Opportunity Attacks

[Aulirophile]

It doesn't matter what "moving through a square" means, because that's not the criteria for what provokes.The criteria is "leaves a square". If the large creature always occupies the square, then he did not leave it, right? I have no idea if WotC intended for it to work that way or not, but that is what the rule says.

I don't think it's particularly unfair to allow a large creature to do this, unless you have your party facing the Mythical Train Beast of Railroadia, that is 40 squares long, and moves past a party member 39 squares of movement without ever leaving an adjacent square.

Remember that a creature two sizes larger or smaller can move through your squares, so if Orcus was in front of you, he has reach 4, he could charge THROUGH you to an ally six squares behind you, and end up standing over you, smacking around your ally, with no OA provoked.

Actually that sounds so awesome I'm going to go with that works.

 

[pwnedd]

Just to clarify: If a player moves is standing adjacent to a monster, and then moves to a different square but still adjacent to that same monster, the monster gets an opportunity attack?

 

[Kingreaper]

Just to clarify: If a player moves is standing adjacent to a monster, and then moves to a different square but still adjacent to that same monster, the monster gets an opportunity attack?

Yes. They have left their starting square.

 

[Oldtimer]

Just to clarify: If a player moves is standing adjacent to a monster, and then moves to a different square but still adjacent to that same monster, the monster gets an opportunity attack?

Yes, unless the player character did a shift. Leaving a threatened square is what triggers the opportunity attack, not where you are going.

 

[pwnedd]

Cool. Thanks for the clarification

 

[eamon]

Remember that a creature two sizes larger or smaller can move through your squares, so if Orcus was in front of you, he has reach 4, he could charge THROUGH you to an ally six squares behind you, and end up standing over you, smacking around your ally, with no OA provoked.

You mean in the sense that despite charging, he never leaves an adjacent square since he's so big? Obviously the PHB writer didn't consider that case given the wording: "Moving into a nonhelpless enemy's space provokes an opportunity attack because you left a square adjacent to the enemy." - which of course isn't true for Orcus.

On the other hand, it's a minor distinction - after all, even a an enemy two size categories larger is not allowed to end movement in your space, so he needs to leave your space and that provokes. And of course, a charge ends your turn, so you can't charge if doing so implies ending your turn in an opponents space.

Which begs another question: suppose orcus moves over a fighter. Then according to the current interpretation, entering the squares before the fighter doesn't provoke (no adjacent squares left). Similarly, stepping onto the fighter doesn't provoke, nor does entering the squares behind the fighter. However, eventually orcus continues to move and leaves adjacent squares - but he's still in the fighter's space! If the fighter takes an OA and hits, ending orcuses movement - in the fighter's space - what happens?

 

[DracoSuave]

You mean in the sense that despite charging, he never leaves an adjacent square since he's so big? Obviously the PHB writer didn't consider that case given the wording: "Moving into a nonhelpless enemy's space provokes an opportunity attack because you left a square adjacent to the enemy." - which of course isn't true for Orcus.

On the other hand, it's a minor distinction - after all, even a an enemy two size categories larger is not allowed to end movement in your space, so he needs to leave your space and that provokes. And of course, a charge ends your turn, so you can't charge if doing so implies ending your turn in an opponents space.

Which begs another question: suppose orcus moves over a fighter. Then according to the current interpretation, entering the squares before the fighter doesn't provoke (no adjacent squares left). Similarly, stepping onto the fighter doesn't provoke, nor does entering the squares behind the fighter. However, eventually orcus continues to move and leaves adjacent squares - but he's still in the fighter's space! If the fighter takes an OA and hits, ending orcuses movement - in the fighter's space - what happens?

Ending Movement: You can end your movement in an ally’s square only if the ally is prone. You can end your movement in an enemy’s square only if the enemy is helpless. However, Tiny creatures can end their movement in a larger creature’s square. If you don’t have enough movement remaining to reach a square you are allowed to be in, your move ends in the last square you could occupy.

Orcus then goes back to the last position he was in where no creature was occupying. This may, actually, end up with Orcus not moving at all.

 

[eamon]

Ending Movement: You can end your movement in an ally’s square only if the ally is prone. You can end your movement in an enemy’s square only if the enemy is helpless. However, Tiny creatures can end their movement in a larger creature’s square. If you don’t have enough movement remaining to reach a square you are allowed to be in, your move ends in the last square you could occupy.

Orcus then goes back to the last position he was in where no creature was occupying. This may, actually, end up with Orcus not moving at all.

Hmm. That's a reasonable ruling. It's not exactly what's happening though; after all Orcus does have enough movement, it's just that it ends when he's hit - and that ending occurs when the OA occurs, by which time (necessarily) orcus must have already moved several squares into a position in which he can't end his movement.

The distinction is clearer is you imagine a third creature on this hypothetical battlefield. Orcus is walking over that third creature, and at some point during that movement he provokes an OA from the fighter - which hits and ends the move. Obviously, you can't retrospectively pretend Orcus never moved over the creature and that his move ended in the last legal position since from that position, the fighter may well have not been able to hit orcus - or for that matter, he may have a feat or an ability that allows him to shift or move, so that even the original location is impossible!

In short, no interpretation of orcus's movement rules can prevent a situation in which an OA occurs in a position where he may not end and which could not have been made from the last safe position, nor can it prevent situations whereby there are no legal positions for orcus to end in (if a reaction or interrupt to the movement changes the battlefield).

So, a DM may need to adjudicate ending in an occupied square regardless.

 

[DracoSuave]

Hmm. That's a reasonable ruling. It's not exactly what's happening though; after all Orcus does have enough movement, it's just that it ends when he's hit - and that ending occurs when the OA occurs, by which time (necessarily) orcus must have already moved several squares into a position in which he can't end his movement.

Ending movement means he has no movement left. It doesn't end the action, it ends the movement, and that's an important distinction.

The distinction is clearer is you imagine a third creature on this hypothetical battlefield. Orcus is walking over that third creature, and at some point during that movement he provokes an OA from the fighter - which hits and ends the move. Obviously, you can't retrospectively pretend Orcus never moved over the creature and that his move ended in the last legal position since from that position, the fighter may well have not been able to hit orcus - or for that matter, he may have a feat or an ability that allows him to shift or move, so that even the original location is impossible!

Orcus attempts to step over the creature. The fighter (who, by the way, has power equivalent to a demigod, a world-saving hero of legend, and is at the absolute maximum a demigod hero of legend can be. This isn't even Heracles, this is Heracles at his absolute best.) does an epic heroic assault, knocking Orcus back where he ways, using all the enemy-stopping techniques he's developed over his entire career.

This idea you can't 'retroactively' pretend anything in a game with immediate interrupts irks me. There's entire action types devoted to that exact concept. The ability in question, Combat Superiority, is essentially 'retroactively pretend that never got to happen.'

In short, no interpretation of orcus's movement rules can prevent a situation in which an OA occurs in a position where he may not end and which could not have been made from the last safe position, nor can it prevent situations whereby there are no legal positions for orcus to end in (if a reaction or interrupt to the movement changes the battlefield).

The former is a non-issue, and while the latter is a corner case, it can be resolved in a chain of interrupts.

Obviously the movement interrupt that put a guy in Orcus's spot is resolved at that time. But the Fighter's interrupt occurs before Orcus's movement, moving him back to his original square. The thing is, that original movement interrupt has -that- guy in an illegal square, so he then has to move back to the first square he had moved into where he could legally occupy.

Is this RAW? Seriously, this comes up so utterly rarely that there doesn't need to be RAW for this. I've said it before, and I've said it again.

Roleplaying games do not need rules to cover every single rules corner case or loophole. That job belongs to the guy at the head of your table with the DM's screen.

So, a DM may need to adjudicate ending in an occupied square regardless.

In a very rare corner case, yes, a DM would have to actually adjudicate something in this game.

As is his job.

 

[eamon]

Ending movement means he has no movement left. It doesn't end the action, it ends the movement, and that's an important distinction.

Where do you get this from? A hit enemy "stops" moving - nothing specifically is stated about this reducing squares left to 0 rather than just ending the action. Given the abrupt termination and the following clause that speaks of resuming movement in another action, it's actually more natural to simply assume the action has ended. Not that it really matters - you could still rule that this triggers the rule that says movement ends in the last legal square, it's just vague since obviously this doesn't occur commonly enough to be explicitly mentioned.

This idea you can't 'retroactively' pretend anything in a game with immediate interrupts irks me. There's entire action types devoted to that exact concept. The ability in question, Combat Superiority, is essentially 'retroactively pretend that never got to happen.'

Interrupts resolve in some order. They may resolve before the attempted action, or may happen after some other interrupt, but there needs to be some order in practice. A normal interrupt doesn't involve any kind of retroactive time-travel effect, it just happens before the triggering action.

However, in this case of movement+combat superiority, the square of movement that triggers the interrupting action does not merely resolve after the interrupt, in fact it could never even have been attempted since orcus's (or any other large or larger creature - a 1st level halfing fighter could do this to a 1st level riding horse) movement actually ended before even reaching the starting square of the triggering movement. The fighter might not even be able to reach the creature from there at all - yet, he hits it from afar?

Roleplaying games do not need rules to cover every single rules corner case or loophole. That job belongs to the guy at the head of your table with the DM's screen.

No argument there - I'm just curious as to how you'd resolve it. Since the rules don't cover the interaction between these rules, does it even make sense to try and combine them both?

Since I don't think the interaction of ending movement in the last legal square (by combat section moving through opponents) and ending movement when hit (implicitly and most normally in the square where hit) makes sense, I'd prefer the approach that simply accepts the resultant mess; perhaps both creatures provide combat advantage or the moving creature drops prone.