Overwatching close combat

[Thade]

I played a game over the weekend and an interesting situation came up: a character (arbiter) wanted to fire on a target (servitor), but a friendly (inquisitor) was fighting the servitor. I was GMing and I suggested that the arbiter overwatch the combat, so that as soon as he had a clear shot he'd fire a snap shot at the servitor. The player had to specify if the arbiter would fire if the servitor went to arms length (therefore hitting his target with a 2/3 chance instead of 1/2) or if the servitor exited combat entirely.

The player elected to wait til the servitor was out of combat; when the servitor broke off to try and fire on the inquisitor, it was gunned down by the arbiter.

I felt that it worked out pretty well, but I wanted to know what others thought. Has anyone else had similar experience?

[Necris]

I once played a game where a marksman over watched a combat waiting to see who won, if the enemy won he would take his shot if the enemy lost the combat he would move on to another target. Unfortunately it never got that far as a death cultist pounced on  him,

[Kaled]

I regularly allow players to declare over watch on situations other than those in the rulebook - the most common being declaring they'll shoot an opposing character if he does anything offensive like drawing a weapon or starting to charge.

[MarcoSkoll]

Pretty much as Kaled said - lots of GMs/players use overwatch as a "I will shoot if X happens" command. X might be the default of a target moving into a defined area, it might be a given character taking hostile action, or any number of reasonable-ish possibilities.

I have also used it in combination with Rock Steady Aim, such that I can overwatch an area/target/etc while moving. Cool, but tends to suffer from the downside of those movement penalties when I do need to shoot!

[Koval]

I recall an "I will shoot if X happens" being used against me, to fairly devastating effect, during the Twin Arches finale -- Khisanith had her rifle trained on Tyra, who in turn had her bolt pistol trained on Kais (the main difference was that Tyra was aiming, not overwatching). As Tyra had no way of knowing that she was sitting in a sniper's sights, I had her open fire on Kais the instant he was alone, at which point Khisanith shot Tyra in the arm.

It may not be a part of the core overwatch rules, but there's fundamentally nothing wrong with it in my book.

[Thade]

Seems like it's fairly fluid then. The overwatch on a character if they draw a weapon is pretty interesting: very useful.

[DapperAnarchist]

For "I will shoot when X happens", would a roll to see that X is happening be appropriate? Like an awareness roll, or an initiative roll to be fast enough.

[Koval]

For "I will shoot when X happens", would a roll to see that X is happening be appropriate? Like an awareness roll, or an initiative roll to be fast enough.

In the example I gave, Khisanith was very definitely aware of what Tyra was doing, and as an Eldar, her Initiative would've been high enough to make a test based on that rather moot. (Tyra on the other hand wasn't overwatching, so she shot Kais as a normal action.)

It's definitely a possibility though.

[MarcoSkoll]

At present, I wouldn't say it's all that different from overwatch already including the possibility of shooting in the a fraction of a second while a target darts past an opening.

My current draft for Inquisitor 2 rules do however make all reactions (of which overwatch is a special subtype) require an initiative roll - or, in many cases, a roll off to see which action/reaction happens first.