Wraith Strike, I never make people roll to use acrobatics for things like moving through allies squares. I probably let players get away without rolling for a lot of stuff they should.
As far as wizards and fly / invisibility, you could be right, but like I said, the defensive casting roll is almost automatic. Even if they get into more trouble with this system, it isn't that big of a deal.
Now, while I character can step up defensively, a step up is almost never defensive. Forward motion is almost always aggressive, unless you consider killing the target your "defense." When a character does a five foot step back under the protection of an allies threatened area, he knows he can make the step because unless his enemy is so sweet he has step up, he won't be able to safely time a following step through his ally's area.
Wraith Strike, I never make people roll to use acrobatics for things like moving through allies squares. I probably let players get away without rolling for a lot of stuff they should.
As far as wizards and fly / invisibility, you could be right, but like I said, the defensive casting roll is almost automatic. Even if they get into more trouble with this system, it isn't that big of a deal.
Now, while I character can step up defensively, a step up is almost never defensive. Forward motion is almost always aggressive, unless you consider killing the target your "defense." When a character does a five foot step back under the protection of an allies threatened area, he knows he can make the step because unless his enemy is so sweet he has step up, he won't be able to safely time a following step through his ally's area.
I misunderstood you on the acrobatics thing. I get it now. When you said through a threatened square I thought you meant through the opponent's square, and squished like the rogue are are going to be really hurt by the acrobatic's rule. It is hard enough to make a normal check. The option to go through an enemy's square is all but eliminated. You might want to make a rogue and run some math on this one.
Stepping forward aggressively does not mean stepping forward and dropping your defense especially when you see armed enemies around. It is not a wild charge. D&D also does not have facing so it is not necessarily even a step forward or backwards. It is just a simulation to represent you trying to create space.
Pathfinder might act like there isn't facing, but there is, in my opinion.
I had a monk in my last game with a 19 dexterity. At sixth level he was moving through equal level enemy fighter's squares on like a 6 or something. I don't think it is that hard if it is what you are trying to do.
6th level Monk
+6 Skills, +3 Class Skill, +4 Attribute, +3 Skill Focus = +166 Level Fighter
10 + 6 BAB, +5 STR, +1 Dex, +5 Difficulty = 27.So even without a magic item to help him, with no other special bonus besides Skill Focus, he can do it on an 11. Of course really optimizing for this sort of thing will give you a higher bonus.
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As far as the stepping forward thing, this is just a matter of how you want to see it - your own attitude on fighting will give you your own opinion, and while you aren't really wrong, I can't get behind your answer.
The fact that you had to take skill focus is a telling point. You should not have to take skill focus to succeed at a task. Skill focus is for those that want to be the best at it. Even without skill focus(perception) a rogue or ranger can most likely find most traps. A caster can use spellcraft or knowledge(arcana) without skill focus quiet well. Why should one skill be singled out?
Your monk without skill focus has a 13, and with it has a 16
Ettin CR 6 and average CMD(23)+5=28. Even you monk with the tax feat is struggling.
Earth Elemental CR 5 and elementals always have high CMD for their level, has a CMD of 25+5=30.
If for some reason the monk wants to tumble through a square the CMD's go to 33, and 35. The monk with is in dire straights to pull this off.
The only time you even get close to facing is the detect magic spells because the cone has to be focused in a certain area for so many rounds. Other than that there is no hint of facing. Even in the detect series of spells it is more like a focus than facing since the caster can still see the entire room. Facing would require your vision to be pointed in a certain area, which would allow you to sneak up on someone even if there was no cover or concealment.
To be fair I will admit I have been through this CMD vs acrobatics thing before in another thread late last year. That is how I knew to pull the elemental out, but that does not make my idea any less valid.
edit:As to the fighting thing people with RL experience have basically said the same thing. I don't think it is wrong to say that is how it works in your world, but if you are going to base it off of real life I would use RL examples. If pushing the wizard down a peg is more important than RL example then I would open up your idea of pushing the casters down a peg to other ideas such as the full round casting idea which remains revelant throughout a caster's career as opposed to a mechanic that gets less affective as the casters just get better with higher levels.
Why not simply rule that any character that is too decrepit or physically unfit to move quickly is denied the 5-foot step? This would be a situational ruling by the GM, not a blanket set of numbers to drape over an already complicated rules set.
I mean it's already your job as GM to do things like that.
I've done martial arts for the last 10 years including TKD, MMA, stick and knife fighting, traditional karate, systema, kung fu...
All these clowns that teach it say the same thing, "this is our 1000 year old tradition based on real world fighting application. It is universal to the way people move and responsive to the characteristics of the criminal mind," or, "This is how you fight. We will teach you to fight."
Despite that, they all do it differently and close to 90% of them couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag and you can't tell the difference between them by what they are saying. All of the experience, even war time experience, for real people, barely boils down to more than anecdotal evidence.
I'm trying to model situations that I feel are realistic. That said, there isn't anyway to vocally express how a fight works in a way people can agree, it is one of those things where to get the truth you really have to say "show me, on me."
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I don't think that there is anything wrong with requiring skill focus and magic to regularly cheat equals out of their roll. A fighter really can't do anything to get in a rogues way if the rogue is faster, unless you really twink it out or use one of my house rules. Once in the rogues way, he is doing his job, being in the way. He barely has any other function than to be in the way.
If a rogue wants to get past him, he should have to invest quite a bit into it, because once past, the fighter really can't do anything else to him.
A lot of the time, the rogue or monk with acrobatics isn't going to be trying to jump over high level fighters anyway. If a PC at high level is fighting other high level player character types, something very important is probably going on. Against mooks a few levels lower, getting by shouldn't be a problem.
So this is not being done to weaken the caster, it is being done to strengthen the fighter? I am also assuming you use classed opponents as opposed to monsters since you seem to focus on fighters. That is important since it has a different affect on your game, and it changes the advice that people might give.
It isn't specifically to strengthen or weaken either character. It is to fix a situation that I think doesn't emulate reality. People can't take a five foot step back in the middle of a fight to do something that would ordinarily get them killed, all the time, without error.So this is not being done to weaken the caster, it is being done to strengthen the fighter? I am also assuming you use classed opponents as opposed to...
Fair enough. It seems you have made up your mind on the issue. I am curious as to why is such an issue compared to other things such as shooting 5 arrows in 6 seconds accurately, as an example.
I play e6, ....Fair enough. It seems you have made up your mind on the issue. I am curious as to why is such an issue compared to other things such as shooting 5 arrows in 6 seconds accurately, as an example.It isn't specifically to strengthen or weaken either character. It is to fix a situation that I think doesn't emulate reality. People can't take a five foot step back in the middle of a fight to do something that would ordinarily get them killed, all the time, without error.So this is not being done to weaken the caster, it is being done to strengthen the fighter? I am also assuming you use classed opponents as opposed to...
Nobody knew that, and that changes the way things are done, and how people view the game. Thanks for the response.
The problem with the 5' step is that while it may not fit overly well on the fluff side of things, it is necessary to keep casters and ranged attackers from being completely useless in combat after the first round or so. DnD has never been able to simulate a proper balance between magic, ranged attacks, and melee attacks. The 5' step is an unfortunately necessary stopgap measure that, while far from perfect, is required for a turn based game that has to be already unrealistic in assuming that everyone even gets a shot at doing something every round.
I must be terrible at making arguments, because the 5 foot step makes sense to me.
Not that it's a big deal.
Besides, the group I used to GM for doesn't like e6, and I still would force these rules on them.
Force? I don't think you ever fully understood why I'm responding.
It isn't that your adding a rule.
It isn't that your changing a rule.
It isn't that your trying to balance the game.
It's that your attempting to do all of these things without a reason that is equal to the change you are making.
When you change a fundamental rule such as this you better have several very good reasons. Right? If you think your reasons for making this change are very good reasons then why hasn't this change been made during the past decade? Why haven't they fixed this? Has there been a splat book that has fixed this?
I'm not asking these questions to make you mad I'm asking them to make you think. Take a 5' step back and think. Having the authority to make a decision does not mean you have the wisdom to make the correct decision.
On the argument of believability: I don't think its believable that a Wizard would sit still and let himself be attacked four times. 5 feet by 10 feat is a pretty big space for movement. Certainly you could imagine all manner of attacks and parrys and doges and advances and retreats all within roughly that space. If you are holding a weapon and are in combat(and you are any good at combat) your not just standing there. Your in a stance. Not all stances are built for speed. A combatant only trains to be fast enough to catch another combatant. Combatants don't train by killing unarmed opponents.
Fencers are trained to be quick. They have a specific stance where one foot is directly behind the other. They are also not as good as Broadsword fighters at turning quickly because thats not as necessary for that kind of fight.
This isn't to say a combatant can't move fast across a battlefield but they're not in a stance when your charging. In fact you receive a -2 to your AC.
A wizard must certainly have a stance as well but chances are it's specific to spell casting.
I don't think it would be worth much time to invent rules for entering or exiting a stance but if it helps you understand how movement in combat works to imagine them changing stances all the better.
Indecently giving a character a -2 to AC for taking a 5' step and not engaging another enemy combatant would seen a little logical but probably so circumstantial that it wouldn't be worth the trouble to implement.
This is something I never can quite get: If the game you are playing isn't fundamentally based on what your are expecting, why are you playing that game?
D&D isn't based of anything nearing the real world. D&D is a fantasy game, be it low or high fantasy. There are shades of the real world in certain aspects of the game, but that's just because it is easier to relate to something you expect.
If you wish to model reality, you'd be better off playing a game whose system is based on reality. For example, GURPS resolves combat in 1-second rounds. There isn't any of this silly "imagine you are making 5 attacks and retreating slowly" nonsense. What you do on your turn is what you do on your turn.
Just a thought.
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As for the actual topic of the thread, the following changes might work for what you're looking for.
When casting a spell when threatened, you must make a concentration check (should be easier than Defensive Casting) or lose the spell. You may avoid this check by attempting to Cast Defensively.
If you take a 5-foot step to exit a threatened square and attempt to take an action, you must make a concentration check (DC=5+CMB of previous threatener?) or fail to perform the action.
However, I would never implement this. There are already enough ways to prevent people from retreating from melee. As soon as you close to melee with a suspected caster, your very first attack should be a grapple or a trip. It doesn't even matter if you have the feats because the caster will probably not be armed. The easiest way to prevent casters from stepping away is actively removing the option to move.
I'm one of those with no issue with the 5' step. However, for the limiting on casters CraneWings wants to enable, I think the suggestion of all spells are a full round cast is the easiest implimentation with least rules adjustment.
Greg
Fighters in theory are supposed to protect the casters but in the end they just provide a gap stop, just like summoned creatures do. If he wants fighters to be better at stopping things then feats like the stand still feat from complete psionics is a good one to use, or even better just allow the PF Stand Still feat to affect squares other than adjacent ones. That give the fighter true battlefield control. There are a ton of ways to make the fighter better at stopping people without making squishes weaker.
Needing a feat just to be competent in a skill is also not something I agree with especially since the math I showed above does not help the rogue against CR equal opponents, and heaven forbid a boss fight come up. the rogue can't tumble or 5 ft step into position.
Tumbling is supposed to be fairly simple for the rogue. How else is he supposed to deal damage?
I hope he comes back after this experiment and tells us how it went, or better yet I hope to see one of is players here.
edit:after my last post I see why he is doing certain thing, but I don't agree with the methods so this post has been edited
I'm one of those with no issue with the 5' step. However, for the limiting on casters CraneWings wants to enable, I think the suggestion of all spells are a full round cast is the easiest implimentation with least rules adjustment.
Greg
That wouldn't fix the issue at hand since they could still take a five foot step. If you change them to a casting time of '1 round' it would work, but that would be horribly unforgiving to casters.
Then again, that seems to be what he wants...
However, I would never implement this. There are already enough ways to prevent people from retreating from melee. As soon as you close to melee with a suspected caster, your very first attack should be a grapple or a trip. It doesn't even matter if you have the feats because the caster will probably not be armed. The easiest way to prevent casters from stepping away is actively removing the option to move.
True Dat!
Give fighters "step up" for free upon creation?
I am trying to think of easier implementations.
Cranewings seems to be trying to create a low magic, fighterfriendly E6. Though I am a fan of E6, I don't seem to have the malice towards casters or see the need to increase the fighters. If anything, for E6 my issue is with Rangers outperforming other melee. Still trying to work around that and may start my own thread in a few weeks once I have some ideas.
Greg
I'm one of those with no issue with the 5' step. However, for the limiting on casters CraneWings wants to enable, I think the suggestion of all spells are a full round cast is the easiest implimentation with least rules adjustment.
Greg
He later changed the reason. I think he is trying to equalize the classes.
I'm simply a lot more interesting in the interplay between classed characters.
Oh. I got nuttin.
Greg
Indecently giving a character a -2 to AC for taking a 5' step and not engaging another enemy combatant would seen a little logical but probably so circumstantial that it wouldn't be worth the trouble to implement.
Now that I think about this its not a bad idea at all. Is it?
Oh. I got nuttin.
Greg
I don't have much hope for this equalizing thing either. Low level casters are not good enough to justify the high chance of death, and rogues need more help, not to be nerfed.
Someone refered to the bad Old Days of 1st/2nd Edition and it's casting times.
I think that could be usable here :)
Each Spell has a Casting Time. A quick suggestion would be half level, round Up, +1 if it requires somatic components, +1 if it requires material components. So, a Blur is a level 2 (+1), with only Verbal components: Casting Time 1. Fireball is a level 3 (+2) with Verbal, Somatic (+1, second component) and Material (+1, third component) netting Casting Time 4.
The caster is reduced to Flatfooted AC (though not considered Flat Footed!) for the duration of their casting. All damage taken during the casting is accumulated and the caster must pass a single concentration check in order to successfully complete the spell.
So, if a wizard was throwing a Stoneskin, starting on Init 16, and is hit three times for a total of 20 points of damage on init cycle 16/15/14/13 he must make a Concentration check (from the core rules) of 10+20(damage)+4(Spell Level)=34. If you are only playing to 6th level, no caster would ever get a spell off against an aware party unless they lots of space/blockers. (in review, I would make the Concentration check simply Damage+Spell Level.) Or, simply say that *any* damage is 'catastrophic' and the spell is lost.
This would also make the 5'step and cast irrelevant.
GNOME
I removed a post using inappropriate language and the replies to it.