Well, it'll be hard to explain without the pictures or eloquence of the writers, but I'll sum things up as best I can...
You can change your facing as you move as you enter each space. If you don't move, or only take a 5' step, you can also make one facing adjustment as a free action at any point during the round. That's how the adjustments work...
Fr Fr Fr
Fl PC Fl
Re Re Re
Ok, using the above: PC=your character, Fr=Front, Fl=Flank, Re=Rear
And this is just for medium or small creatures, I'm not going to try to map out larger creatures, but it works on the same concept.
You still threaten all of the squares. However, if you attack either of the flanking squares, you are at a -5 to attack, and if you attack rear squares, you are at a -10. If you have the Combat Reflexes feat, the flank penalty disappears. If you have Whirlwind Attack, there is no penalty to any square.
There is a lot more to it than that, but that should give you an idea.
It's really quite cool. I think it will work really well for the "just prior to combat rounds" too. You can actually sneak up on someone from behind. They no longer face every direction all the time...
So while the idea of standing, facing the same direction for 6 seconds might seem like a stretch, but I think it's no more of a stretch than constantly turning and facing all directions. While 1 second rounds could probably help towards making things more realistic, I certainly wouldn't want to play out a combat that way...it'd take forever!
Anyway, I recommend the book. It has lots of yummy goodness in it. But I suppose you can check out the other thread for more info on that. I'd like to keep this one focused on the facing rules.
