Battlefield Shift

[Water Bob]

I'm not sure I like to figures staying in the same five foot square during a battle. Yes, the combat round is abstract, but combatant position is not. Those guys should be all over the place, swinging, dodging, punching, circling, feinting, side-stepping, etc.

At the same time, I don't want to add a rule that bogs combat down.

Has anyone of you ever come across a rule that incorporates the melee dance in an easy, manageable way?

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

Easier that six-second rounds of turn based combat that permit attacks of opportunity to make the fighting less turn based?

Nope.

 

[the Jester]

4e does a great job of encouraging dynamic encounters by changing the 5' step for the "shift". You can shift 5' as a move action, which basically means it doesn't trigger opportunity attacks. You could add this to your game, although with a system that uses iterative attacks it isn't all that hot of an option. Alternatively, you could make it "shift half your speed as a move action" to encourage more mobility. Another alternative might be to build a chain of feats off of the basic 5' shift ability, or even off the standard 3e 5' step rule. What about a feat that changes it to a "10' step"?

With a little work you can probably do something to your taste with this.

 

[kitcik]

There are too many dependent rules to change this - any change will have too many knock-on effects.

If you allow intentional additional shifting, it will allow abuses of feat / ability combos. If you somehow make it random, flanking and whatnot will be so annoying you will shoot yourself.

One thing you could do is add a push effect on any crit and a random 5' step on a fumble.

 

[PureGoldx58]

There are too many dependent rules to change this - any change will have too many knock-on effects.

If you allow intentional additional shifting, it will allow abuses of feat / ability combos. If you somehow make it random, flanking and whatnot will be so annoying you will shoot yourself.

One thing you could do is add a push effect on any crit and a random 5' step on a fumble.

Thanks for the great idea for crits and crit fumbles, I'm sure my players will love me for doing that!

 

[Water Bob]

4e does a great job of encouraging dynamic encounters by changing the 5' step for the "shift".

Sounds exactly like the 5 foot step rule. But, why use it? Players need a reason.

There are too many dependent rules to change this - any change will have too many knock-on effects.

If you allow intentional additional shifting, it will allow abuses of feat / ability combos. If you somehow make it random, flanking and whatnot will be so annoying you will shoot yourself.

One thing you could do is add a push effect on any crit and a random 5' step on a fumble.

We'll have combat shift automatically when two combatants face one. The single defender will always move or use his five foot step to break flanks.

It's the one-on-one combat I'm interested in. I need a marriage between game rules, necessity, and combat shift to make it work.

Oh, and it's got to be easy-cheesy.

 

[Empirate]

How about the Bullrush mechanic? It's already in place, it isn't all that complicated, and the way it is, it doesn't see any play time whatsoever (aside from Dungeoncrasher Fighter variant, which isn't used all that much, either).

Just allow an optional bullrush attempt everytime a successful attack is made: it shifts people around and about, adds another at least slightly interesting reason for attacking somebody aside from "you do 11 points of damage". Moving somebody on a successful attack isn't that powerful (so not to unbalance the game), but can be useful occasionally.

Make sure to include a clause such as "the target can't be bullrushed if it would be into difficult terrain (or over a cliff, or something), but does take 1d6 extra damage" or some such, to prevent situational unbalancing knockon effects of the houserule.

 

[the Jester]

Sounds exactly like the 5 foot step rule. But, why use it? Players need a reason.

The shift is like the 5' step once it has grown up and gotten a degree.

By making it a move action, you can shift and then move (by cashing in your standard action for a second move), unlike in 3e D&D (not sure about Conan). Also, tons of 4e monsters and powers have "shift 2 squares" or more abilities. But like I said in my post above, with full attacks (which 4e lacks), spending your move action for anything has a huge cost attached.

That's why I suggested possibly employing feats for this, expanding on the 5' step in various ways. You could have things like:

Expert Step- When you take a 5' step, you may move an extra 5' without provoking attacks of opportunity.

Battlefield Step- When you take a 5' step and are adjacent to an enemy, you may move to any space adjacent to that enemy without provoking.

Mighty Step- When you take a 5' step, you may make a Bull Rush attempt against one enemy adjacent to your starting square. You can only push the enemy 5' with this bull rush.

Quick Step- At the start of your turn, you may take a 5' step even if you will move later in the round.

Tactical Distraction- Whenever an ally within 30' triggers an AoO, you may take a 5' step as an immediate action.


If you don't want to make them feats- as this costs characters other options to employ them- you could make them combat maneuvers that you gain access to with sufficient BAB. (Note that I didn't really worry about what prereqs would be appropriate above; obviously some of those ideas are better than others.) Making them all free like that also would definitely encourage a more mobile sort of combat. On reflection, that's probably a better path to get what you're after.

One caveat is that you might need to look at Tumble if you do this, I don't know if it is different in Conan.

I have to say, whatever its flaws, 4e gets dynamic combat pretty well right. You can probably find a bunch of cool ideas if you know someone familiar with it who you can mine for ideas.

 

[Empirate]

Shift as a move action + another move action sounds like a withdraw action to me, which 3.5 already has. Do you have any examples where it'd be actually useful to shift as a move action?

Apart from that, shifting more than 5' would have quite a few repercussions in the game, as others have pointed out, such as:

- difficult terrain no longer prevents 5' steps
- skirmish on a full attack becomes a no-brainer
- reach weapons/monsters are nerfed quite a bit
- it's much, much easier to get into AND out of a flanking position, which rubs me as kinda strange
- spellcasters have an even easier time getting their spells off even when engaged in melee
- it's generally much easier to do stuff that provokes AoOs even when engaged in melee
- feats/abilities such as Sidestep, Setting Sun counters etc. would either have to be rewritten or be considered nerfed
- probably lots of stuff I haven't thought about yet

 

[Greenfield]

If you really need a mechanic to allow characters to "shift" more than 5 feet without drawing AoO, look at Tumble. It's not just for Rogues you know.

You want to boost it with a Feat? I'm sure there's something out there (other than Skill Focus) that would make it "in class" for those who don't have it.

And it has an advantage over Withdraw: You can hit and run, taking a single attack then Tumble away for up to half your normal move without drawing Attacks of Opportunity.

Withdraw gives you the first 5 feet free of AoO, and Spring Attack let's you hit and run without drawing AoO from the creature you attacked, but Tumble lets you safely move out of the range of a creature with Reach (i.e. who can AoO even after you've taken your 5 feet of safe movement), and applies to all opponents, not just the one you attacked.

My Wizardly types frequently take this skill (since I tend to build them with more Dex than Con).

There's little reason to create a new rule to cover the situation when an old one already does the job.