5' Step Questions (Moved from House Rules)

[S'mon]

I tend to agree that the 5' step is Balanced, yup - to me that's not the problem. The problem is plausibility - the designers came up with a way to make archers (and spellcasters) _viable in a melee_ - presumably because most D&D combats take place in cramped underground conditions and forcing the archer to resort to a melee weapon would be 'unbalanced'. This is the same reason why archers have almost the same damage output as melee fighters do - they can typically drop an equivalent foe in 2-3 rounds of combat. It was a big shock to me when I first played 'Medieval Total War' with its realistic missile effects - Polish archers emptied their quivers into a standing unit of Byzantine infantry at close range - several minutes of fire and the archers killed less than one man each!

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.

This is an interesting idea - by the rules, Ready is always a 'standard' action, so you can't attack + Ready. Would it work to let characters ready a 5' step to follow up an opponent as a Move-Equivalent (eg attacker could standard-attack +_ 5' step, & ready another) or even Free action (if they hadn't already moved that round - so could full attack ready 5' step)? - That would deal with the archer problem right off.

An alternative - but much bigger change - would be to split the round into a movement phase & an attack phase, so ALL movement was resolved (in Initiative order) before resolving all attacks/spellcasts/etc (again, in initiative order) - or vice versa (Attacks first, then moves). That would deal with a huge number of problems D&D's non-simultaneous resiloution system introduces - eg last Thursday ou party was 'on initiative' and we wanted to 'ride into town together', side by side - which turned into a total nightmare because the rules simply don't support this. It ended up with lots of Delay actions and a bit of fudging.

 

[StalkingBlue]

I tend to agree that the 5' step is Balanced, yup - to me that's not the problem.

Agreed.

The problem is plausibility - the designers came up with a way to make archers (and spellcasters) _viable in a melee_ - presumably because most D&D combats take place in cramped underground conditions and forcing the archer to resort to a melee weapon would be 'unbalanced'. This is the same reason why archers have almost the same damage output as melee fighters do - they can typically drop an equivalent foe in 2-3 rounds of combat.

I don't have any more plausibility problems with that than with the asynchronous movement rule in general, to be honest. I'd say the 'take 5' step back plus fire five arrows at surprised swordsman in front of you' option is due to the way DnD splits the combat rounds into turns with combatants moving and fighting one after another.

Of course I wouldn't mind giving my poor Midnight orcs a tactic to counter pesky elves stepping back and Colour Spraying them to Mid-Morning Come ... 8)

This is an interesting idea - by the rules, Ready is always a 'standard' action, so you can't attack + Ready. Would it work to let characters ready a 5' step to follow up an opponent as a Move-Equivalent (eg attacker could standard-attack +_ 5' step, & ready another) or even Free action (if they hadn't already moved that round - so could full attack ready 5' step)? - That would deal with the archer problem right off.

Hm. It wouldn't really stay viable at higher levels because the melee fighter who readies would still lose a couple of attacks - I'd expect that it'd usually make more sense to use up all my attacks hoping to take the archer down on my turn, rather than try to hit once, then ready in case he steps back and fires arrows at me.

Here's the feat from Dragonstar someone mentioned (slightly reworded the description, which is too long and fuzzy to type here):

Pressing Attack.
Prereq.: Combat Reflexes.
Once per round when an opponent steps back from a square you threaten, you can immediately follow up with a 5' step into an unoccupied square where you again threaten the opponent.

An alternative - but much bigger change - would be to split the round into a movement phase & an attack phase, so ALL movement was resolved (in Initiative order) before resolving all attacks/spellcasts/etc (again, in initiative order) - or vice versa (Attacks first, then moves). That would deal with a huge number of problems D&D's non-simultaneous resiloution system introduces -

Hm ok. It would however nail everyone down to a Move-first-then-fight or vice versa order - much less flexible than the current system.

I pretty much hated the Dark Eye combat system for (amongst other things) forcing you to spend a full combat round if you wished to move even a single step - which led to leaden fighting styles with a lot of stiffly standing around hacking at everything within reach, rather than tactical use of movement. I wouldn't much like to limit those options I think.

Can't see yet how introducing separate movement and fight sequences would open up additional tactical options, maybe that's it. I've never played a game that used that AIR:

eg last Thursday ou party was 'on initiative' and we wanted to 'ride into town together', side by side - which turned into a total nightmare because the rules simply don't support this. It ended up with lots of Delay actions and a bit of fudging.

It worked though! Letting characters act synchronously if they delay to the slowest one's iniative is a pretty small change, but it works ok I thought.

 

[S'mon]

It worked though! Letting characters act synchronously if they delay to the slowest one's iniative is a pretty small change, but it works ok I thought.

Technically BTW we could all have Delayed until the 'very start' of the next round - Zana has Init +7 so I could delay to eg count 27* the next round, and probably higher than that...

*27 would be the max under 3.0's 'refocus' rule, which 3.5 discarded. It now seems unlimited so we could all have delayed to count 10,000 on the following round, if we wanted...

I guess that's a good argument against the DM rolling Initiative too early.

 

[S'mon]

I don't have any more plausibility problems with that than with the asynchronous movement rule in general, to be honest. I'd say the 'take 5' step back plus fire five arrows at surprised swordsman in front of you' option is due to the way DnD splits the combat rounds into turns with combatants moving and fighting one after another.

Of course I wouldn't mind giving my poor Midnight orcs a tactic to counter pesky elves stepping back and Colour Spraying them to Mid-Morning Come ... 8)

IMO a spellcaster should take ranks in Concentration if he wants to cast in melee.

I really don't like the 5-arrows thing, though.

After discussing this a bit on the Conan boards I'm thinking maybe just allowing a free 5' reactive step _if the character hasn't already moved on his action_ would deal with it somewhat, although not if the archer never gives his foe a chance to prep one. That's why I'm thinking of allowing 5' step + a standard attack + ready another 5' step.

 

[S'mon]

Or maybe it's not worth worrying about.

After all, it's not like D&D missile combat is realistic anyway, *sigh*

 

[RigaMortus]

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.

What you are explaining here is already doable within the context of the rules. It has nothing to do with the 5' step, but has to do with Ready Actions. If you don't want that fighter to draw his knife, or that Mage to step back and cast a spell, just Ready an action to attack them when they try to do so. This will allow you to "follow" your opponent as they withdraw or 5' step back.

 

[StalkingBlue]

Technically BTW we could all have Delayed until the 'very start' of the next round - Zana has Init +7 so I could delay to eg count 27* the next round, and probably higher than that...

*27 would be the max under 3.0's 'refocus' rule, which 3.5 discarded. It now seems unlimited so we could all have delayed to count 10,000 on the following round, if we wanted...

I guess that's a good argument against the DM rolling Initiative too early.

Hm, as far as I'm concerned the round starts with the highest initiative count of any combatant, or if you delay to just before them, one count above that. Could be higher than 27 in Midnight for all I know, with all those Quickened and other unusual bonuses, but certainly not 10,000.

Not that I see it making much of a difference - if anyone readies or delays again, that basically means waiting for the other guys to act, bringing initiative back down to normal levels.
(It would stress-test our trusty Ini keeper though, to have to keep lists up to 10,000 ... )

 

[StalkingBlue]

IMO a spellcaster should take ranks in Concentration if he wants to cast in melee.

Yup.

I really don't like the 5-arrows thing, though.

After discussing this a bit on the Conan boards I'm thinking maybe just allowing a free 5' reactive step _if the character hasn't already moved on his action_ would deal with it somewhat, although not if the archer never gives his foe a chance to prep one. That's why I'm thinking of allowing 5' step + a standard attack + ready another 5' step.

Standard attack, not full attack, right? Why would that option be worth giving up iterative attacks at higher levels?

And what about the Pressing Attack feat? No good IYO?

 

[S'mon]

Yup.

Standard attack, not full attack, right? Why would that option be worth giving up iterative attacks at higher levels?

And what about the Pressing Attack feat? No good IYO?

Standard attack - well, attacks at full BAB are always handy, especially for power-attackers.

Pressing Attack - it looks ok, I'm just not sure it should require a feat?

 

[Uller]

I haven't had a problem with 5' steps, but I must admit that the ease with which characters in melee can disengage leaves a bad taste in my mouth. But not enough to make any sort of house rule. If I were to make a house rule here is what I would do:

Disengagement: Any time a character is threatened by a foe and attempts to move out of the foe's threatened area (whether by a move action, withdraw action or a 5' step) the foe may choose to attempt to follow with a 5' step of his own. To do this, the character and the foe make an opposed roll d20 + BAB + Dex Mod. The disengaging character may choose to use the tumble skill instead of BAB. If the foe's result equals or beats the character's result, the foe wins and can make a 5' step to follow the disengaging character. This counts as the foe's 5' step until the end of his next turn. Alternatively, the foe may take an AoO.

So...as an example, an archer is threatened by a sword wielding fighter. He tries to take a 5' step so he can do a full attack without provoking that pesky AoO. Now the fighter has an option to try to follow. If he is quicker than the archer, he can keep up. If the archer has a lot of ranks in Tumble, he'll be all the more difficult to follow.

Or maybe the Archer is going to try to withdraw and the fighter doesn't really want to move. He can just take an AoO.

The only wierd area here is that on the fighter's turn, can he move (if he took the 5' step)? I would say no because once you have taken a 5' step, you have given up your movement for the round.