As a veteran of 3e D&D, I find that the lack of Attacks of Opportunity in the Pathfinder Beginner Box has a hugely beneficial effect on play. Combats go much faster and are more dynamic. Wizards and other back-line fighters are much more likely to be attacked; and with no Concentration skill they can't cast in spells with melee. However it does raise a couple issues, eg it should be possible to 'bodyguard' or otherwise stop people running past you. Here are my ideas:
1) Readied standard actions are back: you can Ready (going out of initiative order) a standard action, eg Ready to attack an opponent when they move adjacent to you. Your initiative then goes to just before theirs.
1) A move ends if you are adjacent to an enemy. You can take a second move action to move again.
These may make fights a bit less run-everywhere, but should be simple to adjudicate and keep things fast, while enabling battlefield control.
I haven't played with the beginners box but like the idea of streamlining combat by removing AOO.
Treating threatened squares as difficult terrain might be a simple way to model the need to move carefully past armed creatures?
1) A move ends if you are adjacent to an enemy. You can take a second move action to move again.
Well that didn't work, and really annoyed the Rogue player until I gave up on it.
In play, my experience is that anything which stops PCs attacking is not really a good idea, and same goes for monsters to a lesser extent. It looks like just sticking to the rules as written is best, though I like the idea of enemy-adjacent squares costing double. But really Rogues need Sneak Attack to be viable in melee, and +2 for flanking is pretty meagre really, so I think I'll just stick with RAW, which worked great in my first game.
Allowing Readied standard actions worked fine, though.
Treating threatened squares as difficult terrain might be a simple way to model the need to move carefully past armed creatures?
Thinking about it some more, I'm not sure how this can be made to work. It needs to be *leaving* the threatened square that counts as extra movement, otherwise it would cost extra just to move adjacent to a foe and attack! But costing double for leaving adjacent square prevents the 5' step!
The more I think about it, the more I think that the right solution is just to stick with free movement, as per the BB RAW. A heavy armour wearer only gets 4 squares of movement on a move action (or 3 diagonally), that's really not much! Even the 6 squares for light/unarmoured is not huge, but enough to allow for some dynamic combat - much moreso than in regular Pathfinder or 3e & 4e D&D, where opportunity attacks clamp everything down.
Reducing battlefield control has another beneficial effect - it means you can get a dynamic fight on a smaller battle map, and forming a 'front line' typically requires no more than a 10' frontage, whereas with OAs 2 melee PCs can do it on a 30' frontage! 10' is both more realistic and works much better with the Paizo flipmat dungeon maps.
You know, it almost feels like AoO developed before the "feel" of what you can do with feats developed, but I could be wrong.
What do I mean?
It almost seems like "I want to be able to hit him if he tries to withdraw from me and fight anyone else" would be a great feat to give someone.
However, it applies to everyone in the game.
Not having many hit points and not wearing armor tends to be a good disincentive to casting in front of someone, but you could easily make a "Magekiller" feat that let to hit a caster, if they tried to do it, instead of making it the default.
In this way, you have everyone being able to move where they wanted, so the movement in combat rules are simple . . . then you apply the specific rules.
>>It almost seems like "I want to be able to hit him if he tries to withdraw from me and fight anyone else" would be a great feat to give someone.<<
Hm, interesting thought!
However with the 5ft step, I remember reading somewhere in the BB that movement can never be reduced below a minimum of 5ft. So using a 5ft step will always allow you to move atleast 5ft. In this regard threatened squares costing double movement is not a problem.
I think the rule is that you can always move at least 5' as a full-round (double move) action, as long as you're capable of moving at all. That doesn't let you 5' step, though. I didn't let a Prone PC 5' step, and AFAIK that's per RAW. I did let him shoot a shortbow while 'prone' though, which is not RAW but I was thinking he could fire it from a crouching position, and rising to a crouch could be subsumed into the general move-equivalent action of grabbing & readying the bow.
You could fire a crossbow prone easily, reloading it might be a challenge though.
I would always let a player who could move (ie not frozen, stuck), be able to move a minimum of 5ft. I am pretty sure there is a rule somewhere that says you can always make a 5ft step if you're able to move at all, you just can't combine the 5ft step with regular movement.
No, it's not a 5' step, it's a full round to move 5'. See page 55 of the Heroes' Handbook on Minimum Movement - "You can spend a full round (your move plus your standard action) to move 5 feet (1 square) in any direction". Page 54 on 5' step: "You cannot take a 5' step if your movement is slowed or you are moving into terrain that slows you down".