One of the ongoing peeves that I have with D&D 3.x is the Attack of Opportunity.
I prefer to dungeonmaster a game that's light on tactics and thick with roleplaying. When the game turns to battle, almost invariably the pace slows to a frickin' crawl. Sometimes (and only rarely!), the level of detail that standard 3.5 provides offers a vivid quality to the events at hand. Most of the time, AoOp's slow the pace insufferably. I woud gladly flush the detail that AoOp's provide in exchange for smoother play.
For example: the last time my group gamed, i had designed an encounter wherein the characters were set upon by ghoul hounds atop a city wall. The edges of the wall restricted free movement, and the stacked ranks of PC's and nasty-dogs meant that all combatants might well move through friendly squares and/or hostile squares inside a combat round. The variables that thus came into play regarding AoOp's, especially in connection with movement and charges and bull rushes, became terribly complex. What I had intended to be just a flavorful if intimidating encounter ended up taking almost two hours to resolve. Grrrrrrr!
MY QUESTION: What's involved in simply stripping AoOp's from the game?
Here's what I know:
(1) If I strip AoOp's, I need to allow PC's to reconfigure their Feat selection (as any number of Feats are intimately tied to the logic of AoOp's);
(2) Stripping AoOp's will have a whole host of consequences in 3.5;
Some assumptions:
(1) I want to stick with d20, in some form. I have invested beaucoup bucks in the system, as have my players. I have no desire to ditch the system wholesale;
(2) Those with whom I game are not terribly hung up on battlefield tactics. They accept and/or they appreciate the fact that my interest and my strengths are in refereeing a roleplaying game, NOT a tabletop game like Warhammer. They are not going to pine away for the tactical minutae of tabletop wargaming;
Related issues:
(1) What does stripping AoOp's do to the basic mechanics of 3.5 combat, and are the issues involved insurmountable? For example: (a) movement; (b) reach; (c) initiative; (d) special actions like "charge" and "bull rush"; and (e) the logic of "actions" -- full-round, standard, move-equivalent, etc.;
(2) I read somewhere (???) that an RPG w/o AoOp's introduces its own set of potential rules-lawyering abuses; what are they?
I wish to thank you all in advance for any feedback you offer.
P.S. I picked up a copy of Castles & Crusades, mostly on the word that it represents a d20 mechanic without AoOp's -- and promotes the simplicity of combat. While the game seems well-designed, its standard ruleset does without a number of things that I want to keep, like Skills and Feats.
I prefer to dungeonmaster a game that's light on tactics and thick with roleplaying. When the game turns to battle, almost invariably the pace slows to a frickin' crawl. Sometimes (and only rarely!), the level of detail that standard 3.5 provides offers a vivid quality to the events at hand. Most of the time, AoOp's slow the pace insufferably. I woud gladly flush the detail that AoOp's provide in exchange for smoother play.
For example: the last time my group gamed, i had designed an encounter wherein the characters were set upon by ghoul hounds atop a city wall. The edges of the wall restricted free movement, and the stacked ranks of PC's and nasty-dogs meant that all combatants might well move through friendly squares and/or hostile squares inside a combat round. The variables that thus came into play regarding AoOp's, especially in connection with movement and charges and bull rushes, became terribly complex. What I had intended to be just a flavorful if intimidating encounter ended up taking almost two hours to resolve. Grrrrrrr!
MY QUESTION: What's involved in simply stripping AoOp's from the game?
Here's what I know:
(1) If I strip AoOp's, I need to allow PC's to reconfigure their Feat selection (as any number of Feats are intimately tied to the logic of AoOp's);
(2) Stripping AoOp's will have a whole host of consequences in 3.5;
Some assumptions:
(1) I want to stick with d20, in some form. I have invested beaucoup bucks in the system, as have my players. I have no desire to ditch the system wholesale;
(2) Those with whom I game are not terribly hung up on battlefield tactics. They accept and/or they appreciate the fact that my interest and my strengths are in refereeing a roleplaying game, NOT a tabletop game like Warhammer. They are not going to pine away for the tactical minutae of tabletop wargaming;
Related issues:
(1) What does stripping AoOp's do to the basic mechanics of 3.5 combat, and are the issues involved insurmountable? For example: (a) movement; (b) reach; (c) initiative; (d) special actions like "charge" and "bull rush"; and (e) the logic of "actions" -- full-round, standard, move-equivalent, etc.;
(2) I read somewhere (???) that an RPG w/o AoOp's introduces its own set of potential rules-lawyering abuses; what are they?
I wish to thank you all in advance for any feedback you offer.
P.S. I picked up a copy of Castles & Crusades, mostly on the word that it represents a d20 mechanic without AoOp's -- and promotes the simplicity of combat. While the game seems well-designed, its standard ruleset does without a number of things that I want to keep, like Skills and Feats.
