Fun with forced movement?

[Mistwell]

There's a less feat intensive way for Prone; just take World's Serpent Grasp and powers that Immobilize or Slow enemies; the enchantment and Illusion schools have plenty of these, and Slow is a common effect among all classes anyway.

Interesting. But it would take two spells to get it, and over two rounds, or else with an action point. It was apparently ruled you cannot simultaneous slow/immobilize and prone, the target must already be subject to a slow/immobilize effect.

 

[Ferghis]

Interesting. But it would take two spells to get it, and over two rounds, or else with an action point. It was apparently ruled you cannot simultaneous slow/immobilize and prone, the target must already be subject to a slow/immobilize effect.

True. But it still works. Slow or immobilize effects are often until the end of the attacker's next round or save ends. Attacking the same targets again has a strong likelyhood of proning.

 

[Unwise]

Funny, I'm a big fan of forced movement. It's some of the most interesting, flexible, tactically challenging stuff you can do in 4e combat. Everything else works or doesn't based on dice and stats, etc., but with forced movement you can do things like prevent a monster from attacking (often in combination with knocking it prone or dazing it), free an ally from a monster's grasp, send it into hazardous terrain, anything the terrain allows.

A Daze or Slow effect is pretty much always that -- daze or slow. But forced movement is a veritable swiss army knife. I love it.

-rg

When I said forced movement was underwhelming in isolation, I just meant in terms of power. The point being, you need a good place to move people to. In an open field, it is of limited use. Often though it is certainly a very fun and tactical tool to have.

As a GM I really hate it when players do not have any forced movement tools. I make up a fun encounter with lots of hazards and they go completely unutilised. In a recent game, one player did a good job of pulling the enemy right up against a portal that would banish him to the elemental chaos. What should have been a climactic tactical victory was foiled by the other PCs not having a single push or slide to take advantage of the situation.

 

[RangerWickett]

How did your forced-movement Enchanter work out for you? Jester, how did the one in your campaign go? Anyone else play one of these?

No, just kidding. Don't delete me as spam.

I need to make sure I have enough dangerous but not deadly terrain in ZEITGEIST. Like we had a train adventure, and I realized that forced movement on a train top led to short encounters. In movies shoving someone off a train is hard. In D&D, you can do it a lot.

 

[Ferghis]

... we had a train adventure, and I realized that forced movement on a train top led to short encounters. In movies shoving someone off a train is hard. In D&D, you can do it a lot.

It depends on whether you have some elites among the enemies. It takes failing a save to get rid of people that way. And elites rarely fail their saves. I'd say that the danger is more to the PCs, if the bad guys have any kind of power that repeatedly forces movement.

 

[Mistwell]

Don't they get a save for being forced into any damaging terrain, including spell areas that do damage?

 

[D'karr]

I need to make sure I have enough dangerous but not deadly terrain in ZEITGEIST. Like we had a train adventure, and I realized that forced movement on a train top led to short encounters. In movies shoving someone off a train is hard. In D&D, you can do it a lot.

I ran a one-shot Eberron game where the characters ended up having a combat on top of the Lightning Rail. I knew I wanted people shoved off the top by all these push/slide/pull powers so I "cheated".

When anything shoved someone off the train the target would get a save. If they saved, the fell prone at the edge. If they failed they took xd10 damage as they 'slammed" on the side hanging on for dear life. To get back on they needed to succeed on a move action Athletics check DC (x). Minions never got to hang off the side, which was also a side-effect I wanted. One of the weak players hanging off the side took 3 attempts and an assist to get back on. At one time I considered giving them ongoing lightning damage as they hung to the side but opted against it at the time.



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