No more "Abort to Dodge?"

[prestidigitator]

Re: No more "Abort to Dodge?"

 

I don't have a concern with such tactics. But I also don't believe there is any reason to eliminate Aborting. That said' date=' if the Heroes all reserve waiting for the Bad Guy to attack, and the Bad Guy reserves so he can respond to the Heroes' tactics, it's going to be a long, dull battle.[/quote']

That's for those moments when opponents, "size each other up." Maybe a good opportunity to use Analyze skills and Presence Attacks to try to gain an advantageous moment to press the attack....

[Vanguard]

Re: No more "Abort to Dodge?"

 

I've never really considered "aborting" to be acting sooner than you would normally go. I've always looked at is a "WTF" moment and one of this split second, save your bacon, kind of things. If that makes any sense.

 

In either case, I don't think it really causes that much of an issue considering when you Abort, you're giving up your next available phase so it's not like you get to go again when your aborted phase rolls around. You just continue doing whatever action you aborted to. Which, I think works out. If you aborted to Dive for Cover, then you're still diving for cover (or recovering from the dive) when your aborted phase rolls around. Same with Dodging, etc.

 

In short I don't think there's a problem with it so I've never disallowed, nor been in a game, that has disallowed it.

 

Although, come to think of it, it might be interesting to experiment and see what would happen if it was disallowed . . . . .

[pinecone]

Re: No more "Abort to Dodge?"

 

Has anyone considered removing the option of aborting to defensive actions from their games? What got me thinking about this are the several threads that have sprung up recently discussing perceived problems with the SPD chart. Many of the problems seems to boil down to players taking advantage of the way aborting to dive for cover and dodge work, and looking for ways to stop it.

 

So I started thinking about the SPD chart and combat. To me, combat involves everyone acting as quickly as they are physically able to take actions (offensive and defensive) against their opponents (with the understanding that they can go slower if they want, but never faster than they can). The only thing that prevents the speed chart from perfectly representing this idea is the ability to abort future actions for current defensive actions. If everyone is doing things as quickly as they can (each time their phase comes up), then suddenly being able to act sooner (aborting) doesn't seem to make much sense.

 

So has anyone given this a try, or thought about why it works the way it does? Or how about the ramification of removing the ability to abort?

 

Thanks!

 

Well....it would make things More realistic, and Less cinematic, if thats "OK" then I say why not? At it's heart Hero is the system that will not let you die, this is a step away from that. But hey if you like it, it's all good....

 

I've never tried it myself though.....

[Fireg0lem]

Re: No more "Abort to Dodge?"

 

I don't have a concern with such tactics. But I also don't believe there is any reason to eliminate Aborting. That said' date=' if the Heroes all reserve waiting for the Bad Guy to attack, and the Bad Guy reserves so he can respond to the Heroes' tactics, it's going to be a long, dull battle.[/quote']

 

Yup. That is kind of a problem with the "holding generically" thing. What we did is houserule it to:

 

If you hold non-generically (ie, for a specific event), it works as written.

 

If you hold generically, when the initiative count reaches -(DEX) before your next phase, you can either use your action now, or keep holding. If you keep holding, you can't act until the start of the next phase, but you do start it with a held action (even before your DEX comes up). So, basically, the higher DEX person gets to choose who goes first. It stops the Endless Mexican Standoff situation and keeps DEX important in fights where everyone holds a lot.

[prestidigitator]

Re: No more "Abort to Dodge?"

 

I allow a held Phase to be used any time, including before your Dex on the Segment you would normally get your next Phase (however, you don't get the second Phase that Segment; the held Phase just allows you to move up in Dex order). Any time you use a held Phase to try to interrupt someone else's action it requires a Dex-off (unless it's a defensive action, but that's not really "interrupting").

[Spence]

Re: No more "Abort to Dodge?"

 

Holy 5 year old thread resurrection!

 

Since no one seems to have noticed.......

 

Holy Cow Batman 5 year old thread resurrection!

 

 

OK I added Cow and Batman, but it just seemed right.....

[prestidigitator]

Re: No more "Abort to Dodge?"

 

Or, as Robert Asprin misquoted (myth-quoted?)

 

"HOLY BATSHIT, FATMAN! I mean...." --Robin

[archermoo]

Re: No more "Abort to Dodge?"

 

I don't have a concern with such tactics. But I also don't believe there is any reason to eliminate Aborting. That said, if the Heroes all reserve waiting for the Bad Guy to attack, and the Bad Guy reserves so he can respond to the Heroes' tactics, it's going to be a long, dull battle.

 

hmmmm

 

I've seen this basic thing happen IRL.

[megaplayboy]

Re: No more "Abort to Dodge?"

 

One effective counter-measure to the "abort to dodge/dive for cover" is to have two bad guys target the PC, the first with a single-target attack that's large enough that the PC can't afford to be hit by it, and the second with an AoE attack that, since the PC aborted to dodge, they cannot now dive for cover from. I think it'd also probably work in reverse. Obviously, PCs could also do this against opponents...