Defend your rear
 

Bob with no talents is holding a crossbow and takes the defend option.

Anne steps into Bob's rear hex and strikes at him using her sword skill. She now has to roll her DX +4 on four dice or less, because Bob is defending.

Whatever the results of Anne's attack, Bob's crossbow is now broken.

Is this the correct reading of ITL page 117 and Melee page 20?

Re: Defend your rear
 

With the understanding that to take the defend option, Bob had to be engaged first.

Re: Defend your rear
 

Anne's on his rear so he's engaged.

Re: Defend your rear
 

We always felt the intention (and what made sense, which we trusted was the same thing, or else it was an oversight which should be corrected), was that Defend only applied from the front.

The rules do say: and it seems to me that being "ready" in this case would logically include facing the right direction, hence why this is a question even when no, I don't think it explicitly says that.

I can see reasoning and ways to imagine it making sense to allow Defending from all directions (e.g. it's a five-second turn, so facing the wrong direction doesn't mean you couldn't defend yourself at all, especially when spending the whole turn trying to defend).

Really I'd be content to play it either way, though less content if someone were using a house rule where Defend also counted as Dodge, and were munckining up a storm with, say, weapon mastery on a wizard using the new free-action 2-hex armor-penetrating DX+3 zap attack...


That seems like an over-literal misunderstanding of the options list, to me.

Re: Defend your rear
 

Defend is like a shield, only effective from the front. the idea is that you are parrying.

True that it does not specifically say that though. But I'm pretty sure that is the original intent.

Re: Defend your rear
 

Whatever the rules book explicitly says in its 'rules' tone of voice, I think it is obvious that the intent, and best practices, is to only allow Defend against attacks coming in through front hex sides (excepting those cases that are called out, like martial artists who treat side and rear hexes as front facings).