Can you miss on purpose?

[Anand]

So, to drag this back on-topic a bit, what about *other* cases where missing might be desirable.

Say, Band of Fellows.

My warlord would happily miss with this on purpose several rounds in a row when an opponent is surrounded...

I think this is is weird, as the warlord from my group just used this yesterday. He kept missing on purpose to dish out two surrounded-by-melee solos.

Don't you guys think it is a bit off to miss on reliable with effect powers?

 

[Dausuul]

From the flavor text, I could see the weapon standing there, acting as a beacon for your friends and giving them the bonus. However, it says the weapon attacks, not the character. I would never allow falling prone to "grant" a penalty. I wouldn't even allow closing your eyes to do so since you aren't swinging or guiding the weapon, it is an animate object fighting on it's own.

So, you would also rule that if the character is hit by a blinding effect, the weapon still attacks at full bonus?

(To be clear, I'm not criticizing if this is the case; it's a perfectly valid interpretation. Just pointing out that this is a logical consequence of your approach.)

deliberate misses are, IMO, always associated with an attempt to game the rules.

Or, depending on your point of view, they are associated with stupid rules. Band of Fellows, linked above, is an excellent example. The power makes no sense in terms of what's going on in the game world, so why do you expect players to use it in sensible ways?

In this particular case, I don't see the problem. You want to distract the enemy but you don't want to actually cause physical harm. So you feint an attack but do your best to ensure that it misses. I agree that calling for a Bluff check is reasonable, however. If you succeed, you attack but hit only on a natural 20. If you fail, you still hit only on a natural 20, but the foe sees through your bluff and doesn't grant CA.

Edited to add: To me, the real problem here is the existence of a Pacifist Healer feat in the first place. You'd think they'd have learned their lesson from the endless arguments about the paladin code pre-4E: Trying to write roleplaying into the rules ends badly. Don't do it.

 

[the Jester]

"when you sustain, repeat the attack" is how it is written, and for those who will not allow a person to forgo the attack in the sustain, I just wanted to point out that there is precedent to allow for pulling the blow to cause no damage (through other effects/powers).

There is? What and where?

Spiritual weapon says, "When you do A, do B," not "When you do A, you may do B".

Yes, but such an attack is not the main attack of the power. That being, the attack you do when you originally use it. That is the only mandatory attack. Subsequent attacks that are always optional to take or not take: See Chaos Orb for precident on this.

What are you talking about? Chaos Orbs doesn't even have a secondary attack. Are you referring to a different power by accident? Or the "one or two creatures" in the target range? That explicitly gives you an option.

Going back to the OP- no, I wouldn't allow someone to miss on purpose, though (for instance) if the pc chose to use his elven reroll in the hopes of rolling lower than their initial attack roll, I'd go for that.

Heck, in my last game one of the party's wizards killed their henchman by catching him in a fire burst that he should have survived- but the wizard rolled a crit. Whoops!

 

[Dausuul]

Should check out the Lazy Warlord on the CharOp forums. 8 str, and he wields a whip... which he isn't proficient with. Mostly the build takes powers that grant other people attack rolls/damage/anything. It is quite possibly the best enabler ever, it literally can't do anything by itself. Hell, at later levels a natural 20 will hit, not crit, on most monsters with the build.

Ha, I made a character somewhat like that--a hybrid taclord/wizard, and I didn't have Band of Fellows, but still with Strength 8 and using the nonproficient whip. (Could have gone with a glaive or longspear, and my OAs would have been marginally less pathetic, but the whip had so much more style.) Best controller ever.

As it happens, I had very little trouble justifying my powers in-game. Commander's Strike, for instance, was me cracking the whip at a monster to distract it and give my ally an opening.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I think this is is weird, as the warlord from my group just used this yesterday. He kept missing on purpose to dish out two surrounded-by-melee solos.

Don't you guys think it is a bit off to miss on reliable with effect powers?

Band of fellows needs a line: An opponent may chose to be hit by this attack.

 

[The Human Target]

I know this is an old thread but its an interesting topic.

There is nothing at all wrong with the pacifist healer feat. If you take it there are plenty of non-damaging powers you can use on bloodied opponents.

As to this situation- the spiritual weapon grants CA as an effect. I see no problem in letting a cleric grant that bonus against a bloodied enemy without being forced to make the attack roll. That cleric is using up a daily power, a standard action, and a minor action every round to do so. Seems like a pretty trivial thing. Now the pacifist cleric is for sure better off taking another daily, but if they want to use this I see no problems with it. Its a decent choice if they use it at the beginning of a combat (which since its a sustaining power it should be used as early as possible anyway.)

Does that mean I think you should house rule all attacks so that wizards can omit attacking allies with fireballs? Not at all.

 

[thewok]

Band of fellows needs a line: An opponent may chose to be hit by this attack.

I think removing the Reliable keyword, or making the Effect into an on-hit effect would be better for that power.

I don't at all care for the idea of wanting to miss. If you don't want to hit someone, don't attack them.

 

[babinro]

Yes, of course you can miss on purpose.

However, a character has no reason to do this unless it is an act of roleplay, or an abuse of the game mechanics. If their intention is to miss on purpose in combat, the act is no longer an attack roll with an associated power, but rather a bluff check.

I suppose the only way I'd allow someone to intentionally miss in combat for certain powers...is if they did the same actions since level 1 for all powers. In this manor, they are not abusing the rules, but legitimately using prone/blindness/non-proficient weapons as a combat tactic.

 

[DracoSuave]

Now the pacifist cleric is for sure better off taking another daily, but if they want to use this I see no problems with it. Its a decent choice if they use it at the beginning of a combat (which since its a sustaining power it should be used as early as possible anyway.)

Well, the fluff of the power's pretty clear.

I do, in fact, have a lot of problems when a cleric who takes up the mantle of pacifism (even the 'you can hurt them a bit but not finish them off'-style pacifism the feat requires) is using magic from the god who empowers them with the powers inherent in pacifism, who makes them better at pacifism....

...and they go around summoning weapons.

Look, I mean... seriously. Come on. Game-crunch effects don't even play into this. The cleric is empowered to be a man of not-killing, and he goes about summoning killing instruments that fly around.

This doesn't make any sense. The player should have to sit down and explain how the hell this doesn't break versimilitude. He'll have to go into what the heck his ethos is here, and how this actually works. Why is that? Just because the rules say you can take power A and feat B and feature C doesn't mean you're absolved from the responsibility of making a character that makes rational sense.

 

[fumetti]

If the PC wanted to not make the attack roll at all, I would refuse them. But the OP is about making the attack roll but intentionally trying to create a penalty to the to-hit roll.

If falling prone and closing eyes leads to a penalty to hit, then so be it. It's the player's choice. This does not circumvent the rules, this actually adheres to the rules. The roll must be made, and there is a chance of success. I'd say The Game is satisfied.