Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
Capable of attacking a specific target. If a sniper is attacking, there needs to be some method of attacking the sniper directly in order to stop them.
If no one has a weapon capable of effectively engaging at the sniper's range, why should the system automatically allow the targets to return fire?
They cannot.

The list was for situations that the system must be able to resolve, if they come up and are relevant. If the party encounters a sniper on a ledge with no path up to it, and they don't have ranged weapons, then they have no way of attacking the sniper. (I made this specific example in my post.) Similarly, if the players are up on a ledge and the NPCs have no ranged weapons, then the NPCs would have no method of attacking any of the PCs.

On the other hand, if the party is in an open room and there are a bunch of enemies there, then they should be free to run up and attack one of them. Doing so means that choices of targets and targeting priority is meanful for the players. There should not be some sort of "total enemy HP level", or some sort of "victory rolls" that the party needs to roll. If that sort of a situation happens - if attacking one enemy is roughly the same as attacking another, if there is no way to eliminate an enemy past "winning the fight" - then it stops being a sensible combat system for a RPG. It starts turning into some sort of board game or video game, where the goal isn't "what would my character do?" but "how do I score the most points against the enemy?"