A Cool Incident From Our Playtest

[JohnBiles]

We've done two playtest sessions so far with two adventures I whipped up with the preview stuff from here.

But we had one really supercool moment I had to share.

Adventure 2 opened with Goblins led by a Hobgoblin Warcaster and two Hobgoblin soldiers attacking the village the PCs were in. At the start of the fight, about 8 hapless human peasant minions were running about the town square being chased by Goblins. At the start of the fight, the goblin minions had to make a roll (4 or higher on D6) or else they chased after a peasant instead of going near the PCs.

Most of the peasants got killed or ran, but two of them were still being chased by minions late in the fight.

The warlock used her daily and succeeded and got to slide the badly injured warcaster three squares away. So she moved him right through the middle of the two surviving peasants.

Who got opportunity attacks on him as a result.

And critted.

Twice.

Killing him stone dead.

So the PCs bought them both a drink and they got proclaimed Town Heroes.

 

[hcm]

Sounds like a fun moment, but since it's a playtest: I don't think the peasants should have gotten opportunity attacks since the warcaster's movement was forced.

 

[Chibbot]

Definitely an awesome moment.

Uuuuuuunfortunately I believe hcm is right, forced movement doesn't provoke OA's, unless explicitly stated. (iirc)

 

[Ingolf]

Sounds like a fun moment, but since it's a playtest: I don't think the peasants should have gotten opportunity attacks since the warcaster's movement was forced.

Do you mind? We're having a moment, here.

 

[Dragonblade]

Sounds like a fun moment, but since it's a playtest: I don't think the peasants should have gotten opportunity attacks since the warcaster's movement was forced.

True. But its still cool. And I don't mind fudging the rules in favor of cool.

 

[hcm]

No no no guys -- it's in the rules! The peasants' hero titles *must* be revoked!

/hcm, defender of dead warcasters

 

[Lizard]

Definitely an awesome moment.

Uuuuuuunfortunately I believe hcm is right, forced movement doesn't provoke OA's, unless explicitly stated. (iirc)

Because nothing says "I'm maintaining my guard and fighting well" like being dragged all over the battlefield by magic, tripping, or being harpooned by a goblin...

It's obvious why this was done -- you could use movement powers to grossly unbalance the game, basically kicking some poor sod through a gauntlet instead of focusing on tactical positioning, which is the point of them. If I understand the OA rules, you can take as many as you want, but only one per combatant. So if an orc provokes an OA from three people, all three can hit him, but if he does something in his turn to provoke a second, they can't -- but they can whack some other orc who likewise provokes (Dumb orcs). Is that correct?

(Actually, looking through the rules, some forms of forced movement DO provoke OA, such as Cause Fear. This is clearly a case of 'the special pre-empts the general', though.)

 

[Chibbot]

Because nothing says "I'm maintaining my guard and fighting well" like being dragged all over the battlefield by magic, tripping, or being harpooned by a goblin...

It's obvious why this was done -- you could use movement powers to grossly unbalance the game, basically kicking some poor sod through a gauntlet instead of focusing on tactical positioning, which is the point of them. If I understand the OA rules, you can take as many as you want, but only one per combatant. So if an orc provokes an OA from three people, all three can hit him, but if he does something in his turn to provoke a second, they can't -- but they can whack some other orc who likewise provokes (Dumb orcs). Is that correct?

(Actually, looking through the rules, some forms of forced movement DO provoke OA, such as Cause Fear. This is clearly a case of 'the special pre-empts the general', though.)

:\ Maybe you see something that I don't? I wasn't arguing in favor of the rule, or against it, or at all. I was simply clarifying that, with what we've seen so far, that would be the case. Given that we don't have the full information on how OAs work, I can't say. I personally like the 3e style of 1/round period, unless you're special, but we'll see how it turns out.

Also, to my knowledge, with what has been released thus far, Cause Fear doesn't technically fall under the heading of 'forced movement.' I understand that you are, in fact, forcing someone to move, but the information that we have is that 'forced movement' is restricted to pushing, pulling, or sliding someone. Does it make sense? Not really. But that's what we've been given.

 

[Blackbrrd]

Pushing, pulling and grabbing doesn't provoke attacks of opportunity because it would make all those movement powers way to strong. Personally I like think it is ok, because otherwise one couldn't have abilities that forced movement. I really like the thought of pulling, sliding and pushing opponents around. (and monsters doing the same)

 

[invokethehojo]

That's awesome!

It made me think of one of my favorite wierd occurances. I was playing in the 2e "dragon mountain" adventure years ago, where there are like 18 NPC cohorts by the end of the adventrue (which you need because it's hard and many PC's will die). One of our first NPC's was a skinny guy we found in a cage named evan. No one expected him to live so we sent him in first all the time as cannon fodder... yet he always lived. As the adventure went on we got lots of gear, but no one wanted it cuz our players were all stupidly unique (a samurai, a monk, a guy who wanted his families sword forever) so we gave it all to evan.

Evan was one of the three surviving characters when we beat the adventure, he was amazing. The only starting PC left was the wizard.