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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Clavis" data-source="post: 2657899" data-attributes="member: 31898">You don't make your players actually beat the sh**t out of each other with swords? What is his world coming too?What I was trying to say was that the battelmat-centered 3.* combat system IS an attempt to model combat more realistically, and that it fails miserably. Combat, which should be exciting, becomes a board game. Better to treat the whole thing abstractly and narrate the exact moves.But the problem is that 3.* combat, as written, is tedious as all hell. And to play it from the book, using all the rules does require mini's (which surprise, WOTC now sells) and a battlemat. You have to simplify the rules to do without the battlemat, and get exciting combat back.I've played both OD&D and AD&D through every edition, and never encountered the need for mini's, or ever had spell radii be a problem. 3.* edition has made it a problem, though, by trying to make combat realistic and instead making an RPG into a board game. Do not bring your cardboard prejudice here!You wouldn't get the ability to effectively damage someone multiple times UNLESS they do something stupid, and you're are an exceptional fighter. The AoO is redundant, and slows the game down without a big payback in player excitementy and enjoyment.Yes, because only very trained fighters would be able to take effective advantage of the situation. Remember two things: 1) Hit points represent how hard it is to kill someone, NOT how much damage they can sustain in an absolute sense. They're an abstract way of showing how important a character is to the ongoing story. They represent how Conan can fight 20 men without ever taking a good sword thrust, while the avaerage evil wizard's guard gets dropped at the first blow. 2)The attack roll never represented a single thrust, but how effective your attacks are in the combat round. There are feints, blocks, and poor thrusts accounted for in that round. Multiple attack rolls really just mean that your character fights better, not that he can warp time and space to swing a sword 3 times faster than a lower-level character. More of his blows connect, because he is better able to exploit weaknesses in his opponant's defence. Therefore, I suggest that there has always been a mechanic to represent the fact that some people can effectively use other peoples' dumb moves against them in combat, and that multiple attacks per round represent that ability.Watch, or better yet, participate in an actual fight to realize just how hard it is to think while adrenaline is pumping. A well run combat should get the player's adrenaline actually pumping, should be almost as exciting as actually wailing on a dragon woulds be. Once the battlemat comes out, however, the experience is no longer visceral, but purely intellectual. RPG combat, which should be creating mental pictures of blood and guts hitting characters in the face instead becomes an exercise in argueing about what causes an AoO and what doesn't, and whether a character can take a 5' step or not.I guess what it all means is that I prefer a more free-form, abstract set of rules because it allows a good DM to tailor the experience to the players, and maintain excitement more easily. The battlemat is another way that 3.* attempts to castrate the DM and reduce him down to a mere rules referee.</blockquote>

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