D&D 3.x Refocus disappeared in 3.5?

[pokedigimaniac]

Hey, all. I can't find Refocus in my 3.5 book, and it's been confirmed that it was taken out. I'm just not sure why at all, as I didn't see a massive problem with it. Can you folks possibly enlighten me on this situation?

As a bonus question, because I'm not quite clear on the etiquette of this forum yet, (should I make separate threads for separate questions, or would that be considered to be cluttering up the forum?) can you take special combat actions (trip, sunder, disarm) during an AoO? I saw someone else declare this in another thread and nobody spoke up in dissent, but I wanted to be sure.

Thanks in advance!

 

[KarinsDad]

They took refocus out because it didn't do anything. Basically, it was a totally worthless rule.

The 3.5 Delay rule takes care of both the 3E Delay and Refocus rules. The concept of a "start of round" is pretty much moot for both 3E and 3.5 and having a special rule whose sole purpose is to move you beyond that mystic "round boundary" was a very poor rule.

What is the difference between delaying to the end of the current round or refocusing to the beginning of the next round? Granted, they had some additional special rules in there about not delaying beyond 10 below your init and only refocusing to an init roll of 20, but it was still a pretty lame set of rules. The current 3.5 Delay rule takes care of getting rid of that nonsense and makes the overall Delay (and/or Refocus) actions more intuitive and simpler to use.


And yes, you can do special attacks on an AoO.

 

[pokedigimaniac]

Strange. I always saw Refocus as the best possible option to take when you didn't have anything to do or couldn't do anything that round (blocked from the front line by meat shields, etc, etc...) and so just geared yourself up to jump into combat that much faster for the next round.

I may houserule it in (it'd be awesome for certain baddies to use in battle... And it'd be a good way to freak out the PC's! "You see the ______ focusing mightily... he appears to be getting ready for something.") if there's no major reason it was taken out other than "it didn't do anything." I was more curious as to whether there was a reason it was taken out in regards to having a detrimental effect on the rules.

Also, thanks for the clarification on the special attacks during an AoO thing.

 

[KarinsDad]

You don't need a houserule. Just have your NPCs Delay and they then go in when they are ready or able to act.

 

[pokedigimaniac]

Whoops. Just thought of something. This dives into the "AoO in response to an AoO" debate, but let's say that if you trip someone during an AoO, do they get the AoO in return (assuming the tripper has no Improved Trip feat)? This also brings up the question of whether you can pull a 'special move' for that retaliatory AoO - "You trip me? Well, I disarm you! You disarm me? Well, I sunder you!" And so on and so forth.

Edit: Also, yes, but the problem is that Delay ends at the end of the current round and sets their Initiative equal to ... what,a very low number?

Oops. Just checked the rules and realized that Delay now works much like Refocus in that it can carry over to the next combat round. Cool. Before, it had a minimum low point in 3.0 - something like -10 or whatnot? There was an example where two folks that ran into each other in an alley delayed until they couldn't delay anymore in order to see what the other's reaction was.

 

[KarinsDad]

Whoops. Just thought of something. This dives into the "AoO in response to an AoO" debate, but let's say that if you trip someone during an AoO, do they get the AoO in return (assuming the tripper has no Improved Trip feat)?

Yes.

Edit: Also, yes, but the problem is that Delay ends at the end of the current round and sets their Initiative equal to ... what,a very low number?

Oops. Just checked the rules and realized that Delay now works much like Refocus in that it can carry over to the next combat round. Cool. Before, it had a minimum low point in 3.0 - something like -10 or whatnot? There was an example where two folks that ran into each other in an alley delayed until they couldn't delay anymore in order to see what the other's reaction was.

Yes, that was one of those "I know you know I know you know I know you know" types of situations which they wanted to squash. Needless to say, I've never seen it happen in the game and it ended up giving them an additional half page of rules they didn't need.

 

[pokedigimaniac]

Originally Posted by pokedigimaniac
Whoops. Just thought of something. This dives into the "AoO in response to an AoO" debate, but let's say that if you trip someone during an AoO, do they get the AoO in return (assuming the tripper has no Improved Trip feat)?

Yes.

But then can they use another special combat maneuver on that AoO? For example, let's set up the scenario.

Fighter Bill walks past Fighter Ted on his way to awesomely smite some kobolds.
Fighter Ted takes his Attack of Opportunity, and decides to disarm Fighter Bill. Fighter Ted does not have Improved Disarm, so Fighter Bill gets an attack of opportunity.

Can Fighter Bill use this attack of opportunity to attempt to, say, Sunder Fighter Ted's sword before Fighter Ted disarms him? Because that opens a can of worms and an infinite chain of AoO's - in return to Fighter Bill's Sunder, Fighter Ted could Trip... and so on and so forth. It's bad. So does this fall within the rules, or should I houserule?

 

[Wonko the Sane]

If both Bill & Ted have Combat Reflexes, it would end up looking like a couple of extremely dextrous fighters flailing away at one another in a series of very rapid strikes.

Looks okay to me

 

[pokedigimaniac]

Ooh. So these AoO's from the special combat maneuvers DO count against the AoO limit, eh? That would make a lot of sense.

 

[Hypersmurf]

For special attacks on an AoO, you want to check the Table 8-2, Actions in Combat, on p141 of the PHB.

Footnote 7 denotes actions that can be used as an AoO. These are Disarm, Grapple, and Trip, all of which are defined as Action Type: Varies.

It's worth noting that Sunder does not have this footnote, and is a Standard action.

-Hyp.