Does Opportunity Action + MBA = Opportunity Attack?

[FireLance]

Well, there are other things that modify them as well, like Polearm Gamble and Beast Defender.

Good point. I had forgotten about that.

Really, it isn't the terminology that is confusing to people. It is just the way for whatever reason certain Opportunity Action MBAs confusingly lose out on bonuses that apply to OAs. It lacks any real logic in terms of what is going on in the game that there is this fairly arbitrary distinction.

I get where you're coming from, but I would call it a "fine" distinction rather than an "arbirtary" one. After all, it could be argued that the degree of "letting your guard down" when you are moving or making a ranged or area attack is different from (and somehow greater than) when you are making a charge attack against someone with the Repel Charge feat, or when you are making an attack that does not include an Essentials fighter while you are in his defender aura. This would provide some in-game justification for why there are bonuses to opportunity attacks that do not apply to other melee basic attacks made as opportunity actions.

Admittedly, the explanations will get more convoluted when you throw in all the ways to expand the trigger conditions for opportunity attacks: you lower your guard more when you attack a ranger's beast companion (but not any other ally of the ranger); you lower your guard more when making an attack that does not include a Champion of Order compared to an Essentials fighter - possibly, it could be explained that the ranger co-ordinates so well with his beast companion that you need to drop your defences more to attack it, and that the divine backing behind a Champion of Order's mark causes someone who makes an attack that does not include the Champion of Order to do the same.

But yes, the fact that certain bonuses apply to some melee basic attacks made as opportunity actions and not to others implies that there are different degrees of "letting your guard down". And while it is certainly possible to distinguish between them via trigger conditions, and even provide some kind of in-game justification for the different degrees, it does add an additional level of complication to the game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I get where you're coming from, but I would call it a "fine" distinction rather than an "arbirtary" one. After all, it could be argued that the degree of "letting your guard down" when you are moving or making a ranged or area attack is different from (and somehow greater than) when you are making a charge attack against someone with the Repel Charge feat, or when you are making an attack that does not include an Essentials fighter while you are in his defender aura. This would provide some in-game justification for why there are bonuses to opportunity attacks that do not apply to other melee basic attacks made as opportunity actions.

Admittedly, the explanations will get more convoluted when you throw in all the ways to expand the trigger conditions for opportunity attacks: you lower your guard more when you attack a ranger's beast companion (but not any other ally of the ranger); you lower your guard more when making an attack that does not include a Champion of Order compared to an Essentials fighter - possibly, it could be explained that the ranger co-ordinates so well with his beast companion that you need to drop your defences more to attack it, and that the divine backing behind a Champion of Order's mark causes someone who makes an attack that does not include the Champion of Order to do the same.

But yes, the fact that certain bonuses apply to some melee basic attacks made as opportunity actions and not to others implies that there are different degrees of "letting your guard down". And while it is certainly possible to distinguish between them via trigger conditions, and even provide some kind of in-game justification for the different degrees, it does add an additional level of complication to the game.

Yeah, I hear you. They just seem to become fairly hair-splittingly minor distinctions at a certain point. This is one of the reasons I'm beginning to disfavor this part of the whole way 4e has been designed. I don't think for the most part the core rules really demand it either. You can establish some fairly strong themes for a character by mostly incremental means of combining specific mechanics but because things are always defined in mechanical terms you get these odd corner cases or sometimes entirely unintended effects that don't relate much to what the player is trying to do with their character development. Or you just plain end up with big awkwardnesses like the way the Swarm Druid is effectively an almost unplayable build due to some interaction of a required feat with mechanics of another class.

Powers and feats REALLY should have been designed more in terms of their contributions within the narrative structure of the game. That would have made it a good bit more straightforward for players to decide what they wanted "Hey, I want to be a guy that has a grudge against giants, I'll take some giant fighting feats!" Power selection could have related more closely to other character choices too in some cases. Martial characters to a large extent work pretty well in the power department since handling weapons is usually seen as a matter of knowing the right moves, but it works a bit less well with some other power sources.

 

[DracoSuave]

Really, it isn't the terminology that is confusing to people. It is just the way for whatever reason certain Opportunity Action MBAs confusingly lose out on bonuses that apply to OAs. It lacks any real logic in terms of what is going on in the game that there is this fairly arbitrary distinction. .

Actually, the distinction is pretty solid: Opportunity Attacks are all meant to be triggered by motion and/or use of powers adjacent to the player. Things that alter that (like polearm gamble, threatening reach) are designed to expand on that concept. Thug's Trick is another example from essentials, adding 'When an enemy shifts' to possible triggers for opportunity attacks. Heavy Blade Opportunity changes the result of the OA, by making it an at-will power rather than a basic attack; but the concept in the fiction--a character defending his turf from someone dropping his guard--remains exactly the same in all three cases.

However, when an new opportunity action comes about, it always has a subtly different trigger. Spirit Shield has 'When an enemy moves from a square adjacent to your spirit' as its trigger. It might seem like the same thing, but it's actually an attack that does minor damage and heals your friends... and the enemy is likely nowhere near you. This is not the same concept as taking a swipe at someone beside you who has dropped their guard. Pre-update Blurred Step was about following someone who shifted, either keeping them adjacent, or possibly blocking their shift entirely.

The distinctions are hardly arbitrary. Opportunity Attacks represent a specific set of concepts, and other opportunity actions represent completely new concepts.


See, this is why I don't understand where you're coming from. You're claiming the game needs to hold a better grasp of 'its fiction' and powers need to be designed with that in mind; that's accomplished through distinction and exception, and in the case where they do that (opportunity attacks vs other opportunity actions) you complain that there's no need for that distinction... that's nonsense. It's like being angry at your government because it won't cut taxes while doubling military spending--it's doublethink, holding two diametrically opposed opinions at the same type.

You need to decide which is more important, pick that one, and stick with it, otherwise you're coming across as irrational.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

That said, I do think that there is some potential for confusion between an opportunity attack and a melee basic attack made as an opportunity action since an opportunity attack is also a melee basic attack made as an opportunity action

This. It's why I asked the question.

 

[Gryph]

Actually, the distinction is pretty solid: Opportunity Attacks are all meant to be triggered by motion and/or use of powers adjacent to the player. Things that alter that (like polearm gamble, threatening reach) are designed to expand on that concept. Thug's Trick is another example from essentials, adding 'When an enemy shifts' to possible triggers for opportunity attacks. Heavy Blade Opportunity changes the result of the OA, by making it an at-will power rather than a basic attack; but the concept in the fiction--a character defending his turf from someone dropping his guard--remains exactly the same in all three cases.

However, when an new opportunity action comes about, it always has a subtly different trigger. Spirit Shield has 'When an enemy moves from a square adjacent to your spirit' as its trigger. It might seem like the same thing, but it's actually an attack that does minor damage and heals your friends... and the enemy is likely nowhere near you. This is not the same concept as taking a swipe at someone beside you who has dropped their guard. Pre-update Blurred Step was about following someone who shifted, either keeping them adjacent, or possibly blocking their shift entirely.

The distinctions are hardly arbitrary. Opportunity Attacks represent a specific set of concepts, and other opportunity actions represent completely new concepts.


See, this is why I don't understand where you're coming from. You're claiming the game needs to hold a better grasp of 'its fiction' and powers need to be designed with that in mind; that's accomplished through distinction and exception, and in the case where they do that (opportunity attacks vs other opportunity actions) you complain that there's no need for that distinction... that's nonsense. It's like being angry at your government because it won't cut taxes while doubling military spending--it's doublethink, holding two diametrically opposed opinions at the same type.

You need to decide which is more important, pick that one, and stick with it, otherwise you're coming across as irrational.

He's not arguing those points. He is discussing only the specific case of an Opportunity Action granting an MBA and how that is understandably confusing when compared to an Opportunity Attack which grants an MBA.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, philosophically, to abuse this poor thread one last time perhaps, I think there is a widely held opinion that 4e focuses too much on mechanics and too little on emphasizing narratively significant things. In a sort of general way you can see that here in this debate. 4e can to some extent 'synthesize' narrative concepts like "this guy is quick" out of a bunch of different mechanics but it doesn't hew to it at all and doesn't do it really consistently.

A completely different, but more plainly illustrative, example are monster defenses. They bear virtually no relationship to anything ABOUT the monster itself to any significant degree. They are set based almost purely on difficulty level, with at best a bit of a tweak. Higher level monsters ALL have higher reflex defenses, even if they hulking immobile armored brutes than the quickest and sprightliest of lower level monsters. Even at the same level the variance is pretty small, maybe at the most extreme 5 or 6 points. These defenses are determined almost PURELY on the basis of general game mechanical considerations, the narrative concept of a quick monster that is hard to pin down effectively doesn't exist. The other defenses follow the same pattern.

Pretty much all other elements of the game are this way as well. Personally I think a LOT of the reluctance of a large part of the community to embrace 4e is related to this. older editions gave very little credence to mechanical considerations and as a result were in a game mechanics sense pretty much of a mess, 4e unfortunately went almost to the opposite extreme and basically threw out the baby with the bathwater.

The players can noodle around a whole bunch and kind of reconstruct some sense of connection between mechanics and narrative by careful use of mechanics and fluffing things, but it would be a really vast improvement if the game were to simply meet them halfway.