[CONAN] Flip-flopping on Dodge

[Supplement Four]

I've asked this question a couple of times, and I keep flip-flopping on my position.

Question: Do you see any unintended consequences or problems that may arise if I change the rule to where, if a character uses the Dodge defense, he has to move into an adjacent square as part of his Dodge?

 

[kintire]

Situation:

Guard attacks Barbarian. He's an experienced fighter with three attacks, Dual wielding and he gets one extra due to high BAB anyway. First attack, he swings, rolls low, barbarian dodges. Barbarian "has to" to move a square. he moves one square directly away. Second and third attack, Barbarian is out of reach.

Guard shoots Barbarian standing in doorway with rapid shot. Shot 1: barbarian dodges. He moves one square, out of the doorway. Shot 2: Barbarian is out of line of sight.

Fifteen Guards shoot at fleeing barbarian. He dodges each one: some successfully some not. He moves fifteen squares towards his escape, and THEN its his turn to move!

You say "has to" to move to an adjacent square. Try offering a feat where any time someone is attacked, they can move one square! Hopelessly overpowered...

Squares are 5 feet across. That's plenty of space to dodge in!

 

[Supplement Four]

Situation:

Guard attacks Barbarian. He's an experienced fighter with three attacks, Dual wielding and he gets one extra due to high BAB anyway. First attack, he swings, rolls low, barbarian dodges. Barbarian "has to" to move a square. he moves one square directly away. Second and third attack, Barbarian is out of reach.

Not necessarily. Guard swings. Barbarian dodges and retreats backwards 5'. Guard uses 5' step, which is immune to Attacks of Opportunities, following the Barbarian, who then dodges again, back another 5'....and then there's the problem you're highlighting.

It's a good point.

What if I changed it so that the Dodger has to move into a new square on every successful Dodge? In other words, Dodges that fail mean that the dodging character stays in the same square because he failed.

Guard shoots Barbarian standing in doorway with rapid shot. Shot 1: barbarian dodges. He moves one square, out of the doorway. Shot 2: Barbarian is out of line of sight.

I'm actually OK with that, but I could allow rapid shot to make both attacks before any defense. Roll both attacks--against a single dodge attempt. That would make sense.

Fifteen Guards shoot at fleeing barbarian. He dodges each one: some successfully some not. He moves fifteen squares towards his escape, and THEN its his turn to move!

This is a very good point and probably the reason I haven't changed it so far (but keep thinking about it).

I want to make the game have some combat shift without getting silly as expressed in your example.

 

[Supplement Four]

Guard shoots Barbarian standing in doorway with rapid shot. Shot 1: barbarian dodges. He moves one square, out of the doorway. Shot 2: Barbarian is out of line of sight.

So, I'm thinking of two things.

1. A dodging character only moves when he successfully dodges. If he his hit, he stays in the same square.

2. Rapid shot would have to attacks against a single Dodge.

Fifteen Guards shoot at fleeing barbarian. He dodges each one: some successfully some not. He moves fifteen squares towards his escape, and THEN its his turn to move!

If all missile attacks are compared to a single dodge, the dodging character is forced to move, at most, one square. And, it's likely he'll be hit by one of the 15, so, accorging to the #1 point above, the character would stay in the same square (unless he successfully dodged all 15 attacks--in which case, he's move one square).

Thoughts on that?

 

[Supplement Four]

Situation:

Guard attacks Barbarian. He's an experienced fighter with three attacks, Dual wielding and he gets one extra due to high BAB anyway. First attack, he swings, rolls low, barbarian dodges.

Going with what I wrote above, what if we resovled all attack vs. one dodge here, too?

We know the Dodge Target. Just throw all three attacks. If all three miss, the dodge is successful, and the character is forced to move back one square.

If one hits, the character's dodge fails. It's harder to dodge three blows than it is one. The dodging character must stay in his same square.



The next question is...what if the defender wants to mix parry and dodging in the same round?

Have to think about that.

Just thinking out loud here.

 

[kintire]

Not necessarily. Guard swings. Barbarian dodges and retreats backwards 5'. Guard uses 5' step, which is immune to Attacks of Opportunities, following the Barbarian, who then dodges again, back another 5'....and then there's the problem you're highlighting.

You can't take a move action halfway through an attack action. Spring attack allows you to do the reverse, but that won't help in this situation. Also, you can't take a move action and have multiple attacks, so taking the 5' step would lose the guard all his remaining attacks anyway.

What if I changed it so that the Dodger has to move into a new square on every successful Dodge? In other words, Dodges that fail mean that the dodging character stays in the same square because he failed.

That would help, but you are still handing a huge mobility advantage to Dodgers. Especially since I assume that the Dodge move does not draw AoOs?

I think your second best option, after "leave things alone" is to declare that any character who makes one or more dodges in the course of the round must move into an adjacent square if possible. However, you may want to give Parry an extremely useful special ability as well to keep things balanced.

My sneaky soul might suggest that the defender picks the square they move to if the attacker misses, and the attacker picks it if they hit, but then you hit trouble if some hit and some miss...

 

[Supplement Four]

You can't take a move action halfway through an attack action.

Point made. But...I think there's a Feat that allows taking movement at any time, right? Thought I'd read that somewhere.

Anyway, as you might see in the other thread, I play tested this along and didn't like it enough to change RAW.

 

[Jeraa]

You can't take a move action halfway through an attack action. Spring attack allows you to do the reverse, but that won't help in this situation. Also, you can't take a move action and have multiple attacks, so taking the 5' step would lose the guard all his remaining attacks anyway.

Your only half right. You can't take a move action halfway through a full attack. But you can take a 5 foot step at any time, as long as you don't move any other distance that round. 5 foot steps are free actions. The rules for a full attack even say you can take a 5 foot between attacks.

 

[rabindranath72]

Why would you change how Dodge works? What's wrong with the original formulation? (I missed your "flip-flopping" I guess.)

 

[Supplement Four]

Why would you change how Dodge works? What's wrong with the original formulation? (I missed your "flip-flopping" I guess.)

Ended up sticking with RAW.