Combat Challenge / Superiority

[Maximillian]

Looks like I'd been misinterpreting some of the fighter's opportunity attack related abilities while playing with the quickstart rules and KotS pregens.

Combat Challenge lets you attack a marked enemy if it "shifts or makes an attack that does not include you" "as an immediate interrupt." Combat Superiority gives you bonuses to opportunity attacks and makes your opportunity attacks stop movement.

So, in other words, the free attack granted by CC is not an OA, and doesn't gain the wisdom bonus to hit, nor stop movement. We'd been interpreting that free attack as an OA, but it's just an immediate interrupt, meaning it doesn't stop movement. (Also, it doesn't count against the one OA per opponent's turn limit.)

Can anyone contradict that logic from the books?


Also: I can't find anything that limits a fighter from marking more than one enemy. I thought I read that before, but it's not in the PH. Thoughts?

 

[MindWanderer]

You are correct. Fighters usually can't mark more than one enemy because their mark only lasts a round, but if they hit multiple enemies during a round, they can mark all of them.

Try combining Combat Challenge with Viper's Strike. Two attacks, one of which is an OA.

 

[Maximillian]

Try combining Combat Challenge with Viper's Strike. Two attacks, one of which is an OA.

Funny you mention Viper's Strike... that's the one that made me notice the difference in wording on the CC/CS.

The multiple marking, of course, came up as soon as we built a dragonborn fighter. That breath weapon is great for controlling the actions of a number of monsters. Luckily, I don't think they'll be featured in our first actual campaign.

 

[fuzzlewump]

So, a fighter can't keep an enemy from shifting away from him, but he can keep him from moving around him, which provokes opportunity attacks as normal. I'd like to see how this plays out, I'm wondering if it is beneficial for a brute or skirmisher type to shift back from the fighter, then move around him, staying just out of reach.

 

[Ginnel]

Looks like I'd been misinterpreting some of the fighter's opportunity attack related abilities while playing with the quickstart rules and KotS pregens.

Combat Challenge lets you attack a marked enemy if it "shifts or makes an attack that does not include you" "as an immediate interrupt." Combat Superiority gives you bonuses to opportunity attacks and makes your opportunity attacks stop movement.

So, in other words, the free attack granted by CC is not an OA, and doesn't gain the wisdom bonus to hit, nor stop movement. We'd been interpreting that free attack as an OA, but it's just an immediate interrupt, meaning it doesn't stop movement. (Also, it doesn't count against the one OA per opponent's turn limit.)

Can anyone contradict that logic from the books?


Also: I can't find anything that limits a fighter from marking more than one enemy. I thought I read that before, but it's not in the PH. Thoughts?

you do want to keep it in mind that any character only gets one immeadiate action per round, so you can only use Combat challenge once in between your go and your next go.

But yes combat challenge is not an OA so it does not get the bonus does not stop moving and you can only do it once per round instead of OA's which are once per turn.

Also I don't think combat challenge works with heavy blade oppurtunist as that requires you to be doing an OA to use your At-will

Also as far as I've read the rules you can mark with area, ranged, close and melee attacks and multiple opponents.

 

[Maximillian]

you do want to keep it in mind that any character only gets one immeadiate action per round, so you can only use Combat challenge once in between your go and your next go.

True, but the reason I mentioned it is that a fighter could theoretically get two free attacks against an enemy; once through CC and once with an OA. If the monster were to, say, make a ranged attack, then shift, both would grant the fighter a free strike.

 

[Zaruthustran]

True, but the reason I mentioned it is that a fighter could theoretically get two free attacks against an enemy; once through CC and once with an OA. If the monster were to, say, make a ranged attack, then shift, both would grant the fighter a free strike.

Right. You get one immediate action per round, and one OA per "each other combatant's" turn.

Combat Challenge doesn't work with Heavy Blade Opportunist, for the reason pointed out by Ginnel. However, Heavy Blade Opportunist works very well with Warpriest's Challenge (a marking ability that has the same triggers as Combat Challenge, but allows OA instead of basic melee attack).

This improved marking feature makes Fighter/Warpriest a very effective build, especially when you add heavy blade opportunist and polearm gamble. I wrote up such a build; you can read it here.