AoO: How are they so confusing?!

[hong]

I like the way Iron Heroes handles it: _every_ action, except an attack action or full attack, provokes an AoO. Nice and simple.

 

[Ranger REG]

I've noticed many times in the gaming community that there's this group of people that just can't seem to grasp the concept and rules of Attacks of Opportunity.

They don't have experience with wargames under their belts, mostly by choice. Tragic.

 

[Plane Sailing]

What can you tell me about Attacks of Opportunity rules that're mind boggling and that I can't seem to notice? I'm really curious.

The two most silly examples that come to mind immediately

1) A paralysed person doesn't provoke AoO. They are standing there, stock-still, unable to defend themselves, but you don't get a free whack at them (unlike the chap casting the spell, moving away from you, drinking the potion etc)

2) Cleaving off AoO would allow you to get a free bonus attack against someone who hasn't dropped his guard at all, just because a different numwit provoked the AoO.

(in our campaigns we house-ruled situation 2*, we've not actually bothered about situation 1 yet because being paralysed is bad enough... but it is an illogical situation)

I imagine someone may be able to come up with some excuse to justify these corner cases of the AoO rules, but I think they class as pretty mind-boggling. Certainly not 'intuitive' effects.


* In one campaign we just don't have cleaves off AoO. I think that we've discussed an option (which I particularly think a decent one) is that if an AoO drops a foe and you have cleave, then it counts as if you haven't used that AoO - you get to cleave into a different AoO, but you can't use the cleave attack against someone who hasn't provoked an AoO

Cheers

 

[robberbaron]

* In one campaign we just don't have cleaves off AoO. I think that we've discussed an option (which I particularly think a decent one) is that if an AoO drops a foe and you have cleave, then it counts as if you haven't used that AoO - you get to cleave into a different AoO, but you can't use the cleave attack against someone who hasn't provoked an AoO

Having Cleave give you free AoO only partially fixes the problem I saw when the big butch fighter got attacked by many Tiny Constructs.
In your option, he would drop the first one that attacked then cleave/free AoO the 2nd one, then use up his Combat Reflexes AoOs on the next 2 or 3.
Or do you imply that Great Cleave would give unlimited 'free AoOs', which has exactly the same effect, in this instance, as allowing Great Cleaves on AoOs.

When this came up in game there was a unanimous agreement to disallow Cleaving on AoOs and I have seen/heard no discussion that offers me a better option.

Also, the vision I have for Cleaving is: warrior takes a mighty swing, cuts clean through his foe then cuts into the next foe along. Great Cleave means that the swing is so mighty that it can cut into a third foe if the second is dropped. I realise that this doesn't fully work for piercing weapons.
Given that an AoO is a reaction and, therefore, not a considered attack, I don;t see it as reasonable that the blow should be able to go through into the next foe.
In fact, I can see an argument for not including STR bonus to damage on AoOs, but I'm not going to advocate that - too much for players (and me) to remember.
I can also see an argument for limiting cleaves to adjacent foes - something to think about later, perhaps.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Having Cleave give you free AoO only partially fixes the problem I saw when the big butch fighter got attacked by many Tiny Constructs.
In your option, he would drop the first one that attacked then cleave/free AoO the 2nd one, then use up his Combat Reflexes AoOs on the next 2 or 3.
Or do you imply that Great Cleave would give unlimited 'free AoOs', which has exactly the same effect, in this instance, as allowing Great Cleaves on AoOs.

I remember that occasion, and you're right, it wouldn't solve this particular problem. It wouldn't be a bad issue if there was only cleave, but great cleave would make it still a horrendous problem.

(We've also seen the problem arise in Star Wars, IIRC)

I'm perfectly happy with the simple 'no AoO on a cleave' to be honest, and that's the way I plan to run it for the future too.

Cheers

 

[ThirdWizard]

In a sword fight this lapse of attention on an opponent (assumedly for 6 seconds) could mean the difference between life and death.) I've thought about this, and have even had players bring it up, and I haven't come up with a reason yet.

Is this so different than A taking a full attack on C when both B and C are adjacent to him?

 

[Psion]

2) Cleaving off AoO would allow you to get a free bonus attack against someone who hasn't dropped his guard at all, just because a different numwit provoked the AoO.

(in our campaigns we house-ruled situation 2*, we've not actually bothered about situation 1 yet because being paralysed is bad enough... but it is an illogical situation)

Hmmm. Perhaps to cleave rule is a bit over-simplified as written. As is, cleave is limited targets that you would otherwise be able to attack due to position -- i.e., other targets in melee attack range -- but doesn't consider other eligibility criteria.

I'd simply rule that targets of the additional attacks granted by cleave must have been eligible to be attacked by the initial attack and be done with it.

On a tangentially related topic, there's a house rule I'm rolling around in the back of my mind called "reserve attacks" that addresses this and other issues more implicitly, but I have to chew on it some more. Perhaps I'll throw it up on the house rules forum when I flesh it out a bit.

 

[Felon]

There is a lot of overhead with the AoO rules--adendums, exceptions, and loopholes all over the place.

Leaving a threatened square provokes...unless you just take a 5-foot step...or if you just move and do nothing else...well, that is to say the first square you leave won't provoke but the rest of the squares do....but if you move and then cast a spell or fire a ranged weapon that does provoke because you did something else after you moved...in fact, it provokes twice, once for the mvoement and once for the povocative action you took...although you could cast defensively to avoid the AoO for the spell...and you could use a party member as soft cover to avoid the AoO for the ranged attack.

People don't have trouble with AoO's because they're a hard concept to grasp, just that they're tedious to keep track of. More like doing your taxes than doing a calculus problem.

 

[Drowbane]

What can you tell me about Attacks of Opportunity rules that're mind boggling and that I can't seem to notice? I'm really curious.

I dunno man, I've never had a problem with the concept. I've known and played with a few gamers who couldn't keep AoOs straight... then again the same people had trouble adding up thier melee damage with power attack on the fly too.

 

[CharlesRyan]

I think confusion over the AoO rules are a legacy from the text that appeared in the original 3.0 PHB.

3.0 didn't internalize the use of the 5-ft. grid the way 3.5 did, and it used a lot of soft language in describing space and areas in combat. In particular, the language surrounding the AoO rules was very mushy in referring to "threatened areas" (a vague, general term refering to the area surrounding a combatant) vs. specific squares that were threatened.

I'm the one who wrote the 3.5 version of the rules, or at least the language that eventually became the 3.5 rules. I did it because even I (inside WotC R&D) was struggling with the mushiness of language; I needed to clarify the rules for my own use. So I very much appreciate how that soft language really muddied otherwise reasonably sound rules. (My text didn't change the rules (although I think I added the withdrawal action), it just tried to make them easier to parse.)

I'd like to believe that the rules are much easier to understand now. But for anyone who initially tried to get them back in 2000 - 2003, the seeds of confusion sewn by those initial attempts might have made it very hard to ever completely parse even the fundamentals.