Opportunity Attacks - no limit ?

[Aulirophile]

Needs to be "Range Weapon or Melee Touch" to account for natural reach. Then it'd work fine.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Needs to be "Range Weapon or Melee Touch" to account for natural reach. Then it'd work fine.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

 

[Squire James]

...except then it doesn't properly model the reach attacker that lacks Threatening Reach. Those still provoke at Melee 1.

I think we can keep the Opportunity Attack "power" and simply amend the text for Threatening Reach to something like "The range of your Opportunity Attacks is changed to Melee X, where X is your weapon reach." The rest of the rules follow naturally.

 

[DracoSuave]

Well, by RAW it is like this: Polearm Gamble allows you to TRIGGER an OA, but the OA itself is a Melee 1 power with no weapon keyword.

So, you have a contradiction, in which case specific STILL BEATS GENERAL.

Thus it can only legitimately target someone that is adjacent to you, period.

Unless you have some intervening thing that contradicts it. Like Polearm Gamble.

The reach of your weapon etc would be irrelevant. Since an OA is interrupt speed PG triggers the OA when the target is still 2 squares from you, and the OA power then fails its targeting check, no MBA ever happens. That's the RAW (backed up by a vast quantity of discussion on the Q&A board).

EXCEPT THAT POLEARM GAMBLE CONTRADICTS THAT, AND THUS SPECIFIC BEATS GENERAL

Now, is anyone seriously going to play it like that? Of course not. In a practical sense the RAI is that PG or other similar sorts of things (Beast Defender in some situations comes to mind) work. The strict interpretation of the mechanics just doesn't work, so the new 'OA power' is borked. It should probably just have a weapon keyword and a range of Melee Weapon. I THINK that would work, though heaven knows there's probably a corner case where that gets wonky too...

It's like an entire discussion where specific beats general magically stops applying.

The reason Polearm Gamble works is because by pointing out how it does not work, you've pointed out a contradiction. All contradictions are resolved with specific beats general. By pointing out that it does not work, you, in fact, enable it to work via SvG.

Moreover, the exact wording of polearm gamble:

'When a nonadjacent enemy enters a square adjacent to you, you can make an opportunity attack with a polearm against that enemy..

Every rule you've sited is a general rule. The definition of range is a general rule. The range of Opportunity Attack is a general rule. This, however is a specific rule.

So, you telling me that 'The rules on range say you cannot?' Polearm Gamble says 'You can.' The rule on opportunity attack having ranged 1 saying you cannot? Polearm Gamble says 'You can.'

Specific Polearm Gamble defeats General you can't in any area there's a contradiction. It is specific enough in terms of scope, and as you've pointed out cannot be run any other way, so it's obvious how Specific beats General works.

I don't know what board you went to that doesn't understand what 'You can' and 'Specific beats general' means, but they are 100% wrong in this specific case. They need to go back to 'Rule 1 of 4th edition' school because they are clearly unaware of SvG's existance and what it means in this particular case.

Adding 'Ranged touch' to Opportunity attack would not change how Polearm Gamble or Threatening Reach works, because these things don't CARE. They say you can, and trump general rules they contradict as a direct result. Making OA 'Range weapon' would make it that powers that count as melee basic attacks could not work with it, particularily melee implement attacks. On top of this, it would make OAs trigger OAs.

Why is this necessary? The game features it supposedly stops tell you you can use them in defiance of the larger rules. Then specific beats general kicks in.... and They. Still. Work.

They don't only contradict the rules on range, and nothing in their wording suggests or indicates otherwise. You have a contradiction, as explained by yourself. You have a feat that tells you in no uncertain terms the OA is allowed, so whatever general rule you pull out of your arse that says it can't does not apply.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Is there no limit to how many OA's you can take ?

It's over NINE THOUSAAAAAAND.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiMHTK15Pik"]What, Nine Thousand?![/ame]

 

[Aulirophile]

[MENTION=8777]Draco[/MENTION], no, they don't. This is like the argument that PG provokes from Shifting/Forced movement. Being a specific rule is insufficient, it has to specifically overrride the general rule. PG does not, in any way, override the general OA power. Therefore, by RAW, it doesn't work. This is an error with the way they formatted OA as a power, and obviously isn't RAI.

[MENTION=85075]Squire[/MENTION]: Doesn't matter, the trigger will still be the same, wouldn't effect it at all, except for cases where it is supposed to effect it.

 

[DracoSuave]

[MENTION=8777]Draco[/MENTION], no, they don't. This is like the argument that PG provokes from Shifting/Forced movement. Being a specific rule is insufficient, it has to specifically overrride the general rule. PG does not, in any way, override the general OA power. Therefore, by RAW, it doesn't work. This is an error with the way they formatted OA as a power, and obviously isn't RAI.

So, Polearm Gamble does not override Opportunity Attack, despite the fact that it MENTIONS IT BY NAME, and says you can do things with it you're normally allowed to do?

It's not excepting forced movement, or teleportation and such because it doesn't contradict the rules on opportunity actions, nor does it mention them as things it excepts.

But it doesn't except opportunity attack!?! Come off it. Let's see what PG says about that:

'When a nonadjacent enemy enters a square adjacent to you, you can make an opportunity attack with a polearm against that enemy.'

Hmmmm.... seems to me like it's directly mentioning opportunity attack and saying you can use it, thus the part of opportunity attack that says you can't... the range... is explicitly excepted by this power. Verbatim.

You cannot make the case that Polearm Gamble is not changing how opportunity attack works; it's bloody well written into Polearm Gamble that it does. The ONLY thing Polearm Gamble does not except is what melee basic attack allows you to do. In the case of polearms, they all tend to have reach, so that question is moot.

Opportunity Attack cannot be a weapon power because melee basic attack is not a weapon power for all classes or monsters.* Ergo, it cannot have any reach other than 'Melee 1.' It cannot be ranged because it will trigger OAs. It cannot be 'Melee touch' because that would effectively give threatening reach to things like Stoneblessed, which have extended natural reach. Clearly, THAT is not intended either.

However, by having a feature, feat, or otherwise stating that you can make an opportunity attack against something that is outside that melee 1 range, by explicitly mentioning the impossible range conditions, creates the contradiction that permits it to ignore that melee 1 for the purposes of making opportunity attacks.

This is not at all analogous to how shifting ignores opportunity attacks, as that is a case of shifting being more specific than the opportunity attack granted by polearm gamble. Polearm Gamble does not create an exception against shift (Notice, it does not mention shift) but shift DOES except Polearm Gamble (shift does explicitly mention the opportunity action, which Polearm grants)



That last bit is very important. The designs for Opportunity Attack mentioned here completely ignore the fact that monsters need to access them. You need to account for monsters in it, they're the ones that Threatening Reach apply to.

 

[Aulirophile]

If that were true you could make a PG attack with a Polearm that lacked Reach. It isn't, you can't. You need to meet the standard requirements, PG makes no exception for that. All it says is you can make an OA. OK... I make an OA, isn't a legal target, I'm done. That is the RAW order of events, whether you like it or not.

 

[DracoSuave]

If that were true you could make a PG attack with a Polearm that lacked Reach. It isn't, you can't. You need to meet the standard requirements, PG makes no exception for that. All it says is you can make an OA. OK... I make an OA, isn't a legal target, I'm done. That is the RAW order of events, whether you like it or not.

Except if the polearm lacks reach, it isn't Opportunity Attack that isn't satisfied. You can execute Opportunity Attack just fine.

However, you're unable to make the melee basic attack that it grants you, and as such, THAT is where it becomes illegal, as nothing excepts how THAT works in this chain.


Besides that, you can't say that Polearm Gamble only excepts part of Opportunity Attack when it is not exclusive in how it alters Opportunity Attack. For it to work as you say, it needs to say 'Opportunity Attacks can now be triggered by creatures outside its range' or something like that. It is NOT that specific in how it alters OA. It says you can use OAs on targets outside its normal parameters, and you do not pick and choose which parameters it can apply to to make convenient arguments. Polearm Gamble changes any and all aspects of Opportunity Attack it contradicts, including range.

It does not change melee basic attack; that's a different discussion, and that is why the range of a weapon is still important for this discussion. If you somehow use a polearm as an implement for a druid beastform at-will, even tho they count as melee basic attacks, the range of the power still applies because nothing is an exception to it, nor contradicts it.

That's the important difference. Polearm Gamble explicitly contradicts Opportunity Attack, so it works. The rules on Range that work through Opportunity Attack get excepted by Polearm Gamble. PG does not explicitly contradict anything else, so anything else works as it normally does.

 

[Aulirophile]

So your argument is "this gets excepted but this doesn't because that 'makes sense'" and I'm the one picking and choosing? Yeah, no. All PG does is allow you to make an OA with a new trigger. The OA, now, doesn't actually do anything because you can't pick a legal target. It in no way changes the range. It says "make an OA." OK, I do that.... damn, out of range.

The exact same issue comes up when you use the one Polearm that lacks Reach. I make an OA, damn, out of range. You need to satisfy the requirements of the powers you use, the rules are explicit about that especially in terms of legal targets, and nothing in PG changes the OA power. Nor should it, considering it pre-dates OA-as-a-power.