Attack of Opportunity -- does it deserve to survive to v.4?

[Lanefan]

If you break free of the "all actions occur on your initiative and that's it" idea, then the backline wizard might have a longer life expectancy:

Consider this, a very small combat to keep things simple: WizBang and Sir Meatshield vs. PowerOrc-1 and PowerOrc-2. PO1 and PO2 win initiative and charge, rather foolishly side by side instead of spreading out, but these *are* Orcs, after all. Now, while it's pretty much guaranteed Sir M can intercept and block one, why doesn't he get some sort of roll to see if he can block *both*? Nothing to do with attacking, he's just trying to block like a defensive lineman for long enough for WizBang to get one spell away, which he hopes will even the odds a bit. It's idiotic to think Sir M is going to just stand there and let these guys run past, and even AoO won't help - sure he might hit one (or both if he's feated enough) but they'll still get past. But if Sir M gets to try and block even when it's not his initiative, common sense prevails. Things like this handled case by case work far better, I think, in a dynamic game...but a rulebook to cover all the possibilities would be just a little cumbersome, so in the end it just comes down to the DM.

Lane-"hundredth post - woohoo!"-fan

 

[painandgreed]

So, you equate "making an attack in melee while standing in front of the wizard" with being "interested in personal glory".

In other words, you and I will never see eye to eye on the subject of AoOs, since your opinion concerning what meat shields do is so radically different than mine (and probably, the opinion of many other people).

In 4E that I would write, a meat shield would be holding his action (or some of them anyway) to attack anybody who tried to get at the magic user though his threatened area (not sure if I'd keep 5' squares or not) rather than acting willy nilly and expecting some free actions to cover what he is supposed to be doing.

Either that, or keep AoO and also say that being held, immobilized, or other situations where one is unable to defend themselves, automatically provokes an AoO.

...but trust me, if I wrote 4E, the blasphemous things I would be doing to AoO would be the least of your worries.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Yep. Sucks to be a wizard with too few meat shields while the one you have is more interested in personal glory than being a meat shield.

I certainly do see merit to ditching AoOs for the sake for simplicity. Not to my taste, but I do not doubt it would be a sound move for some campaigns.

Ditching AoOs and replacing them with some kind of Readied Action has merit, too, but it is the last thing I would do if I wanted to rules to be simpler.

Am I understanding you correctly?

 

[Taraxia]

Well, I haven't play tested it. ;-) In such a situation, the orc would suffer Dex penalty which would lower his AC. If Sir Meat Shield has not already attacked, he may do so at that time, making that his new initiative. If he has already attacked, then he's facing too many opponents or isn't being a very good meat shield. In general, I'm against the creation of new actions that the AoO presents.

A system where you need one meat shield per one attacker to protect the wizard isn't that great of a system.

It swings us all the way back to the other pole, where fighters' job is to stand around the wizard and do nothing but wait, and the wizard's job is to lob spells at the BBEG.

 

[2WS-Steve]

Readied actions are nice in concept, but awful in execution.

Fighter readies action to protect wizard, then opponents decide to do soemthing else like drink a potion or throw a javelin or attack the druid. Fighter wastes an entire round; player, frustrated by not actually getting to play, comes back next week with another character class, or not at all.

 

[painandgreed]

Ditching AoOs and replacing them with some kind of Readied Action has merit, too, but it is the last thing I would do if I wanted to rules to be simpler.

Am I understanding you correctly?

Readied Actions are already part of the game. I'm replacing provoking AoO (and generation of extra actions) for a penalty to AC (which would probably count as loss of Dex bonus for other certain abilities). Making the rules simpler is not a major design goal (or we'd just end up with another edition of T&T). Keeping the rules so they flow fairly easily might be.

 

[Stalker0]

I could see an immediate action called "blocking" created. As an immediate action you can take it out of your turn, but it would last through your next round of actions. Basically you give up a round of actions to block. Blocking would either be a check to stop enemies, or perhaps all enemies motion through your threatened squares is halved, or something to that effect. That would be a lot cleaner imo than AOOs.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

So, you equate "making an attack in melee while standing in front of the wizard" with being "interested in personal glory".

In a very real sense, it is if the choice is the binary "either/or."

Wizards, especially the evocation/conjuration happy ones, are the D&D equivalent of living siege engines, howitzers, etc. There have been countless battles won or lost depending on how seige engines & artillery (or command posts, or supply lines) were protected.

Fortunately, the current system of AoOs doesn't force the fighter's player to make a binary choice- he can do both. This, IMHO, meshes nicely within the concept that a round of combat reflects a bunch of strikes, dodges, blocks- albeit highly abstracted. It isn't that the person taking the action that provokes an AoO is giving his adjacent foe an extra action, its that by taking that action, he's leaving himself open for one more of those many blows to be landed.

 

[genshou]

Readied actions are nice in concept, but awful in execution.

Fighter readies action to protect wizard, then opponents decide to do soemthing else like drink a potion or throw a javelin or attack the druid. Fighter wastes an entire round; player, frustrated by not actually getting to play, comes back next week with another character class, or not at all.

QFT. I can't count the horrendously high number of times a readied action has gone wasted while I was sitting at the gaming table.

 

[Hussar]

How, exactly, do you ready an action to protect someone?

"I attack anyone who attacks the wizard." might work I suppose, but, why not just attack the guy with a full attack? Since you only get one attack with a readied action, it would be an awful waste to do this.

I'm not disagreeing, just obtuse.