Hey eveyone, I'm new to the boards here and just beginning to look into 3P as an alternative to 4e (i'm really glad paizo is carrying the dnd torch through these dark times!)
One thing that was a clever (but simple) change that 4e did, was removing the free 5ft-step in combat and replacing it with the 5ft-shift or a move action with an AoO. The reason why I though this was so clever was because it removes the wandering battle phenomena (e.g. round by round, step by step, the battle wanders by 5ft-increments through the forest, down the hill, across the river...). It also makes combat harder to escape from when two opponents are toe to toe. I'm not sure if this has been discussed already, if so, please point me in the right direction, if not, I wonder what other people think about the rule change?
On the side: are there plans to spell out a combat round explicitly in the rules (e.g. Standard, Move, Free, Immediate, etc.)?
On reach: from what I can tell, 4e is still trying to figure out how reach will exactly work. I'm glad that it was removed from certain martial weapons, but now they seem to be struggling to give it back to larger creatures (i.e. dragons, etc). I can already smell the errata... In any case I was wondering if there were plans to revise the reach rules in 3P? Perhaps making it a combat maneuver with certain conditions? Perhaps even just qualifying it (e.g. in order to qualify for reach, two combatants must be two or more sizes apart)? Once again, I'm interested in what others think about this.
Thanks!
Also, not quite sure what you are getting at. You already get either movement or a 5ft step, as you cannot perform the latter if you have done the former.
I was under the impression that in 3.5e, one could take a free 5ft step. Therefore it was possible to make a 5ft step and a full round attack.
In 4e, the 5ft step isn't free, it's a move action, therefore you can't make a 5ft step and full attack, I think. Please correct me if I'm wrong.