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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5663454" data-attributes="member: 54877">If I remember Basic and 1E correctly, they went with prohibiting the kinds of actions that would provoke in 3E and 4E.  (The older games are all somewhat mushed together in my mind with house rules and variants from Dragon, though.)  In any case, the actual effect was that it was possible for the tougher characters to position themselves to slow down a dogpile on the weaker characters.  But if the wizard got surrounded, and didn't have some ready defensive spells--he was so hosed. For 3E or 4E, I'd go with the penalty to attacks option, rather than straight nullification of options.  That always gives the dogpiled character a choice--even if picking between two relatively bad options.  Having a choice when in trouble makes the player feel a bit better. For 4E in particular, I'd go with something like -2 to all attacks for the full round after provoking.  And then stacked on top of that, if you provoke a defender, they get to mark you.  For the fighter, rather than apply damage, let him stop movement.  I'm not sure what other defenders would need to compensate, if anything.  Take the paladin for example.  His mark damage isn't usually decisive.  But now a hoard of weaker opponents running by him have a total of -4 to hit (and -2 to hit him).  And if they risk that -4, they all take his mark damage.  So getting to mark multiple opponents is not a bad trade for an OA--and would certainly handle the main task of making people respect the defenders. The ones that really get messed up with that rule, however, are the melee strikers.  I suppose controllers or leaders with nasty status effects they want to dish out also could be affected.  So how about stacking on the rules in the preceding paragraph that any character can "lock" onto a provoking opponent and gain a +2 to hit with their next attack against that guy?   Provoking is now pretting nasty, but it doesn't involve any rolling.  You've got -2 to hit everything, and the guys that you provoked have now got a +2 to hit you on their turn.  If you provoked a defender, you are also marked.  If you are the lead brute ogre trying to bust through the line, you'll suffer.  But at least the horde of goblins following you won't all give up the +2 to hit them, even if they do suffer the negatives. For flavor purposes, this rule is assuming that a thinking opponent simply can't totally let down their guard when someone is waving a big axe under their nose.</blockquote>

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