[Skarg]

I can think of various realism and logic arguments for why one might want to play any of these combinations of situations and effects one way or the other. But this isn't the house rules forum.

For RAW, my impression is that the intention is that facing to-hit modifiers don't apply to ranged attacks. I see the letter-of-the-rules legal case, but I'm not convinced that's the intent. I think we probably need SJ to make an official statement on it to get agreement on RAW.

But again, for people who want to apply facing modifiers to ranged attacks, or even for the pretty clearly intended effect of protection from packs and shields worn on the back, we also need to know (i.e. agree when playing each game) which facing to apply for ranged/jab attacks that come in along the hex spines between side and rear.