New House rule

[Rouroux]

I know this seems very deep, but I propose you this, for a little more realistic combat action.

------> The vision of a character is only and always 180 degree.

Exemple, Roggs, a soldier, uses his full attack action to attack storm troopers, four to be precise. There is one to his left, one to his right, one in front of him and on behind him... it should look like this:


......................S


S...............Roggs............S



......................S


Roggs has 4 attacks for this round, and he wants to shoot everyone of them (like they have only 1 wound point left) Roggs can shoot the the two on both sides and the one in front of him, but not the one behind him, for he is actually BEHIND and Roggs cannot see him.
So Roggs will attack the 3 stormtroopers he sees, and kill them in one shot but looses his last attack because he sees no more ennemy in front of him for this round. This does not deny the fact that Roggs knows that there is still one behind him, he just doesn't see him...for the moment.

This rule can be countered by someone who wields 2 weapons (for it is more maneuvrable to attack someone behind with an off hand attack) or with the Feat:
Quick turn melee and Quick turn Ranged... for either melee or range it is different feat.

Tell me what you think!

[Flax]

In my opinion:

1) This adds nothing but complications to combat

2) This is a game not real life, so if Roggs have four attacks why not let him use them all? (Btw facing is usually unimportant in personal combat)

3)The number of house rules should be keeped to a bare minimum. When to many variables enter combat it the pace becomes slow and playing becomes tedious.

[Banzai Kamikaze]

The vision of characters has already been discussed to death in the official Star Wars RPG forum. Your house rule is interesting, but as Flax said, it would make combats much more complicated (enemies on different floors, odd angles, etc.).

Furthermore, if you know someone is behind you, why can't you attack him? In 6 seconds, you have plenty of time to attack someone in front of you and someone behind you.

You could say that an unexpecting enemy has a vision of 180 degrees when he is not in a combat situation. This is more logical, as the enemy has no reason to look back if he doesn't expect any attacks. This is useful for someone sneaking on him.

In a combat situation. sneaking on someone is much more difficult since he has a 360degrees vision. Also, in combat, everyone has a -5 penalty on spot checks (official ruling) since you don't pay attention to everything. So, the vision aspect has already been treated in official ruling, but it isn't realistic, I agree.

If others find your rule interesting, I might add it though.

[Rouroux]

I understand...

You may delete this thread...since it's meaning has been terminated...to keep the number of useless threads to a minimum

[Archangel Zero]

The combat system is actually more realistic than this house rule because a character could be aware of an opponent without actually seeing him: by hearing him walking, for example. However, it is a DM's responsibility to add realism by not showing NPCs that are sneaking and, if he wants, rolling the spot/listen checks without the PCs being aware of it causing a surprise factor (but also possibly a frustration factor).