movement and shooting Options

[James McMurray]

I'll preface this by saying that my group and I have played d20 for the past few years almost exclusively, so we're not used to people being able to act in the middle of their movement without some sort of special ability (a feat in D&D).

That said, what do people think about the ability to act during movement. The rules don't say whether you can or not, but they seem to imply that you can. However, it results in several odd occurrences being possible such as

• Step around the enemy's cover, shoot with no penalties, then run back to your cover.
• Mages can cast spells while sprinting (using athletics to increase their run speed)

Does anyone else have a problem with this, or any reasons why it shouldn't be house ruled?

[Zeel De Mort]

Using athletics to increase your running speed is a complex action, as is spellcasting, so you couldn't do both in the same phase, although you could do one then the other, or house rule that you can do both at once.

Regardless, yeah you can do things like moving around cover, shooting, and then moving into cover. A lot of people (including our group) house rule some aspect or other of the whole initiative or movement thing and when modifiers apply and when they don't. But even if you don't, remember that, even if you're negating all your opponent's cover by moving around and shooting, you will still get the penalty for walking, or more likely running, instead. Might not be as high but it's still something to consider.

SR is more realistic than D&D in regard to moving/acting, but also a bit harder to manage I suppose. Same goes for a lot of things.

[Kagetenshi]

You declare your movement at the beginning of the turn. If you step around cover, you take the Attacker Walking penalty. For running, Attacker Running. Also, your movement is divided among every initiative pass, regardless of whether or not you get an action in it.

As for mages casting spells whilst sprinting, I believe using Athletics to increase run speed is a Complex Action. Otherwise, why would it be a problem?

And for balancing the duck out of cover, shoot, duck back in: the very held actions your other thread discusses.

~J

[grendel]

If you act while moving, you suffer movement penalties as per the ranged combat modifiers table. Which means if you walk around your opponent's cover you'll take a +1 or +2 depending on if it's difficult ground or not. Also, movement is broken up over the total number of passes in a combat turn. This means that for a human with a quickness of 6, who can walk 6 meters per combat turn, could only move two meters per combat pass if the combat turn had three passes. So, you could still move to circumvent an opponents cover, but you would be unable to move back to your own cover until next pass.

Also, sprinting is a complex action, which means a mage cannot cast spells while in the process.

[Nikoli]

I recall something in the FAQ about changing direction. You can't alter your movement that much till the next new initiative. I could be wrong though. Just seems cheesy to dart out, shoot them with them having no cover then dart back behind a trol.. I mean cover.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Count the movement before actions. If there are several Initiative Passes in a CT, divide everybody's movement to all the Init Passes and calculate those before anything else happens in that Init Pass. That should solve most problems.

You can't cast a spell or do much anything else while sprinting -- that takes a Complex Action and is only effective for that one Combat Phase.

[GrinderTheTroll]

[Kagetenshi]

Three seconds long.

~J

[grendel]

Running isn't a complex action, it's movement. Sprinting is a complex action.

[James McMurray]

Sorry, I had missed that sprinting was complex. But you can still run at top speed and cast a spell, or pop around cover and shoot someone. Attacker running (+2) is a lot better than defender has cover (+4).

It just seems kind of silly to me. I've watched a lot of gunfights on TV and you never see someone doing something like that. While I've never seen a real gunfight (except on reality TV shows) I seriously doubt that you'll find anyone running around cover, taking 2 shots, and then running back.

[Kagetenshi]

Attacker Running is +4, so 50% cover is a wash. On difficult ground, it's +6.

~J

[Rev]

Does it say sprinting is a complex action someplace?
I thought it was a simple action.

PS I think it is dumb to let people move out of full cover, shoot, then move back into full cover. If they do that you could just give them partial cover. The combat system is turn based for reasons of OOC expediency, not because thats the way things are really happening IC. Similarly if a person just runs from one full cover spot to another across open space they probably should not get full cover on the next shot. Give them some sort of average cover over the phase. At least do all that if you want to have highly tactical combat. If you don't it doesn't matter much.

[Cochise]

[James McMurray]

That's what happens when I don't have my book in front of me while posting.

Cochise: It says it in the movement section, page 108, under the "Running" header.

[Crimson Jack]

What is the target number modifier for kicking ass and chewing bubble gum? :D

[Austere Emancipa...]

Dunno about SRComp, but it certainly says so on page 108 in SR3.

[James McMurray]

[Zeel De Mort]

[James McMurray]

What's your house rule?

[Zeel De Mort]

As luck would have it I was just looking for the document that has various house rules of ours, so here you go. I'm sure our GM won't mind you guys looking over and disecting it. I've not actually re-read it myself, and we rarely need it, but anyway this is said set of rules:


• Attacking from cover. If a character starts his action behind full cover, he can move and attack normally, but cannot end his action in full cover without spending at least a simple action at the start or end of the attack. Also, the furthest change in cover modifier a simple action can provide is+4. So a character starting in full cover can move, fire from partial cover +4 (one simple) and then return to full cover +8 (one simple). If he wanted to fire from +2 cover, then at the end he could only return to a maximum of +6 cover. Similarly, a character standing behind a wall (partial cover) can use a free action at the end of his phase to drop prone (full cover). But his next action would consist of change position (simple) to partial cover +4, fire from partial cover (simple) and drop prone (free). In the case of a character who wishes to run across the end of a corridor from full cover to full cover whilst firing down the corridor, the following rules should be used. The character may do this, but still uses a simple action to end his phase in cover; he may use the other simple to fire if possible. However, he is subject to cover penalties and return fire as though in partial cover till his next action. If a character wishes to move from like cover to like (other than full) then he can use all of his actions for firing, and will take the cover penalty on them. If he changes type of cover on this kind of action he can choose which modifier will apply.

[Kagetenshi]

[Rev]

Holding actions might not help. You would have to allow action holding charachters to take thier turn in the middle of another charachters turn:

Alice moves from cover and fires a semi-automatic shot
_Bob uses his held action to fire a semi-automatic shot at alice
__Charlie uses his held action to fire a full auto burst at Bob
_Bob readies a grenade.
Alice fires her second shot shot and moves back to cover.

That would work ok too, probably about the same management pain as averaging cover values.

[hahnsoo]

We rule that you can shoot out of Full Cover (pop out, take a shot, pop back in), but then you compromise your cover down to a level that your character chooses. If you jump out and shoot, you only get a +1 penalty to attack, but you only get a +2 cover modifier (same as 25% cover). If you lean out and shoot, you get a +2 penalty to attack, but you only get a +4 cover modifier (same as 50% cover). If you just stick out your hand and head and fire shots, you get a +3 attack modifire, but a +6 cover modifier (same as 75% cover). If you take a shot, you are automatically not taking advantage of full cover because you are not completely hidden... it's not like you pop out once and fire, you are looking for an opening and thus you pop out multiple times during the firefight until you can take a shot. This is just like if you walk or run at any point during your action, the movement modifiers affect you until your next action. You don't run, then stop, negating the run modifiers.

Thinking about movement (and the initiative count) as a process rather than an end point does wonders in determining how certain situations work. It's not "I fire and move, then you fire and move", it's an abstraction of how people fluidly move in a room and an approximate order of how the shots landed.

[James McMurray]

[Kagetenshi]