Defensive Stance

[Derek Jeter]

Any plans to look at how terribly buggy it is? Dueling a certain famous caliban and his character model teleports back 3 spaces and bugs me out and I'm stuck walking on a treadmill flat-footed unable to fix it as he wallops me. I learned to manage it in dungeons against npcs but against certain player phenotypes and npcs such as perfidus ones it literally is a death sentence, and I've spent a long long time working with it and doing the best I've can, and learned a lot on using it, but there's nothing to be done against certain enemies. People start scratching her head when she does the robot and its kinda... just blegh.

[SardineTheAncestor]

If locking the dwarven defender in place isn't possible because it's too glitchy, maybe reducing their movement speed to the same as the heavily encumbered speed (25%? 12.5%?) would be sufficient.

[zDark Shadowz]

Apply spring attack while it's active so that attacks of opportunity due to movement can't happen, maybe?

[EO]

Unfortunately there are only two ways to handle Defensive Stance as written in PnP; either you go with the base game's version, which doesn't lock you in place but whenever you move the stance breaks (which happens all the time in combat), or you lock the character in place and keep the stance on.

[Derek Jeter]

I assume that means theres no way to fix the animation bug of walking in place that can take multiple rounds of combat to fix and theres no easy fix? Especially since in combat randomly my opponents seem to teleport back when fighting me in stance, but i see it rarely or never against other opponents or on any other character. That's a shame. The ability is really, really buggy. Especially fighting larger character or monster models with longer reach and or longer reaching weapons. Also I'm sure you're aware that when you're engaged already it doesn't actually engage and you lose a round of combat. It's a shame.

[SardineTheAncestor]

Unfortunately there are only two ways to handle Defensive Stance as written in PnP; either you go with the base game's version, which doesn't lock you in place but whenever you move the stance breaks (which happens all the time in combat), or you lock the character in place and keep the stance on.

The first way would be much better. We already have people juggling expertise being cancelled by bard song and divine feats. This would be ideal in comparison.

But I still think seeing someone creep along at 12.5% movement speed (or whatever it is when you are heavily overencumbered) would be more than slow enough and preferable to the glitches.

[Philos]

I think it's better that we lock characters in place honestly. Imagine how frustrating it would be to have your stance break due the the combat dance animation or your target suddenly fleeing due to a moral lose away and you chase after them losing your stance.

[Derek Jeter]

It's just as frustrating to bug out walking in place and look like Michael Jackson moonwalking in place and getting walloped because of it as it would be losing it due to moving if not more. If you move youd still be able to fight move and not be flat footed in a broken walking animation.

[SardineTheAncestor]

Characters who do melee combat already have to stop themselves from moving after an enemy flees, otherwise they lose the rest of their attacks in that round. More importantly, they might trigger attacks of opportunity from other nearby enemies, since the game decides at random whether your character gives chase or attacks a random nearby enemy.

Honestly, it's a basic part of melee combat. If someone wants to play a dwarven defender, they probably love being right in the thick of it already, and they're used to the game's natural jank. Choosing to chase that enemy and break your stance so you can actually get them seems fine to me, glitching out and moonwalking seems like 2002 spaghetti.

On the other hand, reducing the defender's movement speed to 12.5% while in the stance accomplishes the same thing. They're not catching anyone like that, they're not glitching out either. Right now it seems like a huge detriment to an otherwise rare but iconic PRC.

[Derek Jeter]

Unfortunately there are only two ways to handle Defensive Stance as written in PnP; either you go with the base game's version, which doesn't lock you in place but whenever you move the stance breaks (which happens all the time in combat), or you lock the character in place and keep the stance on.

So is there truly no way to reduce movement speed in defensive stance by say, 95%, thus rendering yourself practically immobile, but not getting stuck flatfooted walking in place doing the moonwalk? I'm asking again because large creatures like fat phenotype caliban have a tendency to cause this issue without you moving your character/the big enemy moving, simply shifting in combat without doing a move command.