Combat: A Sticky Situation?

[Bareheaded Warrior]

A while ago, I played the Trial using the Companion App with a fellow experienced HeroQuester, just for the purposes of trying out the app and in the final room we had a bit of an epiphany.

Three of our Heroes were in the final room, happily hacking at opponents, whilst the Wizard was safely situated on the square adjacent to the doorway in the passageway outside of the room. EWP / Companion Apps turn and the Gargoyle moved from its position in combat adjacent to the Barbarian, passing directly through the square adjacent to the Elf and through the square occupied by another monster adjacent to and engaged in close combat with the Dwarf into the square inside the room directly adjacent to the Wizard and proceeded to attack the Wizard.

My buddy exclaimed, "Hey it can't do that", but it obviously could and indeed did. We survived the encounter, although the Wizard did get battered, but it made me look again at the specific details of the rules around movement and combat and made me realise that I had been playing with at least one assumed but never stated rule that is not present in the game, but perhaps could or should be.

There is nothing in the rules that prevent a character from skipping casually out of a close combat, adjacent to, situation and neither is there any restriction around characters moving through a square occupied by a friendly figure, even if that friendly figure is currently engaged in close combat (adjacent to) a mutual enemy. However that does feel right to me, so perhaps Combat should be made more "sticky".

After some consideration, two options present themselves, for the first issue.

1. The hard option: Creating a rule that states that you CANNOT move out of combat, that is from a square in which you are adjacent to an opponent, instead you have to attack that opponent.

2. The soft option: Creating a rule that states that you CAN move out of combat, that is from a square in which you are adjacent to an opponent, but in doing so you give away a free attack to that opponent

Out of the two I prefer the soft option as that increasing the choices available to players.

But this raises some follow on questions:

Should the rule cover adjacent squares only or diagonal squares too? Does that depend on what the combatants are armed with?
Do you still get a free attack if an opponent chooses to step out of combat, if there are other opponents, next to you?
Should the free attack follow the usual rules or have some form of penalty, like less defend dice or no defence?
Should a character be allowed to move through a square occupied by a friend, if that friend is engaged in close combat with an opponent in an adjacent square?

Thoughts anyone?

Maybe we could consider the Blood Bowl "Tackle Zones" and/or AHQ style "Death Zones" as part of this solution...

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Shame we don't have a tumbleweed icon as my first post on this topic seems to have been really well received.

That said a mechanism of this kind is present, as I mentioned above in AHQ and Blood bowl and many similar games and, as I spotted yesterday Mice & Mystics which is a very similar game with a similar audience to HQ.

Some modifications to fix the issue(s)

(1) If you are on, or move onto, a square adjacent to a monster and that monster does not have any other heroes in any adjacent squares then your movement ends
(2) Same for monsters
(3) Amend the pass-thru rules so that a friendly figure cannot allow you to pass if it has an opponent in an adjacent square

Characters may, however, pass through an occupied square, provided that the player controlling the obstructing character allows you to pass and the obstructing character is not adjacent to another opponent; otherwise, you must take another route or stop. Only one character can occupy a square.

[Chwat]

What if the unit {Hero or Monster} rolls 1 combat Dice when moving into an occupied friendly square that is in combat!
as if it was hit in chaos of the fight, not sure what icon you would use for a hit thou.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

In my original post, I did go with the "soft" option of saying you CAN do the move but it comes with a penalty in order to increase player choice but on reflection it also increases complexity so now I'm favouring the you CANNOT option due to its simplicity, although I may revise that in future...as always.

I'm just struggling with the wording as it sounds more complicated when you write it down than it actually is, maybe...

If you are the only character adjacent to an opponent then you cannot move away from that square

But you could add a roll in to determine whether you can get away or not, and that opens up the possibility of having a skill for specific hero types Rogue/Thief/Halfling and monster types Goblin that give them a bonus on that roll...perhaps you can only move away if your movement roll total is greater than the monsters movement roll (or vice versa) but that would be harder to track the other way around as who would remember the heroes movement total by the EWPs turn?

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Scenario 1:
Barbarian rounds the corner revealing an Orc, but his movement doesn’t take him close enough to attack, so he advances as far as he can, ending his turn. Wizard decides discretion is the better part of valour and hangs back peeking around the corner.

Then on EWP’s turn, Orc moves forward, strolls passed the advancing Barbarian, and attacks the Wizard.

scenario1.png

Valid according to the rules and a valid tactic for the EWP, but you can’t help wondering what the Barbarian was doing that allowed the Orc to slip passed (especially if you are the Wizard player!), did an unusual wall carving distract him at the critical moment…

Or scenario 2:
Orc has survived an attack by the Barbarian and on EWPs turn strolls away from the attacking Barbarian and moves and attacks the Wizard instead.

scenario2.png

Or the more complex, combination of 1 and 2 in scenario 3:

Orc ignores the immediate threat of being simultaneously attacked by 3 mighty heroes and just casually strolls out of danger, dances around the heroes and attacks the “soft” target of the Wizard.

scenario3.png

AHQ handles this through the concept of “death zones” but the explanation of how those work is long and complicated, but I do feel that something needs to be done here, any ideas?

My initial suggestion…

You cannot move out of a square that can be attacked in close combat by an enemy unless that enemy is itself in a square that can be attacked in close combat by another character.

[MonsterMotor]

Yes, these are interesting examples that occur from time to time. A simple possibility is to have the monster roll movement dice (for initiative) if it starts its move adjacent to a hero, so it has a chance to roll low and not reach the target.

More complicated rule options would introduce a kind of zone-of-control mechanics that you mentioned. Such rules are very common in strategy games, so if a figure leaves a zone of control, then it must pay extra movement points (or is not allowed to move at all in the extreme case). But I am not sure if HQ is the right system to have such a rule included because of the complexity.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

I'm not sure if you are referring to some form of "dodge" roll here that either allows the character to move out of or through contested square if the roll is successful or perhaps ends their turn if unsuccessful, which could work but I'm not sure how simple that would be to implement, what values would you use for the hero and monsters for a dodge roll and what mechanism?

I do share your concerns about keeping it simple but I'm not sure that the rule presented is too complex...although the wording may need work

You cannot move out of a square that can be attacked in close combat by an enemy unless that enemy is itself in a square that can be attacked in close combat by another character.

That said, this is even simpler...

You cannot move out of a square that can be attacked in close combat by an enemy.

[MonsterMotor]

No, I meant to simply let the monster roll movement dice instead of using its fixed movement value, e.g., by converting full 4 movement points into 1D6. No extra dodge rolls necessary here.

Yes, your two example rules are indeed simple. But they would mean that two opponents will be locked in melee combat until one of them dies (or is relieved by somebody else in the first example, who then needs to fight until he or the other one dies). I don't see that resulting in an enjoyable gameplay in HQ, especially for the heroes, and it would also make the whole game more static. Also, the formulations may allow figures with diagonal attacks (which I would also count as close combat attacks) to trap opponents without diagonal attacks on a diagonally adjacent field without giving them any chance to retaliate, so the text should be clarified to prevent that.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Yes, your two example rules are indeed simple. But they would mean that two opponents will be locked in melee combat until one of them dies (or is relieved by somebody else in the first example, who then needs to fight until he or the other one dies). I don't see that resulting in an enjoyable gameplay in HQ, especially for the heroes, and it would also make the whole game more static. Also, the formulations may allow figures with diagonal attacks (which I would also count as close combat attacks) to trap opponents without diagonal attacks on a diagonally adjacent field without giving them any chance to retaliate, so the text should be clarified to prevent that.

Two good points here, I'm not sure how much of an issue the "locked in combat until one side is dead" would really cause, but the diagonal challenge is a very good point as I too would consider that close combat.

No, I meant to simply let the monster roll movement dice instead of using its fixed movement value, e.g., by converting full 4 movement points into 1D6. No extra dodge rolls necessary here.

I'm not a fan of this approach because for a monster with a movement of 8, such as an Orc, they would roll 2D6 which would result in 3 possible outcomes;

1. Low roll and they can't reach the target - which is fine
2. Medium roll and they can reach the target - fine
3. High roll and they can reach the target and can in fact now reach a target that they couldn't have reached if they weren't in combat, for example one that is 9 squares away. For me the ability to actually move further than usual because you start in a combat situation doesn't make sense.

You could get around this by capping the roll to the monsters maximum but this feels contrived and inelegant, roll a D6 for each full 4 points of movement but count any roll above 4 as 4. How would you handle a monster with a movement of 7, would this be D6+3 but capped at 7 or just D6?

Also in scenario 1, if we swapped out the Orc with a Goblin, he would have used 4 points of movement to get adjacent to the Barbarian and would have 6 points remaining, would he get 2D6+2 to reflect his original 4+4+2, or 2D6 to reflect his original 2 full 4 points, or D6+2 to represent his remaining 6, or just D6 to represent the whole 4 remaining to him? What if he only had 3 points of movement remaining?

Perhaps we have inadvertently stumbled onto a better mechanism with a simple dodge rule.

If you consider the jump (jumping a pit) mechanism then effectively (and I'm paraphrasing here) you move onto a pit, roll a combat die, if you roll a shield then you carry on as normal, if you roll a skull then you fall into the pit ending your turn (and suffering a 1 BP loss)

Perhaps we could do something similar here.

To move from a square that can be attacked in close combat by an enemy you must roll a combat die, if you roll shields then you can move as normal, if you roll a skull then your turn ends.

[MonsterMotor]

No, I meant to simply let the monster roll movement dice instead of using its fixed movement value, e.g., by converting full 4 movement points into 1D6. No extra dodge rolls necessary here.

I'm not a fan of this approach because for a monster with a movement of 8, such as an Orc, they would roll 2D6 which would result in 3 possible outcomes;

1. Low roll and they can't reach the target - which is fine
2. Medium roll and they can reach the target - fine
3. High roll and they can reach the target and can in fact now reach a target that they couldn't have reached if they weren't in combat, for example one that is 9 squares away. For me the ability to actually move further than usual because you start in a combat situation doesn't make sense.

You could get around this by capping the roll to the monsters maximum but this feels contrived and inelegant, roll a D6 for each full 4 points of movement but count any roll above 4 as 4. How would you handle a monster with a movement of 7, would this be D6+3 but capped at 7 or just D6?

Also in scenario 1, if we swapped out the Orc with a Goblin, he would have used 4 points of movement to get adjacent to the Barbarian and would have 6 points remaining, would he get 2D6+2 to reflect his original 4+4+2, or 2D6 to reflect his original 2 full 4 points, or D6+2 to represent his remaining 6, or just D6 to represent the whole 4 remaining to him? What if he only had 3 points of movement remaining?

Yes, that is what I meant. Decompose the number as a sum of 4s to be converted to 1D6s and leave the rest unchanged.

Your examples: 7 = 4 + 3 --> 1D6 + 3 and 10 = 4 + 4 + 2 --> 2D6 + 2. And 3 remains 3.

Perhaps we have inadvertently stumbled onto a better mechanism with a simple dodge rule.

If you consider the jump (jumping a pit) mechanism then effectively (and I'm paraphrasing here) you move onto a pit, roll a combat die, if you roll a shield then you carry on as normal, if you roll a skull then you fall into the pit ending your turn (and suffering a 1 BP loss)

Perhaps we could do something similar here.

To move from a square that can be attacked in close combat by an enemy you must roll a combat die, if you roll shields then you can move as normal, if you roll a skull then your turn ends.

Ok, this sounds like something worth trying out on the game board. Maybe better write "... then your movement ends." because then a normal action can still be done.

Perhaps the probability of getting stuck may need further adjustment. In your first picture example, the orc would unlikely dare to pass the barbarian if that guy was wielding a weapon with diagonal attack capability because he could get stuck on the first square with a 50% probability, which would cost him his complete attack.

Also, there might be issues when guarding corners. A hero with a diagonal attack could wait 1 square behind a corner and stop an orc from moving onto the corner square with a 50% probability, which the orc would need to make his normal attack.