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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Zardoz" data-source="post: 3665413" data-attributes="member: 704">Not being an author of the rules, I cannot say with an absolute certaintly what the intended effect of AoO's was.  But I can make some observations on what AoO's  allow for.At the absolute core of it, they make combat a great deal more tactical than it would otherwise be.  AoO's and Flanking, and to a lesser degree, terrain considerations, make melee combat more then 'I move adjacent to my target and start swinging'.  Position matters.They provide a real degree of battlefield control to melee types.  Their existence prevents a DM from swarming the casters with 1 HD Goblins if the players make any effort to protect one another.  They also prevent combatants from gaining flanking with impunity.  Ultimately, it makes entering into melee against a capable melee combatant a very dangerous thing.  If your going to move into melee range, your basically obligated to Fight or eat AoO's.Now, what you seem mostly curious about is not the movement related AoO's, but the 'distraction' AoO's that happen when you essentially do not engage in melee.  This, I think, is mostly to help overcome the fact that in a real fight, people do not stand there and take turns hitting one another.  When your in a melee, your supposed to be moving and flailing at your opponent in an honest effort to either kill or inflict bodily harm.  By necessity, the rules abstract it out to that.  The distraction rules account for the fact that everyone who is trying to kill you aren't exactly standing still when it is your turn to perform an action.Melee combat is an abstraction of what is essentially near constant action.  So most moves that can be expressed as a single discreet action will usually provoke an AoO.  The decision on what moves qualify is arbitrary though, for a combination of reasons (usually balance).END COMMUNICATION</blockquote>

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