Can a character ever be denied the 5' step?

[Gaiden]

I was thinking about a tactic where a rogue or any character that had at least 2d6 SA dmg and the hamstring feat would use hit and run tactics with Spring Attack. As far as I can tell, the reduction in movement rate would stack - in this method probably multiply as stacking would be too powerful. So I am thinking that it is possible to reduce someone's movement rate down to 1/32nd or or even 1/64th of their original movement. That would make the traditional 5' step longer than the character's base movement and perhaps even a double move and worse - a run. Would the free 5' step still be allowed if the character took no other actual movement in the round?

As a related question, could someone with the Hamstring feat sacrifice more than just 2d6 - let's say 8d6 and have the effect happen 4x per hit?

Feedback appreciated - if I have made a gross error in overlooking an obvious rule, I apologize early. I don't have the books with me right now.

 

[kreynolds]

I was thinking about a tactic where a rogue or any character that had at least 2d6 SA dmg and the hamstring feat would use hit and run tactics with Spring Attack. As far as I can tell, the reduction in movement rate would stack

It doesn't stack. This has been addressed by the Sage.

Can you Hamstring a creature more than once (quarter it's movement, etc.)?

You can't hamstring a biped twice.

How about using it to strike a wing instead of a leg to halve it's flying?

No, see feat description.

Why can't you Hamstring creatures with more than 4 legs (i.e. 3 successful sneak attacks to affect a six-legged creature)? Some kind of balance reason, I presume?

Because it gets absurd after awhile. I suppose you could hamstring *anything* provided you hit half it's legs.

Feedback appreciated - if I have made a gross error in overlooking an obvious rule, I apologize early. I don't have the books with me right now.

It's cool. The description threw me off at first as well. So did Dash.

 

[hong]

Re: Re: Can a character ever be denied the 5' step?

Quoth the Sage:

Because it gets absurd after awhile.

I'd actually say it gets absurd right at the start, since called shots like this undermine the whole basis for the hit point system, which is that you don't take serious injury until right at the end. But that's just me.

 

[Gaiden]

I have to give the sage alot of credit as he typically rules in a very balanced fashion and makes alot of sense. However, I would clarify a distinction in the way the sage comments on rules. One is referencing one clarification with other preexisting rules. The other is deciding on an issue that is perfectly ambiguous or even worse is in fact the opposite of the sage's ruling. As I said, as far as I can tell anyway, these rulings are in the name of game balance and I imagine that is the reason for limiting hamstring. However, now having looked over the feat, there is absolutely no reason absent the sage's ruling to prevent multiple uses of this feat. I do not mean to criticize the ruling for hamstring, I merely am asking an innocent question (ok enough of the politicking - here goes).

First, has anyone played where the hamstring can multiplicatively stack, or at least that you can hamstring both legs instead of just one (or in the case of a multilegged creature, hamstring each of their legs)? This in fact raises another question which would be, if hamstring works by disabling one leg, then if both were disabled, does the character's movement goto 0 (or something where it would be equivalent to a collapsed person crawling only with the use of his/her arms)?

Would the hamstring feat be too powerful if you did allow it to multiplicatively stack - i.e. 1/2 to 1/4 to 1/8 to 1/16, etc. I would imagine it would definitely be too powerful with what I just mentioned above where # of hamstrings = to number of legs means movement 0. Moreover, if anyone has played with the stacking, do they require seperate attacks for each application of hamstring, or can you simply reduce the amount of SA dmg by 2d6 for each application.

Actually this whole thread has raised two other questions - what is the difference between sage rulings and official errata?

The other is what if something is so small that its base movement is less than 5' - then does it get to take a free 5' step.

 

[Uller]

The other is what if something is so small that its base movement is less than 5' - then does it get to take a free 5' step.

I'd have to say, no. But the rules are simply not designed to handle this situation. If you somehow end up with a combatant who is unable to move even 5' then I think you'd almost have to rescale everything so that there the size of the grid is meaningful or just say the very slow character can move 1 sq every X rounds if he is running or every 4X rounds if is doing standard actions....No 5' step, though.

 

[Henry]

The most sensible thing would be to house rule it to say that if a creature can still move, you cannot reduce it's movement rate to less than a 5' step. Even a severely hurt creature can stagger a short ways.

 

[kreynolds]

Actually, if you just follow the rules for Hamstring, you don't have to house rule a thing.

 

[IceBear]

But aren't there some spells that reduce movement below 5ft - solid fog is the only one that comes to mind, but I think Monte has one too. I do think that it is possible to lower someone's speed below 5 based on these spells.

IceBear

 

[shurai]

I'm not familiar with the hamstring feat in general. Is it in Song and Silence? Regarding hamstringing creatures with more than two legs, I've a suggestion that would be a house rule, but probably within the spirit of the hamstring feat.

If you hamstring a biped doing so halves the biped's movement, then it makes sense that hamstringing a creature with more legs would result in a commensurate reduction in movement. For instance, hamstringing a quadriped would reduce its movement by 1/4 since it still has three of its four legs to stagger around on. In the same vein, hamstringing a hexaped would reduce its movement by 1/6.

This is both realistic and seemingly balanced to me. What do you all think?

-S

 

[EOL]

Actually, if you just follow the rules for Hamstring, you don't have to house rule a thing.

Take an armored halfling (move 15 ft.) hamstring him and slow him (move 7.5 ft./ round) and then cast solid fog (.75 ft. pre round) even with very liberal rounding it would be hard to justify giving this person a five foot step.