Prepare for combat (Close combat overwatch)

[CantStrafeRight]

I GMed a game last week where a player asked if it was possible for them to do a close combat overwatch.  They had a character that has no guns approaching a blip on their radar that might have been a genestealer, but they were unsure. They wanted to get closer to see what it was and be ready for combat if it turned out to be the xenos they were hunting. 

I allowed them to do it but we never got into a situation where it came into affect.  I thought it was a good idea and thought I would post about it here along with 2 of the ways I could see it working, to see what people here thought.

The two options I thought were:

A ) If a character is attacked in close combat after a Prepare For Combat action they get one close combat attack before the attacking player gets their close combat actions. 

B) If a character is attacked in close combat after a Prepare For Combat action their WS is considered to be 20 higher until the beginning of the their next turn.  This can be used to help parrying and dodging.

Anyone got any feedback on this? 

[MarcoSkoll]

It's an interesting concept and I can't see a particular problem with allowing it. I see shooting overwatch used more generally in a lot of games - "I'll shoot if he does anything aggressive" is a popular one.

Of those two, I'd go with A.

B is quite a lot like the "guarded attack" option in Dark Heresy; as compared to a normal close combat attack, it's a full action (rather than a half action), is at -10 WS, but gives +10 to Parry and Dodge until next turn.
Problem is, they're both sort of weird.

The guarded attack is strictly only really an option if in close combat* (not that I think I'd forbid it being used if not), the prepare for combat is only really an option if not in close combat.
*Given that Dodge applies against shooting in Dark Heresy, this can have the effect that the character can be better at dodging bullets while they have a melee opponent to deal with than not...

It's similarly a bit weird that characters can be better if prepared for a surprise than 10 seconds later when prepared for a no longer at all surprising scenario.

And +20 WS? Hmm.

If I look at some of my melee experts, like Silva Birgen or Markus Karlmunn, they're mean because they're good at parrying. Frequently, they'll get more counter-attacks in a turn than actual rolled actions - hell, Silva once flattened two characters in the space between the end of her turn and the recovery phase...

She got charged by one character, passed her Lightning Reflexes roll to swap weapons, scored three counter attacks and connected the last one with his head, rolling Acute injury. The second charges, she counter-attacked twice, got a critical hit with the second and crippled the guy's chest. I'll admit there was a lot of fluky rolling, but it would have been a lot less of a long shot if she'd been able to declare an extra +20 WS first.

~~~~~

However, good thinking, nonetheless. Reactive play is something I'd like to see more of in Inquisitor - if I ever kick my ideas about writing my version of 2nd edition Inquisitor into gear, making reactive options more common would be a big focus for me.

The sequential nature of the game (character A acts, character B acts, etc) as it currently is does sometimes present a problem.