D&D 4E Hate or aggro rules in 4e

[KarinsDad]

Yeah, many of the Bo9S abilities that encourage enemies to attack a designated target rather than require it would be a nice fit for a defender character. Iron Guard's Glare, for instance.

I prefer a more plausible solution to the defender issue.

Quasi-mystical abilities for "fighter types" or "defender types" that affect others with no saving throw do not seem balanced.

Instead, I would give the defender other abiliites which seem more plausible and balanced.

Instead of penalties for an opponent (How are you giving him a penalty by glaring at him? I don't know. How are you able to affect him, even if he walks away from you and attacks someone 30 feet away? I don't know.), have maneuvers such as:

1) Taking an additional 5 foot step outside his turn so that he can cover a slightly larger area for an AoO, or:

2) Giving him a lunge ability that allows him to stretch out and reach with an AoO, etc.

An extra positive maneuver outside the defender's turn as opposed to penalities with no saves against enemies which have no real plausible explanation.

From a plausibility point of view, Iron Guard's Glare is awful. Someone thought of a neat mechanic and then came up with a terrible explanation for why it works. IGG is totally nonsensical and what is worse is that it has no saving throw.

Yikes!

In fact, Bo9s and PHBII are filled with such bizarre and non-defensible abilities.

 

[KarinsDad]

Actually, I disagree with this and I always thought that losing morale rules in 3e was a mistake. As it stands, there is nothing preventing a DM from having every monster fight to the death each and every time. Morale was a nice way to end fights faster without having to ponce about chopping the heads off of every kobold just because the DM feels "oh, they would never run".

There is no need for such a rule. It's totally dependent on the DM. In our games, a high percentage of enemies run away when they get seriously damaged or outnumbered if it is possible for them to do so. But, there is no need for a formalized rule about this, you just have to pick a DM who makes reasonable decisions for the NPCs.

A lousy DM who has every creature fight to the death is a lousy DM and should just be replaced by the group. The way to force reasonable DM behavior is to not allow bad DMs to run the game.

I really hope they do add some sort of "taunt" ability and put a morale rating back into the rules.

Taunt is fine as long as it has some form of saving throw AND has extra defenses / weaknesses against it. It should be easy to taunt a dumb excitable Minotaur, but very difficult to taunt an intelligent Demon.

 

[Hussar]

There is no need for such a rule. It's totally dependent on the DM. In our games, a high percentage of enemies run away when they get seriously damaged or outnumbered if it is possible for them to do so. But, there is no need for a formalized rule about this, you just have to pick a DM who makes reasonable decisions for the NPCs.

Unfortunately, there are far and away more poor DM's out there than good ones. I'd MUCH rather the mechanics helped poor DM's who need it than simply say, "Oh, well, sorry about your luck, your DM sucks."

A great DM doesn't need any help. An average one does. I've got no problems admitting to my own mediocrity. I loved the old morale rules. I thought it was a very simple and easy mechanic that led to very reasonable results - the creature is hurt, it has a chance of running away. What's wrong with that?

 

[Nifft]

Instead of penalties for an opponent (How are you giving him a penalty by glaring at him? I don't know. How are you able to affect him, even if he walks away from you and attacks someone 30 feet away? I don't know.)

In the case of Iron Guard's Glare, the answer to 1 is "this is a gloss for covering your adjacent ally", and in the case of 2 the answer is "it doesn't work like that, only adjacent opponents are affected".

How do you "save" against it? Easy. Move away from the guy with the stance.

Cheers, -- N

 

[KarinsDad]

In the case of Iron Guard's Glare, the answer to 1 is "this is a gloss for covering your adjacent ally"

So, he can defend all 8 of the allies around himself with one Swift Action the same as they each can defend themselves with 8 standard actions (i.e. 8 Total Defenses)?

Aid Another (which has a chance of failure) is a Standard Action to give one adjacent Ally +2 to AC against one single attack for one specific opponent.

IGG for a single ally is a LOT more than twice as powerful as Aid Another (no failure chance, a swift action instead of a standard action, twice the advantage, and it affects multiple enemies) and for up to 8 allies, it's just plain broken.


It's nowhere in the ballpark of balanced, and it still does not make plausible sense ("Hey, it's the human auto-cover for the team").

The bigger, better, badder syndrome strikes again.

Aid Another to help a single ally against a single foe makes plausible sense. Spinning around like the Flash in order to protect 8 allies (with a swift action) better than they can protect themselves is not plausible. It's beyond supernatural.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Iterative attacks, and the ratio of damage from the typical melee attack to a single attack, made AoO not quite as threatening as they could have been. Fighters don't have to be the uber damage dealers to make monster think twice about bypassing them. They just need attacks that hurt, when something ignores them.

You could take 3E, drop the iterative attacks, add a level bonus to damage, and AoO would automatically become more of a threat, without any direct changes to the AoO rules. I would think 4E, with apparently wholesale changes to how interrupts works, could do an even better job.

 

[Hussar]

So, he can defend all 8 of the allies around himself with one Swift Action the same as they each can defend themselves with 8 standard actions (i.e. 8 Total Defenses)?

Aid Another (which has a chance of failure) is a Standard Action to give one adjacent Ally +2 to AC against one single attack for one specific opponent.

IGG for a single ally is a LOT more than twice as powerful as Aid Another (no failure chance, a swift action instead of a standard action, twice the advantage, and it affects multiple enemies) and for up to 8 allies, it's just plain broken.


It's nowhere in the ballpark of balanced, and it still does not make plausible sense ("Hey, it's the human auto-cover for the team").

The bigger, better, badder syndrome strikes again.

Aid Another to help a single ally against a single foe makes plausible sense. Spinning around like the Flash in order to protect 8 allies (with a swift action) better than they can protect themselves is not plausible. It's beyond supernatural.

So, it's better to have a mechanic that is never, ever used - aid another for AC and another that is almost never used - full defense because it's ... more plausible? Ok. Plausibility can take a far back seat to fun in my game thanks. I'd rather see something that is actually useful than waste time and space in the rule books for things that are of very limited use and will likely never see the light of day.

 

[Grog]

"Hate" or "aggro" as a number the DM has to keep track of and check against every PC whenever it's a monster's turn to act?

No way in hell will we see that. They're trying to simplify the game, remember, and that would be a bookkeeping nightmare, especially in larger battles.

But per-encounter abilities which force a foe to make a save or be forced to attack the fighter-type for one round? I think there's a good chance something like that will make its way in. Iron Heroes has abilities like that, as I recall.

 

[Jhaelen]

There is no need for such a rule. It's totally dependent on the DM.

Agreed. Such a mechanism is required for CRPGs because there's no DM. For pen & paper RPGs the DM gets some general guidelines on a monster's preferences from the tactics section and then decides on it's behaviour depending on the given situation and circumstances. Anything else would be way too limiting.

A lousy DM who has every creature fight to the death is a lousy DM and should just be replaced by the group. The way to force reasonable DM behavior is to not allow bad DMs to run the game.

Disagreed. In my experience there's a lot more lousy players who will never allow monsters to flee or always kill them if they surrender than there are lousy DMs. Letting every monster fight to the death is often just a reaction to the players' preferred behaviour.

 

[The Souljourner]

So, he can defend all 8 of the allies around himself with one Swift Action the same as they each can defend themselves with 8 standard actions (i.e. 8 Total Defenses)?

Aid Another (which has a chance of failure) is a Standard Action to give one adjacent Ally +2 to AC against one single attack for one specific opponent.

As hussar said, Aid another is NEVER used. The only time it's used is when one combatant realizes it is impossible for him to affect an opponent, and only *then* does aid another come out, and it's usually to the tune of "What, I need a 19 to hit and then even my max damage bounces? I guess I'll go aid another on Glarg the Barbarian, and hopefully the big bad won't decide to squish me".

IGG for a single ally is a LOT more than twice as powerful as Aid Another (no failure chance, a swift action instead of a standard action, twice the advantage, and it affects multiple enemies) and for up to 8 allies, it's just plain broken.

Just in case you're not aware, it's not an activated ability, per se. It's a stance - once it's going, it just sticks around. My crusader has it on 24/7.

Yes, it's good. Yes, my DM bitches about it constantly. It's doing EXACTLY what its supposed to do. Make it a pain in the ass to attack someone else. So you know what happens? Either they attack me, or they just move out of my reach.... it only affects people I threaten.

What is the exact in-game explanation? I don't know... I'm very good at harrying opponents if they take their focus off me. It's kind of like the opposite of flanking.

is -4 to hit too much of a penalty? Possibly, but the mechanic is still sound.

Aid Another to help a single ally against a single foe makes plausible sense. Spinning around like the Flash in order to protect 8 allies (with a swift action) better than they can protect themselves is not plausible. It's beyond supernatural.

As said before, Aid Another is pretty much "I skip my turn".

Really, IGG has nothing at all to do with protecting your allies, it's about harrying your opponents. Your allies can be 50 feet away, it's the enemies you're affecting, that's why it affects the enemies you threaten.

Whether or not it's balanced, it's a hell of a lot better than "I use Sunder Armor, and give the Ogre +10 hate on me". And D&D does need some better battle control mechanics. As it is, there's almost no way to actually protect your allies. Movement is too easy (and now they're talking about removing AoO!! Please, for god's sake, no.) and the turn based nature of the game means you can almost never interrupt someone else's action. Attacks of opportunity were, by far, the best addition to D&D ever. It added tactics to the battle like no other addition. It's the one thing that I would never tolerate being removed entirely from D&D. It adds barely any time to the fight, and adds SO much more tactics to the game.

IGG is at least a step in the right direction. Something that makes it a tactically sound idea to attack the Crusader, rather than his friends.

-Nate