AoO and "circling"

[jadrax]

I'm not at all sure I know what this really means (ditch them? see how they flow when moving fast?), but without them you need something to stop rather crazy combat mobility. Being given a "free attack" if an enemy moves away without spending an action is just an OA dressed up in a fashionable outfit, but what else do you suggest?

I still don't see how most of the combat mobility is that crazy barring a couple of corner cases.

If you watch a boxing match, or a fencing bout*, most of it is briefly closing with your opponent to make a few blows and then quickly parting again.

The idea of standing five foot away from each other and trading blows is a product of the initiative system which should probably be put to rest.


*not ideal I know, but it is all we really have to base such things on.

 

[Minigiant]

They're.. doing something someone's Grandma wouldn't approve of in combat? Emphasis mine

I was flanked by Overzealous Autocorrect and Bad Voice Recognition.

I moved out of melee and hit the wizard dead.

 

[RangerWickett]

As I posted elsewhere, I like the ability to stop one person from running past you. I also dislike that the rules let you be absorbed in dueling one person, then freely smack someone else who happens to run behind you.

So, what if we just had a rule like, "If a hostile creature enters a space adjacent to you, and it is the only enemy adjacent to you, you can choose to stop its movement."

Basically, you can run up to someone and attack. And if you're fighting and you want to run away, you can do that too. And if one of your buddies is distracting an enemy, you can run past without concern. But if the enemy isn't currently engaged with anyone else, you can't run past it unless it lets you.

 

[slobo777]

I still don't see how most of the combat mobility is that crazy barring a couple of corner cases.

If you watch a boxing match, or a fencing bout*, most of it is briefly closing with your opponent to make a few blows and then quickly parting again.

The idea of standing five foot away from each other and trading blows is a product of the initiative system which should probably be put to rest.


*not ideal I know, but it is all we really have to base such things on.

A boxing ring is 20' x 20'.

If you mapped this as a grid, 4 by 4, and tracked average positions of the boxers in e.g 3 seconds blocks, you'd actually see most "rounds" that the fighters were in two adjacent squares (or quite often in the same one). So, indeed if you mapped a boxing match to D&D's resolution in time and space, the combatants do basically stand next to each other (well, circle around) and trade blows.

I expect the same analysis of fencing would show a similar result. Although there is more reach and lunging there, so perhaps distances are typically over 5', but not by much.

The idea of standing five foot away from each other and trading blows is a product of lack of imagination when working with an abstract combat system. I understand it feels static, because nothing in the game system represents that movement, but even 1e had descriptive text implying that melee involved moving around that wasn't explicitly tracked (well, in that case a melee round was a whole minute, so it made little sense otherwise).

 

[KidSnide]

As others have said, we're both wrong (it's area attacks, not close attacks, that are the other case) - but that's peripheral, really.

It's peripheral to your point, but it's still a reasonable demonstration of how "move without shift, plus ranged and area attacks" is a harder rule to remember than it would seem.

But all of that ignores the real complexity of the system: shifting. The best reason to get rid of OAs is to get rid of shifts (and five-foot-adjusts).

In 3.x, we had a "five foot adjust", which was a special weird little rule. In 4e, they generalized non-provoking movement into a "shift." That's a fine rule for tactical folks, and at least half the players I know never had trouble remembering it. But it's an extra thing to explain and it generated another abstract rule: "move actions" to handle your various choices of how to move.

Move actions are organized and neatly understandable, but they are abstract and require explanation. I can remember the expressions on the faces of players when I explain that you get a standard action, a move action and a minor action. Nearly every person understands it, but new players need to concentrate on it. When it gets to their turn they think "I have three types of actions, what do I do with them?"

That's fine for a tactical skirmish game, but lousy for a role-playing game. In a RPG, players should be thinking "what do I want to do?" not "how do I spend the action currency I've been allocated?" If focuses new players on rules abstractions, not the in-game fiction.

The other reason to can OAs, is that they force players who haven't internalized the OA rules to think carefully when moving. The exact details of their movement is rarely critical to the game, and careful thought dedicated to usually-irrelevant detail slows down combat. It's far better for players to focus on their actions.

-KS

 

[Oni]

Two combatants cautiously circle eachother, looking for an advantage...

It's a classic image. In 3e, it's the 5' step. In 4e, it's the move action to shift 1. In 5e, they can just run circles around eachother because there's no AoO.

I know 5e wants to stay all TotM-friendly. But even the core TotM rules need to account for classic bits like circling or edging past foes cautiously vs running past them recklessly vs barreling through them - not to mention trying to keep enemies from edging or running past you to murder the people you're trying to protect. I'm sorry, they're just too commonplace for "describe your improvised action to the DM and he'll make something up." If every DM who ever runs the game is going to have to make up a rule for the same thing the first time there's a fight, it's not improvising, it's a missing rule.

I sort of feel like, in a TotM situation, circling for position should be some sort of maneuver for an advantage of some kind. To me that would make a lot more sense in that context than trying to adjudicate it via AoO.

 

[jadrax]

A boxing ring is 20' x 20'.

It should be 24' by 24', but they do vary.

And you do have a point in that 5 foot squares are ridiculously huge, but I think that actually reinforces my point that disengaging from combat is no where near the herculean task some people seem to think it is.

 

[Texicles]

I'm aware of being able to move 5 feet and not provoke AoOs, whether you want to call it a step or a shift, I just think that 5 feet is a little limiting, and that melee classes would benefit from added mobility.

As I was reading through the responses, the boxing analogy came to mind, not as justification for move in->attack->move out, but for more of the circling aspect. I think slobo's description helps support my point.

In a boxing ring, it would not be uncommon to see a fighter move from one side of his opponent to the other within a 6 second period. Such a distance is generally more than 5 feet, but the opponents remain within 5 feet of one another.

 

[jadrax]

I'm aware of being able to move 5 feet and not provoke AoOs, whether you want to call it a step or a shift, I just think that 5 feet is a little limiting, and that melee classes would benefit from added mobility.

As I was reading through the responses, the boxing analogy came to mind, not as justification for move in->attack->move out, but for more of the circling aspect. I think slobo's description helps support my point.

In a boxing ring, it would not be uncommon to see a fighter move from one side of his opponent to the other within a 6 second period. Such a distance is generally more than 5 feet, but the opponents remain within 5 feet of one another.

Yeah, there really could do with being a better way to model simultaneous movement.

The other problem with this that is coming up a lot recently is the idea that you send two people up a corridor walking shoulder to shoulder, but because one is going on initiative 10 and the other on 3, the Gnolls get to run through a gap that should not logically exist on initiative 5.

 

[Balesir]

I still don't see how most of the combat mobility is that crazy barring a couple of corner cases.

If you watch a boxing match, or a fencing bout*, most of it is briefly closing with your opponent to make a few blows and then quickly parting again.

The idea of standing five foot away from each other and trading blows is a product of the initiative system which should probably be put to rest.

*not ideal I know, but it is all we really have to base such things on.

The crazy mobility comes from coordinated moves that would be simply impossible - not because movement was impossible, but because your movement is dictated by the enemy and circumstance as much as by yourself. And I disagree that fencing and boxing is the best we can do - study some of the videos among these liks and think how they would play out:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ijy8Ky_vrI&feature=related"]Link1[/ame]
Link2
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-Ms9RMH7IA&feature=related"]Link3[/ame]

Basically, D&D combat is and has always been hopelessly inaccurate; but that's OK - just accept it as an abstraction, and as an action movie, and it's still great fun!