Mixster said:
At first I thought you guys were completely wrong, but reading it again I understand that it can be read either way. The section on evading (page 90), starts by listing multiple examples of when to use the evade skill. Dragon's breath, charging and missile fire among them. Then goes on to mention that it is always an opposed skill. Then it says: Whatever the result, the evasive gambit momentarily places the Defender at a disadvantage as he regains his balance, preventing him from performing an attack with the CA available to him on his next strike rank.
Simply tells us that using evade in combat places you at a certain disadvantage, I would think this also applies to closing/disengaging.
To me it is clear that you are not put at a disadvantage from closing/disengaging, for various reasons:
- From RAW: The rule for "not able to attack on next SR" is stated under "Evading", whereas closing/disengaging is discussed under it's own headline - it is two different actions, and therefore to me there is RAW no connection unless otherwise stated.
- From practical experience: I was a fighting training yesterday and I really got to see where the rule came from: when fighting sword and buckler I constantly evaded instead of trying to parry. The result was that my counter attacks were badly placed because I always attacked when out of balance.. We made some exercises trying to make me parry instead, and I instantly got better at fighting. I went from hitting him 1 out of 10 rounds, to 1 out of 4 or something like that (he has 4 years of training on me, so that is acceptable

).
On the other than, I did not feel near the same penalty when trying to go closer to him or moving away. It was a much simpler thing to do, and we often did it while attacking.
- From theoretical analysis: Evading an attack is often a sideways movement. It requires a quick movement to the side, shifting one's balance point in combination with leadping backwards or to the side. It puts you at a significant disadvantage to perform such a movement.
On the other than, with the weapon reach categories we have, the distances are pretty short. I mean, the engagement distance between longsword (L reach) is something like 1.20 meters, while shortswords are perhaps 0.9 meters. Moving yourself those 30 centimeters closer to the opponent, is not nearly as demanding and balance-ruining as the movement needed to dodge a blade - here the hard thing to do it, is to do it without getting hit in the process (as illustrated with the opposed evade or automatic attack rule).
(@Mixster: you were talking about trying out combat at some point. You're welcome to join us wednesday evenings. Nikolaj has begun there also.)
- Dan