The Souljourner said:
I can dodge between 20 armed soldiers to hit the mage in the back.
Well, sure - if you don't mind being surrounded by 20 armed soldiers who are likely going to cut you to ribbons on their next turn.
AoOs are not the only factors which can encourage battlefield tactics. Not even close.
The Souljourner said:
I don't agree that battles are static because of AoO.... it just forces you to actually think about the consequences of your movement.
No it doesn't. Combined with the full attack mechanic, it just discourages movement, period (unless you have a high enough Tumble skill to safely ignore it). When the party barbarian plops himself down next to a giant, he has
no incentive whatsoever to move. In fact, he has a strong
disincentive against moving. If he moves, he sacrifices his full attack, he eats an AoO for moving away, and since the giant has reach, he's going to eat
another AoO if and when he moves back in in another round or two. His best course of action is just to stand there and swing at the giant until either he or the giant goes down.
The Souljourner said:
And I think you underestimate the maneuverability you get from 5' steps. Those can be very key.... and you know what? In real battles, people aren't running back and forth and back and forth, most of the time the movements are relatively small jockeying for position. I thin 3.x combat rules capture that very well.
Sorry, but this is just flat-out wrong. Oh, it's true in battles between armies, but that's simply because in a big, mass battle, there isn't room to move around very much. But if you watch any kind of smaller hand-to-hand combat - boxing, martial arts, fencing, whatever - you'll see that the combatants
do move around quite a bit, using as much of the area as they're legally allowed to. If you were to add in things like cover and high ground, movement would be even more of a factor.
Or, for a fantasy example, take Westley's fight with Innigo Montoya in
The Princess Bride. They moved all over the ruins, used walls for cover, went up stairs, etc. Or take the big fight at the end of
The Fellowship of the Ring movie. Aragorn didn't just stand in the same place swinging at orcs over and over again - he was moving all around the battlefield. This is what D&D combat is supposed to model, and right now, it fails miserably.