Opportunity Attacks - no limit ?

[Aulirophile]

That doesn't make any sense. "Opportunity Attack" can be melee 1 all it wants and threatening reach will work just fine. That's because threatening reach changes the range to your reach. There is no need for errata.

No, it only specifies the provoke range, it doesn't modify the attack range (or the target range, more on that in a second).

Also it means Polearm Gamble and around four dozen player powers no longer work as intended (or at all, in some cases). But hey, whose counting?

But wait, you might ask, doesn't it say to make an MBA? Wouldn't the range on the MBA work? And the answer is no, because RAW you cannot use the power Opportunity Attack since the target will not be legal by the targeting rules.

There is a thread on the errata forums addressing this, hopefully it'll be fixed.

 

[DracoSuave]

Look at the RC p246. Obviously what happened is some nimnuts somewhere was told "reformat things as powers". Unfortunately someone went WAY too far with that. They formatted the triggering of an OA as a totally unneeded 'power'. It is an Opportunity Action, with Melee 1 range and the usual OA trigger condition. Its effect is that you get to make an MBA.

This is because the trigger for OA involves adjacency, in other words, IS of melee 1 range.

You see the problem here.

Nope.

The "Opportunity Attack" power isn't using the reach weapon.

Of course not, because it has no parameters that a weapon plugs in to.

Even if your theory was correct, which I am not sure it is, it is moot because Opportunity Attack doesn't have a weapon keyword at all! In fact it has no keywords.

It doesn't need keywords. It never did.

It really is absolutely not something that should be a power at all and can be safely ignored. But so stands RAW, officially it is IMPOSSIBLE to have an OA beyond 1 square unless some other game element actually specifically overrides p246.

This is true.

All the stuff that did allow it when OA was just an MBA no longer functions by RAW.

Except this is not.

See, everything that changes how opportunity attack works is specifically naming opportunity attack, and therefore is a specific exception to the general rule.

For example, Polearm Gamble specifically changes it so that an opportunity attack can be delivered to a non-adjacent creature and adds a different trigger that allows it. By naming opportunity attacks, it changes how opportunity attack works. It's still a contradiction of the opportunity attack power, and in the case of every rules contradiciton specific beats general.

Threatening Reach changes the range of opportunity attacks by allowing them against non-adjacent targets. It does not matter what range the opportunity attack power has, as by contradicting that, specific beats general.

Neither of those elements only mention a 'provoke range' or 'attack range.' They say you can use opportunity attacks against those creatures. That means that FOR ALL PURPOSES you can do so. It does not specify that only subsets of the opportunity attack rules work, and I'm completely baffled as to how one could come to that conclusion.

These things work because they say they do. Specific beats general allows this to happen until all contradictions are involved.

The only way it wouldn't work is when you have two equally specific rules clash. This is not the case.

 

[Nullzone]

While I can agree with the sense that what is in the RC is buggered, it appears that the recognized data is not actually that Melee 1 abomination:

http://www.wizards.com/dndinsider/compendium/glossary.aspx?id=331

In here it says nothing about range or that it's even a power; it states that OA = MBA. It also states that threatening reach automatically extends the range of the OA to the creature's reach (as it should).

They've updated lots of other stuff to match Essentials data and some articles even reference the RC. The fact that this one does not tells me that they fully intend(ed) to errata that bit and simply haven't done it yet, for whatever reason.

 

[mmaranda]

DM's solution to this

If a player is that heavily invested then they are making a mistake. As I recall the rules there is a way to prevent many of those OAs:


In a situation like that. After the first one or two guys goes and finds out about the threatening reach the rest ready actions to charge the reach PC when the last monster in initiative moves into the PCs threatening reach.

The last monster moves triggers the OA and all the other monsters charge they don't take OAs because it isn't their turns. Instead a readied action is a reaction.

 

[DracoSuave]

If a player is that heavily invested then they are making a mistake. As I recall the rules there is a way to prevent many of those OAs:

The DM can potentially and actively counter anything a player does with minimal effort or preparation.

This does not mean he should. It is not the DM's job to punish 'bad character choices' or 'overspecialization.' It's the DM's job to run a fun game.

Sometimes, the best thing to do is to give and to take. Reward players who overspecialize by giving them encounters in their field of expertise, and challenge players who do so by taking them out of their comfort zone.

If the player invests that heavily into a character the DM never lets them shine because 'it's a bad idea' the DM might be a dick.

Of course, it could also be that it's specializing to take care of a situation that never comes up, like 20 monsters all triggering OAs in the same turn. At which point, the DM should step in and say 'Look, you probably only need to go -this- far... you can spend feats on other things and be just fine in my game.'

 

[mmaranda]

There seemed to be a great deal of discussion in this thread about how to do this and if it could be done how broken it was.

I was trying to show that is wasn't something that would create a game breaking combination. In fact specializing to that degree was a poor choice of effort.

But I do agree if a DM sees a player going down a rabbit hole of crazy specialization for little bang the DM should try to talk the player out of it.

 

[Aulirophile]

While I can agree with the sense that what is in the RC is buggered, it appears that the recognized data is not actually that Melee 1 abomination:

http://www.wizards.com/dndinsider/compendium/glossary.aspx?id=331

In here it says nothing about range or that it's even a power; it states that OA = MBA. It also states that threatening reach automatically extends the range of the OA to the creature's reach (as it should).

They've updated lots of other stuff to match Essentials data and some articles even reference the RC. The fact that this one does not tells me that they fully intend(ed) to errata that bit and simply haven't done it yet, for whatever reason.

The majority of the RC has not yet been incorporated to the Compendium (and indeed some entries that say they reference the RC in fact don't). Giving Wizards to much credit I'm afraid.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is because the trigger for OA involves adjacency, in other words, IS of melee 1 range.



Nope.



Of course not, because it has no parameters that a weapon plugs in to.



It doesn't need keywords. It never did.



This is true.



Except this is not.

See, everything that changes how opportunity attack works is specifically naming opportunity attack, and therefore is a specific exception to the general rule.

For example, Polearm Gamble specifically changes it so that an opportunity attack can be delivered to a non-adjacent creature and adds a different trigger that allows it. By naming opportunity attacks, it changes how opportunity attack works. It's still a contradiction of the opportunity attack power, and in the case of every rules contradiciton specific beats general.

Threatening Reach changes the range of opportunity attacks by allowing them against non-adjacent targets. It does not matter what range the opportunity attack power has, as by contradicting that, specific beats general.

Neither of those elements only mention a 'provoke range' or 'attack range.' They say you can use opportunity attacks against those creatures. That means that FOR ALL PURPOSES you can do so. It does not specify that only subsets of the opportunity attack rules work, and I'm completely baffled as to how one could come to that conclusion.

These things work because they say they do. Specific beats general allows this to happen until all contradictions are involved.

The only way it wouldn't work is when you have two equally specific rules clash. This is not the case.

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

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...

 

[Nullzone]

Just make it a rangeless (or personal, maybe?) opportunity action, trigger: an enemy moves out of a square adjacent to you or makes a ranged/area attack (this line will then be overridden by the feats and threatening reach), effect: you make a melee basic attack against the triggering creature (this line will be superseded by powers that are used on OAs or the PP features (I think that's what they are) that allow you to make RBAs as OA.

Problem solved, I would think

Edit @Aulirophile: Admittedly, I haven't compared the pages to tell if the parts they reference are accurate or not; that's slightly amusing that they don't even match up when they do reference info from the RC, lol.

I have to wonder if anyone on the RPGA side of things would actually care if their DMs weren't running by RAW for this particular rule with it being so messed up like that...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Just make it a rangeless (or personal, maybe?) opportunity action, trigger: an enemy moves out of a square adjacent to you or makes a ranged/area attack (this line will then be overridden by the feats and threatening reach), effect: you make a melee basic attack against the triggering creature (this line will be superseded by powers that are used on OAs or the PP features (I think that's what they are) that allow you to make RBAs as OA.

Problem solved, I would think

Edit @Aulirophile: Admittedly, I haven't compared the pages to tell if the parts they reference are accurate or not; that's slightly amusing that they don't even match up when they do reference info from the RC, lol.

I have to wonder if anyone on the RPGA side of things would actually care if their DMs weren't running by RAW for this particular rule with it being so messed up like that...

Yeah, I think all you need to fix is the range. Technically the power needs SOME sort of range text. I guess it could be 'special' somehow. Doesn't really matter as long as it gets rid of the Melee 1.