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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DM_Blake" data-source="post: 3950125" data-attributes="member: 57267">Ouch. This sounds pretty time consuming. D&D combat takes a long time now. Are we sure we want to slow it down?Except, people flee from melee all the time in the real world without getting hit from behind. I think the exisitng rules where a combat move (moving somewhere then taking a combat action, even drinking a potion) provokes an AoO when you move away, but fleeing (a Withdraw action) doesn't, is a fairly simple solution.Wizards are already fragile. This would almost guarantee that a fighter in melee with a wizard will always win. At least with the current rules, if the wizard survives the AoO, he only needs to make a Concentration check that might not be too hard if he has kept up his ranks in Concentration. He should be able to get off some of his spells.Moving past an armed enemy should be dangerous. Moving takes time, so he shouldn't have to prepare for it in advance - nobody moves faster than a sword can be swung. Assuming combatants are not standing confined in their little 5' battle mat squares, it's reasonable to assume that much of the time a combatant's nearest enemies are not in immediate attack range, so he is often free to take a quick swipe at someone without getting gorked in return - he can swing (his AoO) then return to a defensive posture, faster than his opponents can realize what's happening, react to it, and land an effective blow. At least some of the time. Adjudicating when he can and can't can be problematic in a game system where everyone freezes in their 5' squares until their turn.Standing up without any feats to allow you to stand up safely implies that you're not doing a martial artsy "kip up" maneuver. You're getting up like everyone else: rolling onto your front side, rising to your hands and knees, then rising to your feet. Yeah, that should be as dangerous in a melee as drinking a potion.Part of the whole AoO mentality is that when someone is threatening you with a weapon that can hurt you, you take precautions not to be hurt, so your number of attacks are limited, and you don't get any AoO against an armed combatant threatening you. But someone standing there with an unloaded bow, who is reaching to draw an arrow from a quiver, placing that arrow on the string, drawing the bow, then finally able to point it at you and threaten you, and doing all tha preparatory stuff within your reach, is asking for a beating, and you should be able to give it to him. Heck, even  just pointing a readied bow at you from a couple feet away, while you're holding a sword, might be problematic - that big old bow, held out at his arm's fully extended reach, is an easy target, even if the bowman is a bit out of reach.As for your final point, I totally agree. A wizard starting to cast a spell right next to a giant stag beetle should probably not provoke an AoO any more than his fighter friend who is swinging a sword. But, arguably, if the beetle is aggressively attacking that wizard, and the wizard stops ducking and weaving long enough to stand still, drop his guard, and cast a spell, he should probably pay the price. So this one might be situational - provoking an AoO against a an opponent not smart enough to know the difference shouldn't actually provoke unless you were that opponent's target anyway.Lanefan</blockquote>[/QUOTE]

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