AoO and Cleave

[Justin Bacon]

Reach weapons are a pain in real combat. Sure, when opponents first meet, they are good. But in real combat, they were quickly dropped (unless used on horseback) and replaced with more traditional weapons.

... and since D&D requires extraordinary training (by way of a feat) to "choke up" on most reach weapons, what's your point, exactly?

My point remains: Reach weapons are very specifically designed to attack people before they get close enough to hit you. Your previous claim, that this is not "realistic", is, in fact, contrary to reality.

I hate to break it to you, but wuxia films are more fake than professional wrestling.

As opposed to LORD OF THE RINGS and CONAN, which are God's Gospel Truth, right? Are we talking about D&D the Fantasy Game or not?

It would be impossible to attack someone 10 feet in front of you and then 10 feet behind you within a half second while you have allies on either side in a 8 foot tall room. But, it can easily happen in DND.

Since when did D&D have "half second" rounds?

Have you ever been in real melee combat like a gang fight? It sounds like you haven't. Yes, you can easily be snuck up on. Ask anyone who has been in it.

Allow me to repeat myself, since you've chosen to simply ignore what I wrote: If you want to model sneaking up on someone on a battlefield, you need a better mechanic than "I walked up to him, clearly he had no chance of spotting me". Such a mechanic would be more complicated than the basic combat mechanics in the PHB, but such a mechanic does appear in the Complete Adventurer. It involves, quite appropriately, a Hide check, and allows you to catch an opponent unawares (rendering them flat-footed in regards to yourself).

If you are fighting eight guys, you won't have time to take advantage of one of them lowering their guard. Nor will you probably see it happening. You'll be too busy.

As I mentioned before, this is a ridiculous contention. Like I said before, if you're (successfully) fighting eight guys you are SPECIFICALLY looking for situations lke this. When you're vastly outnumbered in a fight, you spend most of your time simply trying to avoid the attacks of others -- and you spend what little time you have left SPECIFICALLY looking for somone to drop their guard so that you can take advantage of it.

If you're unsuccessfully fighting eight guys, then it's irrelevant. The eight guys stab you and you die like Caesar.

If you think that this is what they do, fine. Just because you kill someone does not mean that you necessarily did a powerful blow (e.g. you could have done 1 hit point of damage, but that is irrelevant to Cleave). That's called flavor text.

Allow me to roll my eyes. YOU SPECIFICALLY ASKED FOR FLAVOR TEXT: "What is Cleave intending to emulate? What is AoO intending to emulate?" If you weren't interested in what these rules are attempting to emulate, WHY DID YOU ASK?

Geez.

Justin Alexander Bacon
http://www.thealexandrian.net

 

[FireLance]

This seems to be the core of your difficulties with the RAW. And frankly, this is just the result of the cleave mechanic. AoOs have little to do with it.

As I've mentioned, it's the specific interaction of Cleave with AOOs.

Cleave by itself is fine. If C attacks B and then Cleaves into A, C's damage potential against A for the round doesn't increase because any attack that he could have made against B, he could also have made against A.

AOOs by themselves are fine. If B does something to lower his defences, it's fair that C's damage potential against B increases. Similarly, if A does something to lower his defences, it's fair that C's damage potential against him rises as well.

It's the interaction of Cleave and AOO that I have a problem with. If B lowers his defences and A doesn't, C's damage potential against B should rise, but C's damage potential against A shouldn't. Cleaving off an AOO allows C's damage potential against A to increase as well. As indicated in the dire rat example above, Cleaving off an AOO allows C to get three more attack rolls against A simply because three weak opponents provoked AOOs from him.

 

[Dinkeldog]

Okay, boys and girls, at least one person has earned themselves a 3-day suspension from this thread. Everyone else is hereby put on notice. There are a few subconversations going on that vary in nastiness. Going any further down the path of nastiness will result in additional suspensions.

Thanks,
Dinkeldog
ENWorld Moderator

 

[Storm Raven]

What is the DND combat system intending to emulate?

Exactly what I said it is intended to emulate: mythic fantasy combat. The kind found in Homer, where Hector has a lance that is five meters long. Or the kind where Hercules kills a lion with his bare hands and wears its skin as magical armor. And so on. Once you get to mid- to high-levels in D&D, that's the only type of precedent that comes close.

If you want realistic combat, play GURPS or something similar. D&D just isn't suited to "realistic".

 

[KarinsDad]

Exactly what I said it is intended to emulate: mythic fantasy combat. The kind found in Homer, where Hector has a lance that is five meters long. Or the kind where Hercules kills a lion with his bare hands and wears its skin as magical armor. And so on. Once you get to mid- to high-levels in D&D, that's the only type of precedent that comes close.

If you want realistic combat, play GURPS or something similar. D&D just isn't suited to "realistic".

Precisely.

Which is why attempts at rationalization of how a given rule can be imagined works for some people and does not for others.

It's all a matter of which rules jar a given person's suspension of belief and which do not.

 

[Nail]

..true enough. The problem comes when it works for some, but not all, of those people within one gaming group.

 

[Storm Raven]

Which is why attempts at rationalization of how a given rule can be imagined works for some people and does not for others.

It's all a matter of which rules jar a given person's suspension of belief and which do not.

I'm not sure where you are going here? What suspension of disbelief are you going to jar when the genre itself is entirely fantastical? Does anyone need an explanation for how Hercules held the sky on his shoulders? Or how Beowulf swam in full armor for seven days while battling sea monsters?

 

[rvalle]

Yes, I agree. But, it is not just the concept of attacking outside your turn. It is the concept of getting an extra attack in, just in order to attempt to balance out some portion of the game that is considered more potent.

The entire idea of AoOs has been part and parcel of our collective consciousness for several years now.

But, when it first came out with 3E, a lot of players had issues with it because it was so darn non-intuitive.

I even had a player quit because he had a problem with a Fighter "in front of him" who was "facing away" and attacking someone else with a longspear and when he tried to sneak up behind him, the opponent got a free AoO against him.

I agree with that player. What the heck is that??? It makes no sense.

But, this simple game mechanic rule has become so ingrained within our culture, that people even spend time explaining how something so non-intuitive actually makes sense. I have seen many people here on the boards trying to rationalize this type of thing (in fact, a few people did that here in this thread as well).


AoOs were introduced to resolve the "Everyone run past the guards and attack the king. The guards cannot to anything to stop you.". It is a clever game mechanic trick to balance out such issues caused by each player getting one turn each round and being able to run past opponents in order to attack the spell caster in the real of the group issues.

Howdy.

I never had issues with grasping these ideas as they can be viewed as carry overs from board war games.

AoO = Zone of Control and Defensive Fire

Zone of Control is where a unit exerts influance on the area around him so enemy units have to stop their movment after entering.

Defensive Fire is a unit taking an attack during the enemies movement.

Think its bad in DnD, try playing Squad Leader where you watched the other guys every move and told him 'stop' when you wanted some of your guys to fire. Pretty much akin to letting archers take AoO's on anyone moving within their sight and range.

This is one of the area's that DnD has become more tatical and wargame like.

rv

 

[KarinsDad]

I'm not sure where you are going here? What suspension of disbelief are you going to jar when the genre itself is entirely fantastical? Does anyone need an explanation for how Hercules held the sky on his shoulders? Or how Beowulf swam in full armor for seven days while battling sea monsters?

Yes, some people do. You, evidentally, do not.


Firelance has a real fairness problem with AoO and Cleave. Hence, one reason we have such a long discussion here.


The player in my game had a problem with attacking someone from behind and them getting a free attack on him when he did it. He had SUCH a problem with this going from 2E to 3E that he quit playing for several years.


Just because you can suspend your belief and allow fantastic imaginative weird events to occur when you are gaming does not mean that everyone else can or will or wants to.


Just because you have no problem with a PC Monk carrying 50 pounds making a 35 foot running long jump over a pit does not mean that other people do not have a problem with it, even though we are talking a fantasy game here. That's a physically impossible task in the real world and some people might be uncomfortable with non-magical skills giving characters magical sounding abilities in a fantasy world. Other players have no problem with this.


Hence, getting back to my previous point, just because one person can describe how Cleave off AoO works for them does not mean that a description like that will change someone else's point of view as to whether it is fair or not (or even reasonable to have happen, even in a fantasy game).

 

[Storm Raven]

Yes, some people do. You, evidentally, do not.

No, the question is this: once you are in a genre in which that sort of mythic capability is accepted as part and parcel of the game, why does accomplishing mythic level feats of skill become a problem? Celtic myths talk about heroes able to outrun arrows or balance on spears in flight, Greek heroes accomplished similar feats of skill, and so on. How is it that little things like "cleave off AoO" is a problem in that genre?

Firelance has a real fairness problem with AoO and Cleave. Hence, one reason we have such a long discussion here.

There's actually no fairness issue at hand. AoO off cleave is balanced under the rule system as presented. Some people find it aesthetically displeasing. To me, this means they probably find lots of other aspects of D&D combat aesthetically displeasing as well, for example, you find a problem with using reach weapons as presented in the rules. For people concerned with such things, I suggest other game systems. GURPS, for example, will give you detailed realism out the wazoo.

The player in my game had a problem with attacking someone from behind and them getting a free attack on him when he did it. He had SUCH a problem with this going from 2E to 3E that he quit playing for several years.

Then, perhaps, a different game system would be more to his tastes.