DwD Studios
Move and Hold in the same Turn?
Mon, 11/19/2012 - 9:50am | 
jasales
I’ve run into a few situations where a player wants to move their character and then wait for the enemy to close wherein they would take their action to attack later on in the same turn. In my mind this is splitting up their turn over the course of a turn. But the more I think about it and the way multiple actions are handled, I don’t see why this would be an issue in this game.
Example: the character get get a higher initiative roll than the bad guys and on their turn they move to better positions and declare they will attack when the bad guys close. When the bad guys close but before the bad guys attack the characters attack in their original initiative order. I can see this getting rather confusing.
Or is it just best to say, when your turn comes you either move and take your action(s) or hold till later in the turn.
Your thoughts? How do you handle this?
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This is up to the GM.
Waiting is not an action. It's a delay, which, at the very least, should require a perception check, (LOG) if not simply wait until the next turn.
Now, the GM may declare you can make multiple actions and split them up throughout the turn from the time your initiative takes place.
Or the GM may ask that you tell him what all your actions will be throughout the turn, without stipulation ("If they do,..."; which opens up a can of worms that includes "but if they don't,..." or "if they do something else,..."), and then he can decide how and when they apply.
The rulebook, though it doesn't state it categorically, seems to imply on p.26, by means of the example given, that the actions mentioned are contiguous.
This is up to the GM - yep, why I'm asking other GMs.
Thanks for responding Ascent.
I would think things would be contiguous as I mentioned, i'm just wondering if you see problems doing the move at some point and then taking actions later.
What do you mean by the LOG roll above? I can't at all wrap my head around what you are saying there.
A turn is short, quick. Perception is needed to be able to notice an action at the moment it happens and respond quickly.
I don't see any overt problem with it if the GM allows it. It reminds me of the moment a tackle takes place in football. The player with the ball dodges a dogpile only to meet up with another player who is looking for them, passing his perception check, the ball holder spins and feints right, and the second player makes his tackle attempt when he perceives the first player's feint to his left. All within about 2 seconds.
In other words, it seems realistic. But I personally avoid simulation and go for the simplest means of achieving an effect. So I would have a player do it all contiguously, but allow such a wait to be called and determine whether it passes or fails. They can't change their mind if the action never takes place as essentially a failed expectation and therefore opening them up to an opponent doing the same to them if an opponent has initiative. In the end it all comes down to initiative. Whoever has first initiative has the opportunity to wait for a move from an opponent. (Yes, I know you know this. To me it's simply an ability challenge)
Great explaination. You've given me much to think about. Opening up the characters turn like I mentioned adds alot of things to track and kinda skews what the rules already account for abstractly. Thank you for going into detail and showing examples. It really helped.
+1 Ascent
+1 jasales
Another great thought for an article in Decahedron Magazine. I enjoyed reading this one. Thank you both!
This is an interesting question; delayed actions came up in the sessions that I ran and I think I took a stick-to-the-rules approach--if a character wanted to delay their action they could, but it would be subject to whatever multi-action penalties they had accrued by that point in the round.
The main advantage to this ruling was that there was no additional bookkeeping or extra dice rolling. I guess that the main downside is that it could be seen to penalize someone who is specifically reserving their action.
But think of it this way--let's say you're playing paintball. You happen to know where one of your opponents is, and you want to wait until they stick their head out so you can tag them. The reality of the situation is that other opponents may start firing on you while you wait.
In that scenario, you have two options. You can do nothing about the other shooters and focus on lining up the perfect shot, or you can actively try to avoid the shooters and line up a less good shot when your target makes a move.
Personally, I think that the accumulating multi-action penalty in the core rules does a really good job of modelling this. If you choose not to make resistance checks against incoming attacks, you'll lose some BP but have your full attack score to work with when your "held action" comes around. Or you try to make some resistance checks and your "held action" attempt suffers for it.
Anyhow, that's just my $0.02. I'm interested to see how your "perception attempt" evolves--maybe characters can use it to offset some of the accumulated multi-action penalty to a "held action"?