[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Aman

See what I'm saying? That's a self-defeating design flaw, and it isn't necessary. If you have to roll your DX10 to Disengage from a DX9 Giant, and half your team succeeds, and the other half doesn't, you'll end up with half the team getting beat up. Now you are better off fighting. A design that pushes players to ACT positively is a good design.

I do see what you are saying, but I mostly disagree.

I agree that in theory there are potentially frustrating or wrong-seeming situations where figures could avoid being attacked by a single figure with even 1 point of lower adjDX, if that single figure has no pole weapon and no ranged attack, and the terrain is open enough (and if not using the Waiting For An Opening optional rule).

I disagree however that it is a design flaw, or that the design should artificially push players "to ACT positively". I think it's a feature if it is possible for some level of speed advantage to allow a figure to avoid a single sword/ax/mace opponent in clear open ground. I think that should be possible. q.v. fiction like Zorro, Robin Hood, or any hero using agility and maneuver to not be overwhelmed by large numbers of guards. In an arena combat scenario, you can just specify that if one side refuses combat, they forfeit the round as if they ran out an exit, which is also a valid move to survive if you don't think you can win the fight.


I also disagree in almost all of your details of how severe the situation actually is.
* Disengaging doesn't tend to get the disengager much except getting out of a bad position. It doesn't accomplish anything else.
* In situations with terrain and more than a pair of hostile figures, it's not always possible to disengage to a safe hex, and having one of your figures not attack tends to put you at a disadvantage.
* Pole weapons, ranged weapons and spells can be used against you while you're using your action to disengage.
* Pole weapons charges strike before disengagement can happen.
* If there's more than one foe, they can maneuver around you to prevent your escape.
* Disengaging only works if you have an adjDX advantage.
* Waiting for an Opening is a natural response to Disengage, giving your foe up to +2 adjDX, so you really need 3 higher adjDX to be sure to be able to get away from them by continuing to disengage.
* Waiting for an Opening also means that Disengaging a foe means giving them a +1 adjDX advantage next turn.


Having played TFT combat for many years, I also find that Disengage has never occurred as a problem during the play I've seen. If someone wants to disengage repeatedly, it generally means they're running away, or conceding a fight, or trying to fall back to a better fighting position. But that just has natural consequences, none of which I've seen to be a problem in practice. The only issues I've seen have been with new players or people with some other conception of how they want/expect combat to work, or who are just surprised and frustrated when a faster figure keeps avoiding melee with them.


And to address your giant example:

Originally Posted by Aman

I still submit that it is broken to have a mechanic that allows one side to practice continual denial of action. As a matter of fact, if I have a giant, and you have 1/3 it's size in figs, you can move half, Engage, then disengage and deny it indefinitely, locking it into position with the Engage then denying it a chance to fight, while you shoot it to death.

First, 1/3 of a 3-hex giant is one, and (in the full rules, anyway) one or two figures can be Pushed into by a giant during movement, making them roll 3/DX or fall, though that's not really a great tactic in many cases. If you mean a 6-hex giant versus 2 figures, or a 9-hex giant versus 3 figures, well, you'd need to invent their stats, and I would tend to follow GURPS' example of giving such huge giants a reach advantage (reach at least 3 for the 9-hex giant), meaning they don't need to have a spear to hit you 2 hexes away. If giants were often being confounded by people teasing them by coming up and disengaging, they might take to carrying large rocks, spears, or longer clubs.

Originally Posted by Aman

The classic error with, say airplane or spaceship battles is to design a scenario where one side just wants to escape. Oops, boring scenario.

The scenario design is up to the players and/or GM in an RPG game. And scenarios where you want to escape can be really exciting, if you make it other than just an arena situation where one side can just leave. In an arena situation, you can just specify that if one side refuses to fight, they forfeit. If a player says they want to play an arena duel, and then just run away the whole time, that's mainly on them, or a misunderstanding about what the goals would be. It doesn't mean that a set of combat rules should make running away impossible. Now THAT I would see as a design flaw!


I do think that this and other (e.g. Expert/Master Defend) uses of engagement to pin melee fighters without really fighting them while others use ranged attacks to attack them, can be a bit of a problem, which I prefer to address with house rules that address all those issues at once (e.g. allowing moving through engagement but with the ignored figure able to act at that point to attack them).