Attack of Opportunity -- does it deserve to survive to v.4?

[Stalker0]

I don't get the confusion on what provokes.

Moving through/out of a threatened square (not into)

That's it! AoOs come up in our game so infrequently we rarely need more than this to run them.

I think the problem is not how often the AOOs is actually occurred, but in all of the thought in avoiding them. Movement is the big one, as has been mentioned, people will take forever looking at a battlemat trying to get their movement just right as to not take an AOO. It may not be complicated, but it does slow down the game.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

I think the problem is not how often the AOOs is actually occurred, but in all of the thought in avoiding them. Movement is the big one, as has been mentioned, people will take forever looking at a battlemat trying to get their movement just right as to not take an AOO. It may not be complicated, but it does slow down the game.

There's one easy house-rule way around that. Simply state that anybody who uses an Attack of Opportunity on somebody while still being in melee himself provokes an Attack of Opportunity from his opponent(s) and loses any Dex bonus to AC he might have for those AoOs, since he's focussing his attention elsewhere for that split-second.

Oh, and leave special attacks out of the range of being used as AoOs, as well as kill the Cleave/Great Cleave on AoO nightmare.

Actually, I simply hope 4E will, if it shows up, carry an improved initiative system. The current one is a mess for trying to integrate fluidity into the static system of an unchanging initiative order.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Probably because you (like most people) didn't actually play OD&D or 1e AD&D using the actual published rules.



1e D&D expressed movement and ranges in inches. It used combat charts, and percentile matrices to resolve combat. It used weapon speed factors, declaring actions, attack roll modifiers by weapon type. The combat system used grid based movement indorrs, and hex based movement outdoors. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Whether you want to admit it or not, older versions of D&D were more wargame like than the current one.

DO NOT presume to tell other people what they did or did not play.

DO NOT state your opinion as incontrovertible fact.

Doing this is likely to lead to a short suspension from the boards.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Its not a red herring.

The current system now provides a clear-cut rules system for handling a situation that used to be handled by DM's decision...He no longer has to make things up- he has a playtested rule to work with.

We have exchanged off-the-cuff decisions for consistency, not neccessarily a bad thing- and here, I think its a good thing.

I think you may have missed the point of my quote from the DMG. (It was a direct quote).

The 3.5e rules TELL THE DM that he will sometimes have to make off the cuff decisions because the existing rules CANNOT cover all eventualities.

We haven't exchanged off-the-cuff decisions, they still exist and always will exist; the current version of the DMG tells us so (and I can't believe that any future version of D&D would dare to suggest that it had specific rules to cover all specific situations).

Cheers

 

[Plane Sailing]

Hmm; interesting! How does Combat Reflexes work in Spycraft, or do they throw it out?

They throw it out (it only really has meaning when AoO exist). They do have a feat called Combat Instincts which allows you to make a free attack against someone who misses you my 5 or more (or something like that).

 

[Plane Sailing]

There are some other strange things about AoO that haven't been brought up in this thread yet.

such as "why don't I get an AoO against someone who is paralysed or affected by hold person?"

Surely by definition they are more vulnerable and less able to avoid an attack than someone getting a potion out, casting a spell or moving past you, but somehow they are immune to AoO?

 

[Numion]

It's interesting to notice that some people gripe about players going to great lengths to avoid AoO's. In a lot of combats our group provokes them on purpose. Like if a wizard is cornered by a giant, a fighter might provoke an AoO with movement so that the wizard can cast his spell without a fear of one (well, it's happened that a giant had combat reflexes ) It makes sense that a fighter could harrass a giant enough for the wizard to cast a spell uninterrupted. Tanks can usually soak up damage to allow others a bit more mobility, if the situation requires. (We usually strive for defense-in-depth setup, where tanks protect the casters and archers, but it's not feasible always).

This kind of stuff makes the combats interesting for our group. It requires a lot of thought and pretty good teamwork - made all the more difficult because we only allow around one sentence of communication in a round (and the giant might understand it, and preserve his AoO. Elven is a good battle tongue).

 

[Hussar]

I'd hope they keep them in, but make an optional subsystem for people who can't seem to grok the rules so they can run more narrative based combats. That way, those who like tactical combats are happy and those that don't are also happy. Add three pages somewhere in the PHB for "Running Combat Without AOO's and Special Maneuvers".

We haven't exchanged off-the-cuff decisions, they still exist and always will exist; the current version of the DMG tells us so (and I can't believe that any future version of D&D would dare to suggest that it had specific rules to cover all specific situations).

True, there will always be corner cases. However, with the current rules, the corner cases are pretty easily ignored. Phalanx's? How many times has this ever come up? I would never presume to base the game on my personal campaign. 99% of the time, the rules function. THat other 1% is safe enough to leave in the DM's hands.

I'm sorry, but "No, you cannot, no matter what your character is, EVAR move around this ultimate WALL OF FIGHTERNESS" is bloody bad game design.

 

[Storm Raven]

DO NOT presume to tell other people what they did or did not play.

Edited for snarkiness.

I'll just say I didn't tell other people what they played. I conditioned my response with a "probably".

 

[Storm Raven]

I think the problem is not how often the AOOs is actually occurred, but in all of the thought in avoiding them. Movement is the big one, as has been mentioned, people will take forever looking at a battlemat trying to get their movement just right as to not take an AOO. It may not be complicated, but it does slow down the game.

The rule I use is "no counting squares"., that is, you cannot physically count out your movement before you start moving. If you want to mentally tick off the spaces in your head, go ahead and do that, but once you start moving your miniature, you cannot "take back" moves or count ahead. If you screw up on the way, well, it's the middle of combat, and people make less than optimal choices all the time. I try to run the NPCs in a similar manner. I also use this rule for ranges for missile fire and spells. If you want to shoot or cast at an opponent and it turns out he's out of range, you just misjudge the distance and fall short.

I also give the players a reasonably limited amount of time to make up their minds as to what they are doing.