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## After Sundown movement and disengaging questions

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OgreBattle
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### After Sundown movement and disengaging questions

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Post by OgreBattle » Wed Apr 08, 2015 10:12 am

So in After Sundown everyone declares movement before other actions are taken, with the slowest characters moving first so faster characters get to react to them:

> In general, a character declares their intention to move before any actions are taken, and characters can take their actions as if they or their targets were where they were at any point during the turn. 12 seconds is a long time, so if someone is moving around a corner or into view it is reasonable that some number of bullets went towards them while they were in the open. For exceptions to this, see Taking One For the Team and Diving For Cover. Often it won't really matter, but characters with the lowest Initiative Score declare their movement first.

> Disengaging: A character can move out of close combat just as they can move into close combat. However, turning your back on a lunatic with a meat cleaver is dangerous. To represent this, a character moving out of Adjacent range with an opponent is not only treated as being adjacent with that opponent for the rest of the round, they are no longer actively resisting, so the threshold to hit them is just zero (modified of course by circumstances such as visibility and dodging).
> Taking One for the Team: If a character disengages from close combat, another character still engaged in close combat with the same opponent can choose to throw themselves into harm's way. This redirects a parting attack to the brave character playing bodyguard (or sacrificial lamb). The threshold to strike the new target is unchanged.

Now lets say a monster with big claws is 10 meters away from a dude with a gun. If the guy with the gun has the faster initiative he moves after the claw monster. Does this mean that the claw guy can declare he charges at the gun gun and is now adjacent to him, so if the gun guy tries to move away he's making a disengaging action?
If that's how it works wouldn't it be to the advantage of the gun guy to have a lower initiative, thus he gets to move away from the claw guy and stay out of adjacent range?
The line "and characters can take their actions as if they or their targets were where they were at any point during the turn." makes it sound like the guy with the gun could just declare "well I am moving away as if you were at your starting point instead of in my face", but then that leads to a pretty powerful kiting effect for the gun guy.
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Also how does After Sundown resolve two dudes making attacks while charging past each other? Like two cavalrymen with lances riding past each other or two ninjas dashing at each other and clashing in front of the full moon and then landing past one another. How does that interact with the 'disengage' rule?
Like that
Last edited by OgreBattle on Wed Apr 08, 2015 10:25 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Wed Apr 08, 2015 11:08 am

> OB wrote:Now lets say a monster with big claws is 10 meters away from a dude with a gun. If the guy with the gun has the faster initiative he moves after the claw monster. Does this mean that the claw guy can declare he charges at the gun gun and is now adjacent to him, so if the gun guy tries to move away he's making a disengaging action?

No. Our Big Claw Monster declares that he's moving to the gun guy. The Gun Guy then gets to say that he's moving away. If the Claw Monster is moving 10 meters faster this turn than the gun guy, the two end their turn adjacent and Gun Guy would have to disengage next turn.
In either case, the Claw Monster gets a parting swipe at the Gun Guy and the Gun Guy gets to shoot the Claw Monster while it's out in the open.

> Also how does After Sundown resolve two dudes making attacks while charging past each other? Like two cavalrymen with lances riding past each other or two ninjas dashing at each other and clashing in front of the full moon and then landing past one another. How does that interact with the 'disengage' rule?

Character A declares his move from a to b, then Character B declares his move from b to a. Then B gets to declare a strike against A and then A gets to declare a strike against B. And they both end up non-adjacent and no one has to disengage next round.
You generally only have to disengage if one character or the other declares their movement as being to another character rather than to a point on the ground. Or if both characters declare their intention to occupy the same piece of ground for whatever reason.
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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle » Wed Apr 08, 2015 12:20 pm

> FrankTrollman wrote: No. Our Big Claw Monster declares that he's moving to the gun guy. The Gun Guy then gets to say that he's moving away. If the Claw Monster is moving 10 meters faster this turn than the gun guy, the two end their turn adjacent and Gun Guy would have to disengage next turn.

So if the claw monster declares he's making an Exhausting Run (60m) to charge the gun guy that's 10m away from him, that means he can follow the gun guy up to 50 meters to get adjacent to him?
Can this be used to 'force movement' and lure the lower initiative charger? Say the gun guy declares an exhausting run of his own and ends movement behind a sword guy ally, does the claw monster automatically get lured along the way because during its movement turn it declared "I want to make an exhausting run charge at the gun guy"?
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Wed Apr 08, 2015 12:30 pm

> OgreBattle wrote:

> > FrankTrollman wrote: No. Our Big Claw Monster declares that he's moving to the gun guy. The Gun Guy then gets to say that he's moving away. If the Claw Monster is moving 10 meters faster this turn than the gun guy, the two end their turn adjacent and Gun Guy would have to disengage next turn.

> So if the claw monster declares he's making an Exhausting Run (60m) to charge the gun guy that's 10m away from him, that means he can follow the gun guy up to 50 meters to get adjacent to him?
> Can this be used to 'force movement' and lure the lower initiative charger? Say the gun guy declares an exhausting run of his own and ends movement behind a sword guy ally, does the claw monster automatically get lured along the way because during its movement turn it declared "I want to make an exhausting run charge at the gun guy"?

Yes. Horror Movie Monsters fall from rickety bridges like all the time.
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Post by Lokathor » Wed Apr 08, 2015 3:00 pm

How much worse does the game perform if movement just takes place on a character's turn (split up over 4 passes) without all the declarations ahead of time?
Put another way: I've only ever run After Sundown with a more DnD 3e style, and it seemed fine. Are there any big advantages to doing all the movement declaration ahead of time that I'm not seeing?
Last edited by Lokathor on Wed Apr 08, 2015 3:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle » Wed Apr 08, 2015 3:54 pm

The things I mentioned are specifically things that D&D "move&act on your turn" systems don't do well.
Two jousting cavalrymen riding past each other works in AF because there's an initial movement phase and you can then hit anyone based on anywhere they moved, but in D&D it's "One of the knights wins initiative and charges across the field to strike the other knight who has not yet moved".
"I shoot the werewolf as he dashes behind the pillar to another pillar" is handled in AF because you can attack people as if they were in any space they had moved across. In D&D it's "I use my readied action to shoot at the werewolf if it passes into LoS between the pillars".
"I dash 60ft across the room with nobody being able to stop me in the 6 second span of the turn because I kept 5ft away from everyone" is an oddity of D&D mechanics, but in After Sundown that guy can still be intercepted because they can be attacked in any space they moved across.
While D&D needs off-turn opportunity attacks to handle attacking a guy running past you, After Sundown's movement system means that the higher initiative characters can react to other's movement and intercept them on their own turn.
Being able to lure an opponent into a trap or bad position because he's trying to charge into you and you're backing off is something that is handled by AF's movement system, but in D&D it's done in 4e movement powers like "you hit the guy then him X squares"
Overall I like that AF's movement rules handle all these situations in one phase with a short paragraph describing it, while it would be special cases with unique resource management described in multiple paragraphs in D&D3e.
Last edited by OgreBattle on Fri Apr 17, 2015 5:22 am, edited 4 times in total.
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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle » Wed Apr 29, 2015 12:36 pm

Just thought of an oddity in AF's movement system where someone can get killed by someone 20ft behind them
Say in this scenario:
The werewolf is at one end of a 40ft long, 10ft wide hallway, with a vampire and witch at the other end. The werewolf wants to move past the vampire and attack the witch. They roll initiative and...
fastest: werewolf
2nd: vampire
3rd: witch
As slower characters move, the vampire moves into the middle of the hallway. The werewolf then says he's making a run past the vampire straight at the witch at the end of the hallway.
So as faster characters act first, the werewolf gets to attack the witch, and after that the vampire gets a swipe at the werewolf.
But what if the vampire incapacitated or successfully grabbed the werewolf on his action? Then you have this odd situation where the werewolf ran past the vampire, moved 20ft, hits the witch, then gets grabbed/KO'd 20ft back in the hallway. Or am I missing something and interpreting it wrong?
Last edited by OgreBattle on Wed Apr 29, 2015 12:46 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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schpeelah
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Post by schpeelah » Wed Apr 29, 2015 5:34 pm

According to the Disengaging section, the vampire would have an even easier time if they started next to the werewolf. They're explicitly Adjacent for the whole round, so the vampire can melee kill the werewolf from 40ft. away without moving and with a threshold of 0.
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Post by tussock » Thu Apr 30, 2015 11:19 am

The typical retcon is teh Vampire gave a lethal wound to teh Werewolf, and teh werewolf went over and smashed the witch with a dying action. It'd be like a 3e round where you could always finish your actions even if killed, tripped, or grappled by an AoO.
The quatum grapple state is problematic, but you don't have to allow grapples of people who are no longer adjacent. Anything else you can fall over or finally drop your sword after you attack.
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