D&D 3E/3.5 Why do AoO's exist? Would it wreck 3.5 if I removed them from my game?

[KarinsDad]

AoOs make the game almost impossible to play without miniatures. If you take them out, I think you could run a game without minis pretty easily.

I don't. I have never seen a good game run without minis.

The problem is one of communication. It is very difficult to get 5 people able to understand 1 (regardless of whether it is the GM, or some other player) every single time. Plus, distance communication is time consuming. I personally would rather be playing than listening to a description of how far my PC is from other PCs and from NPCs.

Even with minis, players in RPGs I have played have occasionally misunderstood what is going on. Without them, that problem magnifies considerably.

 

[Bagpuss]

How heavily would rogues be affected?

jh

Nice bonus since they could move to flanking position without worrying (although with decent tumble they can almost do this anyway). Can't see much of a drawback for them.

 

[Bagpuss]

I dont recall any classes which have classabilities that rely on or use AoO particularly.

Knight's - Bulwark of Defense ability doesn't exactly depend on it but is rendered pretty naff without them.

Rogue - loses the Opportunist special ability. Although you could keep it if you just called it something other than an attack of opportunity.

 

[Bagpuss]

AoOs make the game almost impossible to play without miniatures. If you take them out, I think you could run a game without minis pretty easily.

Not really, you try to run past someone AoO, you move to attack something with reach AoO, you are in melee range and do something that would provoke an AoO.

I ran my first 3rd Ed campaign without miniatures and kept AoOs. It's was only when I moved to a different group that already used miniatures that I've begun using them.

 

[blargney the second]

I've come to the conclusion that once the group understands AoOs (a fairly big caveat, I know), they actually speed up combat just like any other method of getting extra attacks.

 

[Nail]

So many battles seem to be resolved 'at the door', rather than in the middle of some wonderful, interesting room that the DM created.

That has very little to do with AoOs.

It has everything to do with how melee attacks are handled: stand in a square that threatens your opponent, and whack him. Keep whacking him until he's dead. Move to new opponent and repeat.

Compare this to an action movie, in which whacking the opponent makes the opponent move.

 

[Nail]

I have never seen a good game run without minis.

Seconded.

...that said, I've "heard" about games without minis. No idea on how "good" they are.

 

[Jer]

I don't. I have never seen a good game run without minis.

A good game of what? I never ran D&D with minis until 3e and my games were just fine. I happily run plenty of RPGs, including 3e D&D, without minis.

In games without minis combat tends to be more narrative than tactical - my players talk a lot more about what their characters are going to do and how they're going to do it. In games with minis, my players tend to just move their minis around and try to maximize their capabilities from the system. Both styles can be fun to play, but neither seems better than the other to me.

Back to the original question - removing AoO will have a domino effect on a lot of things. If you're going to keep the tactical portion of the game, you have to decide how movement into and out of combat occur. Are characters forced to stop as soon as they are adjacent to an enemy? If not, does the enemy get some kind of free swing? How about when an attacker retreats from a combat they're engaged in? What about spellcasters standing right next to an opponent - does the opponent have to have a readied action if he wants to disrupt the spellcaster? Does he get a free swing?

Back in the day we'd house rule a lot of that. The reason why the AoO rules exist is to codify a lot of things that were taken care of by house rules in previous editions OR were taken care of by people saying "you can't do that" (for those players who felt that if there wasn't a rule in the book for it, it couldn't be done). If you remove AoO rules, be prepared for a lot of situations to come up where you look at what a player is trying to do and it will be something that your knee-jerk response is "you can't do that!" or "that shouldn't be that easy!" One of the big design concerns for 3e over previous editions was to try to get rid of the situations where people would say "you can't do that" and instead give a mechanism for them and an opportunity for players to succeed or fail at them.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Would it wreck 3.5 if I removed them from my game?

There have been several threads on this question in the past.

Basically, it wouldn't wreck 3.5 if you removed them. You'd introduce a simple replacement (e.g. saying that you can't take certain actions in a threatened area without making a concentration check or something similar). There are only a few basic feats and stuff that would change.


The original d20StarWars didn't have AoO and worked fine. Dozens of RPGs have existed without AoO and worked fine.

Cheers

 

[tomBitonti]

Alternative to removing AOOs

Using this moment to insert a pet idea of my own ...

As an alternative, how about a rule that an AOO costs your next attack?
That is, if an AOO is taken, the next action taken by the attacker must
be a attack or a full attack action, with the AOO costing the first attack
of the action? (This makes iterative attack abilities, including flurry-of-blows,
very valuable.)

That said, either removing AOOs, or the sort of modification listed above,
has a dramatic impact on how combat works. Combat reflexes becomes
useless, so reach/combat reflex builds are broken.

As an aside, how many AOOs are possible between two antagonists?
A simple case of move - fire bow causes two. How many are drawn by
a full attack with an unarmed strike that gets three attacks?