"Against the grain" charge attacks
 

The "3-hex" requirement, in TFT LE, for pole-weapon charge-attack bonuses has some ambiguities, and I'm curious how people are playing (in Advanced Melee there was no such requirement).

The 3-hex charge rule on ITL p111:
There's an accompanying figure that shows an "against the grain" example.

I take "against the grain" to mean that if a figure is 3 hexes distant from a destination hex, then any 3-hex path to that destination is a "straight line" move, even if it zigs and zags on the hex grid. Is that what you are doing?

Below is an example.

Re: "Against the grain" charge attacks
 

Here's an example of what I mean. The image link below shows a possible charge attack situation.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/u9371gtudg...paths.png?dl=0

B has a spear and is looking for a high-priority high-damage charge against the crabman. The amber arrow connects the center of the hexes containing B and crabman. The blue and red lines represent the shortest possible paths from B to the hexes adjacent to the crabman.

This example therefore shows 3 different paths, to 2 different hexes, that might be a legit 3-hex charge: the blue path (a-b-c); the red path (a-d-e); and the amber path (a-d-c).

I think I would allow allow all of these as 3-hex charges, simply because they all close the 3-hex distance with a path 3-hexes long.

Re: "Against the grain" charge attacks
 

Those paths look fine to me. I think what the rule is trying to prevent is someone moving a total of three hexes, but one of them being in reverse and only two moving forward to the target.

Re: "Against the grain" charge attacks
 

(The way I prefer to play is a house-rule to ignore the requirement altogether, but...)

I think that not only would both of those paths be legal, but so would if B stepped north first, and then went two hexes northeast. And so would moving some other direction and then moving three hexes straight-or-zig-zag toward the target.

Re: "Against the grain" charge attacks
 

Thank you both, that was very helpful. Together your comments had me messing around with this a little more and I'm feeling very happy with the idea that if you close a 3-hex distance by any 3-hex path that is as straight as it gets on a hex grid.

Case resolved I think

(Still sticking with Advanced Melee for now though) (:

Re: "Against the grain" charge attacks
 

Yes, the way to do it is by the number of hexes moved, regardless of how it looks, because the shortest distance between two points is the very definition of a "straight" line. My rationale is it looks straight to the characters even when it doesn't look that way to the players, because we're peering into their dimension from above, from our own dimension, and our view is distorted. (There's no such thing as hex grain, that's just the curvature of space we're noticing! :)

More practically speaking, my guess is the intention of the 3 hex minimum is to prevent the cheap ploy of an attacker starting in the defender's side hex, taking one step away, then entering the defender's rear hex and calling that a charge attack for a free bonus. Sure the attacker can still do something similar, moving 3 hexes away and then charging the 3 hexes back, but now the cost is 6 MA total, so it's no longer cheap. In fact your effective MA has to start at 12 to pull that off while still only using 1/2 your MA, which is impossible for most characters.

You could get an identical effect with an entirely different rule that some might prefer, because "weaving" is taken out of the equation. The alternate rule is merely that the charge attacker cannot be adjacent to the defender in more than 1 of the last 3 hexes moved. That's virtually the same effect without having to specify a minimum distance for the total movement.

Re: "Against the grain" charge attacks
 

Yes, exactly

Interesting enough this tactic is explicitly sanctioned in Advanced Melee:

Clearly SJ changed his mind on that one

Re: "Against the grain" charge attacks
 

I don't know if we will ever know how much of AM and AW were Thompson's "meddling" and how much was Mr. Jackson's original concepts

Re: "Against the grain" charge attacks
 

hah ha well there is an authoritative source who in fact owns this forum!

Re: "Against the grain" charge attacks
 

I can only speculate, but in my opinion it is not wise to speak about that issue (edits and changes that occured all those years ago).