Move and Charge in the same turn, is that legal?

[Dr_Sage]

The other thing is the charging PC can only use a *basic* attack. That's why the feats to allow a melee PC to use some other power in place of a basic attack are good.

Until a PC replaces his basic attack with something or gets something to enhance is basic attack - most monsters have a better charge attack than PCs. This is because most melee monster's basic attack (make sure you know what the attack icons on a monster mean to understand this) are better than a PC's basic attack. Thus you should charge whenever it makes sense with melee type monsters.

This is a very important thing.

I noticed that as I progressed in levels with my fighter I charged less and less for 2 reasons:

1 - campaign style related, not important here.

2 - melee basic sucks compared to my at-wills (certanly same happens witha battle cleric). Ending the turn also sucks somethimes, you cant even spend action point here.

 

[TDarien]

Actually the rules specifically say you can spend an action point after a charge.

Charging is definitely situational tactic, but I would argue that for a fighter, the marking ability is what's most important, which charging accomplishes just fine.

 

[d.wartooth]

It's a great combo for my current character. I play a minotaur cleric in a party with 3 defenders (dragonborn GWF, genasi swordmage and shadar-kai pally) as well as a half-elf starlock...my character is a STR based cleric. In combat, I let the defenders lock down the other melee baddy's then 2 or 3 rounds into the mix, I position myself to charge the squishies in the back row. With an effective move speed of 10 for a round, plus the racial bonuses from charging, not to mention knocking them prone when I'm done! It's definately caused some fits for the DM who has taken to keeping a striker back there to protect the squishy, but their AC tends to be low, too.

 

[LoneViper]

It's legal, but it sort of leaves me sour. My group didn't realize quite what an impact the Charge rule would make... for a while, I misinterpreted it as a simple +1 to basic attacks as long as you had moved in a straight line, to the closest square, etc. etc. When we found out the correct ruling, it changed our game significantly.

It helps the monsters/NPCs the most. Since monsters use Basic Attacks so often, they can Move + Charge halfway across the map to reach the PCs, even if they are trying to stay away. The monsters usually don't charge through opportunity attacks, but on occasion it's caused some trouble with the back-line strikers.

It also doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Ordinarily, a double-move means you can't attack. It seems odd that you CAN attack with a charge, even though you're not in a "Run" state. Somehow the act of declaring a charge means that you can throw a basic attack on top of a double-move. If it were a bull-rush ONLY, that might make more sense to me, but it's still a little weird that you can combine a Move with a Standard action, even if the Standard action is limited. Especially since, as far as I know, it's the only action in the game that "doubles up" like that.

The good(?) news is that the Charge rule makes it more difficult to retreat. Before the Charge rule came up, monsters who were getting crushed would double-move away, and the PCs could only hope to fling a Ranged attack or two at them as they went. Now, the front-line guys can Move + Charge, and lock up the enemies with a chance to deal some damage (and possibly an attack of opportunity as well).

I don't know. Normally, Melee Basic attacks (not at the end of a charge) are still Standard actions, which suggests that they still require the kind of time that Standard Actions require. Slapping a free attack on at the end of a Move seems to break my sense of how long the various actions take.

I don't know, it's hard to say precisely what bothers me about it. As I mentioned at the beginning, it just leaves me sour.