D&D Edition Wars

[Humbaba]

[dropshadow=yellow]The best DnD edition is Pathfinder.



-Humbaba[/dropshadow]

[WhiteShark]

[Emphyrio]

how do we fix this oops sisters

[Rand]

how do we fix this oops sisters

D&D 3.5 had most of a solution, then botched the end (on brand, tbh).

Threatened Squares
You threaten all squares into which you can make a melee attack, even when it is not your action. Generally, that means everything in all squares adjacent to your space (including diagonally). An enemy that takes certain actions while in a threatened square provokes an attack of opportunity from you. If you’re unarmed, you don’t normally threaten any squares and thus can’t make attacks of opportunity.

Provoking an Attack of Opportunity
Two kinds of actions can provoke attacks of opportunity: moving out of a threatened square and performing an action within a threatened square.

Moving
Moving out of a threatened square usually provokes an attack of opportunity from the threatening opponent. There are two common methods of avoiding such an attack—the 5-foot step and the withdraw action.

The problem is they botched this part:

Measuring Distance
Diagonals
When measuring distance, the first diagonal counts as 1 square, the second counts as 2 squares, the third counts as 1, the fourth as 2, and so on.

You can’t move diagonally past a corner (even by taking a 5-foot step). You can move diagonally past a creature, even an opponent.

You can also move diagonally past other impassable obstacles, such as pits.

Moving diagonally through an opponent's square should have either been disallowed or required a contest of some sort (strength or agility based).

[Emphyrio]

how do we fix this oops sisters

D&D 3.5 had most of a solution, then botched the end (on brand, tbh).

Threatened Squares
You threaten all squares into which you can make a melee attack, even when it is not your action. Generally, that means everything in all squares adjacent to your space (including diagonally). An enemy that takes certain actions while in a threatened square provokes an attack of opportunity from you. If you’re unarmed, you don’t normally threaten any squares and thus can’t make attacks of opportunity.

Provoking an Attack of Opportunity
Two kinds of actions can provoke attacks of opportunity: moving out of a threatened square and performing an action within a threatened square.

Moving
Moving out of a threatened square usually provokes an attack of opportunity from the threatening opponent. There are two common methods of avoiding such an attack—the 5-foot step and the withdraw action.

The problem is they botched this part:

Measuring Distance
Diagonals
When measuring distance, the first diagonal counts as 1 square, the second counts as 2 squares, the third counts as 1, the fourth as 2, and so on.

You can’t move diagonally past a corner (even by taking a 5-foot step). You can move diagonally past a creature, even an opponent.

You can also move diagonally past other impassable obstacles, such as pits.

Moving diagonally through an opponent's square should have either been disallowed or required a contest of some sort (strength or agility based).

I don't understand what difference the diagonal rule makes here.

[Acrux]

I agree that d20 systems fixed this, and also that I don't see what diagonal has to do with this. But, I also think the diagonal movement past an opponent is fine. That extra 5 feet probably isn't giving any benefit. Unless you are suggesting 3 5-foot diagonal moves would allow the opponent to pass without provoking AOO. But in that case they are still not going to get to the orphan in melee for those turns.

[Rand]

I thought this was obvious, but I see I was wrong:



This is why you can't allow diagonal 5 foot step freely past an opponent.
It makes a mockery of the protection as well.

[Acrux]

Ah, got it. In that case I'd say, "hey you stupid orphan standing on a vast, empty horizontal plane - back up a few steps"

[Rand]

Orphan has a move of 20', orc has a move of 30', orphan lost initiative to orc.
This is the last round before orc catches orphan and paladin jumps in, winning initiative over the orc but failing to accomplish anything.

[Atlantico]

There are all sorts of interesting things in different D&D versions, you can have fun in all of them because you're not really playing a ruleset. It's really rather a question if the ruleset facilitates roleplaying in a fun, interesting and engaging manner.

So they're all good, but on the whole the best is still AD&D 2ed. It's Gygax's janky original AD&D but playtested, polished and extended a hair.

[J1M]

I agree that d20 systems fixed this, and also that I don't see what diagonal has to do with this. But, I also think the diagonal movement past an opponent is fine. That extra 5 feet probably isn't giving any benefit. Unless you are suggesting 3 5-foot diagonal moves would allow the opponent to pass without provoking AOO. But in that case they are still not going to get to the orphan in melee for those turns.

Standard speed is 30 feet.

[J1M]

Orphan has a move of 20', orc has a move of 30', orphan lost initiative to orc.
This is the last round before orc catches orphan and paladin jumps in, winning initiative over the orc but failing to accomplish anything.

Unless the Paladin has the sentinel feat, the orc just strides through and takes the opportunity attack for a little damage before killing the orphan anyway. Opportunity attacks aren't coup de grace.

[Emphyrio]

Orphan has a move of 20', orc has a move of 30', orphan lost initiative to orc.
This is the last round before orc catches orphan and paladin jumps in, winning initiative over the orc but failing to accomplish anything.

Unless the Paladin has the sentinel feat, the orc just strides through and takes the opportunity attack for a little damage before killing the orphan anyway. Opportunity attacks aren't coup de grace.

orc should have some sense of self-preservation. Maybe a wounded animal would attack like that.

[Acrux]

I agree that d20 systems fixed this, and also that I don't see what diagonal has to do with this. But, I also think the diagonal movement past an opponent is fine. That extra 5 feet probably isn't giving any benefit. Unless you are suggesting 3 5-foot diagonal moves would allow the opponent to pass without provoking AOO. But in that case they are still not going to get to the orphan in melee for those turns.

Standard speed is 30 feet.

I know. Sorry, I'm not following how that relates to my comment. If the orc is making a 5 ft step, that's the only movement they can make that round anyway.

[WhiteShark]

Being able to block and/or parry on behalf of an adjacent character would solve the issue neatly, but of course, that's not how defending against attacks works in D&D. I think 4E gave the most tools for characters to protect one another, but those were Defender specific, not generally available.

Unless the Paladin has the sentinel feat, the orc just strides through and takes the opportunity attack for a little damage before killing the orphan anyway. Opportunity attacks aren't coup de grace.

orc should have some sense of self-preservation. Maybe a wounded animal would attack like that.

There are lots of conceivable situations in which the orc would ignore the more imminent threat. Maybe he's frenzying or a crazed cultist. The point is that in most editions of D&D, there is precious little you can do to protect someone if the opponent decides to ignore the likely piddling damage you can potentially do with a single OoP.

[Acrux]

A house rule that a character already in the threatened space of an enemy cannot take a diagonal 5 foot step through the threatened spaces of that same enemy would solve it for most cases, I think.

[Rand]

I agree that d20 systems fixed this, and also that I don't see what diagonal has to do with this. But, I also think the diagonal movement past an opponent is fine. That extra 5 feet probably isn't giving any benefit. Unless you are suggesting 3 5-foot diagonal moves would allow the opponent to pass without provoking AOO. But in that case they are still not going to get to the orphan in melee for those turns.

Standard speed is 30 feet.

Not for size: small characters. I'm assuming a kid.

[Rand]

Orphan has a move of 20', orc has a move of 30', orphan lost initiative to orc.
This is the last round before orc catches orphan and paladin jumps in, winning initiative over the orc but failing to accomplish anything.

Unless the Paladin has the sentinel feat, the orc just strides through and takes the opportunity attack for a little damage before killing the orphan anyway. Opportunity attacks aren't coup de grace.

True. Perhaps a guaranteed critical, and if the roll would be a critical, a double critical.
The orc is lowering his defense against the paladin to attack the kid, after all.
Another possibility involves status effects. Such as a massive penalty to hit, half damage, or just straight up if a threshold of damage is met: lose the remainder of the turn due to stun/off-balance.

This is a situation in which you can make a shitload of rules, but you don't need to make them for rare situations because you have a DM that applies "rule zero": the DM may violate or modify rules at will in service of making the game run correctly.

[rusty_shackleford]

Wartales(video game) handled it by having characters engage each other directly. If a character is engaged with another, he must disengage to do anything except attack the character he's engaged with(still able to use certain abilities.) If you want to break engagement they get a free attack on you and it costs your attack this turn. There were some skills that allowed for free breaks, and other passives that changed a bunch of stuff, but that's the basic gist of it.

I thought it was kinda elegant and liked it. It also felt sorta more 'realistic', especially considering what AoOs are trying to simulate.

[WhiteShark]

This is a situation in which you can make a shitload of rules, but you don't need to make them for rare situations because you have a DM that applies "rule zero": the DM may violate or modify rules at will in service of making the game run correctly.

This is not a rare situation. I've always found it annoying that there is relatively little you can do as a "frontliner" to actually protect your backline. Even in the editions where you can kinda-sorta do it, you generally have to build for it specifically and it also generally takes the form of "do a bunch of damage to the guy who is ignoring you" rather than directly blocking for your friend. If it's something that must be houseruled by every table for the game to make sense, it should have been accounted for in the original rules.

[Humbaba]

Wartales(video game) handled it by having characters engage each other directly. If a character is engaged with another, he must disengage to do anything except attack the character he's engaged with(still able to use certain abilities.) If you want to break engagement they get a free attack on you and it costs your attack this turn. There were some skills that allowed for free breaks, and other passives that changed a bunch of stuff, but that's the basic gist of it.

I thought it was kinda elegant and liked it. It also felt sorta more 'realistic', especially considering what AoOs are trying to simulate.

Wargames fixed this issue decades ago, where an engaged unit has to fall back/disengage to do anything else but attack the engaged unit and can't move past an enemy within a certain range.

Weirdly enough, Bloodbowl has the best "threat range" system I know of, they call em tackle zones. Moving out of a tackle zone is bad enough but moving from a tackle zone into another or even several overlapping tackle zones is even worse, making it a virtual non-option except for the most agile of players.



-Humbaba

[WhiteShark]

The problem is that wargames are more abstract than RPGs. While engagement rules make sense in general, there will be times, at the level of detail in which RPGs operates, that a combatant will be willing to drop his guard against one foe to get at another. Hence, I don't think a hard engagement rule makes sense in RPGs. Sometimes the orc will want to attack the oprhan even if doing so were suicidally reckless.

[WhiteShark]

This is the 3.5 solution:

[Rand]

This is the 3.5 solution:

Oh, fuck. The "spiked chain".
I always hated that. It's a tool for grappling, really, not a weapon.
It would be useless against any decent armor and even normally either do little damage or be dangerous to the wielder and his party.

[J1M]

A house rule that a character already in the threatened space of an enemy cannot take a diagonal 5 foot step through the threatened spaces of that same enemy would solve it for most cases, I think.

Which edition can you move diagonally through a space occupied by an enemy?

[J1M]

Orphan has a move of 20', orc has a move of 30', orphan lost initiative to orc.
This is the last round before orc catches orphan and paladin jumps in, winning initiative over the orc but failing to accomplish anything.

Unless the Paladin has the sentinel feat, the orc just strides through and takes the opportunity attack for a little damage before killing the orphan anyway. Opportunity attacks aren't coup de grace.

orc should have some sense of self-preservation. Maybe a wounded animal would attack like that.

Hit points are an abstract concept. Losing hit points does not equate to losing blood.

[J1M]

Orphan has a move of 20', orc has a move of 30', orphan lost initiative to orc.
This is the last round before orc catches orphan and paladin jumps in, winning initiative over the orc but failing to accomplish anything.

Unless the Paladin has the sentinel feat, the orc just strides through and takes the opportunity attack for a little damage before killing the orphan anyway. Opportunity attacks aren't coup de grace.

True. Perhaps a guaranteed critical, and if the roll would be a critical, a double critical.
The orc is lowering his defense against the paladin to attack the kid, after all.
Another possibility involves status effects. Such as a massive penalty to hit, half damage, or just straight up if a threshold of damage is met: lose the remainder of the turn due to stun/off-balance.

This is a situation in which you can make a shitload of rules, but you don't need to make them for rare situations because you have a DM that applies "rule zero": the DM may violate or modify rules at will in service of making the game run correctly.

As someone already mentioned, 4e had mechanical tools like the Aid Another action to protect another character. The 5e version is to take the Protection fighting style, which allows you to impose disadvantage on an attack against a nearby ally as a reaction.

[Acrux]

A house rule that a character already in the threatened space of an enemy cannot take a diagonal 5 foot step through the threatened spaces of that same enemy would solve it for most cases, I think.

Which edition can you move diagonally through a space occupied by an enemy?

Assuming both are medium sized creatures (and/or creatures within +/- 1 size category of each other - there are some cases where, say, diminutive or tiny creatures can move through an enemy square), none that I know of let you move through space occupied an enemy. But that's not the same thing as the threatened squares of an enemy.

[Rigwort]

The problem is that wargames are more abstract than RPGs. While engagement rules make sense in general, there will be times, at the level of detail in which RPGs operates, that a combatant will be willing to drop his guard against one foe to get at another. Hence, I don't think a hard engagement rule makes sense in RPGs. Sometimes the orc will want to attack the oprhan even if doing so were suicidally reckless.

WFRP accounts for this using its disengage/fleeing mechanic and I find it works well. Then again, it is WFRP so it's a bit different as a system. But a free counterattack for someone who tries to engage a different opponent seems sound to me. Again it really only makes sense for a system that is as lethal as this one, as it is more of a gamble.

[Ratcatcher]

Which edition can you move diagonally through a space occupied by an enemy?

Anything above 3.5 allows that, currently. Actually cannot vouch for the latest D&D edition but otherwise, you're not technically entering the enemy square, you're moving through adjacent corners. The only rule is, the first (and each uneven) diagonal you move counts as 5' while the second (and all even diagonal steps you take) count as 10'.