No 5 foot step

[Voadam]

Five foot step uses:

1 caster and archer backing up to avoid AoO in melee when attacking.

2 reach weapon backing up to be able to full attack adjacent foe.

3 maneuvering a little while still full attacking (to get flank or other situation stuff)

4 move without provoking an AoO and still do something.

5 attach then pull back and have a buddy step into your old space blocking enemy from getting to you.

6 Backing up to do MEA (drink potion for example) without provoking AoO.

 

[mmadsen]

An alternative to eliminating the 5' step is to remove the special exception that a 5' step does not provoke an Attack of Opportunity.

 

[Thomas Percy]

When my PC takes 5 ft. step, every adjacent enemy makes his 5 ft. step immediately as a free action out of turn.

 

[pawsplay]

From my experiences with the minis game, it leads to the ugly situation where even though someone knows they are going to lose, they are still better off slugging it out. That is, once somebody is in a threatened square and they don't want to be, they can be in deep trouble.