On the italian RM forums we had a discussion trying to resolve at best a game situation and I've ended up a bit confused about conflicting actions.
The situation is this: a PC is facing a bear, on the first round the PC declare that he will quickdraw his sword on the snap phase and then flee in the normal phase (don't ask me why he's going to draw his weapon first and then escape...). The bear move towards the PC in the snap phase and then attack him in the normal phase. PC has the initiative.
The question is: can the bear attempt to attack the PC before he runs away or, since he lost initiative, he must first run after him and then attack?
Under the "conflicting action" paragraph of the core book I found a chapter (attempts to avoid melee attacks) which says:
A common conflict occours when one character attempts to avoid melee with another and both characters have chosen the same type of actions (i.e. snap, normal, deliberate) .iIf a foe is adjacent to a character and attempts to manuever away before melee occours, the character who has chosen melee as his action may decide to attack that character before he manuevers away. Both characters make conflict rolls [...]
Since the bear is adjacent to the PC and they are acting in the same phase, I think that a conflicting action rolls should be used to handle the situation. Others replied that, since the PC won the initiative he act first and the bear must move before making an attack.
The manual is confusing because it has constrasting examples to handle similar situations (on page 54 an example use the conflicting actions manuever, while in page 217, under the "press & melee" paragraph, a similar situation is resolved in another way...).
When the "attempts to avoid melee attacks" rule should be used? Only when both characters scored the same initiative? Or it's right to use is in this situation?
