I want to make the rules match the cliche in my head where casters and archers cannot trivially operate next to guys with swords.
* A caster or archer next to a guy with a sword should not find it trivial to back up and cast or shoot unmolested. The guy with the sword should be able to advance on the caster or archer in order to interrupt the casting or shooting.
* Furthermore, I want it to be hard(er) for a caster or archer to operate when a guy with a sword right there and swinging.
* I want it to be harder to escape from a melee fight than it is to follow, unless you drop your guard entirely, turn around, and flee.
* Tactical movement, including and especially 5 ft steps, should be encouraged.
* I want to do all of this while maintaining simple interoperability with existing 3.5 and Pathfinder material.
As far as I know, this was true in spirit and perhaps in practice in 1e and 2e.
It seems the designers of 3.x also intended this to some degree given the rules for casting provoking attacks of opportunity. However, merely taking movement backwards and eating an attack of opportunity (with an easy tumble check to negate in 3.5), and especially 5 ft stepping back, make me question either the competency of the designers of 3.x or whether they intended attacks of opportunity to be a serious impediment to casters.
I've seen a lot of ideas on how to do it, but I haven't seen several of these ideas put together in one place. I hope for good comments (but I have appropriately low expectations). I hope that this might be useful for stimulating conversation as well for others for their own games, and also for building upon this for even better rules.
Here are my proposed changes:
Withdrawing From Melee
When taking movement, if any of the movement involves leaving a square threatened by an enemy in a direction away from that enemy, then you must choose between a retreat and a fighting withdrawal. You do not have to make this choice when approaching an enemy or when your distance to the enemy does not increase.
Retreat: Retreating leaves you less able to defend yourself. If you retreat and leave a square which is threatened by an enemy in a direction away from that enemy, then you lose your Dexterity bonus to AC against attacks made by that enemy until the start of your next turn, and you provoke an attack of opportunity as normal (you lose your Dexterity bonus to AC against the attack of opportunity too). Successful acrobatics (tumble) checks can negate attacks of opportunity while retreating but do not prevent losing your Dexterity bonus to AC against such enemies.
(TBD: Maybe very high acrobatics (tumble) checks allow you to keep your Dexterity bonus to AC while retreating.)
(TBD: Creatures with all around vision probably should keep their Dexterity bonus to AC while retreating.)
Fighting Withdrawal: A fighting withdrawal allows you to defend yourself, but limits you to half of your available movement. This movement penalty applies to the entire action (such as the entire move action), and is not applied on a per-square basis. A fighting withdrawal provokes attacks of opportunity as normal, but you do not lose your Dexterity bonus to AC like you do when retreating. Successful acrobatics (tumble) checks can negate attacks of opportunity while doing a fighting withdrawal.
5 ft steps are always treated as a fighting withdrawal. You do not suffer the movement penalty of a fighting withdrawal on 5 ft steps.
Sticky Melee
Creatures who have a base attack bonus of +1 or higher are allowed a new action in combat: Melee Follow. Whenever a threatened foe attempts to take movement away from you, you may also take movement so long as you follow the path of the fleeing creature who triggered this ability. You may not move further than the amount of movement of one of your move actions (taking into account difficult terrain et. al.). If other creatures are nearby, you may have to decide between a retreat and a fighting withdrawal.
If you use this ability to move 5 feet and it satisfies the difficult terrain rules et. al. of a 5-foot step, then your movement is treated as a 5-foot step, and it does not provoke attacks of opportunity.
If you use this ability to move, then you must pay for that movement in your next turn. You can pay for a 5-foot step by sacrificing a 5-foot step on your next turn (and taking no other movement on your next turn). You can pay for movement by taking a move action for movement (or any other ability which grants movement) and sacrificing the required amount of movement.
All creatures with a base attack bonus of +1 or higher are treated as having the step up feat.
Casters Screwed In Melee
Everyone is assumed to always be casting defensively. Casting defensively provokes attacks of opportunities. You do not need to make a concentration check to cast defensively or lose your spell. You are denied your dex bonus to AC when casting. The combat casting feat allows you to keep your dex bonus to AC when casting defensively. The disruptive feat adds a +4 bonus to attack rolls on casting creatures.
Archers Screwed In Melee
A successful attack of opportunity, when provoked by a ranged attack, interrupts the ranged attack, cancels it, and wastes the action of the ranged attack to no effect. (A successful attack of opportunity only cancels a single ranged attack of a full round attack action. Of course, a second successful attack of opportunity might cancel a second ranged attack of the full attack action, and so on.)
Closing Loopholes
I’m going to have to nerf the few cheap magic items that allow cheap teleportation. I believe the number of such items is small. I would either increase the use-time to a standard action, or make the teleportation end your turn like a dimension door spell. I would also need to nerf the swift invisibility spell.
I'm somewhat sympathetic to the problem you seem to be seeing in your game. That said, I think you may be going a bit too far.
When doing houserules, I find it beneficial to keep them as sample as possible. My simple suggestions:
1) Every character and creature gets the step up feat for free at BAB +1.
2) The penalty granted by the disruptive feat is 2 + 1/3 BAB. The disruptive feat can be selected by any character with a BAB of +4 or higher.
3) The point blank master feat and any other feat or abilities that prevent provoking attacks of opportunity while using ranged weapons are completely removed.
Cheap magic items and teleportation effects might require a bit more work. I find that not allowing anything outside of the Core Rulebook line (core rulebook, advanced player's guide, ultimate magic, ultimate combat, bestiaries, ultimate campaign, and advanced class guide) reduces these issues greatly.
Maybe I'm going too far with some of it. However, with just the step up feat as a bonus feat for everyone, that still leaves two big loopholes:
- Simply take a move action backwards, eat the attack of opportunity (with an acrobatics (tumble) check) to avoid), and then cast in safety. Decent odds to avoid damage altogether. Guaranteed to work if you can soak the damage - modulo stuff like trip and the stand still feat (more feat taxes).
- Casting defensively. Not guaranteed, but pretty good odds.
Already that's about 3 more feats for the feat tax for a guy with a sword to be a credible threat to a caster, let alone a guaranteed attack of opportunity. Even then, acrobatics (tumble) and high AC / CMD can save the caster. (Even with my proposed changes, high AC / CMD can save the caster, but I make it a bit more vicious.)
PS: My aim at the table is generally to allow most things by default. My aim is not to be a controlling GM and to allow whatever fun stuff a player can find, and if I'm in the mood even invent (which is rarely invoked).
JohnDoomdriven wrote: Maybe I'm going too far with some of it. However, with just the step up feat as a bonus feat for everyone, that still leaves two big loopholes:
- Simply taking a move action out of harms way, eating the attack of opportunity (with a acrobatics (tumble) check) to avoid), and then casting in safety. Guaranteed to work if you can soak the damage, and decent odds to avoid damage altogether.
- Casting defensively. Not guaranteed, but pretty good odds.
Making the penalty from disruptive scale with BAB and giving step up for free should go a long way towards eliminating concerns on the second point. As for spells, taking a single AoO a round may not sound like much, but the martial character also gets an attack in on his round, so that means that the caster is taking two attacks for each spell he casts.
In the past, when I had concerns with the power of spells, I found that my problem was one of pace - if the party can rest each and every time they want to, without impunity, then the casters will blow their wad on the first 2 combats and then try to rest. Push the party to go further each day - collapse the entrance of a cave after they walk in, give them quests with time limits, have them fight (and get bit by) lycanthropes deep in the woods the night before a full moon... See if they stop to rest that night, or slog their way through five encounters as the lycanthropes attempt to chase them down. =) It usually only takes one day of the caster blowing his load and looking awesome the first 2 combats and then being COMPLETELY USELESS the next 3 or 4 for him to get the point that he should conserve his spell power a bit more.
Of course, those are lower level suggestions and it's certainly harder to accomplish the same thing at mid to high levels once teleportation spells come online, but by that time, the enemies can jump your party in their sleep using their own teleportation spells if they sense that your party has let down their defenses. =)
I agree that more combats per day can help this out. I've been working on that for a while.
Still, I agree that becomes hard to do when teleportation comes online, which is also around when "quadratic casters" start pulling ahead of "linear warriors". My changes are meant to address that, and are not targeted against low level play.
PS: As for scry-and-die, aka "scry opponent, then teleport to opponent", I play with the following rule (potentially house rule): A mere scry is insufficient to allow a teleport unless you otherwise recognize where the place is. A teleport spell requires that you have a mental picture of the place and of its location.
Note that I've found a Pathfinder dev post strongly suggesting this, and if you read the text in the full 3.5 PHB (not the online SRD), it gives an example in the teleport spell that knowing what the chief's tent looks like on the inside and outside is insufficient to teleport if you do not also know where the tent is.
Of course, I recognize that the scrying spell in 3.5 has description which can be read otherwise, and the Pathfinder scrying spell has a changed word (which IMHO was the result of an accidental editor change for clarity) which clearly reads to the contrary.
JohnDoomdriven wrote: 1) A caster or archer next to a guy with a sword should not find it trivial to back up and cast or shoot unmolested. The guy with the sword should be able to advance on the caster or archer in order to interrupt the casting or shooting.
2) I want it to be harder to escape from a melee fight than it is to follow, unless you drop your guard entirely, turn around, and flee.
3) Tactical movement, including and especially 5 ft steps, should be encouraged.
1 & 2 are at odds with 3.
If taking a 5 foot step back to shoot an arrow doesn't work (points 1 and 2) then you're actually making the five foot step weaker (violating point 3).
By giving everyone stepup for free at any point (BAB 1 as suggested) you've essentially revoked the 5 foot step's benefit from everyone forever. All you're left with is slight shifting around your opponent, which more often than not, is not very tactical.
Tumbling to avoid an attack of opportunity isn't that easy, especially for casters that don't have acrobatics as a class skill.
In pathfinder, tumbling isn't a flat DC anymore, but a DC equal to the opponent CMD, which is more and more enormous as the game advance highter in levels. Tumbling out of an ennemy reach can also be hard with a speed of 30 feet or lesser, because each tumbled square count as double the normal movement. A Large or Huge creature with Lunge may still treat you after a full tumble movement. Same for polearm users.
Personnaly, I like to use difficult terrain to nerf 5 ft step and tumble, as it make it a lot more difficult to avoid this melee guy in front of you, because your more is more likely to provoke an attack of opportunity.
@ Draco18s
We mean different things by "tactical movement". I don't mean "you can avoid attacks of opportunity trivially". I mean "you are free to move around terrain, which can set up interesting possibilities".
A caster is still free to move about. A melee can follow. Depending on terrain, that movement can still be quite beneficial. That's what I meant by tactical movement. For example, it might be possible to get to the other side of a door then close it.
Alternatives include stuff like banning 5 ft steps outright, or giving everyone the stand still feat for free. That accomplishes almost the same thing. However, banning 5 ft steps and giving the stand still feat does stop all tactical movement. That's what I meant when I said I want to preserve tactical movement.
Think of any cliche movie fight scene of two guys with swords going at each other. They frequently dance around the environment. That's the cliche I want to go for. Each round of tactical movement offers new possibilities as they get to new terrain.
@ Kelazan
Yes. In Pathfinder acrobatics (tumble) DCs are hard. They are based on the enemy's CMD. I like that very much. I assumed that when creating the above house rules.
PS: I haven't played with these at all. I'm just looking for some feedback. If I know my group, they probably won't see play either. We'll see...
Something you could consider is giving an AC penalty (or bonus to hit) in melee if one of the combatants isn't in a position to effectively parry. Let's face it - if you have a sword and I'm standing there waving my hands and mumbling arcane words, there is virtually nothing I can do to stop you chopping my arms off. Similarly with ranged weapons: anyone who tries to parry a mace with a longbow is going to be looking for a new bow pretty soon.
+4 situational bonus to hit in melee if opponent isn't actively defending with melee weapon or shield
This isn't such a problem for spells with <1 round casting times, as a spell caster can easily be holding a dagger or a staff. For spells with full round casting times, it's a real issue. For ranged users, it's going to lead them to question whether it's worth risking a Full Round attack.
JohnDoomdriven wrote: @ Draco18s
Think of any cliche movie fight scene of two guys with swords going at each other. They frequently dance around the environment. That's the cliche I want to go for. Each round of tactical movement offers new possibilities as they get to new terrain.
What I'm saying is that it won't happen. If a 5-foot step while remaining adjacent to your enemy was actually that valuable, we'd be seeing it already.
Back in 1st or 2nd edition days, if you were trying to use a ranged weapon in melee you suffered a minus 4 on your attacks, not on your defense, but you could apply that to both if you wanted to.
For casters, simply ban concentration checks to cast without triggering AoOs.
Problem solved.
(Not that I think there is a problem)
@ Draco18s
In my proposed rules, a caster could also 5 ft step backwards. It's not limited to 5 ft stepping to only adjacent spaces.
I'm also still allowing moving back with an attack of opportunity and with a acrobatics (tumble) check to negate.
@ Gilarius
About Archers:
That idea could work.
About Casters:
Going in the right direction, but you still need like a 3 feat tax to even start to make that work. You need:
* step up to handle 5 ft steps
* combat reflexes -> stand still to handle taking a movement backwards.
I want to make that the default for guys with swords, not something you have to specialize in, regardless of what 1e and 2e had.
However, it's also my understanding that in 1e or 2e, casting time was comparable to 3.5 "1 round" or longer cast times, which means guys with swords always had at least one turn to get close to poke the caster to interrupt the spell. (AFAIK, any damage automatically interrupted casting too.)
In 3.x, suddenly nearly all of the spells became standard-action to cast, which means that guys with swords cannot interrupt casters merely by moving up on their turn and poking. IMHO, as far as I can tell, the designers of 3.x added attacks of opportunity for casting in order to give back what was taken from guys with swords when cast times were changed to standard actions.
However, the designers of 3.x also added like three solid ways to avoid the attack of opportunity: #1- 5 ft steps, #2- cast defensively, and #3- take a move action, eat the attack, and cast in safety. To get back to the feel of my understanding of 1e and 2e where casters are severely screwed when a guy with a sword gets adjacent, I need to deal with all 3 of those escapes. And as I said earlier, this shouldn't be a feat tax. This should be something all guys with swords get just for being proficient with a sword.
...
PS: Yes, this is a huge change of balance. That's what I'm going for. It seems some of the posters in the thread simply don't like the idea I'm going for. I understand that some people feel that casters should generally be able to cast spells on their turn and use their character's abilities. That is specifically what I am proposing to change.
I want a caster to have to be super defensive and paranoid in order to be able to flail his arms about and chant to cast his awesome spells of awesome. If the caster screws up, then he should be locked down and prevented from using his class abilities. That's the trade-off for getting magic.
It might also promote some actual teamwork with his friends with swords to provide cover against the enemy guys with swords, almost like linebackers.
JohnDoomdriven wrote: @ Draco18s
In my proposed rules, a caster could also 5 ft step backwards.
And still be in melee, making the entire move pointless.
If the caster moves farther they have to make a choice between:
Half-move
No-dex-to-AC
And take an attack of opportunity either way that they don't have the skillpoints to put into Tumble/Acrobatics to even make* to avoid. Oh and they still end up in melee range of the thing. Because it followed them.
I have a character that would be able to take a half-move and end up out of reach, but only because I have 70 feet of movement (30 foot bonus from bloodline).
*Assuming that anyone can make it because it's opposed by CMD.
@ Draco18s
I again say that moving to different terrain can limit how many enemies can attack you. You could move by allies to help get enemies off you. You and your allies could work together to put your allies in between the caster and the enemies with movement (using various combat maneuvers). You could move to the other side of a doorway and close a door. You can jump up, jump down, slippery terrain, rough terrain, etc.
In short, I don't conflate "tactical movement" with "casters should be able to trivially avoid all attacks of opportunity". I think you're being quite unreasonable.
JohnDoomdriven wrote: You could move to the other side of a doorway and close a door. You can jump up, jump down, slippery terrain, rough terrain, etc. Of of which are going to hamper the caster's own movement as well. If it's difficult terrain for HIM, the only way a 5 foot step will make him enter it is if you're already in it it. And if you're already in difficult terrain, you're already screwed.
Anyway, I don't think this can't work, but that you aren't fully considering the implications. Feel free to try it out, but I'm almost certain that one of two things will happen, maybe both:
1) people will stop playing ranged characters entirely (or if they do, find ways to avoid the whole terrain problem, say, by Flying)
2) people will stop taking 5-foot-steps, except under specific circumstances (i.e. moving into flanking or switching targets).
There aren't enough player characters to make a withdrawal work to try and lead an enemy into range of your allies. Typically a D&D party is 4 to 6 people fighting off 8 to 20 guys. If the caster gets into melee and tries to lead one of them past the fighter...he's going to die. The AoO is going to ruin his face and the movement he gets out of the withdrawal isn't going to be enough to make him safe more often than not (6 squares is not very far: how often are you going to be able to move 6 squares and step past both front-line fighters and still have 1 extra square in order to stay out of melee?). Especially as your allies only have 1 AoO each to give trying to keep the melee guy off your back. If more than one person gets into trouble or if there are two or more guys perusing you, you're hosed.
All of the changes to casting have been to make the game more fun. Rolling them back would at best be trading one problem for another.
Casters that can't cast spells are aristocrats at best. They aren't fun to play and they aren't really fun to fight.
I would instead roll back the nerfs to melee.
If melee characters could move and full attack they wouldn't need to be sticky. The casters have smaller hit dice and the most dangerous casters qua casters have no armor. Being at risk of dieing is enough of a reason to not want to be near melee without also being unable to use their one tool set.
In games without any spell loss mechanics at all casters who wind up in melee still get Darwin awards.
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