One of the better new rules added to AD&D with the Combat & Tactics book (which was largely a disaster - like the rest of the Player's Option series), and which was then added to 3rd Edition, was the attack of opportunity. The concept is simple: if you are in close combat with an enemy, and you do something to let your guard down, he gets a chance to punish you for it.
However, the means by which attacks of opportunity are explained in the Players' Handbook leaves a lot to be desired, rendering this the most complex new feature in the game. Fortunately, the description in d20 Modern is much better, and is likely to be brought over to the revised Players' Handbook, which eliminates that issue.
There remain some oddities with attacks of opportunity, though, the most obvious being the "step back and cast" action. It works as follows: A wizard is standing right next to an enemy warrior. In order to cast safely, he takes a five foot step directly away from his opponent (out of the threatened area), and then casts his spell. Since the five foot step is a free action, it is safe for him to do this.
This is fine from a mechanical point of view. From a realism point of view, however, it's nonsense. Surely, in any realistic scenario, when the wizard makes his step, the warrior would immediately follow? Then, the wizard is screwed - attack of opportunity.
The same can be repeated with any action that doesn't require further movement. So, if you want to fire a missile weapon, just step back and do so. Hell, take a full attack action while you're at it.
I don't know what the solution is, or even if it's desirable to implement one. The five foot step is a vital part of the game, and neatly reflects the slow withdrawal style of fighting, so we can't just remove that. Furthermore, not allowing a wizard to make this adjustment before casting really screws their effectiveness once close in with their opponents (although, I say that's what casting defensively is for).
Perhaps the solution is to rule that if a character takes a five foot step, then takes an action that would have caused an attack of opportunity were it not for taking that step, any character who is now denied the attack of opportunity may immediately make a five foot step to close the gap, and then make an attack of opportunity. Of course, such a character would then be denied the ability to make any movement at all as part of their next regular action. (Essentially, they're 'stealing' the five foot step from their next round.)
Under this scenario, spell-casters are forced to cast their spells defensively while in combat (oh, no!). Archers then can't fire while in melee combat, unless you expand Concentration to allow a 'fire defensively' action to be taken - d20 Modern takes this approach.
Thoughts?
Archived comment by Mort:
ReplyDeleteI think you hit it pretty spot on. You really should get the opportunity to 'follow' when someone uses a five foot step to get away from you. But what happens if you have already acted on the turn? Say your initiative was higher than the mage, and you ran up and whacked him one. Do you then have to save your five foot step incase he steps back? Or should you be able to 'steal' it from your next turn? Option one seems the most feasible, as the second could easily be forgotten and abused.
As it stands, casting defensively is utterly pointless, no one will ever use it, hence you got wizards running around with one or two levels of concentration, when it should be one of their main skills.
Archived comment by me:
ReplyDeleteAs regards the "does the movement come from the previous round or the next round?" question, I considered allowing characters to choose - that is, if you're last turn didn't have a movement component, you steal that, otherwise you steal from the next round. However, I discarded that because I really think that it should be consistently one way or the other. However, I can see no good reason for this other than my own preference.
This leaves three options:
1) You steal from your previous action. That is, you can only make the 5 foot adjustment if you didn't move in your previous action.
2) You steal from your next turn. That is, if you make the 5 foot adjustment, you can't then make any movement as part of your next action.
3) The movement comes from your action in the current round. So, up until your action, you make the adjustment by stealing ahead. After then, but before the end of the round, you make the adjustment by stealing from your previous action.
I discarded #3 because I really don't like the concept of rounds having a fixed beginning and end. I prefer to use rounds as just a cycle of actions, with people acting in order. So, instead of getting one attack of opportunity per round, characters actually get one between the time they last acted and the time they next act. (Per the rules, I think I'm wrong. They should strictly get one per round, which means that they could act, then get an attack of opportunity, then the round changes, then they get an attack of opportunity, and then they act. I have no problem with being wrong here.)
The problems with #1 are two fold. Firstly, it means that a character can't make an adjustment if they get an attack of opportunity before their first action. (Normally, this isn't a problem, since such a character can't make an attack of opportunity anyway. However, if the character has Combat Reflexes, they can.) The second problem is that an opponent can watch a character's action for a movement, and if they make one the character then knows that the character can't make the adjustment before making an attack of opportunity.
(I'm not sure that makes sense. What I was saying was that if I'm fighting you, and you make a 5 foot step in your turn, I'd then know I could safely step back and cast, since you don't have the ability to make another 5 foot step.)
Allowing characters to steal from their next action means that they can always make the adjustment, unless they have multiple AoOs. So, I advocate option #2.