Increasing combat mobility

[The Levitator]

The only major think I would consider is your Facing rules. The increased mobility of combatants might make it easy to move "behind" your enemies. Since I don't know how your facing rules work I can't give much constructive criticism.

We pretty much use the UA rules with 1 addition; engagement. A char. may engage 1 combatant once per round as an immediate action. This eliminates the 'leapfrogging' effect under the normal UA rules. Once a char. is engaged with a combatant, the char. can change their facing as much as needed, keeping that opponent to their front to negate flanking or rear attacks from that opponent.

I am definitely going to show my group this thread at our session later today to get some feedback. Will report back tonight!

Thanls for the analysis!

 

[Yair]

Are full attacks really freezing combat positions at high levels? In what situations?

I never really played at high levels. But it seems to me the full attack should really be considered more of a Special Ability of the warrior, much like a monk's Flurry of Blows. It is applicable only when the fighter gets to keep his enemy close for a round, which actually encourages enemies to move away, increasing combat fluidity. A sorcerer or a rogue doesn't want to keep his position next to the fighter, he wants to move away to deny the fighter the full attack. Perhaps high-level feats should extend the effective range others would want to keep from the fighter:

Pursuing Assault [General, Fighter]
Prerequisite: BAB 6
You can make a move action and then a full attack against an opponent that attacked you from within your threatened zone at the previous round. [This makes the attack-and-fall-back tactic problematic against warriors.]

War Dance [General, Fighter]
Prerequisite: BAB 12
You can make a full attack while moving up to 10', instead of the usual 5'. You may make any number of attacks from any of the three squares (your original plus the two you move into), not just from the initial and final positions. Unlike a 5' step, your movement may provoke attacks of opporunity.
Special: You can take this feat multiple times. Its effects stack, each time adding an extra 5' to your movement.
Your total movement cannot exceed a single Movement action.


Allowing iterative attacks while moving will allow fighters and rogues to deliver much more damage on engaging powerful opponents, and speed up the mopping of mooks. This (needless, IMHO) escalation in power comes at the cost of limiting the tactical choice, demoting the place near the fighter as a dangerous place to be at and allowing oppoennts to strike him and move away into safer positions.

What freezes up combat positions isn't iterative attacks. A warrior will want to close to his effective range anyway, so iterative attacks are only relevant for reaching many seperate opponents in the same round (mopping up mooks, moving to another major foe once your current one has fallen, or harassing multiple opponents). Those situations are sufficiently rare (felling major foes) or ineffectual (a sparse line of mooks) that they aren't important IMO, and I'm not at all sure I even want warriors to be able to automatically handle them with flair and speed. What freezes up positions are attacks of opportunity due to movement. To make combat more fluid one needs to provide ways to avoid movement-related AoO (perhaps banning them, perhaps opening up Tumble to warrior classes). [Adding further incentives to movement, e.g. benefits to jumping from higher ground or speeding past your opponent, and adding more movement, aren't a bad idea either.]

 

[Mokona]

The difficulty of using Gargantuans and Colossals in the miniatures game illustrates a problem inherent in Dungeons & Dragons in general -- big monsters are hard to use.

After the Colossal Red Dragon came out, we fought one in the Wednesday night game that Chris Perkins runs. I knew that Gargantuan and Colossal monsters aren't easy to use in a game. I was aware that fitting them in dungeons is problematic, and that the placement of PCs and other obstructions can make it hard for them to move. When we used the mini in actual play, I learned one more thing about them. Big monsters don't need to move.

When a creature takes up most of the room on a map and it has a reach of 15 or more feet, it doesn't need to move, because it can usually reach all the PCs. It can make a full attack every round without 5-foot shifts. Unless the DM imposes special conditions, this can lead to uninteresting tactics for combat. The monster stands in one place, and so do the PCs. Everyone takes full attacks, and eventually one side or the other wins. Ultimately, fights with big monsters don't necessarily provide the big payoff I look for in such climactic battles. That's not a flaw in the miniatures game, it's just a facet of the way such situations play out. If anything, having a miniature to dress up the table improves things.

I think R&D at Wizards of the Coast handily illustrates the reason that 5 ft. steps and Full Attack actions are boring. This becomes even more true with Reach.

 

[eamon]

I like the idea, but I would prefer an extremely simple implementation. Differentiating between classes isn't necessary. Use it or lose it is OK conceptually, but it's too complex. It's also important to consider how this interacts with normal five-foot steps. You don't want a situation in which a character hits, moves 5ft, hits, moves 5ft - and suddenly discovers that the first five feet aren't a five foot step any longer and thus he's vulnerable to attacks of opportunities retroactively.

In every game I've ever DM'd or played, the monk was underwhelming. There was even a monk with by far the best stats I've ever seen rolled (on the table in front of everyone: 18,18,17,16,15,11), and he was still underwhelming. That was 3.0 though, in 3.5 he's a little more powerful. Still, I wouldn't worry about the monk stealing the fighter's shine in combat.

One poster said it true enough though - you don't want to discourage enemies from moving away, that's just going to make combat less mobile.

How about: In a full-attack, you can move up to 5ft between attacks, and no more than 5ft before the first attack. The first 5ft of movement are considered your 5ft step and don't provoke an attack of opportunity, otherwise, you provoke AoO's as normal. You cannot move more than 5ft after any attack, even your last attack. Your total movement cannot exceed your movement speed.

Possible additional rules:
- You cannot move 5ft and then attack the same opponent again. This contradicts current 5ft step rules. (I'm against this one, but just throwing it out there
- You can move more than 5ft, but for every 5ft of additional movement you lose your best remaining attack. You can only do so if you have an additional attack to burn.

Advantages of this system:
- it's simple, just never more than 5ft movement at a time.
- it doesn't force you to choose between 5ft steps and more movement in any complex way
- it scales nicely in that characters with more attacks get more movement.
- it also minorly boosts a particular fighting style which is horribly underpowered: TWF

 

[eamon]

* Battle Fatigue (a system I created to emulate the cumulative effects of wounds and exertion during battle)

Damage taken during battle can have serious consequences. We use “Battle Fatigue” to represent the cumulative effects of wounds during combat.

75% of total HP: Light Battle Fatigue (-1 STR and -1 DEX)
50% of total HP: Battle Fatigue (-2 STR and -2 DEX)
25% of total HP: Heavy Battle Fatigue (-4 STR and -4 DEX)

Battle Fatigue can only be improved/removed by healing, unlike normal Fatigue which wears off after a short time.​

Neat idea! Is the extra calculation because of odd strength penalties and 1.5 str modifiers and the like annoying?

* All shields are +1 from Core

That does sound balanced, except maybe for bucklers... do you boost bucklers too?

* Death is at –CON, not -10.

* Falling unconscious at -1 or lower is NOT automatic. You are allowed a FORT save (DC=10+ negative HP total). For example, if you were hit and dropped to -3 HP, you could make a FORT save=13 to remain conscious. You are still disabled and dying, just not unconscious and helpless. You must make a FORT save every time you suffer damage, like making an exerted move or from bleeding when not yet stabilized, or of course, taking damage.

I see you also dislike the normal rules on death an dying. Here are mine... Death & Dying - A better (& simple) system

* Bows and crossbows are altered to make them more lethal. Arrows now have a threat range of 19-20 with a critical multiplier of x3. Bolts now have a threat range of 18-20 with a critical multiplier of x3.

I like the flavor, but aren't ranged attackers already very powerful?

As you can see, we play a pretty modified game. Does anyone see a major problem with incorporating a movement system like this into our game? I'm hopeful that we could implement something like this into our game to encourage more strategy and less toe-2-toe smashfests.

I don't see a problem, but I don't know the facing variants. However, you should probably wait and see what this thread leads to before deciding rashly. I live by the DMG2 section on house rules - less is more, and you better have a good idea of why and what you are modifying and how small changes might have unintended consequences. Such as - increased mobility simply means nobody moves because the threat of a full attack is gone.

 

[The Levitator]

Neat idea! Is the extra calculation because of odd strength penalties and 1.5 str modifiers and the like annoying?

It was really just an attempt to appease my players, who don't really like way the core system works in regards to handling damage. While they understand how the abstract system works, it is much more exciting to describe combat as a DM when players can actually see how the cumulative effects are affecting combat. I'm also lucky to have come up with a script in DM Genie, so there's no extra calculating on my part, DM Genie calculates and applies the modifiers automatically.

That does sound balanced, except maybe for bucklers... do you boost bucklers too?

I don't have it apply to bucklers, but honestly, nobody in any of my groups has ever used one.

I see you also dislike the normal rules on death an dying. Here are mine... Death & Dying - A better (& simple) system

I will definitely be checking out the link! I just got my new laptop up and running, so I'm doing a lot of catching up. I lost much of our current campaign to a hard drive failing on me. Once I get our campaign back up and running, I plan to get up to speed on this thread, so I'll definitely be checking out your system.

I like the flavor, but aren't ranged attackers already very powerful?

I agree in that I think that ranged attacks are pretty powerful by Core Rules. This was another attempt by me to make my group happy by making bows and crossbows a little more lethal. I don't mind implementing rules that are slightly unbalanced into the game if it guarantees that my players get the kind of experience that they are hoping for. When I reminded them that the rules work both ways, they actually made it clear that they actually liked the extra lethality of bows and crossbows. They said it made them feel more "in the game" to be a little extra worried of an arrow or crossbow bolt coming out of nowhere to take them down.

I don't see a problem, but I don't know the facing variants. However, you should probably wait and see what this thread leads to before deciding rashly. I live by the DMG2 section on house rules - less is more, and you better have a good idea of why and what you are modifying and how small changes might have unintended consequences. Such as - increased mobility simply means nobody moves because the threat of a full attack is gone.

I'm usually pretty slow to make changes to our game. Our current changes have developed over the last 4 years as a group. I will definitely be watching this thread to see other ideas as well.

Thanks a ton for taking the time to look over my post and give such constructive feedback. I really appreciate that!

 

[Stalker0]

Let me add some simplicity to the discussion.

Arcana Evolved has the following feat:

Speed Burst
Once per level per 2 character levels the character can take an extra move action in a single round.

Just give everyone this feat.

Its very useful and allows the mobility your seeking. The other advantage is it tends to balance itself. At low levels when fighters are dominating its very situational. At high levels when casters dominate, the melee fighters can use it much more freely and keep up better.

 

[eschwenke]

I've only skimmed this thread, so please excuse me if this is redundant or not applicable. I like the idea of giving characters the ability to move around a little more in combat, but not so much that it completely invalidates core feats or gets entirely ridiculus. In the game I'm preparing to run I'm adding facing (as per Unearthed Arcana) as well as giving out a feat per level. I'm thinking of allowing this feat:


Striding Attack[General][Fighter Bonus Feat]
Prerequisites: Dodge, Mobility, BAB +6
When utilizing the Full Attack option you may take a number of 5-foot steps equal to your the number of iterative attacks granted to you by virtue of your Base Attack Bonus. These 5-foot steps may be taken either before or after an attack, but may not follow another 5-foot step. Each time a 5-foot step is taken you may also elect to change your facing. Alternatively, you may elect to only change your facing without taking a 5-step. If used to move diagonally within a opponent's threatened area, this move provokes an attack of opportunity and allows the opponent to change his facing prior to his attack.
Normal: You may only take one 5-foot step per round.

 

[Thondor]

I was actually rather surprised to find that this thread was still alive.

Personally I now feel that a simple everyone can move there speed and a get a Full-attack is fine. (Full-attacks are now standard actions) The fear of AoO will still keep the battlefield somewhat constrained and opponents afraid of moving past the powerful fighter to Full-attack the mage, but they will now be more willing to do it.

I believe this simple system will lead to more interesting combat situations, essentially all your doing is keeping the fluidity of early level combat (where you only had one attack per round and thus could always move your speed). As someone said this also helps the seriously underpowered TWF -- they'll always get all their attacks. And if someone whishes to scatter their attacks, so be it.

The only caveat I would add, reading many of these posts, is the attacker must stop in the square where his last attack occurred. This means they will end movement in a threatened square unless they drop their opponent or have spring attack or spirited charge.

Improves all Warrior classes.
Improves Lightly armored combatants.
Improves the Monk and Barbarian.
Improves the usefulness of Dodge-Mobility, Combat relexes, spring attack, spirited charge
(does make whirldwind attack slightly less useful - although it can still be a very useful feat.)

I really think this is the way to go. It's simple and it mirrors low level combat. Moreover it improves the classes who suffer at higher levels (warriors) just as speelcasters begin to become overpowering.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Interesting thread..

From left field, how about a variant that works like:

Melee Attack, As a standard action you may attack an enemy you threaten with a melee weapon. This attack 'costs' a distance of movement. The cost is 25' minus 5' times your Dex Modifier. You may move the remaining distance up to your normal Move as part of this action. You may not move between attacks more than 5' per iterative attack granted by BAB. The last attack taken ends your movement for this action.

Examples:
Joe the Fighter {3 iterative attacks, Dex 14}
- Base Move = 30
- melee attack 'cost' = 25 - (5 * 2) = 15
- max between iteratives = 5 * 3 = 15'

With a standard action he can move 15 feet, taking his three attacks at any point during the move.


Fred the Barbarian Monk {2 iterative attacks, TWF Dex 18}
- Base Move = 50
- melee attack 'cost' = 25 - (5*4) = 5
- max between iterative = 5 * 2 = 10

With a standard action he can move 45 feet, taking 2 iterative attacks at any point during the move as long as they are within 10' of each other.

TWF and/or Flurry of Blows are still only with Full Attack options
Cleave is limited to immediate threatens

And I agree with Thondor's assesement having that last attack end the movement.

IMHO this change would make Dex Fighters a viable alternative while not overpowering the multiple hit potential of a Monk/Barbarian/Rogue

Makes ranges and mounted combat slightly less useful since you are limited to the normal standard action attack.. but I have my own HR for bettering the ranged combat