Penalty for fighting on a body?

[Jeff Wilder]

In my group, for as long as I can remember, we've instituted a -2 penalty to attack rolls for attacking from a square that contains a body. The rationale is that the footing is poorer, there's not as much room to maneuver, and so on.

I like this rule, but now as I consider dramatically paring down my house rules, I've begun to wonder if there's any way I can keep the rule and actually justify it as a "non-house" rule. I've done a cursory search and can't really find anything appropriate.

Anyone got any ideas?

 

[hong]

The closest is probably the definition of difficult terrain, but that only hinders movement, not attack rolls.

 

[Sejs]

*nod* that's how I handle it - dead guy in the square = difficult terrain. Remove the miniature (or plastic caveman, as is more often the case), and draw a little prone stick figure with X'ed eyes in its place.

 

[The Amazing Dingo]

You may want to consider the character entangled in terms of his feet getting tangled up in the body while trying to move, etc. This of course also incurs a -4 Dex penalty, but I think it makes sense since it would make movement to avoid blows difficult.

To house rule that, might just consider it half-entangled so only -1 to attack and -2 to Dex.

 

[Marimmar]

I'd go for the difficult terrain approach too, if at all. I find keeping track of dead guys bothersome.

~Marimmar

 

[Jeff Wilder]

I'd go for the difficult terrain approach too, if at all. I find keeping track of dead guys bothersome.

Couple of things to mention, regarding keeping track of the position of bodies:

(1) Alea Tools (www.aleatools.com) makes circular bases in different colors, perfect for marking different conditions of characters and squares.

(2) Green Dragon Studios plans to include a stamp of a corpse in their next set of Dungeon Stamps, I believe.

I think I could probably live with making it difficult terrain. I just remember thinking there should be some downside to corpses piled up like a snowdrift. Making it a movement penalty is as good as making it an attack penalty.

Am I correct in my impression that moving into a space that is difficult terrain can't count as a 5-foot step?

 

[cmanos]

also there are some companies that make 'dead' miniatures...Granted, I just hacked up my 25 year old lead minis and voila...

 

[Marimmar]

Difficult terrain counts as 2 squares of straight movement and 3 squares diagonal.

~Marimmar

PS: Aren't there some corpse counters in the 3.5 DMG?

 

[smetzger]

I would also second the difficult terrain and perhaps DC 5 balance checks when you have a large body or more than one body.

 

[Orichin]

*shrug* If it were me, call corpses unnattended medium-sized objects which means balance checks to move through or stand in the square. multiple corpses makes a stack of corpses, which is a large object (or larger, if you've got particularly industrious PC's), blocking the square(s).

Unfortunately, though, IMC, I just don't care enough unless the corpse is terrain.