So one thing that really bugged me about the books, is how Roger kept bundling into people with one-shots and reacting the same way, every single time.
First encounter: ok, admittedly nobody was expecting Seb Tor to have a one shot, and this was also Roger's first encounter against one.
He sees it, has that "oh shit" moment, tries to lift his main powered armor weapon before eating it, and barely survives in the end.
Ok, it's his first time, and even he realizes the only reason he survived at all was because of his souped up reflexes. You can figure that "if the burnt hand teaches best", losing a few ribs and spending a few weeks bedrest would teach nearly as well right? Nope...
Second encounter: just a few months later, Saint commando ship. KNOWS the ship captain is a maniac who already set the self-destruct and is a "True Believer" which anyone but a total idiot knows means completely insane.
Nobody even checks the commandos for weapons before the dooming question "which one of you is the Prince?", and the one shot gets revealed, Roger once again goes to lift his armor primary weapon before realizing he can't use it or else, goes for sword and Pahner suicides to save him. Second one shot is revealed, Roger uses the sword, and is obviously pretty furious about "surrended" commando's producing one shots.
Third encounter: in the Imperial Palace, yet again walks stupidly into one shot range of someone he has ordered to 'surrender', and is still on their own two feet and capable of combat. Meanwhile Roger himself is, by this time, missing an entire lower leg and is using his armor's primary weapon just to stay on his remaining foot.
One shot gets revealed, and Roger has yet another "oh shit" moment, before dogzard saves his ass.
I can understand the first time being a big surprise, Seb Tor being a scummy and not expecting him to have Imperial weapons at all.
I can sort of understand the second one, although admitting who is who to "True Believer" commando's is ridiculously stupid. Not having switched weapons, or having another person armed with a bead cannon (stutter gun?) covering, since the beads wouldn't vaporize the controls they needed. Pretty sure that only Roger and Pahner were on the bridge, both armed with plasma cannon and neither had switched to some form of bead sidearm after entering and seeing no visible "high threat" weapons that required them to keep plasma cannon ready.
The third is the almost unforgivable one though. Roger's now had his two encounters with one shots, is wounded and missing a leg so he no longer has his old agility, is in the Chung body which is more grav tank than he's used to, and once again closed to hand to hand range with a hostile. Leaving aside the minor fact he completely forgot to reload his bead pistol sidearm, I'll give the benefit of the doubt and assume he actually ran out of reloads and forgot to simply grab a fresh one off a body after he came to from losing his leg earlier.
He was armed with a plasma gun here, so he couldn't shoot and kill the hostile without also killing his mother, who he was obviously there to rescue. But he could have turned it into a standoff, the Colonel couldn't kill his mother without assuring his own death, and Roger couldn't advance without assuring the Colonel kills his mother. But Roger was still in armor, and could have called someone else to get into a position to simply shoot through the damn wall at a height that would have hit the standing Colonel, avoiding his mother, and being beads wouldn't have harmed Roger inside his powered armor.
