Getting Rid of Attacks of Opportunity

[Khuxan]

Hi,

I would like to make some changes to combat in my games to make the entire thing simpler for beginners and casual gamers. In particular, I want to get rid of or simplify attacks of opportunity... but I still want people to be able to take a risk and do things like fire a bow in melee, drink a potion, move through a threatened space, and so on.

Is there some sort of alternative to attacks of opportunity that I could use?

Thanks,

Bill

 

[Nifft]

What do you consider to be simpler than an attack?

List those, should make choosing one easier.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Destil]

Get rid of AoOs for movement. Treat areas threatend by opponents as difficult terrain: it counts as double movement (Spring Attack negates this for the foe you're attacking, get rid of Mobility as a feat entirely).

Don't allow trip, disarm or start a grapple with an AoO, and don't normally allow strike an obect or sunder. You can strike/sunder an object when it's involved in the action provoking the AoO (striking a potion bottle in responce to someone trying to drink one, for instance).

Now you have mabye two options when someone does someting stupid in a melee:
1) Stab them for it.
2) Break their potion/bow et cetera before they can do so (mabye).

Complexity solved.

I would recomend looking into simpler grapple rules too, if you want to simplify (I like the way the current rules work, but they get a lot of complaints).

 

[Khuxan]

Get rid of AoOs for movement. Treat areas threatend by opponents as difficult terrain: it counts as double movement (Spring Attack negates this for the foe you're attacking, get rid of Mobility as a feat entirely).

Don't allow trip, disarm or start a grapple with an AoO, and don't normally allow strike an obect or sunder. You can strike/sunder an object when it's involved in the action provoking the AoO (striking a potion bottle in responce to someone trying to drink one, for instance).

Now you have mabye two options when someone does someting stupid in a melee:
1) Stab them for it.
2) Break their potion/bow et cetera before they can do so (mabye).

Complexity solved.

I would recomend looking into simpler grapple rules too, if you want to simplify (I like the way the current rules work, but they get a lot of complaints).

Thanks - that's the sort of thing I was looking for.

 

[Bladesong]

The recommendations above are very good. If in your mind you still struggle with someone rummaging through a backpack looking for a potion in the middle of melee, you could have them make concentration checks with failure delaying the action till the next round, or preventing it altogether.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

I don't use AOOS. I just say it's impossible to shoot a bow in melee. Other things, like drink a potion, etc, we don't worry about.