Stance and engaging enemies

[JoeArcher]

I have a question regarding this.

Can two player characters engage the same creature and be in different stances? Was just pondering since the way the community stance mat is set up and when using miniatures, you can't place them all next to each other.

[Hermes Serpent]

Yes, but the limit is three characters or adversaries vs. one target unless the target is larger.

Forget what you think you know about fighting in miniatures based RPG's.
The stance in One Ring is purely how aggressive the hero is. It says nothing about spatial location. Having a mat sometimes confuses the issue. You may be better off having a small circular changeable base to stand the figure on which is labelled with it's current stance.

[Dunkelbrink]

What Hermes said.

I tried to use miniatures on the stance mat at first, but it really just confused the players. So the solution for us was to use a piece with the character's name on it on the stance mat (just to show current stance; cards or something similar would work as well), while we use miniatures to show the characters, number of enemies and actual positioning (engagement, terrain etc.)

[Hermes Serpent]

Dunkelbrink reminded me about cards. Somewhere in the dim dark recesses of this board someone posted a set of four cards with the stances and the options printed on them. They are great to hand out to the players as an aide-memoire and to stand a miniature on. I'm using the Hobbit 3.75 inch action figures for future public/convention games and find that if I can keep the players from taking off the removeable bits they work quite well in informing the players about stances with the cards under them.

I've dug out the sheet with the four stance cards on it and put it in my Google drive - link below.
Combat Stance Info.pdf is the file with the cards

[beckett]

Dunkelbrink reminded me about cards. Somewhere in the dim dark recesses of this board someone posted a set of four cards with the stances and the options printed on them. They are great to hand out to the players as an aide-memoire and to stand a miniature on. I'm using the Hobbit 3.75 inch action figures for future public/convention games and find that if I can keep the players from taking off the removeable bits they work quite well in informing the players about stances with the cards under them.

I've dug out the sheet with the four stance cards on it and put it in my Google drive - link below.
Combat Stance Info.pdf is the file with the cards

Does anyone have the ability to update the four stance cards with the tweaks from the revised rulebook?

[shipwreck]

I've adapted a 'cheat sheet' for the players in my home game from the rules and a few other cheat sheets I've found around here.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw3u7v ... sp=sharing

If that's not quite usable I could readjust the first page to be more 'card shaped'. I'm not really a designer so it won't look very zazzy.

[Rich H]

The stance in One Ring is purely how aggressive the hero is. It says nothing about spatial location.

... Except Rearward which does relate to spatial location, so it's interchangeable depending on the Stance - close combat stances (forward, open, defensive) are about attitude/aggression but ranged (rearward) is about spatial location in relation to the close combat battle lines. I can see why people new to the game often have trouble working it out, about 50% of my players did.

[jamesrbrown]

The stance in One Ring is purely how aggressive the hero is. It says nothing about spatial location.

I would say the only "spacial" reference is the difference between close combat (Forward-Open-Defensive) and ranged combat (Rearward).

The deciding paragraph concerning Rearward being related to location rather than attitude is on page 173 of hardback. It says, "Characters in a Rearward stance may not attack using close combat weapons, and may be targeted only by attackers using ranged weapons."

This clearly defines Rearward stance as a ranged position. Close combat stances are all engaged positions, which means they are "close" enough to only use melee weapons and limits attacks to engaged opponents. However, to provide choices in tactics/posture/aggression/attitude, close combat offers three stances.

EDIT: Rich, you posted first! I see that we had the exact same thought

[Hermes Serpent]

I should have qualified my statement by inserting close-combat between The and Stance at the beginning of that statement but then I should have known the pedants and nitpickers would be out in force

[Rich H]

... but then I should have known the pedants and nitpickers would be out in force

Heh, heh. You got both me and James, Hermes, you should feel honoured!