Is Fighter's Combat Challenge an OA or not?

[Celtavian]

Thanks for the responses. Given that the fighter we've had is a little TOO sticky for the DM's liking, I think we'll keep the combat challenge separate from the opportunity attacks. It's more complicated, but I don't like the idea of a fighter being able to attack 4 enemies who try to shift away from him in one round or try to attack the wizard next to him. Apprecitate the input.

I don't believe it is an Aoo either. I believe they made it an immediate action so that it would not be much more powerful than the Paladin Divine Challenge benefit. Divine Challenge only allows its damage once per round. Thus Combat Challenge only allows one immediate action attack per round. That makes Divine Chalenge and Combat Challenge balanced against each other, with Combat Challenge being slightly better.

 

[DracoSuave]

They wanted the Fighter to be sticky enough that enemies have to be punished if they want to peel off the Fighter, but not so sticky that shifting is a viable option. The Immediate Interrupt -isn't- as powerful as OAs and that works fine. Fighters should be able to sticky one or two enemies. ALL enemies however? That's a little hard to swallow.

 

[Goumindong]

The real issue is that

1. fighters OA's stop movement
2. 1 OA per round

Means that CC as an OA means that enemies pretty much never have a reasonable way to get away from a fighter no matter what happens.

 

[Gloombunny]

This has got to be the most-asked question about 4e. Would it have killed them to add sentence to Combat Challenge saying "This basic attack is not an opportunity attack and does not benefit from Combat Superiority or feats that reference opportunity attacks."? :/

 

[Stogoe]

This has got to be the most-asked question about 4e. Would it have killed them to add sentence to Combat Challenge saying "This basic attack is not an opportunity attack and does not benefit from Combat Superiority or feats that reference opportunity attacks."? :/

They thought we'd be able to understand it by ourselves. Seems like most of the errata so far has been clarifying things they thought would be obvious.

 

[PHGraves]

And this is why my workplace has somebody other than the programmers write the manuals. After months/years working on something, it becomes so 'obvious' that 'everybody knows this.'

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

And this is why my workplace has somebody other than the programmers write the manuals. After months/years working on something, it becomes so 'obvious' that 'everybody knows this.'

+5 Insightful, my friend.

Actually, this happened to me and a friend (we are compiling our various houserules and all the info on our homebrew setting). When we started giving our manuscript to third parties for review, some of them came up with questions that seemed fairly obvious to us, but it turned out that they weren´t.

 

[Mirtek]

Well you can stop one of them, and the other has a -2 to attack rolls against anyone other than you.

No, you can not stop any of them.

When a marked creature shifts away you get a basic melee attack against it and then it completes it's shift. Since this attack is not an OA it's move is not stoped because compat superiorty doesn't apply.

 

[Ginnel]

I've been playing a front line fighter for hmm 9 sessions now with 2 combats a session pretty much, I've used my OA once, I've used combat challenge a lot more, its nice for the extra damage but doesn't stop an enemy getting where it wants to go and it's quite annoying you can only use it with your one immeadiate action per round.

I'm hoping to see a feat available in Martial power that lets you treat combat challenge as a OA in terms of Wis bonus to hit and stopping movement possibly epic tier and also another feat to let you take 2 combat challenges per round paragon tier would seem a nice place for that.

 

[Stogoe]

And this is why my workplace has somebody other than the programmers write the manuals. After months/years working on something, it becomes so 'obvious' that 'everybody knows this.'

Well, they seem obvious to me, too, and I wasn't on the design team. I'd bet that most people who aren't trying to game the system settle on the 'obvious' reading.

For example, when Combat Challenge says it's an Immediate Interrupt and not an OA, most people would read that and think that it's a different type of action and doesn't interact with OA add-ons. I mean, that's what the words say, right? Only people who for some reason dislike that reading have cause to disagree.