Trouvere
Explorer
[sblock=OOC]I don't believe saving a few hours (or possibly not, if events higher in the initiative order make a posting irrelevant) is worth the loss of cooperative team potential, and Tarag's full potential. I'd rather have a good fight than a marginally quicker one, in a game that's going to last months and months anyway.
If you pre-post actions that include a move to a new square, there's a good chance someone will have to say 'sorry, that's right where my guy was going to already be', in which case no time is saved. Worse, to avoid requiring the confusion of a re-write, they might feel some pressure to do something else, on the basis of actions that haven't happened yet, which is ludicrous (and in an opening round worse than that, if other PCs have spent resources to increase their chances of acting first).
But if you pre-post a turn without including any movement in order to avoid the above problems, then you're only using a fraction of your available actions, which is horribly unoptimal.
Whether you don't post a move (because you don't want to make one, or you can't know where you can move), or you do and pick a square that won't be occupied, you're still giving up the chance to do anything in response to earlier events in the round.
In the present situation - and of course it may not be true if Turket has any more sneaky tricks up his sleeve - Turket can just alternate between O1 and P2, forcing Keldar to run back and forth between N1 and P3 to get one single sneak attack per round (+10, 2d6+3 is better than +6/+6, 1d6+3/1d6+1 when facing unspecified DR 5, but +8/+8, 2d6+3/2d6+1 would be a lot better than that). Fimble's being foolhardy enough to occupy the corner of the room, from which we'd otherwise never extricate him. Blocking off P2, which contains the cellar doorway too, after all, forces Turket to stay in TWF SA flank or else move away from the walls, where in most possible continuations his position quickly deteriorates. I think that's obvious with a glance at a map with everyone in their most up to date positions.
If it seems that there's a better option than just trying to keep Turket flanked by the guy who, faute de mieux, has our best melee damage potential (though his +1d6 sneak attack doesn't quite match Galwynn's base weapon damage, and a real Rogue would be adding +3d6 by now), start yelling out IC. "Clear! Spell coming!" as a free action works just fine to get everyone to use withdraw actions before Tarag drops Burning Hands, Fimble drops Glitterdust, or Tommy drops Grease. But at this point we haven't even seen Turket make a melee attack. So, you know. We could actually take delivery of our own buttocks before we start panicking.
And after having typed all that, I'll find out he gets dropped by Tommy's 13 HP Magic Missile damage.[/sblock]
If you pre-post actions that include a move to a new square, there's a good chance someone will have to say 'sorry, that's right where my guy was going to already be', in which case no time is saved. Worse, to avoid requiring the confusion of a re-write, they might feel some pressure to do something else, on the basis of actions that haven't happened yet, which is ludicrous (and in an opening round worse than that, if other PCs have spent resources to increase their chances of acting first).
But if you pre-post a turn without including any movement in order to avoid the above problems, then you're only using a fraction of your available actions, which is horribly unoptimal.
Whether you don't post a move (because you don't want to make one, or you can't know where you can move), or you do and pick a square that won't be occupied, you're still giving up the chance to do anything in response to earlier events in the round.
In the present situation - and of course it may not be true if Turket has any more sneaky tricks up his sleeve - Turket can just alternate between O1 and P2, forcing Keldar to run back and forth between N1 and P3 to get one single sneak attack per round (+10, 2d6+3 is better than +6/+6, 1d6+3/1d6+1 when facing unspecified DR 5, but +8/+8, 2d6+3/2d6+1 would be a lot better than that). Fimble's being foolhardy enough to occupy the corner of the room, from which we'd otherwise never extricate him. Blocking off P2, which contains the cellar doorway too, after all, forces Turket to stay in TWF SA flank or else move away from the walls, where in most possible continuations his position quickly deteriorates. I think that's obvious with a glance at a map with everyone in their most up to date positions.
If it seems that there's a better option than just trying to keep Turket flanked by the guy who, faute de mieux, has our best melee damage potential (though his +1d6 sneak attack doesn't quite match Galwynn's base weapon damage, and a real Rogue would be adding +3d6 by now), start yelling out IC. "Clear! Spell coming!" as a free action works just fine to get everyone to use withdraw actions before Tarag drops Burning Hands, Fimble drops Glitterdust, or Tommy drops Grease. But at this point we haven't even seen Turket make a melee attack. So, you know. We could actually take delivery of our own buttocks before we start panicking.
And after having typed all that, I'll find out he gets dropped by Tommy's 13 HP Magic Missile damage.[/sblock]
