Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - For SJ, where's the Move and Defend and option?

Skarg · 09-04-2019, 11:34 AM

The way I see it is the original Wizard and Advanced Melee rules very clearly allowed a change to Defend or Dodge to anyone who moved 1/2 MA or less, regardless of whether they were Engaged or not.

Defend and Dodge just have effects that usually make more sense to take for Engaged or Disengaged figures, but there was no rule against using them based on Engagement.

Then during Legacy editing, Steve chose to use the basic Melee version of the options list as a starting point, without remembering the reasons for the changes he made in original Wizard and Advanced Melee. When asked to retain some of the original clarifying sections right before the PDF was approved, Steve posted that he didn't understand the many arguments trying to explain why it was important, and so he just left it as it ended up in Legacy.

So it seems to me that these details of Legacy are unclear in intent, and subject to what I would say are unfortunate possible literal readings of the Legacy rules (e.g. that you can't Defend against jabs unless some other foe engages you (dumb), or that you have to only move 1 if you want to Defend (no good reason or effects of that), or that you have to declare Dodge during Movement and can't Dodge in response to attacks, or do something else if you didn't actually have to dodge anything when your adjDX comes up (which ends up making Dodge less useful / usable, has people waste actions in gamey ways, and makes missile / thrown attacks even more powerful than they already are.

That is, it seems to me like an unfortunate set of steps in wrong directions to read the Legacy rules in those ways.

09-04-2019, 11:34 AM	#47
Skarg Join Date: May 2015	Re: For SJ, where's the Move and Defend and option? The way I see it is the original Wizard and Advanced Melee rules very clearly allowed a change to Defend or Dodge to anyone who moved 1/2 MA or less, regardless of whether they were Engaged or not. Defend and Dodge just have effects that usually make more sense to take for Engaged or Disengaged figures, but there was no rule against using them based on Engagement. Then during Legacy editing, Steve chose to use the basic Melee version of the options list as a starting point, without remembering the reasons for the changes he made in original Wizard and Advanced Melee. When asked to retain some of the original clarifying sections right before the PDF was approved, Steve posted that he didn't understand the many arguments trying to explain why it was important, and so he just left it as it ended up in Legacy. So it seems to me that these details of Legacy are unclear in intent, and subject to what I would say are unfortunate possible literal readings of the Legacy rules (e.g. that you can't Defend against jabs unless some other foe engages you (dumb), or that you have to only move 1 if you want to Defend (no good reason or effects of that), or that you have to declare Dodge during Movement and can't Dodge in response to attacks, or do something else if you didn't actually have to dodge anything when your adjDX comes up (which ends up making Dodge less useful / usable, has people waste actions in gamey ways, and makes missile / thrown attacks even more powerful than they already are. That is, it seems to me like an unfortunate set of steps in wrong directions to read the Legacy rules in those ways.