Tactical question re: facings and rear attacks (somewhat long)

[slowtrain]

Is there any way to prevent party members from rotating during a battle and leaving their backs exposed to the enemy who can then land a double damage (or more) attack? The manual says that you can turn a party member towards an attacker by telling them to attack that particular enemy, but that doesn't always work.

Example:

My party was waylaid coming around a corner on the Arnika road canyon by a very large number of twilight bats. Not being able to run from them, the party took a defensive position between a stone column and the canyon wall. In this orientation my front and rear were open to attack but my flanks were protected. Not perfect, but better than being out in the open.

I moved my samurai and ranger to the front, my magic users to the middle and my ninja and lord to the rear. In this formation, we were forced to fight two bats at a time, one attacking from the front, one from the rear. Things started off pretty well.

However, during the battle, my ninja finished off a rear-attacking bat with a well-placed shuriken, then rotated and attacked the front-attacking bat. On the next turn, another bat flew into the rear postion and got two double-damage backstab attacks against my now-front facing ninja who promptly expired.



So much for guarding the rear...

Anyway, I have not yet been able to figure out how to prevent a party member who is equipped with a ranged weapon from rotating in this type of situation. I could equip a melee weapon, but my ninja is highly skilled in throwing not melee, and to give her a dagger etc would effectively cripple her combat ability.

Anybody have any possible solutions?

As always, many thanks in advance.

<=ST

Unless there is some game setting you can set not to do so, your party members will always take another shot, provided they have one, whether the opponent they killed was to the front, the back, or the side.
On the screen where you load and save your game, click on "general" and see what you can find that might help you.

My best advise would be to keep your back against a wall (or otherwise impenetrable object) until your characters are a high enough level to survive such surprise attacks.

Best of Luck & Happy Adventuring!

[Tennessee Ernie Ford]

You can arrange your ranks so that a character who turns around doesn't end up with their back exposed, but there's no provision in the game for a 'smarter' autotarget.

If you are running continuous combat (which is actually almost phased combat without built-in pauses) you can do your own retargeting, but it takes some getting used to.

[wrolf]

You can set up any member to not auto-swap their weapons. That will prevent the long range attacks but it still does not prevent anyone from turning their backs for short range opponents.

[slowtrain]

Thanks for the responses.

It looks like this is a good reason to keep your combat characters at least somewhat crosstrained in both ranged and melee combat.

Hmmm...

I guess my "perfect" party isn't as perfect as I thought. Maybe...MAYBE...maybe I should start again. With a new party. And this would be the best! The last and final restart! Yes...


Err..sorry.

[img]smile.gif[/img]

[ryu]

do not put characters into your flanks and press your back (with mages/rangers) upon the wall; fighters from front side will reach very far to the left/rear and right/rear; this is not perfect, but helps a bit
[img]graemlins/lamb.gif[/img]

[yoodaa]

quote:

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Originally posted by ryu:
do not put characters into your flanks and press your back (with mages/rangers) upon the wall; fighters from front side will reach very far to the left/rear and right/rear; this is not perfect, but helps a bit
[img]graemlins/lamb.gif[/img]

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Won't monsters on the flanks then be able to get to your guys on the back?

[tabbikaat]

Slowtrain -

There is no way to keep a party member from turning back around to attack a bat that's in front of her. She would have no way of knowing a bat would be flying around in back of her......from an "AI" point of view, this makes perfect sense.

Did you know you can change your party formation temporarily during battle at any time? Click on the formation grid on the right hand side of your screen and position party members as needed. They will then change to their new position at the end of the round. I've had to do this several times when a strong melee enemy was hell-bent on killing my bard.....I dragged her to the opposite site of the grid and put my strongest fighter in her place......hehe

Good luck on forming your new party, although probably the one you have now will do just fine......just takes time to develop them! You can always put the game setting on "Novice" when traveling from town to town and NO ONE on THIS board will think any the less of ya!

[slowtrain]

I was just kidding about a restart. [img]smile.gif[/img]

My current party is motoring along pretty well. We're in Trynton now. I lost four party members to a pair of cultists on the Arnika-Trynton road. Had to spend 8,000 on 4 res. powders in Trynton.

Eeep...

Eeep is right!
Good thing ressurections don't cost you vitalitythe way they did in the old games!