Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 5376635" data-attributes="member: 3424">Good point. I had forgotten about that. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":o" title="Eek!    :o"  data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":o" />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.</blockquote>

Verification