The logic of OAs

[KarinsDad]

One per combatant's turn.

So, I think:
If, on your ally's turn, an enemy does something that provokes (if something gets triggered), you can take another OA.

5 opponents, 5 PCs (counting you) = max 10 OAs per round.

I'll wait for an example of how a foe can do a ranged attack or non-shift non-forced movement on a PC's turn. Yeah, I'm sure there is a once in a blue moon power that allows such, but meh. In the meantime to be technical, max 9 OAs per round since a PC cannot take an OA on their own turn and in normal practice, max 5 OAs per round.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm actually fine with bopping folks who run past you. I'm more amused that you can get all these easy attacks against people, but not against inanimate objects. Heck, it's fair to require a standard action to drop a chandelier, because you've got to cut the rope and make sure the enemy stays under the target spot. But I've had a couple of GMs who balk at the idea of easily smashing unattended things during combat.

Likewise, once my ranger was blinded by a spray of acid in the face. I kept failing saves, and was blind, so I wanted to use a Heal check to grant myself an extra save. But nope, by the rules as written, you can only scrape acid out of your buddy's eyes, not your own. Though, again rules as written, I could make my falcon animal companion perform a Heal check on me to grant me a save.

(In 3e, I witnessed a barbarian player who wanted to chase after a badguy who had used an unseen servant to close a door behind him as he fled. By the rules, the PC couldn't run to the door, open it, and keep running. However, he had spring attack, so he could move to the door, destroy it with a power attack, and keep moving through.)

I'm just pointing out that sometimes the rules come across as a little silly.

It works out well enough. You can't use a Heal check on yourself to get an extra save because you are ALREADY doing everything in your own power to escape the effect, which is represented by the save you get at the end of your turn. If your buddy decides to help you out he can give you a +2 or an immediate save since he's doing MORE for you than you can do for yourself. Obviously there is also the mechanical balance aspect of it, some conditions really shouldn't be that easy to escape from.

As far as objects go one pretty much must assume that the 'hit points' objects have represent a rather different sort of quantity than the abstract hit points creatures have. You hack at the door with your axe for 6 seconds and it takes some damage. The abstraction is different such that it lets you use basically the same mechanics for attacking people and objects. The result makes perfectly good sense, it takes a while to hack down a door, less time the more of a bad assed axe man you are.

Yes, any abstraction will produce some rather odd results if its applied too literally or outside the situation it was best designed to handle.

@MerricB I don't recall ANY rules in 1e that defined combat as stopping anything. You could simply move past an opponent and there really weren't any rules that even referenced opponents WRT moving. I don't even recall a formal rule about what happened if you tried to disengage. 2e went into a BIT more depth about that but not a lot, it at least defined engagement and disengagement coherently. Really the major flaw in both 1e and 2e combat systems was their poor handling of movement. Movement rates were simply much too high for the scale of combat being depicted, etc.

 

[MrMyth]

One thing to keep in mind is that turn-based combat has a lot of areas where logic breaks down, just because people don't really alternate pausing in place and actually attacking. Some assumptions have to be made that despite how things actually play out, this is all just a representation for a more dynamic, shifting combat.

 

[Saeviomagy]

It works out well enough. You can't use a Heal check on yourself to get an extra save because you are ALREADY doing everything in your own power to escape the effect, which is represented by the save you get at the end of your turn. If your buddy decides to help you out he can give you a +2 or an immediate save since he's doing MORE for you than you can do for yourself. Obviously there is also the mechanical balance aspect of it, some conditions really shouldn't be that easy to escape from.

It seems odd that "doing all you can" doesn't actually consume an action.

 

[Samir]

I'll wait for an example of how a foe can do a ranged attack or non-shift non-forced movement on a PC's turn. Yeah, I'm sure there is a once in a blue moon power that allows such, but meh.

Technically, readying an action works, and every monster can do that.

 

[Black Knight Irios]

Technically, readying an action works, and every monster can do that.

I like to add powers /w a trigger (immediate reactions/interrupts, free actions, no actions)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I like to add powers /w a trigger (immediate reactions/interrupts, free actions, no actions)

Yeah, any elite or solo monster should have at least a minor action attack and most of them generally deserve some sort of immediate as well to make them interesting.

 

[Nytmare]

I'm fighting Bob. We both have swords. We're engaged in a deadly dance of death. Every six seconds once in a while, I manage one effective attack against Bob one of our exchanges is interesting enough for our extra dimensional puppet masters to take notice.

Then Tim runs past me. Then, Tim is stupid enough to run right through the middle of our fight. I am able to thwack him with my sword without in any way detracting from my duel with Bob and I'm such a bad-ass that I hopefully won't need to use this as an excuse as to why Bob hits me next turn.

Joe, Dan, and Ricky also run past me, and I get to thwack them too. Four effective attacks, against people I'm not paying much attention to against people I'm obviously paying attention to since I decided to attack them, in the span of a few seconds.

You can't marry abstraction and concrete interpretation without some work.

A round is about 6 seconds long. At the same time, it's also exactly as long as you need it to be to fit in a rounds worth of stuff.

If it sticks in your throat when you try to swallow someone attacking a fleeing horde of Joes, Dans, and Rickys in the middle of a fight with Bob, then change the narrative. You don't need to change the mechanics to describe smacking a guy running past while barely keeping your guard up against someone else. A hit can be an accidental stab, a desperate jab, or a solid blow without the need of a bunch of bonuses and penalties mucking things up.

Standard actions aren't things that exists in the world of the characters. Actions are a limit of how many things a player can have a character do in the game, not an auditing tool meant to peel back the paper thin reality of a combat round.

 

[Black Knight Irios]

I'm fighting Bob. We both have swords. We're engaged in a deadly dance of death. Every six seconds once in a while, I manage one effective attack against Bob one of our exchanges is interesting enough for our extra dimensional puppet masters to take notice.

Then Tim runs past me. Then, Tim is stupid enough to run right through the middle of our fight. I am able to thwack him with my sword without in any way detracting from my duel with Bob and I'm such a bad-ass that I hopefully won't need to use this as an excuse as to why Bob hits me next turn.

Joe, Dan, and Ricky also run past me, and I get to thwack them too. Four effective attacks, against people I'm not paying much attention to against people I'm obviously paying attention to since I decided to attack them, in the span of a few seconds.

You can't marry abstraction and concrete interpretation without some work.

A round is about 6 seconds long. At the same time, it's also exactly as long as you need it to be to fit in a rounds worth of stuff.

If it sticks in your throat when you try to swallow someone attacking a fleeing horde of Joes, Dans, and Rickys in the middle of a fight with Bob, then change the narrative. You don't need to change the mechanics to describe smacking a guy running past while barely keeping your guard up against someone else. A hit can be an accidental stab, a desperate jab, or a solid blow without the need of a bunch of bonuses and penalties mucking things up.

Standard actions aren't things that exists in the world of the characters. Actions are a limit of how many things a player can have a character do in the game, not an auditing tool meant to peel back the paper thin reality of a combat round.

Let me expound on your example and that the OAs are just acciedental slashs narrativewise.
Your horde of people running/walking around aren't cautious when wandering around. To be honest it would be rather stupid in real life to walk into a heated battle with swords w/o taking extra care when walking - hey it's called shifting - to take extra care when moving around. Therefore, not the two battling do anything special your horde of oafs running around behaves, even with real world logic applied, rather stupidly.
So makes perfect sense to me - nice work.