[dimitrov]

Well another OO way would be to add a state member to the Heroine class and create a state class for every possible state (X,Y,Z). Each state can then be responsible for interpreting the input and transitioning to the next appropriate state (if any)

[eismcc]

How do you manage combinatorial explosion as states increase?

[dimitrov]

The proposed state table is hardly more scalable. It's obviously not infinitely scalable but In my proposed way, you only have to specify the cases where a state transition actually occurs.

[eismcc]

What you describe feels more like case classes.

[signa11]

one possibility is to use hierarchical-state-machines (HSM), which allow (encourage even ?) the decomposition of state-machine into common behavior for reuse across states.

HSM have been there for a while, being proposed in '84 (!) by David Harel under the name 'statecharts'