close-quarters fights in doorways

[S'mon]

Your PCs need to hack their way into the room quicker - 5' step is your friend!

 

[heirodule]

Your PCs need to hack their way into the room quicker - 5' step is your friend!

The problem there is that the dor is the chokepoint. You clear the 5' in front of the door and step through, you are in a 'reverse salient' and can be attacked by multiple remaining opponents. So the 'best tactic' is just to stay at the door and wait for someone else to step up. And their best tactic would be to setp up to the door.

I guess putting the door so that it straddles the edge of a square might be an improvement. Both combatants will get cover bonuses, which makes things a bit strange too (no AoOs, extra Ac)

What do folks in general do with rooms that don't conform to a 5' grid even as an approximation? Can peopel stand in half squares? Quarter squares? do they have to squeeze?

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

This has become one of my favorite things. My group is eight characters so they take up a lot of room. I had one day where they were coming out of a 5' corridor. The party paladin in the lead stepped out into an open area, but just out, and there he stopped. He suddenly found himself with three opponents in front of him and one on either side. Nobody behind him could move up and and the paladin was getting hurt, so they made room for him to withdraw and allow another fighter stepped up. Suddenly the party Sorceress, from the back of the party, decides to unleash a Color Spray. Several party members are blinded, including the paladin at the front. Panic ensues! It was great fun watching them fumble their way through what should have been a very simple encounter.

 

[Saeviomagy]

In this case, it appears that the guy with the weapon is your ally. So the D&D rules agree with you too. You can move by him without any difficulty. (Of course, you need to have somewhere to move to so you're still SOL in the situation described above).

And if he's your foe, I think you would need 25 ranks of tumble to get by without him getting a whack in on you.

Well actually according to the rules, unless you hit that dc 25 tumble check, you cannot get past him at all, whack or no. He is an impenetrable wall to you.

I think the silliest example of this sort of scenario was when we got trapped in a room (with exactly enough squares in it to take the whole party, and not one square more) by a single wraith.

A wraith. You know, those incorporeal creatures?

Of course the guy at the doorway didn't have a magical item to hit the thing with.

So - our way is blocked by an incorporeal creature. We cannot move around within the room because every single square is occupied. You can't bullrush him out of the way because there is no room, and you can't charge past an ally. You can't grapple him because it's impossible - he's incorporeal. By the RAW, there's nothing to do except attempt missile weapon attacks.

Ouch.

 

[D+1]

I think the silliest example of this sort of scenario was when we got trapped in a room (with exactly enough squares in it to take the whole party, and not one square more) by a single wraith.

A wraith. You know, those incorporeal creatures?

Of course the guy at the doorway didn't have a magical item to hit the thing with.

Characters can ready their actions to coordinate rearranging themselves and you can move through squares occupied by allies without penalty, you just can't charge through. Under 3.5 rules those unable to get to the fight could also squeeze to make more room for combatants. But even assuming that the rules DID force you into that situation the silliness of it arises not from failure of the rules to anticipate it, but from failure of the DM to make allowances for the ABSENCE of appropriate rules. Had I been a player in that situation I'd have brought the game to a screeching halt until the DM did his JOB and mitigated the rules with some common sense. I can overlook the DM not knowing/remembering that characters can move through ally-occupied squares, but I can't abide slavish obedience to rules in defiance of the need to make some accomodation.