Interesting how even after 20 years of playing RPGs, new basic rule questions crop up...:
So the PC group gets into a fight with a bunch of bugbears and goblins in a long 10 foot wide tunnel with corners etc, where it's more advantageous for the goblins to shoot their short bows than go melee straight away.
The monsters are initially all bunched up in adjacent squares. So the way I played them was that one by one they moved closer to their target and after their movement, they fired their arrow. Moving them individually, created straight lines of sight to the first PC target, enabling some of the goblins to shoot without incurring penalties for covering each other's lines of sight. In other words, I was able to have direct lines of sight for MORE than just the first two goblins.
The players protested, saying that given the monsters all move on the same initiative, I should assume they move at the same time, therefore I should give the players partial cover against everyone except the first two goblins. Or I should roll initiative for each monster individually because then more would be in the way of others etc...
Not sure if I'm making myself clear, I tried to google this, but it's quite specific... What do you all say?
Thx!
So the PC group gets into a fight with a bunch of bugbears and goblins in a long 10 foot wide tunnel with corners etc, where it's more advantageous for the goblins to shoot their short bows than go melee straight away.
The monsters are initially all bunched up in adjacent squares. So the way I played them was that one by one they moved closer to their target and after their movement, they fired their arrow. Moving them individually, created straight lines of sight to the first PC target, enabling some of the goblins to shoot without incurring penalties for covering each other's lines of sight. In other words, I was able to have direct lines of sight for MORE than just the first two goblins.
The players protested, saying that given the monsters all move on the same initiative, I should assume they move at the same time, therefore I should give the players partial cover against everyone except the first two goblins. Or I should roll initiative for each monster individually because then more would be in the way of others etc...
Not sure if I'm making myself clear, I tried to google this, but it's quite specific... What do you all say?
Thx!