When Can a Character Disengage?

[Tom H.]

Originally Posted by Skarg

Yes, and that word "move" means "act" (as in "your move, Bob" - that is, when you actually choose what to do and do it, during the Action phase), not that you are supposed to remember the engagement state at the time the figure got to move during the Movement phase.

It is a tragic typo, which gets repeated in the new ITL, because it causes a lot of confusion.

If you play it literally as meaning you're supposed to remember whether you were engaged at the start of your movement, and have that determine what you can do when it's your time to act, it will create all sorts of silly unintended effects, undermine logical cause and effect, etc.

Hmmm, it's hard for me to see the rules that way, but it does leave slight room for ambiguity.

In any event, when you take a disengaged option, you do have to at least remember whether your figure can attack or not once the Combat phase begins.

For better or worse, having to remember implications of actions in progress is one thing that does complicate systems (I'm looking at you GURPS ;-)).