Unlimited Opportunity Attacks? Really? Why?

[Daern]

I had a player yesterday explain to me that the rules for opportunity actions are that you get an attack against each and every enemy that moves past your position. This means that you could keep hacking all round.
I had thought that Opportunity Attacks were an immediate reaction and that Combat Superiority gave fighter an "exceptional" extra attack against their mark.
Rereading after the game it seems that my player was right. It is the opportunity action that is anomalous in the list of actions.
My question is, Why? What is the game reason for having it this way? I have always thought the tactic of overrunning a combatant who had used their OA to be a pretty good one.
It would seem to make more sense to me to limit opportunity actions (as it was in 3e), and to allow fighters to make more than one CS strike if they had multiple people marked.
So, can someone explain to me why the rules as written make sense or work well? Thanks.

 

[Nifft]

I had thought that Opportunity Attacks were an immediate reaction and that Combat Superiority gave fighter an "exceptional" extra attack against their mark.

Fighters do get an exceptional extra attack, because they get it in addition to normal opportunity attacks. Otherwise, a Fighter who had made an OA would have a powerless Mark until the end of his next turn.

What's the real reason, though? Hard to say, but it could be that it's one less thing to track in combat, and having things this way works fine, so the simple route was taken.

Cheers, -- N

 

[DracoSuave]

Opportunity Actions are the way they are as an advantage to monsters, not players.

It sort of balances itself out that way.

 

[corncob]

To be precise, each creature gets one opportunity action during each other creature's turn. If you want to overrun someone, use readied actions.

 

[FurryFighter]

to call OAs so powerful we'd have to be assuming enemies would intentionally run past PCs constantly, in order for it to be a problem. enemies can do OA too, so they know about this, and should avoid running around stupidly. intelligent understanding of combat from the NPC enemy POV is the balancing act of keeping OA from being too powerful.

 

[babinro]

I find it doesn't come up that often and simply allows the game to move smoothly. In theory, the creature could make so many OA attacks that it makes no logical sense within the 6 second time frame that comes up in a round. But in nearly all cases, this just leaves less work for the DM to track of round after round.

Less tracking for DM and players is really what the game needs. Today's session had a creature with (sanctioned, Challenged, ongoing 4 fire damage save ends, 2d6 radiant damage when attacking save ends, move 2 squares or take 6 damage and cannot see the warlock until the start of its next turn) all at the same time.

I think if I were to DM without a computer, the game would take forever having to write this stuff down every round.

 

[Daern]

huh, everyone seems pretty clear about it. I guess in the heat of the moment I made the wrong call. Oh well.

 

[FurryFighter]

I find it doesn't come up that often and simply allows the game to move smoothly. In theory, the creature could make so many OA attacks that it makes no logical sense within the 6 second time frame that comes up in a round. But in nearly all cases, this just leaves less work for the DM to track of round after round.

Less tracking for DM and players is really what the game needs. Today's session had a creature with (sanctioned, Challenged, ongoing 4 fire damage save ends, 2d6 radiant damage when attacking save ends, move 2 squares or take 6 damage and cannot see the warlock until the start of its next turn) all at the same time.

I think if I were to DM without a computer, the game would take forever having to write this stuff down every round.

Shorthand forms for effects, or have dry erase laminated covers over "monster sheets" sheets designed to be like a character sheet, except its got all the effects listed in one box, you just put the name of the monster in, and track its effects. all the massive amounts of stuff can be handled like this, and the basic things that never change with the monster can still be done "in head".

huh, everyone seems pretty clear about it. I guess in the heat of the moment I made the wrong call. Oh well.

There is also shifting, to get rid of OAs when moving around a character, and thats why the feat "defensive mobility" is nice, cause it +2's vs OAs. Additionally, OA doesnt occur if you move into a square adjacent, so with good movement, you can still swarm some PC and avoid lots of OAs.