RANT: Attacks of Opportunity

[Maester Luwin]

Hmm. Either (a) you're not expressing yourself clearly; or (b) you're still not bothering to read the posts you're responding to. Or both.

To whit: Originally you talked about extending the amount of real time spent in combat. Now you're talking about etending the amount of real time spent in a particular round.

First, these are synonymous statements. Do you understand that?

Second, who cares how much time is spent in any particular round of combat? I can understand personal taste preferring shorter and/or longer amounts of time spent resolving combat during a game session, but I can't imagine any legitimate reason for caring how much time is spent in any particular round of combat if the overall amount of time spent in combat remains unchanged.

Hey Justin! Maybe it is (a). Here is what I am trying to say. AoO's add to the complexity of the game. Maybe not for those who have played for awhile but for newcomers or those who use systems such as AGoT Rpg which do not use AoO. Some combats, not all combats, especially with a larger groups (6-8) can drag out/ last a while. The person who cares how much time is spent in a particular round of combat is the guy who is 8 out 8 in the initiative order & is bored by the time his/ her turn is up. Taking time to explain what an AoO is to a person who is unfamiliar to them, then waiting as they make up their mind what they will do, & then making one (mayhaps more) AoO rolls then resolving these takes time. More time than if AoO's were not being used. I guess that what I am trying to say. Thanks Maester Luwin

 

[The Thayan Menace]

Verisimilitude Über Alles!

The AoO concept is fairly simple, Do something dumb/risky and risk getting hit as you deserve.

True dat ... just like real life!

-Samir

 

[Henry]

Chalk my group up as ones who have never really had a problem with op-attacks. Other issues, yes, but not op-attacks.

Last game I played a binder who ran completely across the battlefield, from one side to the other, to assail a mind flayer. (Not the smartest of notions, but I wanted to engage him in melee to keep the rest of the party from getting brain-blasted while they tackled other threats.) Op-attacks would have come up, so I moved to the side a bit to avoid the threat range of a big, beefy minotaur would would have ripped off half my hit points in one hit; that was my extent of worrying about op-attacks.

I will agree that op-attacks on a field of many opponents will curtail people doing what I did (running across and engaging the rear big bad guy); however, they're supposed to, and I think they do an admirable job of it. It breaks my suspension of disbelief that a person could run willy-nilly through a mob and not take some free hits. If they can, they'd better be Jet Li. (and indeed, people worried about op-attacks can bone up on Tumble or can take mobility and spring attack to avoid the majority of them from movement).

 

[MarkB]

You have missed my point. The AoO doesn't have anything to do with the character completely the move. Before the character even tries the move they get hit. And sometimes that hit prevents them from doing the move all together. It is one thing to get to roll that d20 to try to grapple, but a successful AoO prevents that from happening.

No, the AoO happens as a result of trying the move, and in the case of grappling, if it hits it causes the move to fail.

And frankly, that's just fine. Reaching past an armed opponent's guard to grapple them should be very hard for a person untrained in the technique to accomplish. D&D happens to use AoOs as part of the mechanics by which it makes such attempts more difficult.

The fact is, the wizard attempting to grapple the enemy fighter should be failing 19 times out of 20 against a remotely comparable opponent, and it's not unrealistic for him to pay for his recklessness in blood a fair proportion of those times. AoOs help to accomplish this.

If you allow wizards to pull off specialised melee manouevers with anything approaching a decent success rate, then you devalue the investments that dedicated fighters make into being good at those techniques. It's equivalent to allowing fighters to reliably cast spells anytime it might be considered dramatic to do so.

 

[Crothian]

The fact is, the wizard attempting to grapple the enemy fighter should be failing 19 times out of 20 against a remotely comparable opponent, and it's not unrealistic for him to pay for his recklessness in blood a fair proportion of those times. AoOs help to accomplish this.

Which causes Wizards to not even try in the first place. My point comes full circle.

 

[evildmguy]

Works for me.

And if it works for you and your group, that's great! In the end, that's all that matters.

Which isn't realistic, it's true, but the odds of a standard militiaman getting lucky and one-hit-killing Lancelot are so small that the system doesn't model them.

I will agree to this statement if we can change it to: Which isn't realistic, it's true, but the odds of a [unskilled combatant] getting lucky and one-hit-killing [a skilled combatant] are so small that the system doesn't model them.

However, for me, it still isn't enough that d20 doesn't show that an unskilled person can get lucky. That's dramatic as well!

And note that a high-level fighter with a normal sword can land far more potent blows than the standard militiaman - as reflected by his use of the Power Attack and Improved Critical feats. It's not a perfect fix, but it does work somewhat.

And I am all for the skilled combatant having more choices the unskilled one. I completely agree with that. The system I use, Alternity, reflects this very well. What I don't like is the fact that d20 does not allow for the lucky blow, in combat, of the unskilled vs the skilled. Yes, in real life, the skilled one will win 19 out of 20 fights. But, in d20, the skilled one doesn't even have to try as soon as there is a five or more level difference. It isn't that it is a slight chance that they will lose, it is a zero chance.

And that's the thing with the "high level Fighter running past the mooks" scenario - the Fighter isn't just running, he's also angling arms, shoulders, armour and shield, to roll away from the worst of those blows. Sure, he's not defending fully (hence the AoOs), but much of what he does is instinctive, learned through hard experience.

My points is that the fighting types should respect the other fighting types, and d20 doesn't model that. Even if they are "mooks", the game rules don't have the higher level fighter respect the low level fighters because he knows they can't do anything to him. From what I have seen in real life, the good fighters only taunt and play with the people who are completely unskilled in fighting. Give them an opponent who shows some knowledge of fighting, and they want to end it quickly.

Therefore, getting back to AoO, if the fighter has to wade through ranks of "veteran" fighters (which could be the warrior NPC class), imo, they *should* worry about those "veteran" fighters and the attacks they have. These types *should* be able to hit in such a way as to stop the charging person but the rules of d20 don't support that. Again, that's fine if that's what people want. I don't.

For me, this is because the definition of hit points don't work for me.

From the SRD, CombatI.rtf, Injury and Death section.

What Hit Points Represent: Hit points mean two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one.

I still chuckle when I read this. If I might expand on it.

"The ability to take physical punishment and keep going" means the ability to take a blow.

"ability to turn a blow into a less serious one" means the ability to reduce the effect of a hit.

So, hit points represent the ability to be hit and take damage AND to be hit and reduce damage? Therefore, if I have my logic right, hit points represent taking damage AND not taking damage!

I know, I know. Semantics. Further, I get that the hit point system works for many people. I think they tried to "reverse engineer" the definition and it has gotten "wonky" imo. I also get that the rules of combat are a simulation of real life and not meant to realistically portray combat. I get that, too.

Again, it isn't that I am against AoO at all. They are a good idea. What I am against is how d20 reduces the effectiveness of them at higher levels. It changes how the character is played and also how they can be played. What a character wouldn't even consider doing at less than 5th level becomes the standard tactic at higher levels? Again, I don't know many people who have been hit who like to repeat it!

Thanks for the reply!

Have a good one! Take care!

edg

 

[MarkB]

Which causes Wizards to not even try in the first place. My point comes full circle.

Your point appears to be that the game-mechanics of the system discourage characters from taking actions that have a high chance of being both futile and painful to them.

What I'm not sure of is whether you think characters shouldn't want to avoid taking futile and painful actions, or if you believe that no course of action, no matter how far outside the character's normal range of abilities, should ever be so difficult as to be considered most likely futile and personally painful.

Not that it makes much difference, because I don't consider either of those to be tenable complaints.

 

[MarkB]

Again, it isn't that I am against AoO at all. They are a good idea. What I am against is how d20 reduces the effectiveness of them at higher levels. It changes how the character is played and also how they can be played. What a character wouldn't even consider doing at less than 5th level becomes the standard tactic at higher levels? Again, I don't know many people who have been hit who like to repeat it!

Thanks for the reply!

Have a good one! Take care!

edg

Um, isn't the whole point of gaining levels that you become able to do things you wouldn't even have considered at lower levels?

In any case, your main complaint seems to be about the hit point model of damage. Most of the points you've raised seem to be only tangentially related to AoOs, or could be applied to regular attacks just as easily.

 

[Crothian]

Not that it makes much difference, because I don't consider either of those to be tenable complaints.

Cool, no need for me to answer your post then. Thanks!!

 

[Plane Sailing]

Of course, nobody has yet mentioned some of the wonky things about AoO - like why being paralysed next to a fighter doesn't provoke an AoO while any number of other things do...

AoO are an imperfect solution to a particular problem. They are one solution amongst many imperfect solutions. There are games which work perfectly well with them, there are games that work perfectly well with a 'zones of control' mechanism and there are games that work perfectly well with no mechanism for them at all. None of the mechanisms perfectly model real life, all of them can work just fine for a game.

It would be well for some of the pro-AoO crowd here to recognise the truth of this.

Thanks