Opportunity Attacks - no limit ?

[Istar]

No, it's 1 round. You get it for two of your own turns, but what good does that do you? Threatening Reach is only helpful on someone else's turn. It's the single round in between those two turns that matters.

Yeah its only 1 round.

But a round where positioned right with reach 4 which is burst 5 area, you could get to attack every enemy on their turn and slow them as well, meaning the whole party a round of net being attacked with melee.

 

[Istar]

Fighter. Glaive. Cleave. Longhand style (or whatever it's called). Heavy Blade Opportunity. Spear push. Polearm Momentum. Polearm Gamble.

This is textbook stuff - use a melee basic attack on an opportunity attack (Heavy Blade Opportunity - works with glaives but not other polearms). Make it Cleave and use Longhand Style to give cleave a Push 1. Make it a push 2 with Spear Push. Knock your target prone if you push it two or more squares (Polearm momentum). And Polearm Gamble for when you don't have threatening reach. So on an OA you push your foe two squares and knock them prone. Even when you don't have threatening reach you get an OA for anyone entering a square adjacent to you (Polearm gamble). Oh, and you get your wisdom modifier as a bonus to opportunity attack rolls (Fighter's Combat Superiority feature).

While I'm at it, it's not technically an opportunity boosting feat - but Superior Will and its ability to both shore up probably your weakest defence and to get a free saving throw against dazes and stuns (i.e. two things that prevent opportunity attacks) is worth its weight in gold to this build.

Maybe text book stuff for some guru's.

But this is a warden here, so Con / Str with just enough wis to get Polearm Gamble.

 

[Istar]

In a case, however, where executing something specific cannot work, you have an implicit contradiction wherein a direct explicit[/] contradiction does not need to occur.

An example of this would be Commander's Strike. It has an attack roll of 'Your opponent makes a basic attack' and a hit component of 'the attack does +4 damage'. As most powers are templated that is nonsense, 'as your opponent makes a basic attack' cannot possibly hit as it is not an attack roll.

However, game elements must always work, and therefore SvG forces it to work by having it plow through game rules that say it simply cannot. Nothing contained within it can say it does not work, it works because it says it works.

In the case of Polearm Gamble, yes, actually, it works because it says it works. That's good enough to satisfy SvG, and if more general rules say it cannot possibly work, then those rules get trumped.

The rules cannot make specific elements simply not work, not so easily as that. That is not a logical possibility in 4th edition. Specific Vs General is a guarantee that they do. If SvG can't make Polearm Gamble work, you're not using enough SvG.

The difference between this, and using a non-ranged weapon, is that once you accept that a situation exists where Polearm Gamble can work so long as you use a reach weapon, it now works, SvG is satisfied enough, and the rest of the rules of the game operate as needed. The contradiction is resolved.

To sum up:

If a game element simply cannot work, the rules are wrong. Specific vs General makes sure this happens.
If a game element can work, but in this specific case doesn't work because of a specific scenario, Specific vs General makes sure the specific case trumps the game element, as it is now the general.

The moment you say 'You can never use Polearm Gamble because the rules don't allow it' you've identified a contradiction and ergo, MUST apply SvG until that contradiction is resolved. There is no such thing as 'it cannot work' in 4e.

Polearm Gamble obviously works, or they would have banned the feat, or errated it.
End of story.

Can we confirm, lets move on Draco.

If the OA slows them in difficult terrain, as its an interupt does this mean they dont get to move the square adjacent to you.
Thats if they were 1 square away.

And ditto if they were further away.

 

[Aulirophile]

Polearm Gamble obviously works, or they would have banned the feat, or errated it.
End of story.

...Roundabout Charge went three months of not doing anything before it was errata'd. And that is just an off-hand example, there are tons of feats to this day that do nothing at all because of errata. Again, "it does nothing, which isn't possible" is not only not a rules argument, but completely false-to-facts. New rules invalidate feats/powers/items on a fairly regular basis, and few them are ever fixed.

I expect this to be fixed, eventually, just because the problem effects so many game elements. Until then however...

 

[DracoSuave]

If the OA slows them in difficult terrain, as its an interupt does this mean they dont get to move the square adjacent to you.
Thats if they were 1 square away.

And ditto if they were further away.

If something stops their movement, for example, a fighter's combat superiority forces them to stop moving, or they are given the slowed condition during a move where they've already moved two squares before triggering the OA, then yes, movement will be invalidated.

If the movement is part of a charge action, then if the stopped individual is out of melee range of their charge target, they will also be stopped, and they will not continue their charge action.

 

[Istar]

"Polearm Gamble" Feat.

I just wanted to make a point.
The feats let you do things outside the rules.

If the feat says "you can make an OA when enemy moves into adjacent square"

Then that is what you can do.
Anything else is complete and utter .

 

[Aulirophile]

"Polearm Gamble" Feat.

I just wanted to make a point.
The feats let you do things outside the rules.

If the feat says "you can make an OA when enemy moves into adjacent square"

Then that is what you can do.
Anything else is complete and utter .

And you make it, and it auto-fails, because you can't reach. Again, not a rules argument. The rules say it doesn't currently work.

No one is suggesting you play it that way, only that by current RAW it doesn't work and the OA power needs to be fixed.

 

[DracoSuave]

And you make it, and it auto-fails, because you can't reach. Again, not a rules argument. The rules say it doesn't currently work.

No one is suggesting you play it that way, only that by current RAW it doesn't work and the OA power needs to be fixed.

You keep ignoring the exact wording of SvG. Polearm Gamble wins. Period. End of sentance. You can pull any rules technicality out of your arse you like, but you cannot say something auto-fails by the rules in a game that says that things that directly contradict the rules auto-win.

You cannot say Polearm Gamble doesn't do what it must to make itself work as it is supposed to, because that's exactly how Specific vs General works. There's NOTHING in Opportunity Attack that says 'Polearm Gamble cannot work' and Polearm Gamble is specific to Opportunity Attack. Specific wins.

The stupid thing is, you keep bringing up Roundabout Charge as tho it's some holy grail of rules that validates your point.

"When you charge, you can end your movement in any square adjacent to the target from which you can attack it."

That's the original wording. The reason it 'does nothing' under the rules is not because the rules somehow do something that makes it unable to do what it says. The reason it did nothing is because the rules incorporated Roundabout Charge into Charge itself. This is the same situation as the original printing of the Pact Hammer, which said that you could add your warlock curse damage to attacks with it... which you could always do anyways.

The thing is, Roundabout Charge, under its original wording still worked EXACTLY AS IT SAID. It just didn't add any abilities because you could already do what it said. Pact Hammer still worked exactly as it said, it just didn't do anything because you could already do exactly what it said.

Polearm Gamble is not like that. You cannot normally do what Polearm Gamble lets you do, so it DOES break the rules, and because it breaks the rules, it works. This is NOT analogous to Roundabout Charge in any way shape or form. It is an irrelevant precident. It has NOTHING to do with the discussion.

Give an example of something that actually -breaks- that the rules don't allow, and that SvG can't touch. Not something that is redundant because the ability was added to the basic rule.

 

[Aulirophile]

More being wrong.

In order for specific vs general to apply, it has to actually modify a general rule. PG doesn't modify the range of the OA power. You'll note that feats that modify the range of powers/abilities/etc actually say they do so. That is why they win. It isn't just "herp de herp, the feat says to do this so I ignore all the general rules." If it did, PG would trigger off Forced Movement and Shifting. It doesn't, but by your "logic" it would. It doesn't work like that, specific exceptions are made to general rules. Without a specific exception, you don't get to break the general rule. Period. This isn't ambiguous.

Look at powers like that allow you to make a stealth check. Do you still need to meet the normal requirements to make a stealth check, even though the power says you can make one? Yes, you do. The MP2 FAQ is explicit on this point. If the game worked like you think it does, that wouldn't be true. But it is, so you're wrong. You can get the exact exceptions the wording gives you, nothing else. PG doesn't give you the range, so you make the OA at the allowed range and it fails. Those are the actual rules.

Saying that a feat did something and now doesn't somehow seems relevant to a discussion involving a feat that does something and now... doesn't. Can't imagine where the similarity lies. Mmmm.

 

[DracoSuave]

In order for specific vs general to apply, it has to actually modify a general rule. PG doesn't modify the range of the OA power. You'll note that feats that modify the range of powers/abilities/etc actually say they do so. That is why they win. It isn't just "herp de herp, the feat says to do this so I ignore all the general rules." If it did, PG would trigger off Forced Movement and Shifting. It doesn't, but by your "logic" it would. It doesn't work like that, specific exceptions are made to general rules. Without a specific exception, you don't get to break the general rule. Period. This isn't ambiguous.

Shifting and Forced Movement explicitly call out Opportunity Actions, which means that they are specific rules over the general.

That is a terrible example.

The 'general rule' is something written in Opportunity Attack. Polearm Gamble explicitly changes how Opportunity Attack works. Not rocket science.

Look at powers like that allow you to make a stealth check. Do you still need to meet the normal requirements to make a stealth check, even though the power says you can make one? Yes, you do. The MP2 FAQ is explicit on this point. If the game worked like you think it does, that wouldn't be true. But it is, so you're wrong.

This is because the rule -specifically- sets a limits on stealth checks regardless of the cause. If you have a power that says you can make additional stealth checks, or that you can make a stealth check to avoid losing the hidden status, those work just fine because they break the rules.

The only set limitation Opportunity Attack has is the once per turn rule. And that's not even a part of Opportunity Attack, that's the rule for opportunity actions. Nor is the inability of it to trigger from shifts and forced movement a rule that is actually a part of opportunity attack.

Saying that a feat did something and now doesn't somehow seems relevant to a discussion involving a feat that does something and now... doesn't. Can't imagine where the similarity lies. Mmmm.

Except the precedent is completely different.

Roundabout Charge didn't 'stop working.' If you had Roundabout Charge, you could use it just fine. There just wasn't any point, because Roundabout Charge became a part of Charge.

You're claiming that Polearm Gamble cannot make Opportunity Attack work even tho it calls out opportunity attack explicitly because opportunity attack forbids it from working. That's not the same thing as Roundabout Charge doing nothing because charge now incorporates the feat as how the thing works.

The situations are no more similar to each other than a carrot is similar to an orange. They share a quality, but if you're talking about citrus fruit and things specific to citrus fruit, bringing up a carrot just because it is colored orange and oranges are citrus fruit doesn't actually add to the discussion.