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I've played 3.x since 2000, played 2e long before that, and play a handful of RPGs nowadays including PF, 5e, and more. I have tons of PF books and this game is near and dear to my heart, I have every intention of continuing to play PF for many years to come, but after many years of experience I find myself strongly disliking certain aspects of our favorite RPG.
Primarily I hate how restrictive movement is on the 'Full Attack' action. Secondarily I dislike how lame it is to take a -5 cumulative penalty on each successive iterative attack.
What do you guys think are the reasons for the designers putting these punitive measures on melee combatants? Other than nullifying the purpose of some feats (such as Spring Attack) what would be the result of allowing players in a Pathfinder game to:
A) attack at their full attack bonus for each level-based iterative extra attack (at 6th, 11th, 16th)
B) allowing PCs to use all of those attacks while also retaining their 'move' action?
In 5th edition D&D you can attack at any point in your move - before, during, and/or after. This 'attack' can includes multiple attack rolls, meaning you could attack and kill the goblin adjacent to you, move 10 feet, kill another goblin, then finish your remaining 20 feet of movement. This is baked into the normal combat rules and requires no special feats to achieve. To me this feels more organic, more intuitive, and frankly more conducive to fun.
I'm curious to try this in my next PF campaign, as a profound house-rule change experiment. What pitfalls do you predict that I may not be seeing?
Check out the Pathfinder Unchained alternate rules for replacing iterative attacks.
I'm aware of those optional rules but it doesn't really address my concerns. I like the notion of gaining more attacks; I just don't like the idea of taking penalties on these new attack rolls. It feels unintuitive to me.
Hey congrats on leveling up! You've earned the ability to attack twice in a round!...but take a -5 penalty on that new attack because...reasons.
Furthermore the Unchained option seems like an even more convoluted mess of rules to remember, with the ranges of hit ACs causing a multitude of results... not my cup of tea.
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Well, I think there just needs to be more ways to allow movement with a full attack. Pounce is a prime example, but that's not very accessible. There need's to be an option that most classes can take (With a little investment) that lets them move and full attack. Heck, just letting the full BAB characters have a 12th level ability that's just "You can now move up to your speed and make a full attack action" could help them out a lot.
Keep in mind that the 5e action economy works very differently than it does in PFRPG. Also, with the 5e concept of "bounded accuracy," attack bonuses don't get nearly as high as they do in PF.
Bottom line: Be wary of mixing-and-matching 5e and 3.x rules; the systems have different baseline assumptions about mechanics, and a simple change like you propose could have very serious implications on encounter design.
Honestly, I'm moving toward more rules-light, narrative-focued game systems that still have some of the flavor of the D&D family, such as Dungeon World and Swords & Wizardry.
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An change I've considered that is your 5ft step distance increase by 5 feet every time you would gain an iterative attack, limited by your normal maximum movement speed.
Full BAB characters would be able to move up to 25ft (instead of 5ft) at 20th level, though games rarely reach that level. Still, an 11th level character would be able to move 15ft that doesn't provoke attacks of opportunity. I think this would promote a much more mobile game since full BAB characters would be able to position themselves much more easily.
It does reduce the strength of reach builds, though it's not something I super worried about to be honest.
And for what it's worth I wasn't ever a big fan of the rules for replacing iterative attacks. I just don't like how they function.
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I don't disagree with anything you said, but I guess what I'm getting at is - what would be the consequence of just allowing iterative attacks with no -5/-10/-15 penalties, and movement freedom with your full attack? Why dillydally with it being unlocked at a certain level?
Is this throwing out the baby with the bathwater? I want to throw out the bathwater.
Haladir - you are of course very correct. 3.x and 5e do not mix in most ways, however I don't think that bounded accuracy plays much of a role here. In 5e the attack bonuses/ACs stay low; in PF they grow high. If anything I think the notion of iterative attack penalties is a bigger indictment of PF problems in this light, due to the ever-growing ACs of opponents in Pathfinder. This is at the heart of why I don't like the notion of -5/-10/-15 penalties. That last roll or two are basically shots in the dark with little chance to actually hit.
Claxon - Very neat idea. *scratches chin in contemplation*
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A change I've considered but never tried is to increase the damage on a hit as BAB increases, rather than give additional attacks. It would sort of work like Vital Strike, for everyone.
What I was contemplating...
For evey +5 of a character's BAB, add an additional damage die rolled on a hit. So, a 5th-level fighter with a longsword would roll 2d8 damage (plus Str bonus plus whatever) on a hit; a 10th-level fighter would roll 3d8.
You could still choose to forego a move action to make a Full Attack; this adds a flat +2 bonus on the attack roll and +4 on damage. When fighting multiple opponents in a Full Attack, you can choose to roll against the apponent with the highest AC; on a hit, you then can choose to split the damage up among your opponents as you like.
The point was to prevent the melee combatants from just standing there slugging it out because of their iterative attacks, and instead have more dynamic, cinematic combat scenes where the combatants are chasing each other around the battlefield.
I never quite figured out how that change would work in conjunction with critical hits, two-weapon fighting, multiple natural attacks, etc.
Off the top of my head the things this would do are:
1) Bump the amount of melee damage done (by both sides) considerably.
2) Bump it even more for things with higher number of attacks, twf would likely be superior instead of inferior to two handed.
3) Greatly increase the utility of abilities that often require movement before attacking (particularly sneak attack)
4) Utterly negate some abilities (pounce is meaningless)
5) As a result of these, tactics would change greatly, keeping enemies at a distance (i.e. far enough away that you only take one attack) wouldn't be viable, creatures (including PCs) that were targeted by multiple foes could easily go down in a single round without any indication beforehand that they were in trouble, in-combat healing would be even less viable etc etc.
None of these automatically say that such a game wouldn't be fun, but it would be quite different tactically. There are doubtless other ramifications. If your players are into the idea, go ahead with it, but I wouldn't try to 'force' it on players that were skeptical, the game would change a lot (I would expect PC deaths to be a lot more common.)
I think if all that you do is throw out the iterative attack penalties, while changing nothing else about the system, you'll wind up making encounters exceedingly easy for martial characters.
This guy has an AC of 23, 193 HP, and four attacks per round starting at +36 (Dealing 2d4+21 | 15-20/x3).
Under either ruleset: This guy can only miss himself on a natural 1 with his own attacks (5% of the time), threatens criticals on a 15-20 (30% of the time), and automatically confirms them. Resulting in an an average of 40.3 damage per hit. Meaning that in an average fight he'll defeat himself on his 5th attack (sometime during the 2nd round of combat). He didn't even use Power Attack (or any of his other feats), or any consumable items.
Against an Ancient Red Dragon (which has the same CR as him), but once again, isn't an ideal match-up for him (B1 99):
The dragon has an AC of 38, and 362 HP.
The Fighter can only miss the dragon on a natural 1 (5%), and each attack thereafter is roughly 25% more likely to miss under the standard rules. Therefore his perfectly average DPR will be 117 under the standard rules, or 161.2 under your house-rule. Resulting in the combat ending in either ~3.09 rounds, or ~2.25 rounds (assuming the dragon doesn't fight back)
(Unmodified Average DPH = 26)
(65%x1|30%x3) 16.9+23.4 = 40.3 DPH-1
(40%x1|30%x3) 10.4+23.4 = 33.8 DPH-3
(15%x1|30%x3) 3.9+23.4 = 27.3 DPH-3
(20%x3) = 15.6 DPH-4
These weren't even optimized examples. Most 20th level martials aren't going to still be using a +1 weapon or ignoring most of their feats. Likewise, such a house rule would significantly benefit Two-Weapon Fighters, who might suddenly be getting up to 8 essentially guaranteed hits per round against opponents of similar CR to themselves.
...I don't disagree with anything you said, but I guess what I'm getting at is - what would be the consequence of just allowing iterative attacks with no -5/-10/-15 penalties, and movement freedom with your full attack? Why dillydally with it being unlocked at a certain level?
The main issue is each time the character gets another attack (for full BAB classes: 6th, 11th, and 16th levels) there's a big jump in the class's expected damage output. This is most obvious at 6th level when the number of attacks for a typical fighter-type is doubled. 1E dealt with this problem by making the first step toward multiple melee attacks an extra attack on alternate rounds, not every round. This smooths out the power growth. The -5 to hit on each subsequent attack performs the same basic function - smoothing the growth in expected damage.
5e was designed from the perspective of this no longer mattering all that much and, generally, in favor of different ways of balancing characters than 3e's (or even 1e's) methods. So they're not so worried about power increases by taking multiple attacks and moving at the same time. Maybe PF spends too much effort fussing over the trade-offs between attacking multiple times and moving and between getting iterative attacks and the damage inflicted. There are times I'd agree with that assessment, but I can't deny that the trade-offs between those issues can yield some tactical texture to encounters for PCs built to make use of them. And if you ask me, interesting trade-offs are important to the game - more important that changes (whether rules or build options) that consolidate those trade-offs away.
I heard that marshmallow guy wrote his own revised version of it.
Some people like it.
If you want more mobility, then allow characters to move at half speed when full-attacking. This makes a good compromise while also not throwing the entire mobility versus damage trade-off under the bus.
If you want more mobility, then allow characters to move at half speed when full-attacking. This makes a good compromise while also not throwing the entire mobility versus damage trade-off under the bus.
This is a pretty good idea, although highly exploitable by a few high move speed builds. Another way to go would be a version of Claxon's 5ft step increase. I think it is too much to consider all that movement like a 5ft step. But, allowing characters to move further during a full round action (or a full attack action) would be cool, treating any movement more than 5ft normally (AO's, etc.)
Also, a different compromise occurred to me just now regarding the iteratives themselves. Change to a scaling penalty of -2/-4/-8, following the standard bonus/penalty scale in much of 3.x/PF (skipping the -1). This would do much to make full attacks more effective and satisfying, while retaining some of the mechanical reasoning behind them...and not give away the whole store to martials. I also think the scaling penalty addresses the relative power of the number of additional attacks. Frex, when you're 6th level, -2 to an extra attack feels pretty palatable. Whereas, when you're 16th level -8 to the fourth attack is still reasonable, where no penalty would create an avalanche of damage.
Back at the end of 2nd Edition, my 20th level Fighter, Grand Master with the Longsword had 5 attacks per round with no penalty...it was a game changer.
The one issue you'll run into is the damage per round calculations. A 11th level fighter who gets 3 attacks at full BAB is going to do a lot more damage than one who attacks at +11/+6/+1. This additional damage is going to change how difficult encounters are by making them easier.
Allowing a full attack after a move is also going to increase the average number of attacks in a round, because any around the Fighter can end next to an enemy is a round he gets all of his attacks. This will also push people into the initiative race even more. Right now for melee characters it's actually advantageous to sometimes go second if your opponent uses their action to close on you.
I actually agree with you and would like to make the change, but with the games economy of damage and hit points, it's more complicated than it seems at first. If you want to maintain the current difficulty of a specific challenge rating of monster, you'll either need to increase their AC and/or HP, or you'll need to reduce the amount of damage dealt by PC's.
As noted, many Fighters at high levels only miss their first attack with a natural 1, sometimes they can continue to do this even with some additional penalties. So it's not just the damage that needs to get adjusted, but the attack bonus as well, otherwise it isn't a very interesting roll to be making.
Iterative penalties serve to make AC more effective. In the current system if you have AC 28 and an enemy full-attacks you with +23/+18/+13, your AC translates to a 20% miss chance against the high-BAB attack - not a big deal - but a 45% and 70% miss chance on the iterative attacks. Removing the iterative penalty means every one of those attacks is just as likely to beat the target AC as the first, making any AC value which isn't absurdly high effectively worthless. That one simple change would constitute a large balance shift towards offense, especially for classes which get many attacks such as Monk and Brawler, and would require redesigning many monsters to adjust for the new balance.
How I addressed these issues in my home campaign:
1) A full round attack only uses a Standard Action. IE: your 16th level fighter could attack 3 times and still move up to his full movement rate.
2) If the attack roll exceeds the AC, add the margin by which the AC is overcome to their damage, similar to the way power attack was handled under 3.x. This damage is multiplied on a crit. This damage is limited to 1/2 the BAB of the attacker.
Example: Our level 16 fighter above has a + 16 BAB, and thus if he attacked the generic bad guy and exceeded his AC by up to 8 (1/2 the BAB) those additional points become damage.
Penalties still apply to iterative attacks however.
There is a supplement for 3.5/Pathfinder called Trailblazer.
It is $4.95 and has some nice house rule options.
http://www.badaxegames.com/2009/12/29/trailblazer-now-available-in-print/
General descriptions:
"Combat:
Players’ turns take too long to resolve; combat is no fun when you spend most of your time waiting for your turn.
Combat is faster—you can move and act more freely, and there are fewer iterative attacks. We’ve simplified a lot of the combat mechanics that required two or more rolls to resolve—in fact, in some cases where the roll was a foregone conclusion, we’ve done away with the roll entirely. Most importantly, we have added some Combat Reactions which encourage you to stay engaged on other players’ turns.
Iterative attacks slow down combat.
We’ve changed iterative attacks to both reduce the number of attacks and, more importantly, to streamline the math. All attacks use the same attack bonus."
Get the PDF for the particulars.
So, AC becomes the most important stat in the game.
This is not really that much different that what we seen with power attack in previous editions, and was actually the inspiration for this rule. Besides it helps to flatten the curve in dealing with later attacks whose To-Hit bonuses took such a hit that they were unlikely to actually hit anyway. Another thing this rule addresses is why it is that a high level combatant is suddenly less effective with a dagger vs a sword.
This option actually helps to address the concerns of our original poster Zedth whose main concern seemed to be the loss of effectiveness as the character was supposedly getting better by adding additional attacks later in levels.
One option a player of mine suggested once was this option was only allowed once their secondary attacks kicked in at + 6 BAB and meant that they had to drop their lowest secondary attack. We played around with the option a bit but the troupe generically agreed that they liked the idea that a very experienced combatant was simply able to hit harder. After all, they argued, they were able to TAKE more damage too.
As for the idea that AC is the most important stat...so what? Keep in mind that the value of what stats, skills, saves, etc are going to be the "most valued" are the ones which are getting used the most. I've been in some campaigns where we never rolled a perception check once, yet in others it was "Perception or DEATH!!" Guess what? In that second campaign everyone at the table pushed their perception. It is no different from campaigns where every bad guy is a mind melting Illithid and now your Will Save is the "most valued".
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If you want more mobility, then allow characters to move at half speed when full-attacking. This makes a good compromise while also not throwing the entire mobility versus damage trade-off under the bus.
I do this. We like it.