Steve Jackson Games Forums - Asking for Help

I had played a game with some other MIB's around and we got into a discussion on when a munchkin may no longer ask for help in a combat.

They told me that after a person begins to count to end a fight, if people then alter the combat so that they are losing the fight, then the player may not ask for help because they had already began counting and that means that they have officially declared that they can no longer ask for help that turn.

My problem with this is that if people cannot ask for help if the fight is altered to them losing then nobody will do anything until you begin counting and it makes counting to end a fight redundant because the moment you do people will gang up on you with no way to respond to it in a co-operative sense. It makes the games co-operative experience less engaging because people will abuse that rule and make sure that they can catch you on your own with no way to get help when you originally didn't need it. Most people don't ask for help to a winning fight so it makes asking for help more precautionary since people would do that to a fight they are winning just so they don't get killed by counting and losing their ability to ask for help.

I had thought that when a person begins to count, they are declaring themselves to fight in single combat for that fight as it currently was, and if another munchkin were to alter the combat to make them begin to lose, then the phase of the game moves back to the comparison of combat strength vs monster strength which is followed by whether they will ask for help or not, and finally counting to win or running away.

This kind of verification could very well change how I play Munchkin's so I thought it would be important to ask. Thanks in advance.