5' Step Questions (Moved from House Rules)

[2o-Eyed Foe]

I don't really have any desire to remove the 5' step or alter it, actually. I was just thinking about it the other night in regards to a previous DM using it in a way which I severely disagreed with. My players do not take advantage of it (or any of the rules for that matter) so it really isn't an issue with our campaign. However, in my wandering thoughts I extrapolated the situation a bit and thought of some real world, as well as some D&D, examples.

The problem I do have with it is with the realism of a melee situation. From how I understand it to be, the 6 seconds of a given round are spent dodging and weaving, feinting, and basically jockeying for an opening to strike/cast ..etc.. through. This all happens in an assumed fashion, of course. The actual attack roll only reflects the affects of the attack made once a proper opening has been found. In a real fight, if you were to take a step back, an aggressive combatant would be right there with you matching your movement so as not to let you find a better opening and/or footing ..etc.. Certainly, any fighter with even the most rudimentary training would know not to let his opponent a chance at gaining an advantage.

From what I understand, the 5' step or the withdraw moves are basically actions that you take while you are concentrating on nothing else aside from keeping your guard up, therefore not letting your opponent find an opening to take his attack of opportunity from. So far no problem as I see it, at least in the mechanics of the moves. However, the Withdraw is the only action that you can take during your turn. Whereas the 5' step lets you do anything that you can normally accomplish as a standard action. A quote from pg 144 of the 3.5 PHB: "For example, you could draw a weapon (a move action), take a 5-foot step, and then attack (a standard action)..." Am I misinterpreting something here?

Say I am in a fight with someone and we are throwing punches back and forth. I can see that he has a hunting knife sheathed at his hip, while I have no such weapon available to me. I can assure you that, were he to start backing up from me, I would certainly keep up my pressing of the attack so that he wouldn't have a chance to grab his knife without me, at least trying to, hit him again.

The same goes for a caster. Mage A is somehow, unfortunately, face to face with Orc B. So Mage A steps back 5 feet, and casts magic missle at him. It doesn't take a whole lot of intelligence to realize that a mage backing away from you is probably about to blast you in the face with something nasty, even an orc should realize this. So, more than likely, the orc is going to stay right in the mage's face until he finds another opening to attack; which really would be when the mage lowers his guard to concentrate on the casting of his spell.

Rogue A is not a very dexterous rogue and only has an 11 in Dex, he is also very inexperienced at level 1. Fighter B has combat reflexes, which he could have taken at any level he chooes. Say, for the sake of the argument, this fighter is level 15 and has a 16 Dex (Therefore he has a total of 4 AoO's in a single round). Rogue A somehow finds himself unarmed and in combat with this 15th level Fighter. Under the 5' rule (PHB pg. 144) this rogue could step 5 feet away from the fighter (which is moving out of a threatened square), draw a throwing dagger as a move action, and throw the dagger (which without the 5’ step would provoke a new AoO for using a ranged weapon in melee) at Fighter B. Do you see the problem here? An extremely inexperienced rogue could negate the power of a fighter's feat. This fighter has been denied 2 separate attacks of opportunity. Since he has combat reflexes, he has obviously trained in how to execute AoO’s and this low level rogue has completely circumvented them by simply taking the 5' step. Now, of course, on the fighter's turn he is going to hack the rogue to pieces, but that is beside the point. The point is, is that any highly experienced fighter would never let an inexperienced opponent, such as this, take these actions. It simply doesn't make sense.

The 5' step seems to be very powerful and in the wrong hands could be very unbalancing. I understand the game mechanic need for the 5' step, especially for MU’s. Something was needed to help them (and other non-melee types) so that if and/or when they found themselves in the thick of melee they could do something other than stand there and get hacked to pieces. The 5' step, however, seems like an artificial and unrealistic way of combating this situation.

So I am genuinely asking: Am I missing something or interpreting something improperly in the rules?

2o-Eyed Foe

 

[Majere]

Try playing the game with no 5' step
Your character will all die veryvery quickly

The 5' Step is a mechanic to give people a chance. Take the 5'step away fram fighters and most fighters will never get an opportunity to full attack.
Take it away from a mage and the first tiem someone runs up to him the mage is going to die.

Besides, have you every played a team ball sport, just because your marking me doesnt mean I cant make 5' of space, its just about a quick turn of speed giving me a little space before you react. IF you have ever tried to mark someone in such a game you will know that you can never deny someone a foot or two of space unless you preempt their movements.

MAjere

 

[2o-Eyed Foe]

I understand Majere, and your point is well taken. I am not even remotely considering taking the 5' step out of my campaign. I suppose I am just making commentary that it could be abused, and based on that was wondering if my interpretation of it was somehow skewed.

But I assure you, it won't be disappearing from my campaign. Just curious if other people have had issues with it and what their thoughts were.

 

[Li Shenron]

The 5' step seems to be very powerful and in the wrong hands could be very unbalancing. I understand the game mechanic need for the 5' step, especially for MU’s. Something was needed to help them (and other non-melee types) so that if and/or when they found themselves in the thick of melee they could do something other than stand there and get hacked to pieces. The 5' step, however, seems like an artificial and unrealistic way of combating this situation.

You are going too far IMHO You say that the 5ft step could be "unbalancing" but you then seems to be very aware why it is there in the game... exactly to bring more balance!

With attacks of opportunity provoked by movement, a spellcaster or an archer in melee would be often doomed without the 5ft step. Sure, there are other ways to avoid the AoO, but not as straightforward as the 5ft step (for example, Tumble and casting on the defensive must be paid for and don't automatically succeed).

Just think about it: you are an archer/spellcaster; once your opponent has engaged you in melee, without 5ft step you can (1) provoke the AoO to shoot/cast inside the threat area or (2) move out of the threat area, provoke the AoO doing so, then shoot/cast or (3) withdraw to avoid AoO. Unfortunately, if you do (3) to avoid the AoO, you cannot shoot/cast in this round, and unless you move faster (which is of course possible but not necessarily granted) on his turn the opponent catches you up again.

I think that AoOs provoked by casting and by shooting in melee have been introduced for an important balance reason (if you could easily use a ranged weapon from melee range too, why would you need to use a melee weapon ever?); for the same reason, the 5ft step partially re-balances the thing back.

Whether you want more realism, I think that there are much more unrealistic rules that you may want to change before this one! It's strange however, you are the first poster I hear complaining about the realism of the 5ft step...

 

[LonePaladin]

I guess we've had different experiences with this particular option. Right from the first, my players were using this all the time -- partly, I think, because I did likewise.

As to a 'realism' viewpoint, watch any movie that involves hand-to-hand combat. You'll see that the combatants don't just stand there and trade blows when they engage (though they might do so for a few seconds of frantic cross-parrying). They dodge, weave, duck, roll, and generally move all over the place, though they might not cover a lot of ground in any particular segment of time.

I've taken the time to look over some large-scale combats (six PCs and about twice as many foes), and noticed that, in the span of about thirty seconds (five rounds), nearly everyone in the fight is in a different spot. People position themselves for advantage, try to get away from a bad situation, or just simply adjust themselves for a clear shot or a chance to charge.

Removing the 5-foot step would make combat static. Fixed. Boring.

Case in point: The Combat & Tactics book for 2nd-edition AD&D had a lot of rules for tactical, small-scale miniatures combat, including recalculating movement rates, different types of actions, etc. (A lot of that book ended up influencing the 3.5 combat rules.) One problem it had though -- once you had an opponent engage you in melee, you had only one option for movement, and that was to withdraw. You couldn't try to adjust your position at all. The only maneuvering that took place was jockeying for position before closing in and hoping you'd survive the ensuing clash.

In short, once a combat closed to melee, it was static, and boring.

Sure, the 5-foot step seems unbalancing, in that even low-level characters can use it to get actions off without consequences. But it's not flawless.

If your character's engaged with someone who keeps using it (say, the shiv-throwing rogue, or most spellcasters), simply ready an action for them taking a 5-foot step. The moment your opponent starts to take that step -- but before they can actually do so -- you get to whack 'em.

A slightly generous DM might even allow you to take a 5-foot step of your own -- with a readied action -- in response to a 'step and shoot' action. That way, you can keep in that sorcerer's face and possibly disrupt his spells. (I allow this; it keeps things interesting.)

 

[Gort]

There was a feat in Dragonstar (may have appeared elsewhere though) called Pressing Attack or some such.

The effect was that when someone made a 5ft step out of your reach, you got to attack and move 5ft towards them. That one's a bit of a shock the first time it gets used on you!

 

[S'mon]

I agree - I find that the 5' step is implausible when an archer attacked in melee can just 5' step back from the swordsman attacking them, and get a full-attack volley of arrows off without even an AoO! Trying to visualise it plausibly, I can't - something like Legolas vs the uruks in the FOTR movie maybe, but he seemed like an ultra-high-level PC vs low level mooks. The same problem arises with spellcasters, especially when casting full-round spells.

 

[2o-Eyed Foe]

I agree - I find that the 5' step is implausible when an archer attacked in melee can just 5' step back from the swordsman attacking them, and get a full-attack volley of arrows off without even an AoO! Trying to visualise it plausibly, I can't - something like Legolas vs the uruks in the FOTR movie maybe, but he seemed like an ultra-high-level PC vs low level mooks. The same problem arises with spellcasters, especially when casting full-round spells.

Yes, exactly. Perhaps I didn't state my case properly, or perhaps I spent too much time on other unnecesarry details. But this was, essentially, my train of thought in a nutshell. In almost every "normal" situation the 5' step rule is a fine and worthy tactic, one which I have absolutely no problem with. However, in certain conditions (a number of which are listed throught the above posts), it is very implausible.

S'mon, made a great example. You are facing an opponent who only has his bow in his hands in direct melee. You know that as soon as he gets a chance there is going to be an arrow coming your way at short range. Any fighter worth his salt is going to do everything within his power to never let that archer have room to prepare and fire an arrow at him.

Perhaps having the fighter ready an action for when the archer does move is the only work around for these unusual and specific conditions. And I will stress, one more time, these are only infrequent occurences and specific conditons in which I feel the 5' step a little quirky. Otherwise I embrace the 5' step in all it's glory.

 

[DarkMaster]

Yes, exactly. Perhaps I didn't state my case properly, or perhaps I spent too much time on other unnecesarry details. But this was, essentially, my train of thought in a nutshell. In almost every "normal" situation the 5' step rule is a fine and worthy tactic, one which I have absolutely no problem with. However, in certain conditions (a number of which are listed throught the above posts), it is very implausible.

S'mon, made a great example. You are facing an opponent who only has his bow in his hands in direct melee. You know that as soon as he gets a chance there is going to be an arrow coming your way at short range. Any fighter worth his salt is going to do everything within his power to never let that archer have room to prepare and fire an arrow at him.

Perhaps having the fighter ready an action for when the archer does move is the only work around for these unusual and specific conditions. And I will stress, one more time, these are only infrequent occurences and specific conditons in which I feel the 5' step a little quirky. Otherwise I embrace the 5' step in all it's glory.

Exactly the "parade" to the 5 ft step is the ready action.
Another thing I don't think you can make a 5ft step and make a move action after. It could lead to situation where you exceed your maximum move.

So the archer could not make a 5 foot step, draw his bow and attack with it.

 

[Will]

If someone really doesn't want the archer to have room to breathe, ready a 5' step of your own. Maybe even attack and 5' step to follow, if the DM allows it. This was suggested previously. My twist is ready your own 5' step, specifically, to follow

Result? You might get one of your attacks (standard action). In any case, you follow... and get an AoO if they do anything.