Hi,
Thanks all for the insightful responses.
Working backwards:
roguerouge said:
So, why is reserving an action to attack the caster if he steps out of melee range or casts a spell not a viable tactic that resolves this conundrum?
That never seems to work very well. My group, which likes to mix it up in large and tactically involved combats, only occasionally uses readies actions. That said, I think a part of the problem is that its too hard for most folks to know when to ready an action. One needs to understand initiative and various mechanics very well in order to avoid wasting an action.
Celebrim said:
Don't resolve a person's movement and a person's action at the same time.
Instead, resolve each person's movement in turn, then after all movement has taken place, resolve each person's action.
...
Lanefan's comments sort of sum up why I dislike the notion of RPG as simply a complex tactical wargame. Strict rules become a straightjacket on play if the DM has no expected leeway to rule on the edge cases. However, if you really must have an RPG be a tactical wargame, then I think you ultimately end up either playing something fundamentally as abstract as chess or else end up with phases and complexities like every other wargame out there that attempts to simulate something.
That is interesting. I'm taken back to my 1E and Rolemaster GM'ing style, where I would poll players for their actions, then resolve them simultaneously. More and more, I am missing this style of resolution.
Lanefan said:
Harsh interpretation of the turn-based initiative system leads to many wacko things. For example (and this came up once in a game I was in) a battle breaks out 50' away. Two of us want to charge in *together* so we could keep track of each other's whereabouts in the fog...the higher-init. guy (me) even holds up to wait for the slower guy's initiative to arrive...but we still aren't allowed to move together, as by the book all of one character's actions (including movement) must resolve before another's can start. End result: I charged in, and the other guy got lost in the fog. Bloody ridiculous.
Another one, hypothetical this time: a Giant stands across a field. How can the party charge it en masse? Under the turn-based initiative system, they move one at a time...so when the Giant's initiative comes up only some of the party are there to be hit *despite* the stated intention to all arrive at once.
The game has to make some allowance for simultaneous actions, and for fluidity in combat.
That reflects my views of the problem pretty well. I have my own set of examples:
My players were one facing a large group of Taer, who were crossing a chamber near the party. By initiative ordering, they crossed one at a time, although they were all on the same initiative. One of the players wanted to put a fireball on the whole group as they crossed, but, RAW, there is no point in time when the fireball can be launched that will catch more than one.
In another case, as a PC and party leader, I wanted each player to have a buddy and to stick with their buddy. Turned out to very very hard using the initiative system.
We've also tried to have coordinated charges, and have run into problems with that.
I'm tending to place the problem with turn based initiative (which ties very strongly to AOO's and the 5' step; these are a unified mechanic).
(As an aside: Which makes my distaste for 4E in part because of this lingering distaste for 3E which was not, IMO, adequately "fixed" by 4E.)
I still have to digest the rest of the notes ... more later.