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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 511891" data-attributes="member: 4937">Olgar: I'm not forgetting that at all (I've been playing this game 20 years) and in fact it is precisely my point.  If I am attacking a guy with a bow, then I claim that one swing of the sword more or less coresponds to one 'attack' because there isn't going to need to be a whole series of attacks, feints, parryies, reposts leading up to the critical 'thrust'.   The guy with the bow simply can't actively protect himself in the same fashion as is persumed by the average abstract combat.  You can't equate the two - a guy with a sword attacking another guy with a sword is nothing like a guy with a sword hacking at a guy trying to line up a bow shot on the guy hacking at him with a sword.   The AoO is supposed to handle this, but as the number of attacks/round increases and the number of feats that increase arrow shots per round increase, the less important the AoO becomes and the more the melee attacker must rely on occassionally strange meta tactics - like grappling an archer is more dangerous than hitting him with the sword, or waiting on an archer to attempt to attack is more effective than relentlessly attacking, etc.  While I might get through the guard of a guy with a sword less often than a guy with an arrow can fire (and that's debatable, see my next point), I won't get through the 'guard' of a guy with a bow less often than he can fire - you can gaurantee that. And if your answer to all of the above is, "Well, the guy with the bow is bobbing and weaving to avoid your attacks", how is it that at the very least he doesn't have a penalty to hit compared to when he does not need to bob and weave?Furthermore, the 'abstract combat' arguement worked alot better for 1st edition D&D than it does for 3rd edition D&D.   Combat in 3rd edition D&D has been made relatively less abstract in several ways.   Most importantly, the length of a combat round has dropped from roughly 30 seconds to about 6 seconds.   While this is still more abstract than a GURPS 1 second round, we are definately moving closer to a concrete model.  Add to this the addition of combat manuevers and feats designed to represent certain actions in a round (feints, dodge, spring attack, fight defensively, and so forth), and you are moving closer to a system that is attempting to relate one action (or set of actions) to one round.  And it is clear that the reason D&D is doing this is that it wants to have a more satisfying combat system than the old 1st edition system which was so abstract as to be almost entirely non-cinematic/non-visual; not to mention 1st editions kludgy mechanics for handling players attempting to do things other than roll attack dice (grapple, take cover, retreat, etc.).Again, I don't think that D&D penalizes a missile attacker nearly enough for having recieved melee attacks in the last round, or being in base to base contact with a melee attacker.  And, I also think that in general people have been too generous in creating feats and special powers for missile weapons specifically which are both additive with general weapon feats and above what would be considered appropriate for a general weapon feat/power.</blockquote>

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