Enemy Targeting

[DeCastro85]

Greetings everyone, I just recently started to play the Darkening of Mirkwood and I'm enjoying it very much.

However there is something that seemed a bit odd for me, our Loremaster decides his enemies target in combat "mechanically" by our stances. Meaning someone on vanguard will automatically get attacked by more than one enemy while someone on defensive will not. While factoring that in his decision, makes sense, enemies will simply stop attacking if the same vanguard player change his stance to a defensive one. This is an oversimplification but such situations did happen. While I do know the LM can target whomever he choses, is there an argument aganist this behavior? The way the game has been translated to our language, stances can be confused with positioning, the stance names also imply some connection to that. Does a defensive stance character retreats into safety? Does a vanguard character leap into danger? I searched for clarification on that but failed so far. I would like to know how thing roll on your games.

Sorry for my poor english.

[Otaku-sempai]

I cannot provide a definitive answer, however, a hero can switch from a forward stance to an open stance or a defensive stance without changing position. The stance represents the style of fighting being used. Rearward stance is an exception as it indicates that the hero is positioned to make ranged attacks.

[Stormcrow]

If he is going by the book, and if there are more enemies than heroes, the Loremaster assigns one enemy of his choice to each hero in a close combat stance, then assigns the leftover enemies to either engage with an already-engaged hero or stand back, possibly to attack with missiles.

This means that it's perfectly fine for the Loremaster to assign multiple enemies to heroes in the forward stance (what you're calling the vanguard stance), provided he has already assigned one enemy to each hero. He can't, for instance, assign two enemies to a hero in the forward stance and none to a hero in the defensive stance.

If there are more heroes than enemies, or if the sides are equally matched. then the players get to choose which enemies they engage with, not the Loremaster. Like the Loremaster, the players must engage all of the enemies before assigning additional heroes to engage an enemy multiple times. Only heroes in close combat stances are paired with enemies.

A stance describes how aggressively you are fighting and what tactics you use; their names are not literal indicators of a hero's location. A hero in the forward stance fights aggressively, might charge into enemies, and takes little heed to his own defense. A hero in the open stance fights offensively but does not sacrifice his own defense for every offensive advantage. A hero in the defensive stance looks first to his own safety, only attacking when the opportunity presents itself. A hero in the rearward stance stands away from the close combat, not necessarily literally in the rear, but out of range of the melee.

[Geomtje]

Stromcrow pretty much sums it up.

I remember misunderstanding forward-, open-, defensive- and rearward stance. I first thought it had to do with how close you were opposed to your enemy. This partially had to do with the wording and a YouTube video.

However, it is about how you aggressive/defensive your stance is. So imagine it as pointing a sword forward (forward stance), holding your sword to deflect posible incoming blows (defensive stance) or keeping the sword somewhat in between (open stance). The only stance that has to do with ‘distance’ so to say is rearward stance, which means you are out of reach of the enemy, being able to use a ranged weapon.

There are some additional rules in the Adventurers Companion, dealing with combat roles and engaging with specific types of enemies. But it doesn’t sound like you are using those.