Attacks of Opportunity

[Dragonblade]

I had mixed feelings about AoO's in 3e. I appreciated the purpose they served but were unnecessarily fiddly in combat.

I'm a big fan of the 4e model. Its simple and intuitive.

-You make a ranged or area attack in a threatened space, you draw an OA.
-If you move out of a threatened space without shifting you draw an OA.

That's it. No weird corner cases, no Tumble checks, or other workarounds. No page of rules about Concentration checks. You want to cast or fire a bow adjacent to someone, you get smacked. The entire mechanic basically written in two sentences, stripping out a whole bunch of fiddly extra rules that bogged down 3e combat.

Our 3e fights always ended in toe to toe slugfests. I love how 4e's OA rules complement the movement rules nicely. We always have cool dynamic fights in 4e that range all across the battlemat. Its fantastic!

And the no diagonal movement double counting squares rubbish was a godsend in 4e. We love it so much we play Pathfinder with that rule too.

 

[Spinachcat]

I run OD&D without a combat grid, just minis for relative distance between monsters and key terrain bits. I do use AoOs based only on the logic of the situation.

If you are in melee, you can't cast spells. If you want to try, that's cool. The foe gets a free attack and if he hits, your spell is ruined. Same goes for missile attacks or doing anything other than parrying and attacking with a weapon.

As for movement AoOs, if you flee battle, the monster gets a free swipe on you. If you tactically retreat, then combat order is based on initiative and nobody gets a freebie.

If the area is tight and you want to move around the monster, the monster may get a free swipe at you. Totally depends on the situation and I can make those rulings on the fly.

If there is plenty of room for a swirling melee, then I don't invoke AoOs because I believe that opponents in fights are constantly moving even if the miniatures are not.

I want fully animated miniatures!!!

 

[Tallifer]

They are good for realistic "tanking." Marks and Come-and-get-it seem to gamist, but opportunity attacks are just common sense from my perspective; and they are not complicated either. The complication is all the special interrupts which come from spells, exploits (martial powers) or items.

 

[Number48]

Being the edition of options, I can see OAs as pretty much what they are now, and the simple version where you have to stop movement in range, and can't use ranged attacks at all in that range.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I chose the "other" option.

Despite their being a simulationist mechanic, I don't consider OAs to be particularly realistic. For every situation where they would apply, I could probably point to a similar one where they don't. While casually strolling past an armed opponent is certainly a bad idea, standing still (or shuffling around in the same 5 x 5 square) is not the most sensible tactic either. So I think if you want them to support realism they'd need a bit of a reworking.

I wouldn't mind OAs being optional, and that's probably the best approach.

As for the default, I think Defender types benefit a great deal from them and should have them. For anyone else, use a less fiddly mechanic, like stop movement.

It's not that resolving OAs takes all that long, but players often spend a lot of time either deciding whether it's worth the risk, or trying to find a path that doesn't provoke them at all. Also, I definitely prefer the 4e model; it's more practical to remember 2 common triggers than a dozen rare ones.

 

[mmadsen]

Do you think that attacks of opportunity should be part of the core rules in 5e?

The game needs some kind of mechanic for the problem addressed by attacks of opportunity: real combatants aren't taking turns, and not threatening your opponents means not really defending yourself.

AoO are one of those things that were first introduced in 3.0. I've been thinking alot about them, and I'm not sure if I want to see them in 5e. They do add a bit of tactical complexity to combat, but they also tend to slow down play, especially when you have to look up whether a certain action provokes or not.

As others have pointed out attacks of opportunity were formalized by 3E, but simpler rules go way, way back.

In fact, almost all the complexity of 3E's AoO rules comes from an odd little rule, that the 5' step does not provoke an AoO. Without that exception, the game plays much more like older editions and doesn't really require a battle map.

To be honest, they've never made much sense to me from a simulationist point of view. (The guy standing next to me starts casting a spell, so I just suddenly get an extra attack that round, from out of nowhere? Huh?)

In real life, you can attack multiple times per second, if you don't have to defend yourself, and you don't have to make an opening in your opponent's defenses. Getting an extra attack when your opponent drops his guard is not about physically speeding up your sword arm.

 

[DonTadow]

Keep them but make them simple. You move through someone's space or out of combat, you take medium damage from their weapon. Very simple and no need to interupt the flow. You also can make this nitiative based, meaning that there is no penalty if they are higher in the initiative.

 

[Zireael]

Keep them but make them simple. You move through someone's space or out of combat, you take medium damage from their weapon. Very simple and no need to interupt the flow.

I'd mix this and this:

(a) Moving out of a threatened space
(b) Casting a spell
(c) Making a ranged attack
(d) Trying to grapple an armed opponent

And we'd be perfect!

 

[RHGreen]

I love 4e, but out of turn actions are the sargasso sea of smooth gameplay.

Allow defenders some sort of aura to block actions and I'd be fine.

You said it for me.

There are very good reasons why defenders not just benefit, but need the ability. As for other classes it's more of an uneeded complication. Take it out of the core foundation and make them class power ability specific. In that way it can also be optional.

 

[RHGreen]

What I hate (and initially I liked it, esp as a wargamer) is how long the tactical thinking and discussion took, dragging further into 4Es grind combat.
At the most I would go for Fantasy Crafts movement stops if you move adjacent to an enemy. Add to it the Pathfinder Beginner Box (no ranged attacks or spellcasting adjacent to an enemy) and you have basically the same thing. My players very rarely provoked an AO they just spent ages figuring out how not to.
Maybe a class specific feature to make them sticky, but as they are in 3E and 4E? no thanks

Movement stops when adjacent to enemy sounds good, but I'd make that ability defender specific.

No spellcasting or ranged I don't like. It is too restrictive, but I'd change it to either a -2 or whatever to attack or you have to make a caster/archer check to succeed/fail. I'm sure someone could come up with a similar/more fun mechanic. The important thing is the check would be done on the player's turn and not interrupt play. It is also that class' specific contained rules and not a general foundation core rule that everyone has to care about.