Topic: Sequencing movement

[Old Man]

Hi everyone,

How do people generally go about handling sequenced movement, when one PC causes another PC or NPC to move after them:

Example, Paks the Paladin moves (say 20%), mounts her horse (50%) and commands it to move (5%+). How much of a move does the Horse make? 100%? 0% PC's remaining %?

Ciao,
Old Man

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

At the very most, the horse would only have 50% of its activity left. Since it spend at least 50% of that activity waiting for the stupid human to climb up on his back.

You could also easily say that he spent 20% of his activity waiting for the human to get to him, so he could climb up on his back.

To me, that says that the horse has 30% activity left in which to move.

[Old Man]

Rasyr, thanks. Good point on the 50%, since they are both involved. Does the Horse spend 20% waiting or just "holding his action" til a later phase? But either 30 or 50 works for me. Can use that rule of thumb for PCs as well eh? Joint actions (handoffs, etc.) consume both their actions.

Ciao,
Old Man

[Setorn]

I agree with Rasyr - 30%

[yammahoper]

That would be 30% of the horses base rate, at a run with a successful mnv (difficulty based on horse, of course).

lynn

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

That would be 30% of the horses base rate, at a run with a successful mnv (difficulty based on horse, of course).

rider would have to make a riding roll though... 

[yammahoper]

I was only going to require the player make a riding check.  Requiring one for the horse is fair, but the more rolls required, the greater the chance of fate taking a strange twist with resulting bad mojo to follow.

lynn

[Old Man]

I was only going to require the player make a riding check.  Requiring one for the horse is fair, but the more rolls required, the greater the chance of fate taking a strange twist with resulting bad mojo to follow.

lynn

Same here, I would only do the Riding MM. Unless the Steed needed a MM because of intervening obstacles (fences, ditches etc.)

Ciao,
Old Man

[Joshua24601]

Would the hose really lose the 20% waiting for the 'stupid human to get on him'?

Say our character: Stupid moves 20% on snap,
Mounts 50% on Normal,
and commands the horse to move 5% on Deliberate

Obviously the 50% mounting is shared by both.. but is the 20% snap movement??

If Stupid's buddy, who we'll call Moron is involved in this engagement... and choses to move 50% on normal, and 50% on deliberate (mounting a horse of his own) he dosen't somehow lose 20% of his activity because his friend Stupid is moving on snap.  Should the horse, who's also not doing anything on snap lose 20% just because someone who's going to eventually touch him is burning time on snap?

When two active combatants are going to touch each other during a round, do we prioritize seconds passed? or % activity.  For example Bob and Joe are running a relay.  Bob runs 20% on snap (max movement allowed) and runs 50% on normal (again max) tagging his teammate Joe.  Joe now uses 80% of his activity (again max) racing away on deliberate.
This is legal by the rules (so far as I know).. but if 10% = 1 second, then Bob takes 7 seconds to tag Joe, who then takes off running for 8 seconds... making for a total time of much more then 10 seconds.

I kinda see the horse issue as the same problem.  Chronologically if Stupid takes 2 seconds to get to the horse, the horse waits around 2 seconds for him.  But rule-wise there is nothing that says you have to lose/use 20% of your activity during the snap phase just because someone else is doing it.



This does make me wonder about another question.  When does the horse start moving.  After the rider gives a command, or while the rider's giving a command?

If Stupid burn 20% movement, 50% mounting, and 5% command.. does the horse move on deliberate, while receiving the command? or does he have to wait until after he receives the command, and start moving the next round on snap.

Thoughts?

[yammahoper]

Well, movement is assumed to occur over the entire round.  Max 20% of distance in the snap, max 50% in the normal, max 80% in the deliberate, remaining 20% occurs after phases are resolved.

Of course, I have rarely used the actual rule.

lynn

[Arioch]

Of course, I have rarely used the actual rule.

lynn

I don't really care very much about the % action used by movement, too. I use the rule only in special situations or if a player tries to do impossible moves.

[pastaav]

Would the hose really lose the 20% waiting for the 'stupid human to get on him'?

If the horse stands still 20% of the round the distance it can move is reduced by 20%, right?
This means the horse has 20% activity that it can't allocate on movement. The horse can use the extra activity to make an observation roll, eat some grass or just remain passive...it is up to the GM.

The only thing you need to do is to make a GM call on how many seconds that are spent until the horse can start to move.

[yammahoper]

I think a horse could move its entire 50% allowance in the normal phase, not having to move in the snap at all, another 30% in the deliberatem then finish out the last 20% after the phases are over.

However, such movement would be at faster than a walk, call it a short burst of jog or run, even sprint (for just a few seconds until it settles into the canter/run or whatever pace is desired, including a walk), but this might require a MM roll with a wide range of possible mods.

To move all of its rate in the deliberate phase would be the equvilent of exploding into a sprint (yet covering only its base rate in roughly 3 seconds).  This would most certainly require a mnv.

I think making it impossible for anyone to perform a 100% moving action in any phase they choose is to limited an approach, but there is no reason to assume automatic success.  Since I know very little about horses, I usually use modern human sprinters as my examples when trying to weigh just how dificult or possible something is.

lynn

ps; while typing this, I have sneezed four times.  Damn colds

[pastaav]

I think a horse could move its entire 50% allowance in the normal phase, not having to move in the snap at all, another 30% in the deliberatem then finish out the last 20% after the phases are over.

From my point of view that is interpretating the phases as actual rounds following each other instead of a mechanic to capture the intent of the character "score early vs wait for better opportunity".

A being moving for 80% of the round will cover 80% of the distance he would normally cover. If the being uses a phase multiplier that means he cover 3 times his normal distance, will not change the percentage but only mean he covers 3 times more ground on the 80% of the round that he is moving.

Of course everyone is free to go for old-school 8-bit turnbased roleplaying game where the characters stand still until it is their turn to act if they prefer this. Still that does not mean the rules must be interpretated in this way, a bit of common sense and not getting stuck with bad assumptions is all that is needed to allow the phase rules to map to CEATs style chain of actions when needed.

[yammahoper]

Do deliberate attacks recieve a bonus or penalty?  They recieve a bonus, and 100% action is/can be spent on the attack in the deliberate phase.

They are indeed, little melee rounds.  If used the core way, the slowest fighter in the world will always beat the faster fighters if he snaps and they do not.

I have solved this by having the phases apply an init mod.  +10 for snap actions, +0 for normal and -10 for deliberate.  We roll init and count down from 40.  A really fast fighter can get in all three phases before a slow fighter even gets his snap.

lynn

[pastaav]

Do deliberate attacks recieve a bonus or penalty?  They recieve a bonus, and 100% action is/can be spent on the attack in the deliberate phase.

They are indeed, little melee rounds. 

Sorry but no matter how I try I can't streach myself to reach your conclusion. His attack might be resolved in the deliberate phase, but his parry does apply to the normal and snap phase also so your assertion that 100% of the fighting is spent in the deliberate phase is broken because he by core rules really are defending himself the whole round.

I could agree with that he allocates 100% of his activity to an action that are to be resolved in the deliberate phase, but since phases are not rounds that does not translate into him standing still for the two first phases.

RM basically has two kinds of actions. Overlapping and sequencial action.
The most obvious overlapping one would be combat and observation. A character that sacrifice some offensive power to look around do overlapping actions. A reasonable interpretation is that his attack and parry is slightly reduced in effectivity because he has attention elsewhere. The idea that he would be standing still and take damage while he looks around does not agree with the rules for parry and damage in this situation.

Sequencial actions are things that can't be started until some other action is finished. The most obvius sequencial chain of action would be a character that does wait for some other character to arrive to a certain point. In the real world...if character A waits for B to climb over the fence before he runs away he will be closer to the fence when ten seconds has passed compared to where he would be if he had bolted directly. Realistic handling of these kind of situations require that character A allocate some time to stand still and not move since you can't be standing still at the same time as you run away. The only thing that would speak against such simple and realistic ruling is a desire to emulate old school turn based action, but there is nothing in the phase system itself that demand such interpretation. The rules about maximum move for different phases is as far as I can see a model for how to resolve conflicting actions and not different rounds following each other.

[yammahoper]

I could agree with that he allocates 100% of his activity to an action that are to be resolved in the deliberate phase, but since phases are not rounds that does not translate into him standing still for the two first phases.

True...and not true.

A charavter decides to pick a lock as a deliberate action using 100% activity.  You can bet during the rest of the round he is doing pretty much nothing, and if in the normal phase a foe charges him, he had best abort his action and defend himself or face an attack with no DB, not even for quickness.

More often than not, UNLESS resolving conflicting movement, the phases as stated in the rule book are indeed little melee rounds.  The fact any snap attacker beats any other regardless of comparative speed weighs this fact out by itself.

On everything else, I agree.

lynn

[pastaav]

A charavter decides to pick a lock as a deliberate action using 100% activity.  You can bet during the rest of the round he is doing pretty much nothing, and if in the normal phase a foe charges him, he had best abort his action and defend himself or face an attack with no DB, not even for quickness.

Errrh...you mean that he sit still doing nothing for a while before he starts to try to pick the lock? Fully consistent with 8-based turn based play...totally unreasonable for anyone that want realism.

That he will abort the lock picking and start to defend himselves are pretty given, but aborting an action means rulewise that his lock picking action is replaced by parry action. There is a penalty here for the switch of actions, but no rules that dictate that this means phases are in fact real rounds.

Btw an attack towards a character that really is lock picking instead of trying to dodge is something that I would resolve in the same way as a executioner that cuts the head. If the attacker does not fumble the target is dead...very dead.

More often than not, UNLESS resolving conflicting movement, the phases as stated in the rule book are indeed little melee rounds.  The fact any snap attacker beats any other regardless of comparative speed weighs this fact out by itself.

Actually I can't agree with this. Snap action always win over normal actions is a ruling that makes "slow character make a mad charge to corner his opponent" possible. The difference in speed between the characters are ultimatively captured by the DB so it does not hurt realism really that snap actions always are resolved first. If you want such tactical move impossible your init count down idea make wonders, but I prefer more realism.

With "phases are really rounds" assumption you run into all kinds of problems when trying to interpretate the mad charge situation. It might be true that if actions are not conflicting or sequencial everything can be resolved as "phases are like small rounds", but that that is a kind of circular argument.

[yammahoper]

A lockpicker that opted not to abort...and yes, i have seen this as GM, would sufer a +50 to be hit, and any crit could be modified by 1/2 ranks in foes weapon.

Not auto death, but pretty close.  Probably lose at least a limb.

Certainly, the lockpicker is not doing nothing, he is picking the lock, focused on that task, and attempting to wark the tumblers/lock mechanism/whatever.  Very descriptive, but ask a player, he basically is doing nothing, and as far as the melee round is concerned, he is indeed doing nothing...except making himself an excellent target.

lynn