Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 1197103" data-attributes="member: 10201">I'm still working that out.  To do it properly, it pretty much requires rebuilding the entire comabt system from the ground up.  As it turns out, i'm working a ground-up rewrite of D&D3E, and this is one of the things i'm trying to "fix".  At this point, i'm looking at the classes having three combat stats: Base Init, BAB, and Base Defense, with init determining number of attacks, BAB determining effectiveness of attacks, and defense providing dodging. Thus, a character can increase any of the three without necessarily increasing the othres--and the classes have built-in tradeoffs among them (as well as other class features, of course). From the D&D3E PH: "Attack"The Attack action is a standard action.  You can move and then make a single attack, or attack and then move...."Multiple Attacks: A character with more than one attack per round must use thefull attack action in order to get more than one attack."Full Attack"...Attacking with Two Weapons: If you wield a second weapon in your off hand, you can get one extra attack per round with that weapon."Note that it only mentions extra attacks from two-weapon fighting in the Full Attack action description.  Nonetheless, it *is* a little bit unclear, but the revision seems to have made the words actually say what we always thought was the case:From the revised D20SRD:"Full Attack"If you get more than one attack per round because your base attack bonus is high enough, because you fight with two weapons or a double weapon or for some special reasonyou must use a full-round action to get your additional attacks."  Actually, i wasn't thinking of the ability description at all.  I was thinking of the circumstances under which you can get a sneak attack: flanked, feinted, surprised, etc.  But, now that you mention it, the fact that it doesn't affect creatures without weak points does point up that it's a combination.  Nonetheless, i think that demanding quality hits (i.e., taking a -4 to hit, or having to roll 4 over, or whatever) would make it much more of a "precise strike" sort of thing, feel wise.  As is, you merely have to be able to hit the person, as far as quality of skill is concerned, and the primary limitations on its use are tactical.  Oh, trust me, i don't agree with him consistently, either.  I *do* think that AU is a much better version of D&D than 3E is--good enough that i'm contemplating running it.  But, you are right that he made almost no changes to the combat system--probably the only part of the game left relatively untouched (early on, he talked about armor-as-DR, but then rejected the idea).  And i think it's the only poor design decision in the game.  I'd have loved it to follow the Spycraft model, frex.  The way in which it supports what i'm looking for slightly better is in the feat selection, and especially the class abilities.  Unfettered can do most of what i'm talking about.But i do figure that he has a better handle on what the system does and why, both by virtue of being one of those behind it, and by having played it a lot more than i have.Well, since Dragon is now bagged, care to summarize?  I check out an issue of Dragon every now and then (either risk the money if it looks like it's a really good article, or read a friend's copy), but i haven't seen any content worth the cover price in years--i dropped my subscription when they dropped Roleplaying Reviews (which, for the two years prior, was about the only thing of value to me in the magazine).</blockquote>

Verification