Dodge and Drop; can't be used vs. Melee why?

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by Ubiquitous

Well, the thing is, you probably aren't. Mechanic-wise, the +2 to Dodge, being negated, means that to bust that you've gotta take a -4 to your skill for a Deceptive Attack, plus whatever the new penalty is for raking a prone guy.

The bonus for a Retreating Dodge/Dodge and Drop only applies to one opponent, the one you used it against. All other attackers don't take the penalty. You get the bonus against the one attacker because it's assumed that you're moving suddenly in the middle of their attack, when they've already committed. All other attackers have not yet committed to their swings yet, and have time to compensate for your movement.

Originally Posted by Ubiquitous

if the scenario is saying that it's dodge-enhancing to 'sprawl out', what difference does it make if you sprawled against one guy and not a bunch of others. How do you sprawl just for one guy and not a bunch of others?

As I said above, sprawling, retreating, or other acrobatic movement disrupts an attack in progress. GURPS assumes that you're capable of reacting to changes in the situation in under a second, though. Otherwise, if someone moved up to you, you couldn't attack them immediately - after all, they weren't there a second ago!

Originally Posted by Ubiquitous

You do, then get back up. The 'drop' in this case is just formality but originally I thought it was a case of Acrobatic Stand.

Not in this case. Acrobatic Stand takes a full second to accomplish. If you briefly went down, but ended up back on your feet in less than a second, then it was, as Sudodeus said, simply part of an Acrobatic Dodge.

Originally Posted by Ubiquitous

By saying Retreating Acrobatic Dodge, does that mean you're collecting +3 Dodge from a Retreat and +1 from an Acrobatics success?

+2 from the Acrobatic success, actually. For a total of +5, but only against one opponent.