RANT: Attacks of Opportunity

[Delta]

How? Seriously, how does a soldier know that knife won't hurt him as much this time? How does he know the bullet will only be an inconvenience? And why would he willingly run past people with pointy metal and allow each of them to get an attack?

This reminds me so much of when a drill sergeant takes a new recruit, gives him a knife, and says, "Come at me and try your best to stab me!" Does that not in fact happen all the time?

 

[2WS-Steve]

This reminds me so much of when a drill sergeant takes a new recruit, gives him a knife, and says, "Come at me and try your best to stab me!" Does that not in fact happen all the time?

Not when I was in! And my drill sergeant did two or three tours in Vietnam as part of the Special Forces.

 

[Thurbane]

"AoOs are so difficult. It's like taking a calculus class!"
"It's impossible to resolve AoOs without using miniatures."
"AoOs are confusing."

What is wrong with you people?

1. Can someone hit me?
2. Did I just do something that provokes an AoO?

1. Can someone hit me right now?
2. Am I still going to move at least 5 feet this turn?
3. Will I have moved more than 5 feet this turn?

What, exactly, do you find difficult, confusing, or impossible about these simple questions?

While I don't have a problem with AoO rules as such, there is no denying they are a major part of why 3.X combat runs slower than earlier editions.*


*This has been my personal experience - I fully expect people to call me a heretic and crucify me over this sentiment.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

This reminds me so much of when a drill sergeant takes a new recruit, gives him a knife, and says, "Come at me and try your best to stab me!" Does that not in fact happen all the time?

It happens in Hollywood's version of military training, sure. Never happened in mine.

 

[Justin Bacon]

Um . . . isn't your response the essence of metagaming?

What parts of "willing to make a sacrifice", "uber-skilled", "tough son-of-a-bitch" do you consider to be metagame assessments, exactly?

IOW, no, my response was not the essence of metagaming.

Further, the *rules* support the fact that a sword with no special killing ability CAN NOT kill a high(er) level character in a single blow.

Not true. I refer you to the coup de grace rules.

That's just not true in real life.

This is a tough assessment to make. There aren't any 15th level characters in the real world. Various comparisons between mechanics and real world performances demonstrate that even the truly exceptional people in the real world are no higher than 5th level.

Further, the rules don't support being slowed down, hobbled, blinded from blood, or reeling from the blows, again without some special ability.

Not true. The rules for disabling a character are disappointingly shallow, but they do exist.

Of course, my statement about it not being real life is the crux of the difference between us, specifically me and the d20 rules. I would rather see a player be wary at all times of being hit because it isn't a good thing.

This is the schizophrenic part: You want characters statted up as superhuman demi-gods to behave as if they were average humans in the real world.

Now I can appreciate that you want a different style to your fantasy. But if you want that, you need to limit your players' characters to a lower level. Just like you wouldn't let your players build 500 point GURPS characters if you were looking for gritty, realistic fantasy, you shouldn't have them playing 15th level D&D characters, either.

 

[Justin Bacon]

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.

You keep saying these whacky things. I can see why he might care how long the 1st round takes, but beyond that he's not going to care any more or any less than the other players.

And if your concern is the amount of time it takes to go through a full round of actions in order to get back to the same player, AoOs actually REDUCES that time by allowing for out-of-turn actions.

So you still don't have a point.

Taking time to explain what an AoO is to a person who is unfamiliar to them,

Ah, so AoO is one of those rules which requires explanation. Unlike all those other rules in the game which people instincitvely understand. Or perhaps those other rules can be downloaded directly into the cerebellum, like Neo's kung-fu.

AoO rolls then resolving these takes time. More time than if AoO's were not being used.

You still don't seem to understand that those attack rolls are going to have to be made at SOME point. The enemy's hit points aren't going to disappear all by themselves.

 

[Justin Bacon]

We've not played with AoOs for a while now and haven't really missed them. It wasn't because they were too hard, just time consumming and did take away from the RP. One just assumes that their characters avoid them whenever possible. Yes, one, no matter how poor a roleplayer, can still RP while moving their miniature like a piece on the monopoly board , but it does distract..for ex: "My fighter charges forward...You shall die oh villian of evil..." ::crap:: picks up 3 minis knocked over. "now where was I...you shall die oh villian of..." :M says make a tumble check, rolls dice "Ouch... you shall die oh villian of...wait, does that guy with the spear have reach I only have 10 hit points now? ok...no.. you shall die." ::rolls dice::

You say you don't like AoOs, but then you wander off into a rant about miniatures. AoOs don't require miniatures, so do you have any reason for disliking AoOs?

 

[Justin Bacon]

At first level, no one is going to rush past five monsters who can use an AoO to get to the bad guy, no matter how wimpy the monsters are, because that will kill them. Same for third level, maybe even up to fifth level, depending on the monsters involved and the current hit points of the character.

But wait! Now we are tenth level! Suddenly, our verismillitude has changed.

Umm.... No. Verisimilitude hasn't changed. Character skill has changed.

What used to kill a character is merely an inconvenience. My question is simply, how did the character, after x levels of this manoveur being fatal, suddenly decide, "Naw, I'll survive it this time?"

Because his skill has radically changed? How do you go from being a random kid in high school to fighting on a battlefield in a war? Training.

However, I take umbrage that anyone at any point could look at a line of sword wielding "veterans" and say "I can get through that this time." Or that they could look at a Blade Barrier at any point say, that they can get past it.

Really? So when a highly trained fighter looks at a cadre of the evil prince's guard led by the man who killed his father, lowers his sword and says, "My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die." Your reaction is, "No way. There's no way that the best swordsman in the entire world could know that he can take on a half dozen mooks single-handed without a meaningful risk of being killed!"

Well, count me out of your game, then. It's not realistic and it certainly isn't interesting.

How? Seriously, how does a soldier know that knife won't hurt him as much this time? How does he know the bullet will only be an inconvenience? And why would he willingly run past people with pointy metal and allow each of them to get an attack?

How does the high school kid "suddenly" know that he can disable a IED? Well, he doesn't "suddenly" know that. He spent time training those skills, using those skills, and knows he's done that.

 

[Justin Bacon]

Just how do you avoid him and still kill him? Not every character uses a ranged weapon.

You seem to have lost the course of the discussion: You claimed that it shattered your sense of disbelief for a fighter to stay away from opponents he doesn't want to actively engage while approaching the opponent he DOES want to engage.

You still haven't explained why you consider that unbelievable. And now you seem to be trying to play some kind of semantic game.

The reason is to kill the bastard who is trying to hurt your friends/take over the world/etc.

But we're talking about the people you're running past in order to get to your target. Why are you running past the person you want to kill?

The answer, of course, is that you're not doing that. You're playing a semantic game rather than deal with the fact that your original claims were complete nonsense.

No, by the book, you can take a double move and the square you start in is not considered threatened. So I can move 60 feet, but not 30?

No, by the book, you can move UP TO double your speed and the first five feet of your movement will not provoke an attack of opportunity. If you have a speed of 30 feet, you can move anywhere from 1 to 60 feet without provoking an attack of opportunity for the first 5 feet of your movement.

The concept is pretty simple here: As long as you focus on nothing but your attempt to move away from the big guy threatening you with a sword, you're good to go. But if you try to split your focus between moving away and getting ready to swallow that whisky, your attention will be divided and the guy is going to get a swing at you.

There's nothing conceptually difficult to grasp here, IMO.

That's been a problem in every edition of D&D. I hate the way mages can throw fireballs around with that manner of exaction. It's much like a soldier lobbing a grenade so that it blows the guy up trying to stab his buddy with a bayonet, yet leaving his buddy completely unharmed.

I'm not sure what relevance that has to your claim that a DM can adequately describe the difference between 20 feet and 21 feet, but not the difference between 10 feet and 11 feet.

I suspect you're just playing another semantics game in order to weasel out of admitting your mistakes.

 

[Justin Bacon]

I'm sorry, but #2 is not one item on a list.

No, I'm sorry. That's like claiming that resolving an attack is difficult, confusing, and impossible to resolve without miniatures because:

1. (Roll dice.) Did you hit your target?
2. What type of damage does your weapon do?

Because you have to do a chart look-up for what type of damage your weapon does.

No, it isn't. "a situation where you draw an AoO," includes a number of individual cases modified by multiple feats, such as spellcasting, unarmed combat, trip attempts and so on. It isn't a singular item and the rules don't present them as such.

Heh. Sure, and Power Attack and Weapon Finesse make resolving attacks impossibly difficult, confusing, and impossible to resolve without using miniatures. Probably time to remove those rules from the game.