Phasing for falling down/standing up

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

You fall down either during movement, when you make a bad die roll on bad footing, or in combat, when you get hit for 8 points or more.

... or if you fall due to a Trip spell, net, lasso, whip, dragon tail, aimed attack to your leg, critical hit, shield rush, or UC throw attack, being forced to retreat with nowhere to retreat to, falling off a horse, a multi-hex figure shifting into your hex and knocking you down, or being engaged in HTH combat.

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

Assuming you survive, you stand up during the movement phase.

Only in basic Melee and Wizard.

In Advanced Melee, you changed (I would say corrected) the rules for standing up, which is consistently represented in three places (AM page 3 stand up option, page 5 sentence 2, and page 18 Reactions To Injury). In AM, the rule is you can stand up on the turn after you fell, when your adjDX action comes up.

Another change in AM is you can move one hex during the Movement Phase on a turn you are taking the option to stand up. Basic Melee/Wizard do not let you change hexes when standing up.

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

As it stands, if you are knocked down in combat, only those opponents whose DX is lower than yours will get a +4 hack at you.

In basic Melee & Wizard, yes, but not in Advanced Melee.

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

If you stand up during the COMBAT phase of your turn, the person who knocked you down will get a +4 swing at you, which is bloody but probably not wrong. Is this what was being suggested earlier? What issues does it have?

Close but not entirely. It's what Advanced Melee says, too.

A few comments on what you wrote:

1) In the previous thread, I thought you were saying if you knock down a slower foe, they can get up that same turn as their action. (That's something a player might think is true, but would be even worse.)

2) It's not quite as bloody as you just wrote. Even with the Advanced Melee version, if your adj DX is less than the foe you knocked down's adj DX, he can still get up before you will get a chance to attack him at +4. Even with the Advanced Melee version, this makes using Shield Rush, UC throw, or the Trip spell unable to let you follow up with an attack on people with higher adjDX than you.

If you revert to the basic Melee / Wizard sequence where people stand up during Movement, then not only do you get the "only slower friends capitalize" bug, and the "you never get to hit the foe you knocked down while he's down" problem, but you also need to win initiative in order to get to not be immediately re-Engaged by the foe you just knocked down. By moving it to the action phase, at least you get to not be engaged by just-toppled foes during the Movement Phase. That at least makes Shield Rush, Trip, etc have some possible use even to people with lower adjDX than their targets.

It also means you don't need to write on the advanced unarmed combat talents that they get the ability to enter HTH with people they throw, because they can do that during Movement against a prone opponent according to Advanced Melee.

If it were me, I'd even consider making a person who has already taken their action and then later that turn gets knocked down, lose his next action during the next turn, because then even lower-adjDX figures would be able to follow up a knockdown with a +4 attack. But I've not playtested that, and it would make people lose two movement phases when they fall after having acted... unless you let them stand up as a last action of that next turn.

The only disadvantages I see to using the Advanced Melee version are:

1) People who only ever used the basic Melee / Wizard version may be attached to doing it that way.

2) Some people may be unhappy to more frequently experience being killed while lying in the dirt. (There is a whole camp (of non-TFT RPG players, anyway) that doesn't like effects of injury, but I think it's a hallmark of TFT and falling down should be a big deal which has important effects, not something you take risks to achieve and then your opponent automatically undoes as the next thing that happens.)

3) Some people may see it as more complex?