Comments and questions on 3.5 from a Newbie

[ThoughtfulOwl]

-SNIP - (if she cast it first, before her move, she couldn't attack with it this round.) - SNIP -

Actually she could. If you cast a touch spell and discharge it in the same round, you can take your move between the casting and the touch attack. See the PHB, pp. 140-141 (Touch spells in combat).

It's one of the little tidbits that are easy to miss.

 

[Dr Simon]

You are discovering one of the things that I like about 3rd ed. - that tactics become more than just "I run up and hit him".

This isn't to everyone's taste and it can, in some hands, become too much like a tactical miniatures game but it needn't be. With a DM confident of running a smooth melee (like MerricB's example) you can get something like your beloved Tomb of Balin fight!

Oh, and the other difference between 1/2 and 3 - low level wizards are a bit more useful. "Well folks, that's my one Sleep spell for the day. Time to be off."

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

If the players would be willing to trust the DM, and not argue with him about where their characters are (even if the DM is incorrect in his assessment of where their characters are) then a big fight like the Balin's Tomb Fight (that's what I'll call it ) could take place at high speed.
Would it be totally accurate? No. Might it be unfair to the players from time to time? Yes. (But then, it would be unfair to the monsters too.)
But would the characters themselves know exactly where they were, at every moment, during a Balin's Tomb fight? No. (humor: Well, I am, on second 3 of round 6, at 22 feet from the entry, 14 feet from the tomb, 5 feet from the raised walkway, 8 feet from pillar 1, 15 feet from pillar 2, and of course I take the time to look around and confirm all this. The fact that 5 orcs are attacking me and the room is filled with combatants, a cave troll, and a huge amount of dust ... not to mention the lighting is lousy, makes absolutely no difference! )

ThoughtfulOwl, that may be a Tidbit, but it makes a BIG difference!

Cute Elven Mage (5th level wizard) wins initiative (high Dexterity, Improved Initiative) against the 5th Level Fighter with his full plate armor and large steel shield.
Cute Elven Mage is Casting on the Defensive. Makes DC check of 16, readies Shocking Grasp.
She attempts Touch Attack against Fighter, hits, does 18 points of damage.
5th level fighter decides to run. Takes Double Move, moves 40 feet.
Round ends.

Mage casts second Shocking Grasp, holds charge. Mage moves 25 feet after running Fighter.
Fighter decides running was bad idea, turns around. Can't take 5 foot step and make Full Attack (mage is 15 feet away), decides to take move action and make one attack. Does so, hits with axe, does 5 with axe + 4 for strength + 3 for enhancement for 12 points. Mage survives attack (she had no constitution bonus to hit points, had 14 hit points at start.)
Mage does not need to make a Concentration Check to Hold a Charge.
Mage delivers Touch Attack against fighter, hits, does another 18 points of damage with Shocking Grasp. Fighter has taken 46 points of damage, is at - 4.
Cute Elven Mage delivers Coup de Grace against downed fighter.

Ok, the move of 25 feet was a tactical move, suggestion a board game.
Yet ...
The elven mage could have appreciated the danger of just running right into the fighter, when he was clearly halting his run and preparing a devastating counterattack. So, she halted, just out of range, taunting him, holding her Shocking Grasp. That would be tactical roleplaying, not tactical wargaming.

What do you think?

EDIT: In 2nd Edition, fighter just stands there sneering. Mage can't possibly hope to hit (needs a natural 20.) Fighter doesn't even attack, just stands there and laughs. Remember that fighter gets no penalty to movement for armor class, due to his great strength, in 2E. So he can run and otherwise move just as adroitly as the elven mage can.
Then fighter attacks with weapon in both hands (with high dexterity, almost no penalty at all), and downs mage (who is AC 10, or at absolute best AC 14, because she has no access to Feats that increase Armor Class.)
For that matter, mage probably doesn't go first. She has no access to Feats like improved initiative. If she tries a spell of any sort, fighter just whacks her across the face (1 hit point of damage) and disrupts spell.
After downing mage, fighter beats on chest, declares himself Mr. Big and Bad, uses heal NPC on mage, takes Cute Elven Mage away as slave.

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

Note:

My designation of Cute Elven Mage (or, Cute Human Mage) was not meant to be condescending to women.
It was meant to be condescending to Alpha Fighter types who think the game revolves around them, and all the other characters are extras with bit parts in the play.
Most fighter players are not like that. But we all have sat at that dreadful table where Mr. Big and Bad had to dominate the game. (I believe El Ravager, from KODT, was based on this kind of player and his fighter characters.)
Of course, his type would sneer at the likes of Cute Elven Mage. Until, in 3.5, she proceeds to turn him into Crispy Fried Fighter (after all, such players did not employ tactics. Their characters just stood there and fought. Their AC and hit points meant they didn't NEED tactics. In 3.5, such thinking translates into Crispy Fried Fighter.)

 

[kenobi65]

Just an attempt at solving the Fog of War thing:

What if a Spot check is required to find out what is happening with your friends, since you have to deliberately attempt to look through the chaos and enemy fighters (orcs, in this case) to find your friend and see what his personal situation is?
The Spot check is not needed if your friends are 10 feet away and/or if you are not under attack this round.

Conceptually, it's not a bad idea. In the same way that the battlemat does tend to enable spellcasters to have perfect knowledge of where their spell area of effects will hit, it also enables perfect knowledge of the battlefield for everyone. I'd have to think about what the DC would be on the Spot, but I like it.

There is no real way to avoid AOO in a mass battle, IMO.

What are you imagining that's provoking AoOs? Moving through threatened squares?

If I am a warrior, I'm not just going to try to kill the foe with a sword or other weapon. I'm going to punch, kick, knock dirt up in his face, throw every object at him that is handy, wrestle with him if he closes, try to drown him in the horse trough, and every other dirty tactic I can think of.

Conceptually, I don't disagree with you. Unfortunately, the D&D rules don't capture that idea well, if at all. Unless you're a monk, or a monster with an effective natural weapon, using an unarmed attack is simply less effective than pretty much any manufactured weapon. If it's a trade-off between an attack with my longsword (1d8), my dagger (1d4), or my fist (1d3), the fist comes in last unless I find myself with no other options. And if you say you want to be punching at the same time as you're whacking with a sword, well, now you're in Two-Weapon Fighting land, and taking (at best) a -2 penalty on your primary attacks to maybe do an extra 1d3+Str damage doesn't sound like such a good deal.

 

[kenobi65]

18 points doesn't kill the fighter, but it convinces him to run. (He sees her allies in the distance approaching, or he wants the protection of his allies, or he is a coward, perhaps.)

Heh. Far more likely that the fighter says, "Enough of this!" and whales on the cheeky wizard. Only a truly stupid or desperate fighter would flee, knowing that he's opening himself up to additional spell attacks from the wizard.

Generally speaking, wizards that live to see another day have learned that about the dumbest thing they can do is get within melee range of a fighter. Which is why Shocking Grasp doesn't strike me as broken...it forces the wizard to violate that fundamental tenet of arcane-caster survival.

 

[kenobi65]

Oh, and the other difference between 1/2 and 3 - low level wizards are a bit more useful. "Well folks, that's my one Sleep spell for the day. Time to be off."

Yup. If nothing else, at least now they can use a crossbow.

 

[rvalle]

Conceptually, it's not a bad idea. In the same way that the battlemat does tend to enable spellcasters to have perfect knowledge of where their spell area of effects will hit, it also enables perfect knowledge of the battlefield for everyone. I'd have to think about what the DC would be on the Spot, but I like it.

I did somethink like this in one of our battles. Bad guy mage's (Longtail from WLD) familure was dropped with a sleep spell while invisible while said mage was in combat. I had him make a spot check (I pulled a dc 15 out of my hat) for him to see what had happened. I figured his link would have helped some too.

rv

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

You are in the Balin's Tomb Fight.
That orc 15 feet away is snarling at you. You move 10 feet, then attack. Your attack kills that orc.
Then 2 orcs decide to move past you, heading in the opposite direction, towards Boromir. Due to the Fog of War, they do not deliberately deter around you (because they are not paying attention to you, but to Boromir.) So they both enter your Threatened Squares, then depart them. Departing them triggers your AOO. You may make one AOO against each of them.
Then you see Boromir is in trouble with the cave troll. You charge the cave troll, to stop it from squashing Boromir. But in so doing, you pass by the 2 orcs who are also engaged with Boromir. You enter and then leave their Threatened Squares. Both of those orcs get AOO against you.

Now the cave troll is paying attention to you. It bull rushes you, pushing you back 20 feet, past the 2 orcs, and the 3 more rushing up. The 3 orcs don't get AOO, since you are only entering their Threatened Squares, but the 2 orcs gleefully strike at you again as you leave their Threatened Squares. Then they move up to attack you.

Meanwhile, Sam is banging away with his pans (BANG! I think I've got the hang of this! BANG!)
Sam bangs one orc, downing him. He turns and moves, and bangs another orc next round. But there were 2 other orcs with the orc he first banged. Sam just left their Threatened Squares, so they both get AOO against him.
And unfortunately for Sam, he also just left the Threat Range of the Cave Troll (who was concentrating on Aragorn.) So it gets an AOO also.
The new orc Sam just banged goes down. But the second orc had a spear, which threatens out to 10 feet, and Sam is 10 feet out. That orc gets an AOO.
Master Samwise didn't get the 'hang' of it very well at all, did he?

(Incidentally, the pan counts as a, what, light weapon? Sam has a - 4 to hit with it, being non-proficient. If he hits, he does 1d2 points with it (improvised Small Weapon, correct?) plus strength (in Sam's case, + 2 or + 3. Sam is pretty strong.)

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

Or how about this:

You backpedal (or sidepedal), and blunder right into an orc you did not notice, due to the Fog of War. He was backpedalling (or sidepedalling), and blunders into you.
Both of you realize you have bigger and better foes to face (he wants to fight Gimli, you want to fight that orc with the spear) than each other, so both of you move away from each other at once.
Both of you immediately get AOO against the other, as you leave each other's Threatened Squares.

You move around the corner, backing away from the 3 orcs blitzing away at you (you're killing them fast: there were 7 orcs blitzing at you last round.) But around the corner are 2 more orcs, busy fighting Merry.
Merry and his combat moves past you into another part of the room, while your combat continues to backpedal towards where Legolas is shooting orcs down.
But, as this happens:

You get AOO against all of Merry's orcs.
Merry gets AOO against all of your orcs.
Merry's orcs all get AOO against you.
All of your orcs get AOO against Merry.

ALL of you (You, Merry, your orcs, Merry's orcs) are too busy fighting, to pay attention to whether you are safely 6 feet away from an enemy combatant! Yes, all of you see Big Nasties with Big Nasty Weapons threatening nearby, but staying safely away from them, while you are engaged in mortal combat with foes in your face, is another matter!

The Fog of War is as messy, as that room was after the fight ended.