- A new affect type has been added - "free movement". The helpfile for
    "affect: free movement" explains its benefits. A select few classes will
    gain abilities that are able to grant this affect in the near future.
 
  - The hobbit and elf racial lineages now possess a small amount of free
    movement.
 
  - Lagless escape abilities, such as withdraw, now cause the user one second
    of lag when the ability fails due to battle lock.
    
  - Abilities that place specified preventions on a target (shield's fusing,
    shield's emplacement, etc.) will no longer grant extra charges when
    used to inflict a charge-based prevention.
 
  - Ruan charity is now prevented in a manner identical to rescue.
    
  - Mortal-level undead no longer erroneously possess eye for the cloaked.

Affect: free movement

The power of free movement is impressive, if rather rare; those who possess
this ability display a grace and reflexive speed which make them difficult
to pin down in combat. A successful free movement check allows the afflicted
to do the following:

- ignore a battle lock (attempt a flee, use an escape ability, or be rescued)
- ignore the +hit bonus of a suffered impairment, and attempt to dodge/parry
  even if the impairment would normally prevent it
 
Both of these benefits require a successful free movement check (and in the
latter case, the benefit only extends to that single attack - each separate
attack must be checked against individually). If successful, free movement
allows a chance to counter those abilities which would normally invalidate
the afflicted's escape tools and avoidance-based defenses.

However, free movement does have several strong limitations:

- Only inflicted battle locks (such as continuum of combat) can be ignored;
  free movement does not allow a player to escape a naturally enforced
  battle lock (such as certain PK-mob interactions).
- Step-based escape abilities (such as flee or vanish) must make a successful
  free movement check against battle locks for *each step*, or else they fail.
- Free movement will only counter the +hit and anti-avoidance aspects of an
  impairment; it will NOT counter any other effects, such as restriction of
  actions and attacks.
- Free movement cannot counter exceedingly strong impairments; it will NOT
  provide any benefit against petrify or temple touch.

For more information, see: help affects, help impairments