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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5663573" data-attributes="member: 54877">The purpose of OA (and same with 3E AoO) is to make certain actions occasionally tempting, but somewhat more rare than if there were not restrictions. This is explicitly to put choice into the players' hands without bogging down the flow of the game.  If you make the restrictions too onerous, then the effect will be that no one will provoke. At that point, you might as well simplify everything by banning those actions outright, and save time.  If you make the restrictions too gentle, then the effect will be that people don't care about provoking, except at the margins (e.g. close to zero hit points or when the provoke is several monsters or something like that). At that point, people will provoke all over the place, and it will slow the game down. You might as well remove the restrictions, since they aren't changing the behavior. Or, if you aren't getting the expected result--player choice that occurs rarely enough to keep the main turn structure going--then you can change the restrictions to skew towards the expected result. Someone seeing "too much provoking"--however you define that for your group--could simply double the damage from all OAs. That might get them to the point where provoking became more rare, but still viable--for that group.  Note that all of the above is assuming that one is not playing the game as a series of opportunities for tactical "gotcha" moments. That is, the players are expected to move cleverly to avoid provoking the OA while still getting what they want. This will also slow down the game, but is more about system mastery and tactical insight than player decision making. In any case, if you value this aspect, then you want OAs to occur as often as you can stand, but with relative minor effect. I don't want that aspect at all, and thus will always give a player a chance to change their mind if they didn't realize an OA would be provoked. If they decide to go ahead, then we are back to "making a decision", which is the part I value.  3E leans slightly towards this mode of play by through more complicated AoO than the 4E OA, but I think this is an accident rather than design.  I'm fairly certain that the 3E design is intended for the same purpose, and should be relatively rare. Handling time is thus directly proportional to how often an OA occurs, or is at least considered. Since I think that frequent OAs are a sign that the consequences aren't severe enough, I'm more likely to increase the consequences than try to muck with the handling time by changing how OAs work. However, I might try the penalty route, since it seems to have roughly similar severity of consequences with modest handling time improvement for when it is invoked. I'm all for those things that keep the round flowing freely around the initiative order, and thus keep the players involved in the narrative of the combat.</blockquote>

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