D&D 5E 5E - Time for Attacks of Opportunity to die?

[Buugipopuu]

Everyone's talking about casters and withdrawal, but those aren't the things which AoOs are really about. AoOs are necessary for reach weapons and melee battlefield control to be worthwhile. You should not be able to charge a wall of pikes with your dagger and get away with it. Nor should you be able to completely ignore the fighter standing in a 15 foot hall and run past him to gank the wizard.

 

[Hassassin]

Everyone's talking about casters and withdrawal, but those aren't the things which AoOs are really about. AoOs are necessary for reach weapons and melee battlefield control to be worthwhile. You should not be able to charge a wall of pikes with your dagger and get away with it. Nor should you be able to completely ignore the fighter standing in a 15 foot hall and run past him to gank the wizard.

My preferences on those two things: For reach weapons, allow the wielder to take his next attack early, instead of giving him extra attacks. Treat running by someone the same as engaging and then disengaging.

 

[jodyjohnson]

Whatever the system, it will get gamed. Gamed hard.

The best we can hope for is that the way it is gamed still is fun.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I'd be extremely interested in your system and experiences.

What I've been doing up until now in 4E is supposedly doing the cyclic initiative on index cards, complete with individual rolls, but grouping monsters and characters based on those roles. So it is as much DM art as anything else. If Jasmine and Velvet are the two characters going between two sets of monsters, then they act together.

We are starting Gardmore Abbey this weekend. I'm switching to an overt side by side process that mirrors the actual practice of the way I've been doing, with players rolling initiative every round to determine which bracket they go in--before the monsters, after the monsters, or in big fights, between two groups of monsters.

I'll post something in the 4E forum once I see how it works out.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I'd like to see OA in an optional module - along with alternative ways of handling the same thing, such as having zones of control (star wars d20 original edition gave one easy way of handling this, there are others).

 

[Ratskinner]

Just mostly dead

The "Free swing if you try to leave melee" has a long heritage in D&D (although memory fails me about whether and when it was an actual rule vs common house rule.) So a simple thing like that should probably be core.

Full-on "you get this many" "you threaten these squares" "you get a bonus if..." that sounds like tactical combat module, to me.

 

[Viking Bastard]

I'll post something in the 4E forum once I see how it works out.

I look forward to it. We've switched to Side Initiative and I want to see how other people handle it.

 

[gyor]

I'd say for in general, tactical modual, but I can see some classes also having it as optional class feature.

 

[Eric Tolle]

I like attacks of opportunity because I really hate the idea that say, an ogre for example, could win initiative, and wander past three ranks of fighters and squish the mage. Especially when I'm playing the mage.

Attacks of Opportunity are important in making melee fighters actually useful; of the fighters can't protect the casters, what good are they?

 

[Mengu]

I like opportunity attacks. But I can see some adjustments.

In 4e more PC's have meaningless opportunity attacks than monsters/NPC's. As such, it would be interesting to make "opportunity attack" a class feature, and a monster trait (call it "threatening reach 1" if you will). For instance, all defenderish classes and soldier-like monsters would have the threatening feature. For the rest, it could be selectively or even conditionally decided. Ranged characters, and artillery monsters wouldn't have it. An avenger might be able to make opportunity attacks against his oath. Add to other classes and monsters as flavor demands it.