Attacks of Opportunity - Why Aren't They More Deadly?

[SneeR]

Sorry, Ziegander, but I feel that opens up way too much complication and potential for action economy abuse. I cannot endorse it.
I had to reread it just to understand it fully.

[Ziegander]

Nerfs beatsticks way more than anyone else, actually.  If something is capable of hitting hard, they just ready an action to interrupt the Beatstick's attacks.  If not, they ready an action to leave the Beatstick's reach (and probably use Concentration to negate the AoO).

EDIT: Well, not as bad as I first thought.  If they train Concentration, then it's just another layer of failure for them when it comes to the readied attack.  They're still SoL with the readied move.

I see what you mean, but if Monster A readies an action to move when attacked by Fighter B, and if Fighter B readies an action to attack Monster A if it moves out of his threatened area, then I don't see a big problem.

If there was a penalty for failing a Concentration check, like there probably should be, then the Fighter might even get two attacks that way, if he's got the Dexterity for it.

[X-Codes]

Wait, so there's serial readied actions going on?

That's a whole different problem, then.

[Ziegander]

Wait, so there's serial readied actions going on?

That's a whole different problem, then.

What are you talking about? Everyone gets a readied action. Sometimes a creature might have an action readied that triggers because of another creature taking its own readied action. Yes, when that happens, it triggers. Why wouldn't it? What problems does this create?

[Unbeliever]

I don't really see the point.  Attacks of Opportunity are freebies -- they are something you don't even need to spend an action on -- so I cannot imagine a game where they are generally more powerful than the thing you spend your action on.

The OP seems to stem from a lack of a certain kind of narration/style in D&D combat:  the ideal it seems to promote is 2 fighters circling each other, testing each other's defenses, and then one makes a mistake or one gets lucky and blammo!  That's nice and all, but it's hard to see how that'd actually work at the table.  Taking turns seems to be the natural way to run things, simply b/c anything else seems very unintuitive.  Although I suppose there's Burning Wheel's and Mouseguard's scripting dynamic. 

Now, if you wanted to introduce some set of parrying/defending mechanics, with the possibility of catastrophic failure, then maybe that'd be a possible direction.  But, this notion that anything that provokes an AoO = ultimate death strikes me as at odds with the ultimately ablative orientation of D&D combat.

[ImperatorK]

I think that AoOs should matter for one simple reason: When a monster approaches the melee PC, he should think twice before risking geting hurt. Under present rules AoOs just don't do enough without optimization (for example going the tripper route), because the monster can just ignore the melee PC, eat one or two AoOs and just go around him. Enemies shouldn't be allowed to dance around the PCs. If you come near the beatstick, you have to pay full attention to him or you're dead.

[SneeR]

Don't forget, guys: everything PCs get to do, so do monsters. So if you double AoO damage or make it so AoOs catch you flatfooted--not to mention giving everyone more AoOs for free!--you also need to consider how much of a boost that is to critters with STR so high they can Power Attack for their whole BAB.

[ImperatorK]

Don't forget, guys: everything PCs get to do, so do monsters. So if you double AoO damage or make it so AoOs catch you flatfooted--not to mention giving everyone more AoOs for free!--you also need to consider how much of a boost that is to critters with STR so high they can Power Attack for their whole BAB.

Err... I knew that...
>.>
<.<
Yeah...

[X-Codes]

Two words: Elusive Target.

[dman11235]

Unbeliever: read the rest of the thread please.  We went away from it being powerful strikes, almost immediately, actually.

Anyways, I think we should work with this idea some more Ziegander.  What about a swift action to ready?  You only get one a turn (baring methods of gaining extra ones), but this does essentially add another attack every round.  That's my problem with it.

[Unbeliever]

Unbeliever: read the rest of the thread please.  We went away from it being powerful strikes, almost immediately, actually.

I did.  I chose to address the main idea in the OP, which I saw as motivating the thread, b/c there are what  4, maybe 5 different suggestions tangled up in there, ranging from feinting to interrupting and so forth.  Further, that idea is still live, viz. SneeR's post about 3 above this one. 

The general point remains, though.  (1) what is the goal or image that is being aimed for?   (2) doesn't it seem to make your out of turn actions (e.g., this most recent proposal that allows for readying, or maybe for readying and then interrupting actions) arguably more important than your ordinary actions? 

I can see a character being built around that, though we have that already with Thicket and Robilar's and so forth.  I just don't know if it should be a general thing. 

I think that AoOs should matter for one simple reason: When a monster approaches the melee PC, he should think twice before risking geting hurt. Under present rules AoOs just don't do enough without optimization (for example going the tripper route), because the monster can just ignore the melee PC, eat one or two AoOs and just go around him. Enemies shouldn't be allowed to dance around the PCs. If you come near the beatstick, you have to pay full attention to him or you're dead.

I'd generally like to see maneuvers (bull rush, etc.) be more useful, which might do a lot of this.  If I can do something tactically interesting with my AoO (maybe even feint?) that might go a lot further to making them interesting.  Further, a kind of "interrupt" maneuver could have some merit, too, though it's probably a corner case where someone does something other than spellcasting (which already has an interrupt mechanic) that provokes an AoO.  Right now, though, the maneuvers are not generally useful, and much useful in the hands of Team Monster. 

[brainpiercing]

I still have one problem with doing things on principle for everyone:
In D&D, the baseline abilities should be balanced for low levels, let's say 1-4. That way they work on a regular human baseline. Everything else should require an investment: Feats, and class levels. When a single hit can kill a guy you don't need to give people more free attacks.

At higher levels this gets worse: Giving basically everyone the benefit of combat reflexes just means you've now even further elevated the polymorphed wizard or the beatstick consumptive field cleric, who normally lack the feats to achieve good BFC in melee.
Giving every AoO the benefit of action interruption does the same thing (and makes it worse). Giving everyone a free readied action just gives another advantage to those whose actions are already really valuable - spellcasters.


Any change to a proposed mechanic should not dramatically increase complexity for EVERY COMBATANT on the field. Being able to ready an action as a swift action just very often means you'll have readying fests. Having to save or roll concentration vs. any of those readied attacks just makes the situation worse. It also makes classes without concentration on their list suck.

And finally, if you make AoOs too good, or too many, then you'll be locking down the battlefield even more, making it even more static than it already is. And classes that rely on movement like scouts will just suck. The goal should be to make movement a challenge, but one to be tactically overcome without too much hassle.

For many of the things cited so far there ARE feats, they just might not go quite far enough.
- There is Stand Still
- There are the tripping shenanigans or auto-tripping
- There is knockback (although the requirements sort of limit it), and dungeon crasher
- There is shock-trooper and the whole making AoOs with full PA damage bonus, too
- There is double-hit
- There are the robilar's /karmic shenanigans
- There is mercurial strike the the whole making people flat-footed thing

As is, some of these aren't quite good enough, but still, any improvement must work off of them, because these are mostly accessible to martial types, which are the ones that need a boost.

So what I propose is this:
Look at what feats there are that improve AoOs, and gauge how easily they are to attain (because that is critical, see above cleric/wizard/druid problem).  And then improve them, or add a feat to their chain.
Maybe look at martial maneuvers, too. Immediate action maneuvers are a thing here.

Anything else will just add too much complexity and destroy game balance even further.

[SolEiji]

I stole your idea, but turned it into a feat so that it would have a cost.  It is a very good benefit, so I agree that this should not be some universal rule.  As a feat though?  Delicious.  Worded as to disallow standard action spells and other tricks.

[Ziegander]

Brainpiercing, essentially what you are saying is that because attacks of opportunity can kill at 1st level I shouldn't try to create a universal rule that allows them to be more deadly at any level beyond 1st level? That's how I'm reading your post anyway.

A big part of the reason for this thread's existence is the notion that characters shouldn't (damn my ability to ruin the tone of a whole post by omitting one or two letters!) have to pile on feats and gain 15 levels in order to use attacks of opportunity well. Here's a few bullet points discussing what's wrong with AoOs:

• Attacks of Opportunity often represent 1/6 ~ 1/2 of a character's offensive capability.
• Attacks of Opportunity slow down combat without adding anything significant (beyond 1st level when you might kill an extra goblin).
• Attacks of Opportunity do a poor job of punishing tactically unsound actions in combat.
• Attacks of Opportunity do not work as an aggro or "protect the squishies" mechanic.
• Attacks of Opportunity can be built around, but require very specific builds or tons of feats and class levels.

I'm not looking for more AoO feat chains. I know what's out there and find it far too restrictive. If AoOs are not significant without significant investment, then they might as well not exist as a general rule themselves. The only reason they are even used at all is to crowd control with Stand Still, or to get way more attacks than you would normally be capable of getting on your actual turn. Nobody cares about AoOs beyond 1st level unless they know they are going to invest lots of time and resources into improving them. I find that to be a problem, so I started this thread to brainstorm ways to "fix" this problem.

Now, what Caelic said earlier about perhaps asking the wrong question, at first I ignored it, because while he had a point I felt that point was for another thread. But simply increasing damage dealt by weapons based on character level (or actually Base Attack Bonus) would go a long way toward making AoOs more significant. I've had the idea before, too. You'd have to rewrite weapons so that they all only dealt 1 dice worth of damage at 1st level (so no more 2d6 Greatsword, sorry), but the pay off is that at every odd threshold of BAB you attain beyond +1 you get an extra damage die with your weapon attacks. So, at 3rd level your Longsword deals 2d8 base damage. At 13th level your Halberd deals 7d10 damage.

[brainpiercing]

Brainpiercing, essentially what you are saying is that because attacks of opportunity can kill at 1st level I shouldn't try to create a universal rule that allows them to be more deadly at any level beyond 1st level? That's how I'm reading your post anyway.

No, I'm saying they should not be more deadly without investment. Because this game is ALL about investing your character resources into a functioning package, at least on the build side of things.
Any basic ability that goes without investment should be balanced for level 1. It might scale, but that's another story.

Your bullet list is basically fine, BUT I don't think any of those points is a dealbreaker for me. Because basically, no investment equals no return.  I'm not saying all is perfect, but anything added should require an investment.

You'd have to rewrite weapons so that they all only dealt 1 dice worth of damage at 1st level (so no more 2d6 Greatsword, sorry), but the pay off is that at every odd threshold of BAB you attain beyond +1 you get an extra damage die with your weapon attacks. So, at 3rd level your Longsword deals 2d8 base damage. At 13th level your Halberd deals 7d10 damage.

Ok, so there's a disconnect here: You're saying that at level 1 you can kill a guy with one hit (1HD vs 1 damage die), so let's just change nothing else except weapon damage to make sure that I can do this at any level. I'll grant you that's oversimplifying, but effectively this will happen - both ways. Now let's see: A CR 7 Bulette deals 2d8+8 with its main attack. But going by your rule, and using its BAB of 9 (and the only sensible way is to run it consistently) it will now deal 5d8+8. That's not a complete game-breaker, but still an average 15 damage more - on up to 4 attacks. So the critter deals 12 dice more damage, vs. 6 HD above level 1, which average 30HP for a D8 character, excluding Con. That does make the game very deadly. And it's not like people won't want to build a Hood or Ubercharger just because their weapons now deal more damage.

The other problem is how to consistently adjust your damage dice? You said BAB, but that can be very dangerous to PCs, because a lot of monsters have a lot of HD and good BAB. One might suggest  CR, but that's a wonky concept in itself, and everything will have to be re-examined for such a change. The other option is HD, but then those high HD low CR monsters will suddenly deal a crapload more damage.

The next problem is many attacks - if you dealt four times 1d4 originally, but now you are dealing four times 4-5d4, that's much bigger increase than the dice a general character gets for his iteratives. Granted, here both druids and wizards have a BAb problem, and Clerics have a polymorph problem. But it just might make sense to play lots of Thri-keen now. At high levels everyone could get access to divine power, so a polymorphed wizard will again outperform the martial types in their own area of expertise.

And in addition to just scaling damage you have now removed weapon size categories - a colossal weapons deals the same single damage die at level 1 as a tiny one.

Scaling base damage by level or BAB is a good idea, let's work on the amount.

I also feel this goes very much into "pseudo advancement" territory. What I mean by that is that your character gains levels, but gameplay stays basically the same. Generally D&D advances from basically death roulette over ablation into rocket tag. With your changes it would go from death roulette straight to rocket tack - for meleers, too. With the exception that it might include some anti-rocket-rockets, too.

[dman11235]

@Ziegander: No, no, he's got a point.  And if you aren't trained to really take advantage of a mistake, you won't really take advantage of it.  That's what feats do, provide the training to improve an ability.

And he's right about the bonus damage, that will increase exponentially or quadratically, leaning exponentially, due to extra attacks.  You'd have to alter it to fit the power progression better.

@brainpiercing: he's also got a point.  I do actually like that extra damage per BAB thing.  It makes BAB better, cause right now it just matters at levels 1, 6, 11, and 16.  However, I'd like to point out that this is basically the Monk's main class feature.  Other classes get bonus damage from other means (str, precision damage, etc.), the Monk gets it from dice increases.

[Ziegander]

Because basically, no investment equals no return.  I'm not saying all is perfect, but anything added should require an investment.

That kind of statement will start to put you on a slippery slope.

You'd have to rewrite weapons so that they all only dealt 1 dice worth of damage at 1st level (so no more 2d6 Greatsword, sorry), but the pay off is that at every odd threshold of BAB you attain beyond +1 you get an extra damage die with your weapon attacks. So, at 3rd level your Longsword deals 2d8 base damage. At 13th level your Halberd deals 7d10 damage.

Ok, so there's a disconnect here: You're saying that at level 1 you can kill a guy with one hit (1HD vs 1 damage die), so let's just change nothing else except weapon damage to make sure that I can do this at any level. I'll grant you that's oversimplifying, but effectively this will happen - both ways. Now let's see: A CR 7 Bulette deals 2d8+8 with its main attack. But going by your rule, and using its BAB of 9 (and the only sensible way is to run it consistently) it will now deal 5d8+8. That's not a complete game-breaker, but still an average 15 damage more - on up to 4 attacks. So the critter deals 12 dice more damage, vs. 6 HD above level 1, which average 30HP for a D8 character, excluding Con. That does make the game very deadly. And it's not like people won't want to build a Hood or Ubercharger just because their weapons now deal more damage.

Actually, the damage increase could be applied only to manufactured weapons. I recall somewhere dman suggesting that manufactured weapons should deal more damage than animals' claw attacks, and it does make sense. Natural attacks don't get scaling damage, they just deal whatever damage is appropriate to their size category and how deadly the designer wants a monster's natural attacks to be.

And in addition to just scaling damage you have now removed weapon size categories - a colossal weapons deals the same single damage die at level 1 as a tiny one.

Nah, just have each size category change the die size up or down, and when it can't get bigger or smaller treat BAB as -2 or +2 higher than it is. So, let's say a medium Dagger deals 1d4 damage with BAB +1. A small one deals 1d3, tiny deals 1d2, diminutive deals just 1, and fine can't get any worse so it also deals 1. A large Dagger deals 1d6 damage with BAB +1. A huge one deals 1d8, a gargantuan one 1d10, and a colossal one 1d12. At BAB +3 a fine Dagger deals 1d2 damage, a diminutive one 2, a tiny one 2d2, a small one 2d3, a medium one 2d4, a large one 2d6, a huge one 2d8, a gargantuan one 2d10, and a colossal one 2d12. A medium Greatsword might deal 1d12 damage with BAB +1, so a small one would deal 1d10, tiny 1d8, diminutive 1d6, fine 1d4. A large Greatsword can't get any bigger than 1d12 so it moves to dealing 2d12, huge 3d12, gargantuan 4d12, and colossal 5d12.

I also feel this goes very much into "pseudo advancement" territory. What I mean by that is that your character gains levels, but gameplay stays basically the same. Generally D&D advances from basically death roulette over ablation into rocket tag. With your changes it would go from death roulette straight to rocket tack - for meleers, too. With the exception that it might include some anti-rocket-rockets, too.

If I suggested scaling weapon dice up by 1 per level, then we'd be talking about rocket tag, but I've ran the numbers, and without lots of optimization (which creates insta-gib situations without scaling the damage dice), it makes combat faster, yes, and allows meleers to kill things at a more accelerated pace, but it doesn't typically result in 1 round death for team monster or for the PCs. If natural weapons don't auto-scale with their BAB, which seems perfectly fine to me, then polymorph is less of a problem and Bulettes and other wild snorlaxes won't completely destroy the melee PCs like they do now anyway.

[Unbeliever]

A big part of the reason for this thread's existence is the notion that characters should have to pile on feats and gain 15 levels in order to use attacks of opportunity well. Here's a few bullet points discussing what's wrong with AoOs:

• Attacks of Opportunity often represent 1/6 ~ 1/2 of a character's offensive capability.
• Attacks of Opportunity slow down combat without adding anything significant (beyond 1st level when you might kill an extra goblin).
• Attacks of Opportunity do a poor job of punishing tactically unsound actions in combat.
• Attacks of Opportunity do not work as an aggro or "protect the squishies" mechanic.
• Attacks of Opportunity can be built around, but require very specific builds or tons of feats and class levels.

I'm not looking for more AoO feat chains. I know what's out there and find it far too restrictive. If AoOs are not significant without significant investment, then they might as well not exist as a general rule themselves. The only reason they are even used at all is to crowd control with Stand Still, or to get way more attacks than you would normally be capable of getting on your actual turn. Nobody cares about AoOs beyond 1st level unless they know they are going to invest lots of time and resources into improving them. I find that to be a problem, so I started this thread to brainstorm ways to "fix" this problem.

fwiw, I find this list really helpful.  Although I don't really understand the first bullet at all.  I especially think the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th bullets are important.

Framed this way, I think AoOs have the same problem many of the combat tactics and maneuvers in D&D have:  you can make them work for you, but that takes a considerable resources, so that unless you have gone out of your way to do so they just fall by the wayside.  I'll reiterate that if you can fix those maneuvers -- my goal would be the make them useful in some cases for anyone and more broadly useful for the investment of a feat (I have some vague houserules on this lying around somewhere) -- you can solve a lot of this.  A useful bull rush, trip, disarm, etc. could make an AoO quite significant.  It would, potentially, allow you to effectively punish an unsound action in combat, be significant (if not damaging), and even protect the squishies through battlefield control.  So, that's the direction I'd work in.

One note about damage.  It may just be question of just optimizing your damage output.  My last warrior did about 80 damage per attack at 15th level, which is a pretty serious disincentive for an AoO.  He did a lot more with a full attack or using a maneuver, of course, but even a Pit Fiend is going to notice 80ish damage. 

[Tiltowait]

I think that AoOs should matter for one simple reason: When a monster approaches the melee PC, he should think twice before risking geting hurt. Under present rules AoOs just don't do enough without optimization (for example going the tripper route), because the monster can just ignore the melee PC, eat one or two AoOs and just go around him. Enemies shouldn't be allowed to dance around the PCs. If you come near the beatstick, you have to pay full attention to him or you're dead.

Enemies are better at getting long reach than PCs.

The melee PC must approach the enemies.

The melee PC is already at high risk of an AoO + full attack one rounding them.

See the problem?

[brainpiercing]

Because basically, no investment equals no return.  I'm not saying all is perfect, but anything added should require an investment.

That kind of statement will start to put you on a slippery slope.

Zero investment is a racial HD with poor stats (bad saves, skills and BAB). Little investment is an NPC warrior class HD.

More investment is putting something useful into it, using class levels and feats, so I think I'm on a pretty firm basis here.

Actually, the damage increase could be applied only to manufactured weapons. I recall somewhere dman suggesting that manufactured weapons should deal more damage than animals' claw attacks, and it does make sense. Natural attacks don't get scaling damage, they just deal whatever damage is appropriate to their size category and how deadly the designer wants a monster's natural attacks to be.

This requires specifying a lot of special cases: What happens to classes that grant natural weapons? If you make exceptions, where and when? Do animal companions count as class features? Familiars? Summons? Spells?

Or if you don't grant exceptions, do totemists now suck?