Initiative and Opportunity Attacks

[Blood Jester]

Simple rules question here:

Does anyone know if there is a rule (similar to 3e) whereby you can not make an Opportunity Attack in the first round of combat if your turn has yet to come up in the initiative order?

Not a surprise round, and not after the first round. Only at the start of combat.

Thanks in advance, and bonus internets if you can provide an official book and page reference!

 

[Saeviomagy]

Simple rules question here:

Does anyone know if there is a rule (similar to 3e) whereby you can not make an Opportunity Attack in the first round of combat if your turn has yet to come up in the initiative order?

Not a surprise round, and not after the first round. Only at the start of combat.

Thanks in advance, and bonus internets if you can provide an official book and page reference!

No. There is no such rule. It's pretty hard to provide book and page references because the rule doesn't exist. I suppose I could show you where it isn't? Every page of all the rulebooks released to date There's also no feats or powers to mitigate the effect of the rule, which you might expect if it were in existence.

 

[Jack99]

Surprised: If you’re surprised, you can’t take any actions (not even free actions, immediate actions, or opportunity actions), and you grant combat advantage (page 279) to all attackers. As soon as the surprise round ends, you are no longer surprised.

There is a rule, but it says you can.

 

[Blood Jester]

No. There is no such rule. It's pretty hard to provide book and page references because the rule doesn't exist. I suppose I could show you where it isn't? Every page of all the rulebooks released to date There's also no feats or powers to mitigate the effect of the rule, which you might expect if it were in existence.

Not sure why the passive aggressive attitude since the correct answer to a question of "if there is a rule" would be "No there is not."

 

[Blood Jester]

There is a rule, but it says you can.

Thank you for the info, but I did see that and did not find it clear on the specifics of OAs outside of a surprise round. The bolded part quoted specifically calls out the end of being surprised, but that does not address OAs before one has acted for the first time.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Thank you for the info, but I did see that and did not find it clear on the specifics of OAs outside of a surprise round. The bolded part quoted specifically calls out the end of being surprised, but that does not address OAs before one has acted for the first time.

Yeah, the general rule just applies, so you can make OAs before your first action in the fight. Not really sure why 3.x had a different rule, maybe surprise worked differently? Anyway, 4e tends not to hand out penalties and restrictions.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

In 3.x you just were surprised (flat footed) until you acted...

the rogue has a special trait that he has combat advantage against everone that has not yet acted, oterwise you are no longer flat footed in your first round of combat

 

[Jack99]

Thank you for the info, but I did see that and did not find it clear on the specifics of OAs outside of a surprise round. The bolded part quoted specifically calls out the end of being surprised, but that does not address OAs before one has acted for the first time.

Sure. Since you aren't surprised once the surprise round is over (as per the quoted section) then you revert to default setting, where you can take OA's etc. Until you are hit by another exception, such as daze.

Makes sense?

 

[Joshua Randall]

There's actually a feat you can take so that you don't provoke OAs from people who haven't acted yet in the first round of combat. (Zuwoth's Enlightened Step from PH3.)

That's pretty strong evidence that normally, you do provoke OAs from enemies who haven't acted yet. Otherwise there would be no point to the feat.

 

[Jack99]

There's actually a feat you can take so that you don't provoke OAs from people who haven't acted yet in the first round of combat. (Zuwoth's Enlightened Step from PH3.)

That's pretty strong evidence that normally, you do provoke OAs from enemies who haven't acted yet. Otherwise there would be no point to the feat.

I will trust the actual rules over a feat when they are conflicting. But something definitely doesn't make sense