Quick rule confirmations

General ACKS Forums Ask the Autarchs
1

A couple quick questions, mainly arising due to apparent discrepancies between ACKS and my own preconceptions from other D&D-style games:

  • Do demihuman (player) characters have infravision or any other sort of enhanced vision?

  • When retreating from combat, do opponents get a free attack against you?

I’m pretty sure both answers are “no”, but want to confirm that before my players have a chance to ask me these questions.

2

I am not an autarch, but I have answers to both of them:

  1. nope! get out those torches. this is a fairly important distinction because having to carry around torches limits your ability to get the drop on enemies in the dungeon, so if demihumans had dark or infravision they would have a massive advantage over humans. Don’t worry, they still have some pretty great perks.

2)the way retreating works is it must be declared at the beginning of the round, before anyone rolls initiative. You can declare a fighting withdrawal or a full retreat

If you declare a fighting withdrawal, you walk backwards directly away tfrom the foe engaged with you at half speed. This has to be done through a clear path (so nobody can be directly behind you). If a foe closes in on you after you’ve backed away, you get to attack them.

If you declare a full retreat, anyone attacking you this round gets +2 to hit you and can use backstabs, and you don’t benefit from a shield because you’re in the process of turning and running, but you get your full movement and don’t need a clear path.

In either case, none of your foes get “extra” attacks on you, they only get the attack they’re normally entitled to on their own initiative count. There are no “attacks of opportunity”.

3

Yep, exactly as I thought. Thanks for confirming that I hadn’t missed anything!

4

Note that gnomes and Thrassians (Gnomish Trickster and Thrassian Gladiator from the Player’s Companion) do both possess infravision.

5

My version of the Lizardman has no infravision:

http://spacecockroach.blogspot.co.il/2013/10/final-lizardmen-race.html

The only races with low-light vision I use are Geckomen and Bugmen, both of which are nocturnal. I see little reason for diurinal Lizardmen to have infravision.

Gecko-Men:
http://spacecockroach.blogspot.co.il/2013/09/the-gecko-men-of-queddar.html