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?