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I love house rules, and I love play testing new ideas. I always suggest to people looking to get into game design is to change the rules of a simple game and see how it changes the overall game. It’s a great exercise and it is a lot of fun.
So recently I changed a pretty big rule in pathfinder, I changed how attack of opportunity works. As it stands right now the rule is you may make a single attack once per round at your highest attack bonus against a foe in your threatened square when they provoke it. One of my players asked how come they can only attack, I was only left with one answer, because the rules said so. So after talking it over we decided to try and change the rule, here is how the rule read for our play test
“A player may make an Action of Opportunity (AoO) if a person within a threatened square provokes one, only 1 of AoO may normally be taken a round”
We had to change how certain actions worked but that was it. This meant a person got a single standard or move action when a person provoked one. So what happened was people would get up close, fight and when someone did something that provoked an AoO they got to do more actions. People would use it to grapple, use it to use special attacks. Other times people would use their AoO to follow people as they tried to run away. We found that it lead to a lot of chain events.
For example in one fight our wizard was attacked by a bandit. The wizard used their move action to run away and then cast a spell as the bandit had a weapon with reach and would hit them if they stayed close and cast a spell and the wizard was not comfortable eating the attacking or casting defensively. The wizard moved and provoked an AoO so the bandit followed him instead of attacking him. The wizard was able to get behind friendlies but he brought a friend over. This caused the bandit to run through and out of the fighter’s threat square who used his AoO to grapple the bandit as he ran by, this caused the fighter to provoke an AoO. The bandit had combat reflexes which meant he got more AoO per round. The bandit used this opportunity to use improve dirty trick on the fighter and blinded him. The now blinded fighter failed his grapple and the wizard and bandit moved right along next to the friendly ranger.
This was just one example of these chain events, it seems like it could get complicated kind of quickly but we had a blast with it. We noticed people would use their AoO in different ways, and we are sure we did not find all the strange ways the game could change with this. We did notice spell casters using a lot more spells but also taking a lot more damage. So I put this house rule change out there. What do you think of this house rule change? What changes could you see happen as a result of this rule change?
An interesting concept. This seems like it might inject some chess-like strategy into combat. At first blush this sounds like a fun thing to try, even if it produces some problems later on.
I am withholding further commentary for now, because I have classes going on and a short break, but I'm keeping an eye on this.
I don't know if I would allow any standard action, but it does sound like it added a fun new dimension to the game.
Casting spells as an AoO is a bad idea for a lot of reasons, IMO.
Firstly is the wizard taking Combat Reflexes, and then declaring in combat that he suddenly considers the party to be his enemies. As they move past him, he now gets to cast 5 spells/round.
Second is that it weirdly incentivizes casters to keep Long Arm active, so they can cast a spell at anyone who tries to melee them.
Additionally, usually someone can only move 120 feet per round maximum, but then if people provoke from them they can now move faster, like 150 feet (or 180 if they have Combat Reflexes and two people provoke)? It just doesn't make a lot of sense.
I think combat maneuvers like Grapple make sense as AoOs. Other types of actions, not so much, both for balance and for verisimilitude. If you think it's fun, then go for it, but expect a lot of wonky results, especially if people are actively trying to game it.
Casting spells as an AoO is a bad idea for a lot of reasons, IMO.
Firstly is the wizard taking Combat Reflexes, and then declaring in combat that he suddenly considers the party to be his enemies. As they move past him, he now gets to cast 5 spells/round.
Second is that it weirdly incentivizes casters to keep Long Arm active, so they can cast a spell at anyone who tries to melee them.
Additionally, usually someone can only move 120 feet per round maximum, but then if people provoke from them they can now move faster, like 150 feet (or 180 if they have Combat Reflexes and two people provoke)? It just doesn't make a lot of sense.
I think combat maneuvers like Grapple make sense as AoOs. Other types of actions, not so much, both for balance and for verisimilitude. If you think it's fun, then go for it, but expect a lot of wonky results, especially if people are actively trying to game it.
Obviously some discretion would have to be used. Perhaps a simple expansion of options rather than the over simplified "standard or move" might be more elegant. True casting several spells a round with combat reflexes might get crazy, and movement might need to be a little more restricted, but I think that's just a matter of being more precise (and thus less CONCISE) in wording.
That said, casting a quickened spell would certainly seem to hold within the framework of this houserule's logic. Still mulling it over.
EDIT: I'm thinking that where this may liven up low-level play, it will multiply problems at higher levels. That's just a thought, and I'm not sure how that would help with refining the houserule.
Casting spells as an AoO is a bad idea for a lot of reasons, IMO.
Firstly is the wizard taking Combat Reflexes, and then declaring in combat that he suddenly considers the party to be his enemies. As they move past him, he now gets to cast 5 spells/round.
Second is that it weirdly incentivizes casters to keep Long Arm active, so they can cast a spell at anyone who tries to melee them.
Additionally, usually someone can only move 120 feet per round maximum, but then if people provoke from them they can now move faster, like 150 feet (or 180 if they have Combat Reflexes and two people provoke)? It just doesn't make a lot of sense.
I think combat maneuvers like Grapple make sense as AoOs. Other types of actions, not so much, both for balance and for verisimilitude. If you think it's fun, then go for it, but expect a lot of wonky results, especially if people are actively trying to game it.
It opens a lot more doors for the Wizard to explore, meaning the weapon type they possess and such actually makes a difference. Additionally, consider that even if the Wizard is granted these opportunities and makes the appropriate investments, he is blowing a lot of his resources to cast these extra spells, something which low-level, is not worth doing, and by high-level, wouldn't matter since the first spell he casts in the first round (and probably first turn) of combat would result in combat ending in the first place.
If a Wizard tries to do that sort of cheese, the GM would shut him down immediately, and probably end up giving the Wizard the Confused condition until he decides to wise up and follow the rules, since he takes friend and foe for granted.
One last important thing to note: drawing spell components is a free action, according to the action table in the Combat section. Unless the caster has a bunch of non-material components memorized in his spells, he cannot cast spells unless he draws the materials needed before-hand on his turn, as the sort of action he is trying to fulfill cannot be done outside his turn.
In other words, I find that unless the PC is trying to play like Batman in regards to spellcasting, you should not run into any problems, and if you do, then it's easy to shut him down right then and there as far as the cheese is concerned.
Also encourages weirdness like witches carrying spears so they can Misfortune or Evil Eye anyone who tries to melee them.
Yeah we noticed the wizard player did cast a lot more spells, we also noticed he ran of spells in the second encounter of a five encounter dungeon. We mostly saw it as, you get more options but because most resources are limited, if you blew everything being awesome in the first fight, you were screwed for the rest of the game.
I did not think about just how much a person is moving. we may make a limit on the amount you can move per round. Good catch, thanks!
We did say it at the table and I should have noted it in the rule description (may bad) but you cant count allies as enemies and switch back and forth as is convenient. The wizard tried that once and everyone just gave him a really bad look, we agreed it was gaming the system and we said you cant do that. So my bad, i should have noted that in the rule description.
We are planning a high level test (level 16) this weekend, I will report how it went after.
Interesting. Very interesting. Please keep us posted.
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I prefer going the exact opposite direction: No AoOs whatsoever. They slow fights down massively by forcing players and DM alike to "ask for permission" so-to-speak to perform certain basic actions (like movement) uninterrupted, and leave a whole set of actions (combat maneuvers) practically unused due to the feat tax needed to perform them freely. Instead, the one who would have provoked gains a -4 penalty to AC for 1 round (applied once, no matter how many times they provoke). This does mean some abilities are made worthless, and I haven't figured out how to handle that yet.
As far as casting as an AoO, I would be against that specifically because (as you mention) they get blow through their resources quickly. I'm already not a fan of the limited-resource-per-day game that makes people ration out how often they get to be smart or for how long they can be a wizard precisely *because* people find ways to push all their resource usage up front to win fights quickly, then find themselves having no fun for a while. This is more of a flaw in the limited-resource system than your AoO change, but the change exacerbates the existing problem.
Buuuut it sounds like you're having fun with it, so have at.
This is a really interesting take on opportunity attacks. I can see Combat Reflexes going from an already desirable feat to a 'Must Have!' for all combatants with this change, ditto with things that improve Acrobatics. On the flip side, feats like the Step Up chain, which are good to have normally, might be somewhat marginalized by this house-rule. It also opens up the possibility of using opportunity actions for spells, which might be a crazy can of worms.