Prone=Flatfooted?

[Tyrloch]

I guess in a way, you're right -- I was looking for an answer outside the RAW, since nowhere in the book does it explicitly state that you can or can't do it. I'm defining "unable to effectively defend oneself one way, and others are defining another. My feeling is that this phrase, since it isn't fully explained in the PHB, is more open to interpretation than others here think it is. If there was a printed chart from WOC somewhere that shows the ONLY conditions that enabled the SA ability, then I would concede the point. But in my opinion, every statement here, including mine, are only opinions. So in the end, I suppose we agree to disagree...thanks for the input.

 

[Tyrloch]

I probably should've added that the trip attack was to be made with a bullwhip. I then could've argued that the opponent is not only prone, but also entangled, since the whip is wrapped around his legs...

My build was going to be a fighter-rogue with 2-weapon fighting (whip & short sword?). I was going to trip the opponent from 10ft away, then take a 5ft step to attack with the short sword, and hopefully, add my SA damage when he was prone. But if I can't get a single ally in this argument, then I'll just drop the rogue levels & go straight fighter...again. thanks.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Anyone here who disagrees should try putting on a chain shirt, which is light armor, and then have your buddy/brother/whatever attempt to kick you repeatedly while you lie on your back trying your best to not get hit. Only then will some here realize what the phrase "unable to effectively defend yourself" means. And have your buddy kick as hard as he can: it'll give the added incentive to try your best to retain your dex bonus...a painful lesson, but those are usually the ones that stay with you...cheers!

After more than 20 years of gaming, here's a little tidbit of wisdom I've learned over the years...

When the other guy finally resorts to "real world" examples, you know he's lost the argument.

 

[Abciximab]

Edit: Also, how can you be 'flat-footed' if your feet aren't even on the ground!?

I assumed this was a joke...

Flatfooted (Idiom)- to catch someone who is unprepared; take by surprise.

 

[Herzog]

@Tyrloch:

Actually, you only need to convince one person: your DM.

Sorry we can't back you up on that.

 

[Tyrloch]

Actually, convincing the DM is the easy part -- it's one of the players that is a rules-lawyer, and bitches & moans if he doesn't like something, like a house-ruling.

Would anyone here consider an opponent with a whip or rope wrapped around his legs to be entangled? Or am I doing it again?? Real-world it works, but how about according to the book?

 

[aboyd]

I think that some here are confusing unable to effectively defend oneself with being helpless, whether it's accidentally or on purpose to prove a point. Paralyzed, uncounscious or otherwise immobile is being helpless, unable to effectively defend oneself means that you're trying like hell, but some condition (like being on your back) is not permitting you to do it to the best of your ability -- hence the AC penalty.

No, that is not at all how D&D defines it, and that is why you're getting no traction for your point of view.

Would anyone here consider an opponent with a whip or rope wrapped around his legs to be entangled? Or am I doing it again?? Real-world it works, but how about according to the book?

Yes and no. A whip that lashes around someone is described in the PHB as enabling a trip attack. So the whip does have a "it's wrapped around you and you're going to have a consequence" property. But the property is not "entangled"; it's "you're susceptible to being tripped."

That makes sense. The whip has not bound the person so that arms & feet will not move. Instead, it's simply lashed onto a limb and a good yank will be bad news for the enemy.

If you want "entangled" then you need to look at the description for the net.

EDIT: You know, another option would be to switch away from D&D 3 or 4. Try Basic D&D or AD&D or OSRIC or Basic Fantasy or any of those free original D&D clones. Those games work almost exactly as you wish to play -- there are no feats, and almost nothing is set in stone as far as how gear is used. In older versions of the game, if you think something up and it sounds reasonable to the DM, he will give you a challenge, such as a Dexterity roll with a low/medium/high DC. If you pull it off, then the idea works.

I'm looking at my red "Basic D&D" softcover from 1980, and it doesn't even describe the weapons. Just a list of names & costs. Everything except the dice used to roll for damage is open. That game is all about figuring out how things might work in the real world, explaining the idea to the DM, and seeing if the DM will roll with it.

 

[blargney the second]

Past the first round of combat, it's actually pretty hard to grant yourself sneak attack in 3.5. It usually requires teamwork with somebody in some form: a flanker, a grappler, or someone to cast spells that deny Dex to AC. Feinting is one of the only ways to continually give yourself SA against an opponent.

So unfortunately for you, unless your DM has some specific house rule in place, your rules lawyer friend knows his stuff and is correct about this particular case. If you'd like some help putting together an effective rogue/fighter, why don't you start up a new thread and I'm sure lots of people here would be happy to give you a hand with that.
-blarg

 

[Arkhandus]

Sorry for the semi-sarcastic reply, but I sort of expected civil answers, even if they disagreed with me. Some of those here think that they will win the argument just by getting smug. To me, it seems like a case of "telephone tough-guy" syndrome -- these same guys wouldn't speak that way to someone face-to-face.

What, we weren't civil? Why did you post in the RULES forum if you weren't actually asking a question about the rules? It's only now that you've made it clear you were actually debating the nature/realism of Sneak Attack, not how it works in the rules as written. You're the one who made everyone believe you were debating the RAW, not the abstractness of the rules.

I still feel that being prone, at least in anything heavier than leather armor, should deny you your dex & dodge bonus. Anyone here who disagrees should try putting on a chain shirt, which is light armor, and then have your buddy/brother/whatever attempt to kick you repeatedly while you lie on your back trying your best to not get hit. Only then will some here realize what the phrase "unable to effectively defend yourself" means. And have your buddy kick as hard as he can: it'll give the added incentive to try your best to retain your dex bonus...a painful lesson, but those are usually the ones that stay with you...cheers!

Have you seen anyone actually move and fight in plate armor? I saw it just yesterday, actually, on the History Channel's "Warriors". An American ex-military guy was learning about warfare in the Middle Ages, and the guys gave him a suit of plate armor to try out. He moved around in it and showed how flexible it seemed, even though he mentioned how heavy it was, yet not much heavier than the full combat gear a modern soldier might haul around sometimes.

You may not be able to move as quickly in most armors, but you can still move. Instead of talking about some guy kicking you (which isn't very precise or vital-targeting as far as attacks go), you should be thinking about how the heck someone's gonna stab you in the vitals while you're in that armor and still able to move. Just how precisely can you get them in the vitals that way, while they're trying to roll away or slash at you with their own sword? Sure, you have an advantage; that's why prone opponents take a -4 AC penalty in D&D. Don't forget that you're still armed and dangerous in most cases when knocked prone (unless you're a wizard or something, and if you're a monk, you can probably regain your feet quickly enough for it to not matter as much).

Don't be snide just because you made a poor choice debating realism in the Rules forum, where everyone is naturally going to assume your debate is over interpreting the Rules as Written. You're the one who didn't bother to state in the first place that you were debating it on the grounds of realism, not whether or not it was the correct way to run it by the Rules as Written.

 

[Arkhandus]

I suppose that we have a different view of injecting a bit of realism into a fantasy game. Following the flow of this debate, I would assume that this crowd thinks it's completely feasible that a Monk's unarmed attacks would not only affect opponents in full plate, but also creatures that may only be harmed by magical weapons.

Of course. This is D&D, not GURPS or something. You tossed realism out the window when you decided it made sense that, in the game-world, anyone can learn to just gibber out some words and twiddle their fingers and make sh%t blow up, or pray and make sh&t blow up X number of times per day, every day, because that's just how often their deity was willing to answer with blowing-sh&t-upness of that particular sort each day, no matter the circumstances, and that anyone with a sword and some combat experience can kill giants or trolls or dragons or chimeras while surviving their acid-breath or fire-breath or whatever, even if fighting nekkid. Or even just by accepting that absurd and physics-or-biology-defying things like giants, trolls, dragons, and chimeras could exist in the setting to begin with. Yes I'm aware that's a giant run-on sentence, it's intentional, it's supposed to be silly.

If random Joe number 1 can learn to gibber and make stuff blow up for no obvious reason, and random Joe number 2 can stab a 30-foot-tall giant a few times in the feet/legs and kill it without being crushed to death by the freakin' TREE it uses as a club, why the H-E-DOUBLE-HOCKEY-STICKS can't random Joe number 3 learn to break through a dragon's or knight's armor with his bare hand and crush the squishy meats inside? Or punch a ghost and actually hurt it because of his own enlightened spiritual development as a monk?

Not to mention that arbitrarily changing some rules for "realism" breaks the game, unless you change so many other ones to make it work alright again. For example, if you let rogues Sneak Attack anything that's even just mildly or moderately slowed down/hampered, you'd better as heck reduce their SA damage to 1 or 2 points per increment instead of 1d6. It's meant to be balanced out by how rarely you can make such a precise strike to the enemy's vitals. If you take away the rarity of use, you'd better as heck reduce it's damage, just like a fighter's Weapon Specialization is just +2 damage because he gets to apply it ALL THE TIME. Also, for example, if you decide that monks can't hurt guys in heavy armor or things like dragons that have heavy natural armor (which would include most of the Mosnter Manual, since a lot of critters have natural armor equal to or greater than heavy armors), you'd better let the monk flurry with any kind of melee weapon so he can actually participate in battles beyond 2nd or 3rd level.

And you'd have to overhaul the majority of D&D rules if you wanted realism. This is NOT a realistic game by its very nature. Hit points and Armor Class and a lot of other things will need to be replaced. May as well ditch your Monster Manual and most of the core classes, since hardly any of it is feasible in a "realistic" game with "realistic" laws of nature and science. Otherwise, rethink just how "realistic" monks and fighters and wizards and clerics and rogues and dragons and giants and stuff really need to be. It's only a game! Don't worry about realism!

But again, maybe I brought this upon myself by attempting to add any realism at all -- maybe the game & the rules as they stand should be left to people who enjoy flying around on magic carpets, or boots with wings on them, firing lightning or fire out of every orifice while their singing sword fights his adversaries all by itself. BTW, we don't even use the Monk character because of the unrealistic flavor of it in a medieval setting...(kiaaaaaa!!)

Try GURPS if you want serious realism in a game. Not D&D. D&D has always had things like hit points, armor class, magic-users, magic carpets, DRAGONS, and other patently unrealistic things. It's the whole POINT of the game!

And you don't have to be snarky about anyone actually enjoying D&D for what it is and always has been. The rules have always been unrealistic and fantastical; that's the whole nature of D&D being D&D. You don't have to run D&D as high-magic, but you do have to accept that, if you're playing D&D, you're playing a game based around the fantastical and heroic, not the boring and mundane and hyper-realistic.

And since when has D&D been purely medieval in setting? Oriental Adventures and other settings had been put out during 1st Edition AD&D. I'm not even sure if, prior to that, OD&D might've had some non-European elements in it. Haven't Ogre Magi (a blatantly oriental monster, though using a western name equivalent) been around since before AD&D, or were they first introduced in the 1E AD&D MM? Hasn't D&D long drawn upon myths of demons and other monsters from other parts of the world than Europe since more or less the beginning? Sumerian and Babylonian demons and such? Not to even MENTION genies, djinn, sphynxes, ILLITHIDS (ia! ia! Cthulu ftaghn!) and stuff.

Or the crashed spaceships and rayguns and six-shooters and other things that have been there since the originaly D&D groups' early campaigns and some of the early published modules. Did you even PLAY 1st or 2nd Edition?

Seriously, you can't just deny that D&D hasn't had wierd or non-European elements "until recent editions." And yes, I'm aware that's a double-negative, it's just so silly to think D&D has been strictly "medieval European" since forever.

And how do you think martial arts has spread like it has in the real world? It started with probably Greek Pankration being spread to the east, where it evolved into Shaolin Kung Fu and from there into other martial arts. Then later contact between east and west resulted in people learning martial arts and bringing those arts back to the west, founding schools and dojos of their own. In a D&D setting, who's to say no Shaolin-style monk or western trainee never bothered traveling west and teaching their philosophy and martial art to others?

Unless you're playing a strictly historical campaign, in which case, why use D&D and its magic-users and dragons and junk at all?