sure.

I'm tempted to rule it as Armok does though. I feel you should have to "pay" something to get away from a melee combat. So even if it turns out that it does only take one manouvre to move from Engaged to Close, I'll house rule it to costing two manouvres.

This way, the ranged fighter pays one fatigue each turn to get away, while the melee fighter uses his free manouvre to re-engage. Only way to stop this, is for another fighter to engage the melee fighter, forcing the melee fighter to disengage before he can engage the ranged fighter.

Ralzar said:

Looking forward to the FFG answer,

Armoks said:

Just out of interest, as you state there isn't a band between engaged and close range so what range would YOU say they were at if they just used 1 manoeuvre? I'm in the Close range camp myself as close range is stated as being 'only a few paces from one another'.

It's best to think of being Engaged as a status that occurs within Close range, rather than a range increment in and of itself.

Matchstickman said:

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear.

For me a disengage manoeuvre doesn't contain a movement manoeuvre within itself. Its purpose is to prevent characters from jumping out of the engagement with enemies without any cost. That being said, when a character wants to move away from an enemy to the (for instance) close range, he HAVE TO perform 2 manoeuvres (at the same time). The first one due to the fact that the character moves to the close range (a movement manoeuvre) and the other one, as I said earlier, to do it safely, to safely disengage from the battle with his opponent or opponents without being attacked.

To make it clear, after spending 2 manoeuvres and disengaging, characters end up at the close range from each other.

Why do I think so?

1) "Characters do not need to perform this manoeuvre to leave an engagement consisting only of friendly characters or allies." You won't say that moving away from allies can be done freely, will you?

2) Moving within Close range costs one manoeuvre.

So answering your question, they simply can't perform only 1 manoeuvre. Disengaging from enemies requires 2 manoeuvres.

Cheers!

Wow, lots of good ideas, thanks guys!

I read the rules like Ralzar regarding disengagement, but Armoks solution would be very elegant. I am looking forward to FFG answer too.

Cheers
Ceodryn

Doc, the Weasel said:

This. It's the WFRP equivalent of the D&D3 five-foot step.

Here's the answer from FFG:

"When a character performs a manoeuvre to disengage from an opponent, he moves to a new position at close range from his opponent. Often this is very similar to using a manoeuvre to move within close range, but the GM may rule that disengaging does not permit you to move to a particular (desirable) location, even if that location is within close range.

The most common example is disengaging from one enemy and then engaging a different enemy. A character fighting an orc who wishes to engage a goblin shaman at close range will have to spend two manoeuvres - one to disengage from the orc, then a second manoeuvre to engage the goblin shaman. When he disengages from the orc, he moves to a new location within close range, but that location may not be engaged with the goblin (it's a generic, non-defined location within close range of both the orc and the goblin).

Another example might be a character who wishes to move to a carriage within close range. The GM may rule that disengaging from an enemy places the character at close range from both the carriage and the enemy, and it will still require a second manoeuvre to move to the carriage.

To think of it another way, disengaging is little more than taking a few steps back. You've stepped away from your foe, but you haven't really moved anywhere of interest. "

Ralzar said:

Great stuff, why don't they put that in the errata/rule clarification document?

I also really like the statement from FFG. But in addition to that I would say that it would be very easy to make the "kiting" scenario more difficult:

You could say that moving backwards all the time becomes difficult, the ground is slippery, there are rugs/roots/whatever that either directly cause an extra fatigue to every manoeuvre or that require a successful athletics check (which might introduce further fatigue causing banes etc.).

You could require that the player spend a manoeuvre to reload his ranged weapon under these circumstances.

In addition, both from my gameplay and from listening to the reckless dice podcasts, I have the impression that one very often requires extra manoeuvres for tons of different things – all of this would make the disengagement manoeuvre much more costly and make a kiting scenario riskier.

It's great to have it clarified, but I prefer to say that it takes an extra maneuver to disengage if enemies outnumber allies in the engagement. It seems to make sense that it would be fatiguing/stressful. Otherwise, the rule is meaningless, since it takes a maneuver to go from engaged to close anyway.