Flight and Pursuit

Sometimes, you get the rough end of a fight and need to run. Sometimes, you want to prevent someone from getting away. This is flight and pursuit.

Usage               What it does
flee                Tries a random visible exit
flee <direction>    Tries that exit; direction aliases like n work

You can only flee when fighting, and while standing. If you are knocked prone, you must stand before you can flee. Fleeing is not assured; your opponent will roll an opposed check with their pursuit skill (if they have it) against your flee. If they beat you, you're stuck, lose your action cooldown, and must wait for it to try again. If your opponent is disengaged, your flee works automatically. This portion of the flee-pursuit system represents initially tearing away from your opponent.

When someone flees, they arrive in an adjacent location with a four second movement cooldown and are tagged as 'in-flight' by the game engine. A pursuer is free to follow them and re-engage, but attempting to attack an in-flight target prompts a second flee-pursuit contest. This contest represents the 'who is faster in a footrace' portion of the test. If the pursuer wins this contest, both fleer and pursuer are back in combat, and the actor wishing to flee must start over by tearing themselves out of combat.

If the pursuer instead loses the second roll, they lose both their action and movement cooldowns for ten seconds. They were unable to catch up to their target. The character who is fleeing may run away freely at this point, as ten seconds is enough time to build a serious lead. Once off MCD, the pursuer can manually continue to chase, as the fleer may stop for other reasons -- out of stamina, attacked by something else, getting lost, or so forth.

Note: The in-flight status lasts for one minute since a fleeing character's last successful flee challenge (about 30 standard MCD cooldowns), so if the pursuer simply walks with a fleeing target and does not engage until the in-flight wears off, it is all but assured that the fleeing target will reach safety. Thirty movement commands is a lot.