Casting Defensively a bit much?

[Legildur]

Can you please explain exactly what conclusion? I don't know who you're responding to and I haven't seen any conclusions that require a houserule to ban casting defensively.

You are quote right! I had anticipated that the thread was going to be about how easy it was to cast on the defensive, thereby denying AOOs for casting a spell in a threatened area. After reading it, I realised that it was about Concentration checks for taking damage when casting, but already had it fixed in my mind to respond based on the anticipated thread.

We concluded that the DC 15 check for casting on the defensive and tumbling to deny an AOO was too fixed and didn't scale (and also removed risk from some maneuvres that seemed, well, inherently risky!).

 

[Aidan Milvus]

Thanks. That cleared up a bit of confusion, but has left another question in its place. Does that even make sense? The problem I see with casting defensively is that there is no real cost to it. At lower levels it is a gamble. A fair chance of loosing the spell but you don't have to worry about the AoO. The higher the level goes though, and the farther along the character gets, the chance drastically decreases until it basically becomes non-existent or borderline so. Either way, every round they get a free prevention of an AoO for no cost which, to me at least, seems to be a bit cheap.

A note, most of my games in my group end up going past level 15 at least so that is a concern for us.

You just have to remember one thing... What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Your pc's are swarming your NPC spellcasters, expecting to get AoO's on them when they cast a spell? Just have them cast defensively. In games I play in, the NPC's use the skill way more than our PC's do...

 

[Whimsical]

There is a cost involved to be able to avoid Attacks of Opportunities while casting. It's a cost that I have chosen not to pay for several of my characters.

A halfling cleric. I needed those skill points to go to other skills, so i kept his Concentration low. Since he was an archer, it would normally not come up. But sometimes he would need to cast a spell and couldn't move away. I would then need to take the AoO and hope that my AC was high enough.

A bard. Again, other skills took precedence. My plan was that if he was threatened and needed to cast a spell, he would tumble away first. But there were a couple of times where I couldn't do it and it sucked really bad. Especially while threatened by multiple opponents.

A druid. In 3.0, I had a druid with a tower shield. At the time, it worked since all classes who were proficient with shield could use one. And it was a wooden shield. I would simply rely on my high AC to handle any Attacks of Opportunity. Again, the skill ranks went to other skills. After converting to 3.5, my character took the tower shield proficiency feat as it appeared that I could use the shield to gain full cover and then I would cast the spell safely. But the FAQ clarification blew that strategy away it it make it a Standard action to receive full cover. Something I agree with, BTW.

 

[Infiniti2000]

We concluded that the DC 15 check for casting on the defensive and tumbling to deny an AOO was too fixed and didn't scale (and also removed risk from some maneuvres that seemed, well, inherently risky!).

Tumbling, I agree with; and in that vein we've adopted the counter-tumble rule. Casting defensively, however, does increase sufficiently such that I'm quite happy to ignore it at higher levels. My personal recommendation as a fix, if anything, is to just eliminate the AoO for casting entirely. It's just more 'paperwork' that doesn't help the game at all. Requiring even more calculations is just creating more hassle for no reason.

 

[Corsair]

Tumbling, I agree with; and in that vein we've adopted the counter-tumble rule. Casting defensively, however, does increase sufficiently such that I'm quite happy to ignore it at higher levels. My personal recommendation as a fix, if anything, is to just eliminate the AoO for casting entirely. It's just more 'paperwork' that doesn't help the game at all. Requiring even more calculations is just creating more hassle for no reason.

It intrigues me that so many people seem to complain about DnD (and 3X in particular) being complicated, while on the other hand some people complain about people finding legitimate ways to avoid these complications.