AOO's have to go, or be changed

[SoldierBlue]

All this debate hints at how much the whole AoO system bogs down combat. Veteran players understand AoOs, but even amongst them, it generates the sort of complex debate articulated here. And novices don't understand them because they are not intuitive. Anything that requires such complicated examples in the PHB suggest to me that perhaps it's time to drop them entirely...

These are the sort of rules that scare the eight year-olds we all once were away from the hobby. Can you imagine trying to learn D&D now as a child?

Over on the house rules thread, another player (name escapes me) suggested that AoOs in his campaign only applied when spell casters attempted to cast a spell in a threatened square. Seem reasonable...

 

[HeinorNY]

The other side of your argument involves flavor text which is not going to get very far.....

That's why I said that what I really care about is the metagame point of view.
I think the AoO rules the way they are work well for the game from a tactical point of view of the combat. The AoO mechanism doesn't need to make sense by itself, it's part of a set of mechanisms, rules as a whole, that working together, making sense or not in the way they work, give me the most sactisfactory and believable outcome for most situations in the combat.

It's all about choices in combat. There is a list of bad or risky choices that you can make in combat. You can perform them if you wish, the cost is a free attack from your opponents. The cost is also abstract and it needs to be for the same reason AC is an abstraction, and I feel it works well. Being paralysed is not a bad choice you make, it's something you can't choose; and it's not good for the game and it's not fun, from a statistical POV, to be penalyzed twice for somebody else's actions. Considering you are already a sitting duck for Coupe de Grace, from a metagame POV again, I don't think another penalty for being helpless would contribute anything for the game.

If instead that you needed to make a concentration check to drink a potion, everyone would max the concentration skill and get the Skill Focus feat. But a free attack, that's something you should respect and fear. That's a negative constant, you can't manipulate that more than you simply can invest to get a better AC.

IMO AoO's are nice and work well enough for most distinct situations: drinking a potion, casting a spell, running away, shooting an arrow. We could create a realistic mechanism for each one of those situations, but aren't those choices simply all bad choices in a melee combat anyway? Should we create a different outcome for each one, or try to find a commom constant outcome, that is negative and believable, for all of them? I think that a free attack is a good one.

AoO's are not a perfect rule, I think they can be improved a lot in the next edition, I just don't think that any of the OP's ideas make the game better for me.

 

[Li Shenron]

From a pure metagame view, the one I care, if you boot AoO's, how the character is going to be penalyzed for drinking a potion in front of an attacking enemy?

I think you just summarized what the problem with AoO is: it's a metagaming rule, and as such it cannot be fully explained in character.

The fact is, if you accept reasoning in metagaming terms, then there is no ultimate reason for penalising someone from drinking a potion in the first place, or at least there is no reason why the penalty should be to trigger an attack rather than something else.

 

[Hautamaki]

There's another solution to this problem, that also nicely solves a great many other problems I have with the game. It's always seemed to me incredibly arbitrary to assign the 'death' point at -10. That seems to me to be some kind of artifact from second edition or something and never really came with any kind of reasoning or explanation that I'm aware of, so I can it entirely for my games. In my games, characters are not seriously hurt until they drop to 0 hp. They are superficially wounded of course (bruises, small cuts, etc) but they are not in any way incapacitated in their fighting ability. This is of course common sense; no character's abilities are affected in any way by hit point loss until they get to 0. A fighter with 1 hp does as much damage as a fighter with 112, at the same attack bonus, and so on. We all know this. But then he goes from perfectly hale and healthy to stone dead with a mere additional 10 points of damage? Which amounts to less than 10% of his total hp at high levels? That never sat right with me, I dunno if I'm alone. The simple solution is to make his 'death' point at -(his max hp). A fighter with 112 HP dies at -112. Once he hits 0 hp, that's when he starts to be seriously wounded.

Damage taken from blows after 0 hp I typically force the player to roll saves against unconciousness (and if you want, you can add other serious wounds to the mix; losing limbs, ability score damage, etc). Anyone can work out their own tables for this and make it as simple as they want. I've never had it be a problem where a high hp guy was reduced to 0 hit points and then the enemies had to beat on his prone and unconscious form for 5 minutes to finally kill him or anything wierd like that. It's incredibly easy to wrack up damage very quickly against a prone and unconscious character, especially when you apply the common sense solution to the AOO problem mentioned in this thread, which is that as soon as someone stops defending themself (for whatever reason, including unconsciousness or paralysis) they are subject to AOO as normal. This can give your heroes the extra cushion they need to heal themselves after being taken down or paralyzed despite incurring all those AOO's. But as I said, I've never had it get ridiculous the other way either.

I once had an encounter in which I intended my villain to make a last second escape with his ring of teleportation with contingency to teleport him to safety if he went below 0 hp on it; he had a buttload of HP so I thought for sure he'd survive at least one round even after being dropped below 0, but wouldn't you know it, the PC's had dogpiled him, and dealt over 80 points of damage before the ring could whisk him to safety, and my nicely designed villain was fishfood even despite adding that mechanic.

 

[ogre]

Excellent post, you bring up some good points... things I have pondered, but seeing the "action" vs "Passive" comparison really sums it up. I think this aspect would be the key to fixing it. It makes more sense. Perhaps along the lines one poster suggested, a penalty to Dex. Or, how about an AC penalty which could vary depending on how negligent you were. -2 for punching barehanded, -4 for drinking a potion etc.
I think you're right, that 'free attack' is really illogical, though I admitt, the disuasion that the AoO brings to 3e for doing stupid things in melee is brilliant, but it really should be improved for 4e. In my group, its been 7 years and I'm still the only one who truely understand them

 

[IanB]

So, if we're giving out free AOOs against inanimate characters, should we not also be letting people take free swings at walls, doors, chairs, evil artifacts, curtains, etc., anytime they want as a free action?

The problem I think is people aren't treating AOOs as an abstraction. That's what they are. They don't handle the case of 'what do you do with a downed character' because that's not what they're meant to handle, and it is just as well, as the game would be unplayably deadly with what people are proposing.

AOOs work tolerably well to handle the situations they were designed to handle: providing a balancing factor in caster vs. non-caster combat, limiting the 'infinite chase' scenario, etc. They're a game balance tool more than anything else. For better or for worse, D&D combat is abstract, not a simulation.

 

[OakwoodDM]

the wizard is just standing there, NOT attacking, though presumably defending, and casts the spell, which... generates the AOO.

I don't know about you, but if I were faced by a dragon (and had the courage not to collapse to teh ground in fear) I would NOT be just standing there. I would be dodging, ducking, bobbing and weaving as though my life depended on it (which it would). At the point I decided to cast the spell, though, I'd have to stop all that movement and concentrate on getting the words, movements and materials right. That's when the dragon spots a dropping of my guard and gets an AoO.

You stated: "Also, a paralysed opponent is like a door, and if you are in combat and need to break down a door for any reason, you don't get a AoO against it just because it's not fighting back or defending itself."

Your PC can be paralyzed and you can manifest a psionic power that generates an AOO (I think this is legal), and in this case the "door-like" PC, which is not fighting back or defending itself, gets hit. Yet the "door-like" PC which does not manifest a psionic power does not.

So you think enemies should get AoOs against paralysed people but not against doors or statues, which are taking the same actions as the people, because they are people?
I realise that the psionic power thing is off, but it's not like it's the only weird and non-rules friendly bit of the psionic rules.

Personally, I'd rather either forbid the paralysed psion from manifesting (your mind is wracked with pain, you can't form a coherent thought) or prevent AoOs on the paralysed psion caused by his manifesting than give AoOs against involuntarily unmoving people.

 

[Ranger REG]

No, I don't plan on buying any 4 stuff, but I am interested in it as a game, and to see if they will finally get rid of the inconsistent and stupid way that AOO's are handled currently.

AOO's are, in 3e, "active."

Meaning, if somebody does something that "breaks attention" or whatever flavor text you apply, they are punished by allowing the enemy to hit them with an AOO if (in enemy is in melee range, if they have not exceeded their AOO limit, etc.).

Hence, attack of opportunity.

Besides, it's only active if the player (or DM) sees an opportunity and interrupts to make the attack.

Note that this is active. A creature must DO something stupid in combat, like try to use a bow, or drink a potion, or stand up from prone, in oder to GENERATE an AOO.

Only if he does it in the square that is threatened by his enemy ... or CN player-killer.

Why? Should I reward players' stupidity?

The reason that this "active AOO" system is stupid is clear enough. There are times when being "passive" is much more dangerous than doing something "active" that generates an AOO.

The canonical example is a fighter in combat. He is paralyzed suddenly by an enemy wizard, and when his initiative comes around, he just stands there, paralyzed.

Let's say he is flanked by two enemies when this event happens (the paralysis).

Now, if this fighter were ACTIVE and drank a potion, the two enemies would get two AOO's. If he were ACTIVE and dropped to prone and then stood up again, ditto. If he shot his bow in combat, two AOO's.

Well, duh.

Again I ask, should I reward stupidity?

Yes he is paralyzed, which is certainly much worse than shooting a bow, or standing up from prone, etc. yet he is not penalized at all, because it is PASSIVE. The player does not DO anything which generates an AOO, although his current condition (Paralyzed) should automatically allow an AOO - it's much worse to be paralyzed in combat than, say, distracted a few seconds by drinking a potion.

As one poster already stated, the two foes can just use coup de grace and kill you in one stroke.

If you want, add to the rules that any character who is helpless provokes AoO.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

So, if we're giving out free AOOs against inanimate characters, should we not also be letting people take free swings at walls, doors, chairs, evil artifacts, curtains, etc., anytime they want as a free action?

Now I'd be curious why you wouldn't give a character who, in the middle of the fight against his opponent, wants to take a swing at a nearby chair he threatens the chance to waste an AoO on a harmless piece of furniture. I've got to add that I'd view any scene where it makes in-story sense to actually make an attack like that unlikely to turn up in around 80% of the typical D&D game. In any other sense, it's just nonsense, and I never forbid a player to waste his resources on nonsense if he feels like it.

The problem I think is people aren't treating AOOs as an abstraction. That's what they are. They don't handle the case of 'what do you do with a downed character' because that's not what they're meant to handle, and it is just as well, as the game would be unplayably deadly with what people are proposing.

They aren't an abstraction, that's why people are not treating them like one. They are very specifically detailed, what action causes them, how many you get, how to avoid them through feats, and what qualifies as AoO...if you want to call that an abstraction, I guess there's simply different definitions of "abstract" at work in the thread. An AoO is almost always caused by an action that causes your character to break away from the routine hit'n'parry maneuvers. It also applies to you as long as your opponent thinks of you as an opponent.

For example, if your opponent should successfully manage to trip you, he could in the next round concentrate on another opponent and still smack you when you try to stand up from being prone. That doesn't differ much from you NOT trying to stand up but simply lying on the ground. Your opponent can still side-swipe to smack you one. Even worse, you can't do anything to defend yourself.

The only abstraction in the whole AoO topic is the designers' notion that there should be no "double penalty" to something like being paralyzed. Probably because it would make the game "unfun" at some point. I'm pretty sure if it HAD been done differently, complains about it being essentially "save or die" situations would rank up there with the bodak, death spells, rust monsters and lethal poisons.

AOOs work tolerably well to handle the situations they were designed to handle: providing a balancing factor in caster vs. non-caster combat, limiting the 'infinite chase' scenario, etc. They're a game balance tool more than anything else. For better or for worse, D&D combat is abstract, not a simulation.

That's the basic problem with AoOs, they are too detailed. And, in my personal opinion, a bit silly too. Imagine a fighter who is in melee with an opponent and suddenly turns to the side to swipe at another opponent, who is not really in melee with him, but just did something that threatened an AoO (like drink a potion). Said fighter can do that AoO on the spur of a moment, completely outside his normal attack rhythm, and NOT open himself up to his own opponent? Sounds a tad weird to me, to be honest.

Personally, I prefer to limit AoOs to moments where your character REALLY opens himself up for an attack...spellcasting, certain magic item use, running past (or away from) an opponent without some kind of preparation, rummaging in your backpack for some item. Stuff like that. Everything else is basically a combat action that shouldn't carry much of a penalty, really. I simply don't believe that a combatant opens himself up that much when he tries to disarm his opponent, for example, or tries to trip him. I've seen too many combat schools with specific in-combat maneuvers for exactly that kind of thing, unarmed and armed, doesn't matter. They simply are metagame constructs that end up punishing creative combat maneuvers more than older-edition "there are no real rules for it" ever did.

One thing that was mentioned in this thread a few times sounds like a viable alternative...have all those actions that "leave your character open" simply leave him flatfooted for that round, unless he does some "casting on the defensive" or equivalent check to avoid that. It's punishment enough in a lot of cases (since many high-damage abilities are based on an opponent losing his Dex bonus to AC), and doesn't grant an attacker a sudden, out-of-the-blue additional attack.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I don't see how you can advocate that.

This isn't chess. In chess, you can tell the bishop he can only move diagonally. If he wants to move like a rook, you can tell him "nope, you're a bishop, move diagonally because the rules say so."

But putting in arbitrary "You can't do that" rules in a RPG, specifically applied to things people CAN do, is counterproductive.

Think of it this way - 3e is the only RPG I've come across which has AoO. All other RPGs just prevent you from doing something stupid in combat and - surprise surprise - they have neither become 'chess' nor been any less fun.

3e introduced (imperfectly) the experiment of AoO. It is one way of solving a problem, but not the only way, and not necessarily the best way either.