Fantasy Trip Pole Weapons and Charges

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Kirk

So why declare what you are doing at all until it is time for you to act in order of DX?

Good question!

Usually there really is no need to declare your option before your action! As long as you obey the rules and don't move too far for the Option you want, the only solid reasons I see to declare your Option are:

* To decide to Dodge or Defend before your own adjDX lets you take an action. (The combat example in Melee shows this being done.)

and some "soft" but not insignificant reasons:

* To learn and understand the Option and Engagement requirements to be able to take certain actions, when you are a new player and trying to understand how those limits work (which I believe is the real reason why the rules were written that way in the first place).
* To give the GM & other players a chance to notice and point out if you are mistakenly intending to do something against the rules.
* To coordinate intentions with other players on your own side.

Notice than almost nowhere in the examples of play do players declare their Option at the start of their turn. They're just said to Shift or Move a certain distance, and in a couple of cases they do Defend when their adjDX is lower than the opponents' that attack them, which still causes the +1 die to hit. Their choice of what to do is just described as a choice of what to do given the circumstances and how far they moved during the Movement phase.

Originally Posted by Kirk

And if you want to defend, just wait until someone actually says they are going to attack, the call out defend.

Sure. Why not?

Originally Posted by Kirk

They then can change their option and say they are going to attack someone else, then you can say now you want to attack, then they say then they will defend, and so forth.

No, the attacker can't change their target, because when they say whom they attack, that is not changing their Option, that is saying whom they are attacking, which the rules do NOT anywhere say is something that can be taken back.

Originally Posted by Kirk

And if it isn't their time to act anyway, it's all just wasted time. Seems to me it just boils down to declaring your option when you actually have the microphone and aren't just someone in the crowd shouting out.

Yes it would be wasted time. But as Rick said, that doesn't ever happen. Because, as I wrote above, there is no reason or relevance to announcing your Option or changing it unless it is your own action, or you want to react to an actual committed action by someone else.

Originally Posted by Kirk

I don't see anything in the rules that says you can't change your option right before someone affects you (if you don't use our interpretation), nor do I see where it says you can't change multiple times until you actually take an option.

Options and Actions are different things. You can say you're changing your Option but there's little/no point except as I noted above. Actions happen when your adjDX comes up and is about you deciding what to do - the person taking the action has to accept what other figures do after that, including possibly their target deciding to Dodge or Defend (which BTW is generally not a negative thing - your attack is causing them to forfeit their action even if you miss).

Originally Posted by Kirk

Probably the reason is that the rules for *engaged* characters say
Shift and Attack. The GM argued two points, first was that by shifting to the side I was in effect executing a Shift and Disengage, and secondly that Shift and Attack was only for *engaged* characters, and by moving to the side, I was no longer engaged and so could not select that option.

I imagine you're right that's what he was thinking, but the rules on Shifting and Engagement, as well as the examples of play, show that he was wrong. And to me, that (and the implied contradictions to CHANGING OPTIONS section, which if they do contradict, would mean that whole section shouldn't have been written, but it was) conclusively indicates that the section listing various Options is mainly an attempt to present in one place what the general Options are, but that it is not meant to be a source for what the limits are that overrides other rules in overly-literal ways.

Originally Posted by Kirk

So again I say, SJ needs to clarify how he wants this game to work. The way we do it works well, seems supported by the rules if one understand the problems with other interpretations, and I have never known anyone who doesn't play that an initial option is chosen, and when a character *can actually do something* at their adjDX, possibly change what they were going to do based on their current situation and time spent moving.

Yes, it should be clearer. (I don't think anyone really disagrees that it'd be great if they were clearer.) Your example of the tourney GM is a great example of how the existing wording of what the Options are for Engaged and Disengaged figures can cause someone to get things backwards, instead of helping.