Individual action in close combat

[Uffoman]

First off, I have to say, I really like BE (and BW too). I've just been reading the book for the past week for the first time and my group is about to begin a new campaign next week. We have already burned a world and some characters and its all very exciting. We tried a few mock battles with the firefight rules too and they seem very promising.

So far there was one little thing, I could use some clarification with.

If close combat unit action goes into individual actions, wich characters in the units do the individual actions? Lets say I have a unit of 4 grunts, one heavy weapons specialist and a commander. They go up against a unit of seven grunts and a commander and tie for a close combat maneuver. The book says the following:

Individual Action: Close Combat skill
If the Close Combat unit action is successful or tied, all characters in
both engaged units privately choose a Close Combat action. See the
Close Combat Individual Actions heading in this chapter for details on
the options in Close Combat.

Does this mean that all characters in my unit engage all characters in the opposing unit with some of my men getting two enemies on them and each action is scripted as one mini firefight or just one close combat action? Or do just certain characters in the units go into the individual action? If so, how do you determine wich units do it?

How does this work with very large units engaging in close combat? Say a unit of 50 against a unit of 60?

Second question: Since the book explanation starts with a "If the Close Combat unit action is successful or tied..." Does this mean, that there is no individual combat if one side actually wins the unit action? I assume the successful part is referring to having close combat as an independent action and thus there would be no close combat action if tactics or command as a unit action failed.

[khelek]

I will take a stab at this. Hopefully someone with more detail can come along and correct me if I am wrong.

Does this mean that all characters in my unit engage all characters in the opposing unit with some of my men getting two enemies on them and each action is scripted as one mini firefight or just one close combat action? Or do just certain characters in the units go into the individual action? If so, how do you determine wich units do it?

Yes, all your guys are involved, and one gets double teamed. I believe that like normal fire fight the targeted side gets to choose who takes the hit, but you have to assign one hit to each character before some one can take a second hit.

How does this work with very large units engaging in close combat? Say a unit of 50 against a unit of 60?

The Firefight system is designed to be used for a group of five-ish.. so you would have a unit made up of 5 (or 6) teams of ten. I believe that it is in the book. A Fire Oppertunity is these 10 guys shooting at once, and a "kill" takes out approximately 1/5th of the opposition.

Second question: Since the book explanation starts with a "If the Close Combat unit action is successful or tied..." Does this mean, that there is no individual combat if one side actually wins the unit action? I assume the successful part is referring to having close combat as an independent action and thus there would be no close combat action if tactics or command as a unit action failed.

If the Close Combat action is failed then you do not get your intent, and the opponent gets theirs, which may be a withdraw, flank, etc... because the CC action failed there is no close combat!


I hope that helps.

[Uffoman]

So, lets see if I got it right. On a successful close combat action, each member or a team consisting of one fifth of the unit's members engages in close combat and defender gets to choose how they are paired up. Then each close combat action is rolled separately.

I have one more question about the close combat action with large units. How do you handle a situation, where one team ends up with members who have different close combat skills? Do you break up those teams into smaller ones, or do you take an average skill for the team's action?

[luke]

Jason's correct, but i think you're confused about the "one fifth."

A successful CC unit action, the individual characters within the unit may then make a CC individual action.

If the unit consists of player characters, then they get to choose their actions and suffer the blows from the enemy.

If you're playing mass battles, the unit chooses an action and makes a close combat test, and the results are applied to an enemy unit. Do you really want to sit around rolling for 1500 stormtroopers in your battalion? I didn't think so. Just roll once for the whole unit.

-L