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Suggestion:
AoOs are nowhere near deadly enough. After all, if there’s someone standing next to you with a katana, and you bend down to tie your shoes, you’re going to get more than just an attack of opportunity. Should you not, in the least, be flat-footed when you receive an AoO, since that’s consistent by the definition of both AoA and flat-footedness. This would also sort out the question of whether you can AoO an AoO – the answer is yes if you have Combat Reflexes.
Comments?
Richard
Suggestion:
AoOs are nowhere near deadly enough. After all, if there’s someone standing next to you with a katana, and you bend down to tie your shoes, you’re going to get more than just an attack of opportunity. Should you not, in the least, be flat-footed when you receive an AoO, since that’s consistent by the definition of both AoA and flat-footedness. This would also sort out the question of whether you can AoO an AoO – the answer is yes if you have Combat Reflexes.
Comments?
Richard
What you describe is essentially making yourself willingly helpless next to a hostile. He will coup de gras you, you will die. Tying shoes is a very big no-no when next to Katana-sama.
However, most other AoOs are less tactically dumb items. You can hold your shield up while drinking a potion and you can still move around. Moving too much leaves an opening, but still you are able to defend yourself. Unarmed attacks, you chose poorly but you are indeed still able to defend yourself (grab a chair.) It isn't that you totally dropped the ball, you just left a little opening.
Edit: Spelling Error
Suggestion:
AoOs are nowhere near deadly enough. After all, if there’s someone standing next to you with a katana, and you bend down to tie your shoes, you’re going to get more than just an attack of opportunity. Should you not, in the least, be flat-footed when you receive an AoO, since that’s consistent by the definition of both AoA and flat-footedness. This would also sort out the question of whether you can AoO an AoO – the answer is yes if you have Combat Reflexes.
Comments?
Richard
Bending down to tie your shoes is more like a full round action that makes you helpless. That is nowhere near as bad as drawing an item or trying to fun past someone. Remember the game is an abstraction not a simulation, and there are many posts on here that show bad things happen if too much realism is brought into the game. For what you are wanting I would judge each AoO independently. Well to be honest I would not use the idea at all, but best case scenario is to judge each provoke independently.
I understand that my example might have been a bit extreme.
However, do you not feel that if you provoke an AoO you probably should be denied your DEX bonus to AC?
And, Rogues should be allowed to sneak attack you?
Richard
No we don't. Being denied dex normally means either you don't know the bad guy is there, with the exception of losing initiative, or it means you are so distracted by a 2nd attacker, in the case of flanking, that you are open to the sneak attack. In both cases the situation is that you can not defend yourself properly, and they make sense to me since you can't defend against the unknown, and it is hard to fight off 2 or more people.
Provoking does not mean you can't defend yourself to the extent that being flanked or being ambushed does. It only means there was a temporary lapse in defense that allows an extra attack to get though.