Pathfinder 2E Getting rid of opportunity attacks in D&D 5e, need PF2 players' perspective

[Rockyroad]

Just for reference, I'm a 5e player without any PF2 experience. An issue I find in 5e melee combat is that it seems to boil down to static trench warfare, maybe due to the threat of OA. As a thought experiment I was wondering what would happen if we got rid of OA except when given as special ability or feat such as Sentinel. Would it encourage more fluid movement and combat? I posed this question in the 5e forums but one of the responders mentioned that the situation in PF2 is similar to what I'm proposing and I should get opinions from this forum. So what do you guys think? For those who play both 5e and PF2, do you notice any difference in combat with respect to more fluid or dynamic combat in PF2 compared to 5e and is that due to decreased use of OA? Thanks for your insight.

 

[Retreater]

I've played both systems. I think if you were to do this in 5e, you would need to really telegraph which opponents have the ability to OA, otherwise the characters won't want to be the first to figure it out.

Are you doing anything on your end to encourage movement? Are you using flanking? Are you using mobile enemies to move and engage with squishy targets like spellcasters?

And if combats get stale, feel free to add environmental effects such as a toppled brazier that is spilling hot coals in the room, a collapsing ceiling, etc. Those would get the characters to move quickly.

 

[Campbell]

As is OA already feel pretty weak to me in 5e. Enemies have a lot of hit points and usually go down through death by 1000 cuts rather than getting hammered down like they do in PF2. OA feel like powerful gamechangers to me in PF2. It makes sense to limit them. In my experience enemies already basically ignore OAs in 5e quite often.

The other thing is that there is not much cost for mobility in 5e with the absence of OA. PF2 builds in costs because moving means you cannot do something else. In 5e you just fully maintain your ability to be a blender of death.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Hard to say, one reason it works pretty well in 2e is that actions are fungible, you're giving up attacks or other actions when you move, and while sometimes that's a really good idea, (when you would be attacking at -8 or -10 because of MAP anyway) other times its more questionable. You'd also have to remember to give back to monsters here and there so that some creatures do have it. You might also get Rogues and such who feel cheated out of OA's because they're great for certain builds (since in 5e Rogues can't sneak attack more than once per turn but totally can sneak attack on an OA outside their turn) and certain class and subclass features rely on being more mobile by shutting OA's off on a target they attack hit, like the swashbuckler. I played 5e as my main system for a few years before moving on to 2e, so this is coming from heavy experience with both systems.

If you're really interested, you could try out 2e to see what it feels like when tis set up in the system properly. The rules are (legally) free online on Archives of Nethys.

 

[Thomas Shey]

As The-Magic-Sword says, there are enough other reasons where moving isn't always the ideal case because of the three-action economy and some of the things you can do even with that third action when attacking with it is semi-worthless, that it doesn't necessarily need AoO to discourage kiting all over the map. My observation has been that without some mechanics to discourage that, there's what I'd consider for most contexts "excessive mobility" in a rather large number of games.

 

[GrahamWills]

Because in PF2 only some enemies/classes get OAs, it means that characters that can get information about the enemy effectively are more useful in combat — once you know an opponent doesn’t have an AO, your movement is free. PF2‘s three action economy also encourages movement; I play a pretty squishy character, so I am very likely, when an enemy stands next to me, to hit twice and then back away ...

Standing toe-to-toe with a serious enemy is also very dangerous in PF2. A dangerous encounter will see an enemy with a 33% chance or better of a critical hit on you; and getting 2 critical hits in a monsters single turn is not extreme bad luck — it’s just normal bad luck. So players on low hits are much more likely to want to move away.

Not sure if these translate well to 5E; I think they are pretty tied to core PF2 design. if there is little threat in being beside an enemy, and some threat to moving away, it will be hard to make moving away a solid option.

 

[embee]

I've played both systems. I think if you were to do this in 5e, you would need to really telegraph which opponents have the ability to OA, otherwise the characters won't want to be the first to figure it out.

Are you doing anything on your end to encourage movement? Are you using flanking? Are you using mobile enemies to move and engage with squishy targets like spellcasters?

And if combats get stale, feel free to add environmental effects such as a toppled brazier that is spilling hot coals in the room, a collapsing ceiling, etc. Those would get the characters to move quickly.

The "problem" with flanking is that in 5e, it's an optional rule and even then, it's shittily implemented, as in you gain advantage when flanking, which as I understand the math, comes out to like an additional 24% chance to hit.

I get around it, to an extent, with only granting +2 to the flanker if directly opposite another attacker and +1 to all else. But this isn't much of a solution either, as it then encourages surround-and-pound.

 

[Lefi2017]

just handed flanking in 5e as reverse cover +2 to hit if flanked by 2
and +5 to hit and disadvantage on dex saves when flanked on 4 or more sides

 

[kenada]

When I first ran 5e, I had you roll 1d4 and add it to your attack (like bless). My players aren’t very tactical, so I’m not sure it actually came up in play (and the same goes for the official flank variant). Also, our lack of tactical inclination is probably why PF2 combat was so hard for my group.

 

[Rockyroad]

We first used flanking as written, giving advantage but that seemed a little too much. Kind of diminished special abilities of characters such as barbarians or samurai that had ways of getting advantage from their abilities. So we did away with it. Then we went to +2 as a compromise, some liked it while others weren't crazy about it.

I'm thinking of a variant flanking rule to use. Whenever there are multiple melee attackers for a single target in a given round, the first attacker against that target rolls as normal. All subsequent melee attackers against that target for that round have +2 to their attacks if attacking from the side and +5 if attacking from the rear of the target. The orientation of the target is defined such that it would be facing the first attacker.

Edit: So yeah this is reverse to half and 3/4 cover for ranged attacks.