Shattered Kingdoms

I like this solution. Increased rate of failure for every group member prone. Over three and it should be nearly impossible to accomplish.

It's really hard to have more than 3 prone members in a group anyway. Even 3 is very unlikely.

I was gonna say that too, lol. That'd require like a group of 4 or more mercs.

Can you say spirit horde? Polearm/spear/landy with trip (esp now that fly gimps chance to hit)? Its possible but unlikely. If the opponent is that far in advantage, that should stop your retreat.

Oh, wow, I completely forgot about spirit horde, and shamans are my favorite.

But actually, I agree with Achernar, now that I think about it. 3 prone, should make it nearly impossible, 1 or 2 should just make it harder.

I still think mechanics wise your failure chance won't affect retreat at all Achernar.

I was thinking more like a 50% chance each prone member stays behind(they either get up and get out in time or they don't), and a 10%(perhaps a bit more) chance of a retreat failure adding up for each prone member(the others helping the prone ones to get up, they don't hear the commands well in the heat of battle and they end up running in all directions).

This way it won't be so easy to use tactics of o npc c 'holy w';*walk in*;retreat and repeat. You risk your law NPC for example staying behind and getting killed, so you have to get another one. Generally, retreat won't be an easy way out of any hard situation and every merc will have to think twice before going in a battle if he can pull out everyone in one piece. That, or he can simply wait for the "regains its footing" message and retreat the proper time.

This compromise doesn't bother me. I hope that Dulrik chooses a solution somewhere in this ballpark for simplicity's sake. At least in understanding how it works. I don't know if coding the solution will be anyting about simplicity.

If you are prone you are left behind its as simple as that.

You want to make a STR check to "pull" everyone out that is prone? Uh, horseshit.

How about if the merc first removes his shield and sword, and everyone of the opposing group gets 1 full attack round on him in which he isn't able to dodge, or shield block(obviously) then I'll be okay with it.

Short of that, no. All the idea's for justifying why a prone person should not be left behind are [REDACTED], and although it is a nerf to retreat I can't say that Mercs couldn't take one.

Is it possible to make retreat do a check of the merc's rescue skill aswell as size and weight capacity? That's the only way I see it plausible to save the prone members in the group.

Let me just say this. Retreat has always taken out bashed/tripped opponents. I'm willing to wager 80% of the people in this thread didn't even know that. I for one didn't. I guess with that being said if it had always been this way, and was never a problem, why change it? I suppose I'm kind of playing devil's advocate here.