Eliminating the 5 ft step

[Yahzi]

I want to just eliminate the 5 ft step. It annoys me that casters/archers can avoid all penalties associated with melee; also, it makes running away much too easy.

Can anybody think of any problems that this would create?

[Cog]

I want to just eliminate the 5 ft step. It annoys me that casters/archers can avoid all penalties associated with melee; also, it makes running away much too easy.

Can anybody think of any problems that this would create?
The 5' step is far more useful for melee than for the ones you've listed. Casters have access to teleportation magic, and mundane ranged combat is hard to pull off; the 5' step doesn't save them from anybody with reach, either, and taking it deprives them of a further move - so whoever they've stepped away from can just step up as well, and full attack.

[Fox Box Socks]

There's a feat in Pathfinder called Step Up (or something like that) that lets characters take a 5 foot step as an immediate reaction to an adjacent enemy taking a five foot step. It's more or less mandatory for all melee PCs.

[Darwin]

Sneak Attackers would have a harder time setting up their flanks, for one. Melee characters would be unable to move whatsoever once they're locked into melee unless they want to suffer that AoO. 5 ft. step doesn't help you to run away from much really, that's what the Withdraw option is for. If you want to stop casters from 5 ft. stepping away from the fighters access to a feat or something like this.

Follow Up [General]
Benefit
When an opponent leaves a square you threaten you may choose to give up an attack of opportunity this round to immediately take a 5 ft. step. The opponent does not have to provoke an attack of opportunity for you to activate this.

Edit: Swordsaged', kind of

[Yahzi]

There's a feat in Pathfinder called Step Up (or something like that) that lets characters take a 5 foot step as an immediate reaction to an adjacent enemy taking a five foot step. It's more or less mandatory for all melee PCs.
So instead of getting rid of the 5 ft step, you would have me give away even more 5 ft steps!

:smallbiggrin:

Actually, that's a good idea. I could just give everyone the feat for free.

[DarkEternal]

Honestly, if anything should be eliminated, or at least nerfed is casting on defense for the casters, 5 foot step is alright.

[Darwin]

Honestly, if anything should be eliminated, or at least nerfed is casting on defense for the casters, 5 foot step is alright.

That's why we have the Mage Slayer feats :smallbiggrin:

[DarkEternal]

Yeah, but you need to take a feat which is pretty expensive for something they do for free. But yeah, it can be "balanced" out I guess.

[Runestar]

Why can't casters just cast defensively? Especially against foes with greater reach, 5-ft movements aren't all that useful.

[Yahzi]

Why can't casters just cast defensively? Especially against foes with greater reach, 5-ft movements aren't all that useful.
I'm from the Olden Days, when any successful attack automatically interrupted (and wasted!) your spell.

I kinda miss that.

[gbprime]

I'm from the Olden Days, when any successful attack automatically interrupted (and wasted!) your spell.

I kinda miss that.

Yeah, but in the olden days, the only fighter/magic-users you had were elves and half elves, and they were limited to like 7th level tops. The newfangled way to do it is to build a gish character (divine or arcane), have the option to cast a spell in a melee, and ride the character all the way up to 20. Defensive casting and 5 foot steps are part of this.

Ain't science wonderful? :smallamused:

[cd4]

Playing a crusader or with martial study and martial stance to get the stance Thicket of Blades. Now a 5ft Step provokes an Attack of Opportunity from you.

[nedz]

Eliminating the 5 ft step ?
So my casters now aim forTumble 14 :smallsigh:
I tumble out and cast :smallcool:

[Cog]

Eliminating the 5 ft step ?
So my casters now aim forTumble 14 :smallsigh:
I tumble out and cast :smallcool:
Which requires an investment of resources on their part, has around a 50% chance of working at level one, keeps them from any full-round actions, and if the attempt fails they still provoke. Doesn't seem so bad, to me.

[FMArthur]

Which requires an investment of resources on their part, has around a 50% chance of working at level one, keeps them from any full-round actions, and if the attempt fails they still provoke. Doesn't seem so bad, to me.

It does when you apply the same rules to melee, the only characters that care about the difference between a full-round action and a standard action. I don't think anyone actually cares about balance at level one, by the way. It's already just a crapshoot until at least 3, for every class.

[Cog]

It does when you apply the same rules to melee, the only characters that care about the difference between a full-round action and a standard action. I don't think anyone actually cares about balance at level one, by the way. It's already just a crapshoot until at least 3, for every class.
I wasn't clear; that was for casters only. As I stated earlier in the thread, yeah, it's a bad idea overall.

[Vistella]

Casters wouldnt care much either cause
- they dont wont to be in melee range and thus avoid getting into it
- they can tumble out of reach and still cast their standard action spells (which are around 98% of all spells available) and even if they dont make the tumble check, they just get damage and can still cast freely


not to mention it favors those with more skillpoints cause of tumble

[nedz]

Which requires an investment of resources on their part, has around a 50% chance of working at level one, keeps them from any full-round actions, and if the attempt fails they still provoke. Doesn't seem so bad, to me.

I was just trying to point out that are other options to a 5' step or casting defensively. I actually had a bard who did this, he never bothered with concentration, and it worked really well. I never had to face a full round of attacks from melle types because I would always tumble 10' or more as a move action, and then cast/use music. I could even draw them onto the party tank, letting them face the full round of attacks if they persisted.

[randomhero00]

You could always ban the 5 ft step on all full casters while letting the normal rules apply to everyone else. Boom, solved. Your welcome, try the veal, I'll be here all night.

[Eldariel]

Tie 5ft step to the full attack action. Force it to be taken towards the person you're attacking, if at all. That'll help. Then just fix Tumble DCs and suddenly life is good and not having reach isn't the end of the world for martial types (and indeed, a guy with a polearm is at a disadvantage against a melee range warrior that got up to his skin, as it should be).

This both, achieves the original intent and avoids all the bothersome "5' step away, lol you in the face"-crap. Though you'll also have to make defensive casting somehow impossible 'cause else all this is for naught. Yeah, there are 3 different things you gotta fix for casting near opponents to be dangerous in the least; but once you're aware of that, fixing those 3 things is easy and suddenly life is much more interesting.

[stainboy]

Yeah that rule is dumb and I don't know how it slipped through playtesting.

My house rule is that if you take a 5-foot step, then perform an action that provokes an AoO, you are considered to be occupying both your old space and your new space. It's as if you take the action midway between the two spaces. Resolve AoOs against your old space before AoOs in your new space (so if you five-foot-step away from an enemy then cast, and he uses his AoO to trip you, you fall prone in your old space).

[navar100]

I want to just eliminate the 5 ft step. It annoys me that casters/archers can avoid all penalties associated with melee; also, it makes running away much too easy.

Can anybody think of any problems that this would create?

Spellcasters are entitled to do what they're supposed to do, namely cast spells. Being in melee should not be "Thou shalt not cast spells thus must be punished to eternal damnation of suckiness if thou dare try."

[faceroll]

5-foot steps make combat interesting. Using 5 foot steps to get a flank while maintaining full attacks each turn, for instance, while avoiding AoOs.


Spellcasters are entitled to do what they're supposed to do, namely cast spells. Being in melee should not be "Thou shalt not cast spells thus must be punished to eternal damnation of suckiness if thou dare try."

Yeah spellcasters should never have any limits on them, ever.

[FelixG]

Spellcasters are entitled to do what they're supposed to do, namely cast spells. Being in melee should not be "Thou shalt not cast spells thus must be punished to eternal damnation of suckiness if thou dare try."

So another example of melee should never have any nice things?

[Claudius Maximus]

Yeah spellcasters should never have any limits on them, ever.

Man look at all this straw it's just everywhere

I kind of agree that 3.5 makes it a bit trivial to cast spells with a raging barbarian next to you, but spellcasters should have some recourse in such a situation.

I think Pathfinder does a somewhat decent job at making defensive casting an actual risk. The "5-step to complete safety" thing is a little harder to fix right. It's almost like the sort of broad issue we might need a whole thread for or something.

[JamesonCourage]

Man look at all this straw it's just everywhere

True, true.


I kind of agree that 3.5 makes it a bit trivial to cast spells with a raging barbarian next to you, but spellcasters should have some recourse in such a situation.

Casting on the defensive. With full ranks in the spell (especially if you get Combat Casting at lower levels), you don't provoke and have a minimal chance of losing a spell (if at all).


I think Pathfinder does a somewhat decent job at making defensive casting an actual risk. The "5-step to complete safety" thing is a little harder to fix right. It's almost like the sort of broad issue we might need a whole thread for or something.

Perhaps don't allow 5-ft. steps in the same turn that spells are cast? It singles out spellcasters, but spells are different from attacks, and maybe they should be treated differently.

Just trying to help the OP. I may or may not agree with my own suggestions.

[Popertop]

Man look at all this straw it's just everywhere

I kind of agree that 3.5 makes it a bit trivial to cast spells with a raging barbarian next to you, but spellcasters should have some recourse in such a situation.

I think Pathfinder does a somewhat decent job at making defensive casting an actual risk. The "5-step to complete safety" thing is a little harder to fix right. It's almost like the sort of broad issue we might need a whole thread for or something.

Pathfinder also makes combat casting more difficult, 15+2*spell level, instead of 15+spell level. Casters would bitch about having to roll to cast a spell in combat, but you aren't going to make everyone happy, and they can still play the old way.

I think that would still need to be tweaked a little bit.
You could just rule that they still provoke AoO by casting defensively. I don't think casters could make 10+damage dealt all day long.

[senrath]

...if you take AoOs by casting defensively, then what's the point of casting defensively?

[Triskavanski]

Well if you just hate casters that much that you want to be able to wack them many many times in combat via AoO and stuff, you might as well just have the freeking foot of god break forth from the heavens and crush the caster just for being a caster.

Or you could actually take a little time out of trying to make casters suckified for being a little different than the ones who are standing on the edge of the map, possibly even giving the guy who thinks he is a tank something to do even instead of just out right ignoring him and charging the casters for being casters..

And ready actions.

With a ready action, you can..

Hit a caster the moment he starts spazzing out and chanting weird words.
Hit a caster the moment he trys to duck and tumble away from you.
Hit a caster the moment he trys to five foot step.
Ect. Ect. No need to house rule anything.

Course you can't justly say that every single monster is smart enough to even think about this, which seems really to be more of the problem. You want casters to be like the good old says when they basically used the same ten spells over and over again, because the couple of touch spells that there was required that you had to hit against the enemies entire AC a feat that was nearly neigh impossible for a caster due to the low thac0.

[Popertop]

And ready actions.

With a ready action, you can..

Hit a caster the moment he starts spazzing out and chanting weird words.
Hit a caster the moment he trys to duck and tumble away from you.
Hit a caster the moment he trys to five foot step.
Ect. Ect. No need to house rule anything.

Just trying to close the power gap a little bit. Every fix I've ever seen proposed, people say that it doesn't really hurt the casters that bad.

But yes, Readied actions was a point that I meant to add to my post.
But if you spend all your time readying actions for the casters to do stuff, you are also giving up your turn and the full attacks that you are supposed to be doing as a martial class. :/

One of the other options are giving the fighters access to good feats through the fighter bonus list, but it'll still just be a fighter...

[FelixG]

...if you take AoOs by casting defensively, then what's the point of casting defensively?

Did you read the whole post? It avoids them having to make the anti damage check.

[senrath]

Did you read the whole post? It avoids them having to make the anti damage check.
I didn't get anything of the sort from the post, just that they'd still provoke. If that's what was meant, I missed it. I interpreted it as saying "have them still provoke when casting defensively. They're bound to fail the damage check sooner or later".

[Eldariel]

Perhaps don't allow 5-ft. steps in the same turn that spells are cast? It singles out spellcasters, but spells are different from attacks, and maybe they should be treated differently.

What's wrong with my suggestion of tying it to melee full attack action? The original design intent of 5' step is to allow melee guys without reach approach opponents with reach without provoking AoOs. That would accomplish this without leaving loopholes that make melee without reach irrelevant.

In AD&D, you couldn't cast spells if you took damage. At all. And that was more than fine because Wizards are damn able to have teammates who can keep the bad guys off them. And because there's protective magic that makes it harder to inflict damage on them. In 3.5 with Concentration, even without defensive casting, 5' steps and Tumble, your chances of getting a spell off with a guy in melee with you are good; you just have to take an AoO for it. Oh no! Melee types can do something to spellcasters when they get adjacent and catch the caster with their pants down! What horror! Let's keep the system so casters don't need to care!


Or you could actually take a little time out of trying to make casters suckified for being a little different than the ones who are standing on the edge of the map, possibly even giving the guy who thinks he is a tank something to do even instead of just out right ignoring him and charging the casters for being casters.

Are you serious? Do you realize that even with the rule changes casters are still 100 times stronger than non-casters across the levels? This just gives them a weakness to having a guy with a sword next to them when they cast spells.


And ready actions.

With a ready action, you can..

Hit a caster the moment he starts spazzing out and chanting weird words.
Hit a caster the moment he trys to duck and tumble away from you.
Hit a caster the moment he trys to five foot step.
Ect. Ect. No need to house rule anything.

Yeesh, and imagine if you guess wrong. You ready action to attack the guy when he moves and the just casts instead; you don't get your ready action. Imagine you ready your action to attack the guy when he casts; he moves instead. It'll happen about 50% of the time. Oh, and readying an action means you give up the attack on your own turn. A potential full attack. Which means you're definitely dealing comparatively no damage.

If you ready an attack, things are actually better for the caster than if you just attacked on your turn; at least if you attack you've dealt reliably some potential damage while with ready action, there's the chance that your whole turn sequence accomplished diddly squat without ever getting to even roll.

[faceroll]

nd ready actions.

With a ready action, you can..

Hit a caster the moment he starts spazzing out and chanting weird words.
Hit a caster the moment he trys to duck and tumble away from you.
Hit a caster the moment he trys to five foot step.
Ect. Ect. No need to house rule anything.

That doesn't help anything, does it?

You are next to a caster; you have a chance to full attack. You decide to ready an action, giving up whatever other attacks you have (like, say, being a monster with lots of claw attacks). The caster 5-foot steps back. You hit him. He finishes his move, you get to move up those 5 feet, too. Now he starts casting defensively. You stand there, wishing you had used the rest of your attacks to actually do something useful.

Then you die.

[Triskavanski]

What's wrong with my suggestion of tying it to melee full attack action? The original design intent of 5' step is to allow melee guys without reach approach opponents with reach without provoking AoOs. That would accomplish this without leaving loopholes that make melee without reach irrelevant.

In AD&D, you couldn't cast spells if you took damage. At all. And that was more than fine because Wizards are damn able to have teammates who can keep the bad guys off them. And because there's protective magic that makes it harder to inflict damage on them. In 3.5 with Concentration, even without defensive casting, 5' steps and Tumble, your chances of getting a spell off with a guy in melee with you are good; you just have to take an AoO for it. Oh no! Melee types can do something to spellcasters when they get adjacent and catch the caster with their pants down! What horror! Let's keep the system so casters don't need to care!



Actually in AD&D you weren't "damn able to have teammates who can keep bad guys off you" you just had wizards who sat waaaay in the back casting magic missiles and fireballs and DM's who just won't go past the fighter up in front.

Course some of that actually changed in 3.5 where DMs were actually courageous enough to slip past the 5 foot square of fighter (you know, go around him) and then attack the wizard.




Are you serious? Do you realize that even with the rule changes casters are still 100 times stronger than non-casters across the levels? This just gives them a weakness to having a guy with a sword next to them when they cast spells.


No this doesn't just "give them a weakness" or keep the non-caster 1/100th of the power of a caster.

It just makes the caster ignore anything that would put him in melee. So touch spells? Gone.

That means no healing in combat until later levels. most buffs are touch. The caster is instead going to focus on Magic missiles and fireballs and standing as far away from the party as possible.




Yeesh, and imagine if you guess wrong. You ready action to attack the guy when he moves and the just casts instead; you don't get your ready action. Imagine you ready your action to attack the guy when he casts; he moves instead. It'll happen about 50% of the time. Oh, and readying an action means you give up the attack on your own turn. A potential full attack. Which means you're definitely dealing comparatively no damage.

If you ready an attack, things are actually better for the caster than if you just attacked on your turn; at least if you attack you've dealt reliably some potential damage while with ready action, there's the chance that your whole turn sequence accomplished diddly squat without ever getting to even roll.

The entire goal of this rules change isn't to "give them a weakness" to jack diddly. Its to put in an instance that should come up often were the caster is just completely boned.

Yes you could have attacked. But you want to be able to not only do a full round attack with all your attacks when you successfully manage to get past the 5foot square of meat, but also do all your AoO as well.


That doesn't help anything, does it?

You are next to a caster; you have a chance to full attack. You decide to ready an action, giving up whatever other attacks you have (like, say, being a monster with lots of claw attacks). The caster 5-foot steps back. You hit him. He finishes his move, you get to move up those 5 feet, too. Now he starts casting defensively. You stand there, wishing you had used the rest of your attacks to actually do something useful.

Then you die.

You are next to the monster.. It uses full round attack on you. You are dropped to 1 hp. Can't five foot step. Can't tumble. Can't cast defensively. You stand there, wishing that you could actually do something useful.

Then you die.

[faceroll]

It just makes the caster ignore anything that would put him in melee. So touch spells? Gone.

Lol touch spells. Either you're using reach spell, arcane reach, etc, or you're a bad wizard player and die as you goofily wander next to monsters that can kill you with one hit. Also, you can cast a touch spell outside of melee, and move in to deliver it.


That means no healing in combat until later levels. most buffs are touch. The caster is instead going to focus on Magic missiles and fireballs and standing as far away from the party as possible.

Healing in combat is useless between levels 3 and whenever you get Heal except in a handful of very niche builds/cases.


The entire goal of this rules change isn't to "give them a weakness" to jack diddly. Its to put in an instance that should come up often were the caster is just completely boned.

Yeah, casters should definitely have some of those. A dragon vs. a fighter in an open space? Fighter is almost bound to be toast, what with 120ft cone of death and fly by attack. Or blood wind. And a fly speed about 4x better than whatever the fighter's got.


Yes you could have attacked. But you want to be able to not only do a full round attack with all your attacks when you successfully manage to get past the 5foot square of meat, but also do all your AoO as well.

I am getting the sense that you do not have a firm grasp on RAW.


You are next to the monster.. It uses full round attack on you. You are dropped to 1 hp. Can't five foot step. Can't tumble. Can't cast defensively. You stand there, wishing that you could actually do something useful.

Then you die.

A wizard foolish to end up in melee, maybe because it decided touch range spells were a good idea, deserves to be dead.

[Triskavanski]

Nah, you do not have the grasp of the RAW.

Fighter does not have taunt and there for cannot force the enemy to move to him. Unless you are fighting in an enclosed space were the player is able to control the combat zone, the monsters can and will go around them if the DM so demands it so. If the DM doesn't then they don't.

Why use reach spell when I can just cast fireball. Far more effective and I don't have to use billions of slot higher. See events at the end when it becomes impossible for you to escape.

If healing in combat is only useful after getting Zomg heal after level 3, then either your DM is doing it wrong, or you are.

Its not just wizards though. Its Hexblades, Warmages, Duskblades, Beguilers ect ect ect.


Fighter vs dragon in an open space? You must fight lots of dragons in open spaces. Nah this is more like Fighter fighting against flying creatures while all he has is a sword. If you decided that you didn't like some guy who wielded a sword and smacked things with it, and to get back at him you started making it so that everything was always flying, do you think that the guy who is focused in sword is gonna be happy?

HELL NO! He is gonna do just about everything he can to either start, or have a character who is capable of ranged, to the point he is probably going to focus on ranged combat itself over melee.

You are wanting to create a forceful change of play structure by essentially removing the ability to use a good 50% of the spells in the book, destroy classes, and the like by creating something you want to use to bone particular classes throughout most of the game.

This is not about creating balance. It is not about creating a weakness. It is 100% about trying to bone class types because you despise what defenses they have, while not actually focusing on the matter at hand and ways to really deal with in a manner that would actually work way better.

this is akin to an mmo nerfing a class. Either everyone is going to play a different class, use a different build, or just leave. They are not going to sit there and try to fight the 30th dragon in a row in a wide open space that is full of hazardous terrain just because you don't like sword wielders.

[faceroll]

Nah, you do not have the grasp of the RAW.

umadbro?


Fighter does not have taunt and there for cannot force the enemy to move to him. Unless you are fighting in an enclosed space were the player is able to control the combat zone, the monsters can and will go around them if the DM so demands it so. If the DM doesn't then they don't.

Reach + trip = done. That, and the fighter is there largely for damage. But I can see the problem if your wizards are casting fireball.


Why use reach spell when I can just cast fireball. Far more effective and I don't have to use billions of slot higher. See events at the end when it becomes impossible for you to escape.

lol fireball
Cool 7d6 damage, that was sooo excellent.

Try slow sometime. Think you might like it.


If healing in combat is only useful after getting Zomg heal after level 3, then either your DM is doing it wrong, or you are.

lol cure spells
Does your DM only use monsters that deal your level in damage to the whole party per round?

Let me do some math for you.

A 4th level cure spell heals 4d8+7 damage. That's pathetic. That's only 25 damage healed. At level 7. And that spell is only to undo the damage that fighter (or barb or paladin or warblade) is taking every round. Eventually it runs out. The ogre doesn't run out of swings with his club.

So what cheap investments do you make to have in combat healing actually worthwhile?


Its not just wizards though. Its Hexblades, Warmages, Duskblades, Beguilers ect ect ect

Yeah not seeing any problems with any of those. Hexblades aren't any good in the first place, and should be using swift/immediate spells anyway. Duskblades channel spells, so so what.


Fighter vs dragon in an open space? You must fight lots of dragons in open spaces. Nah this is more like Fighter fighting against flying creatures while all he has is a sword. If you decided that you didn't like some guy who wielded a sword and smacked things with it, and to get back at him you started making it so that everything was always flying, do you think that the guy who is focused in sword is gonna be happy?

Do you have any idea how many monsters there are that can easily kite a fighter? Virtually every outsider over CR 7 can fly, teleport, turn invisible, and/or cast damaging spells. Then you got stuff like Beholders and all sorts of Magical Beasts.


HELL NO! He is gonna do just about everything he can to either start, or have a character who is capable of ranged, to the point he is probably going to focus on ranged combat itself over melee

What I am saying is, a huge number of D&D monsters have ways to pretty much obviate entire classes attack modes. If it flies, a barb rage isn't doing much, neither is a monk or barbarian.


You are wanting to create a forceful change of play structure by essentially removing the ability to use a good 50% of the spells in the book, destroy classes, and the like by creating something you want to use to bone particular classes throughout most of the game.

Hahahaha, no.
50% of good spells are not touch. I'm not sure you even know what a "good" spell is, as you keep talking about fireballs. Fireballs have three chances of failure (save, SR, resistance/immunity) and when it works, it doesn't do anything unless it's a killing blow. I don't know why you'd use it, either as an action or a spell slot.


This is not about creating balance. It is not about creating a weakness. It is 100% about trying to bone class types because you despise what defenses they have, while not actually focusing on the matter at hand and ways to really deal with in a manner that would actually work way better.

Yeah, you have no idea what defenses a caster has, do you? Stuff like luminous armor, blink, blur, invisibility, tiny size, ironguard, astral projection, etc etc etc. Those are spells you can look up.

But in general, they have ways of getting very high armor classes (high enough to matter vs. giants and stuff!!), as well as ways to avoid attacks and targeting altogether, like concealment or being immune to any metal weapon.


this is akin to an mmo nerfing a class. Either everyone is going to play a different class, use a different build, or just leave. They are not going to sit there and try to fight the 30th dragon in a row in a wide open space that is full of hazardous terrain just because you don't like sword wielders.

Not my welfare epics brah!

[Last Laugh]

Why use reach spell when I can just cast fireball. Far more effective and I don't have to use billions of slot higher. See events at the end when it becomes impossible for you to escape.

If healing in combat is only useful after getting Zomg heal after level 3, then either your DM is doing it wrong, or you are.

Its not just wizards though. Its Hexblades, Warmages, Duskblades, Beguilers ect ect ect.


I'm assuming that the Fireball thing is just an example. (and isn't reach spell just +1 or +2? and there are ways to reduce that?) Just gonna pretend you said glitterdust/Solid Fog/Shaped Legion of Sentinels (Which is just too much fun)

Healing in combat isn't so great. Let's compare Fireball to Cure Serious Wounds, at level 5 a Cleric with Cure Serious wounds heals 3d8+5 (Going to say this is 4.5*3+5=18) vs a fireballs 5d6 (Avg damage of 17) Fireball is a weak spell, but it does affect a large area. Your cleric just spent an entire turn reversing the damage of fireball on a single target, instead of actually helping the situation (Hold Person, Silent Image, Gental Repose, Deeper Darkness, Magic Circle against...Protection from Energy, Summon Monster, or just wailing on the dude)

And Personally Hexblades are rather weak, Mechanically they are full of meh, and I could just build a cleric centered around debuffs, without sacrificing any melee abilities. (The Familiar would be missed) Warmages are damage dealers, except they are only a little bit better than clerics, but way more restricted. (I only need 1 way to blast each critter out of existence, 12 is just overkill. Not worth Benign Transpostion) Hexblades are FUN, Beguilers are GREAT and FUN. (Still not as good as wizard, but a ton of fun)

edit: ^^^ this guy types, like, waaaaaay faster than me.

[Lycar]

With a ready action, you can..

Hit a caster the moment he trys to duck and tumble away from you.
Result: You do or do not even get a chance to hit him in the first place, no matter how good a fighter (or even Fighter) you are, thanks to fixed Tumble DCs. But hey, a caster/gish who shells out for tumble deserves a return of investment. That is quite okay. Still, even if you do get to attack, you still need to hit in the first place, and even if you do hit, this has no bearing on the subsequently cast spell whatsoever.

So Tumble beats Readied Action. Fair enough.


Hit a caster the moment he trys to five foot step.
So you get to whack him. If you don't kill him outright, he still gets to cast unmolested, even if you just, say, took him down from 50 hp to 1. Everything more then none means full fighting/casting capacity. That is more a fail of the HP system, but still.

And this is the part where people really complain about. As it stands, even with a readied action the caster can end up virtually untouchable. Although, to be fair, it depends on how much of a jackass the DM is.

As you may recall, a readied action needs to specify a trigger and an action.

If you set your trigger to be 'target does anything but surrender', you ought to be fine with that part, but if your action is 'step and attack'... yeah, what if mage-boy doesn't take a step and you are, for some reason, unable to make a 5-foot step that will still end up adjacent to the caster? Well you really should be able to forgo the 5-foot step and just attack...

Oh and you really should be allowed to count as attacking during the 'casting' part of the mage you targeted, not just the 5-foot step part...

Because, you know, jut hitting the guy as takes his step doesn't stop him from casting at all...

Hit a caster the moment he starts spazzing out and chanting weird words.
Unless he uses Still/Silent Spell and/or spells without somatic/vocal components. In which case the mage in question paid a price in feast and spell slots to spare himself an AoO. He deserves to get that spell of unmolested.

And let's not even get started that even if you do get your AoO in, you still have to hit:

1) Hitting the AC.
2) Getting past Miss Chances.
3) Hoping you didn't waste your one chance to actually cause some damage before being mage-raped on a Mirror Image.

Your caster does have up Mirror Image, at least from lv. 3 onwards, doesn't he? If not, AoO are maybe not your only worry. Archers and company don't need to be adjacent to attack you know...


Ect. Ect. No need to house rule anything.
Except the part where the mage can theoretically avoid an attack by not moving. Although that really is more of a clarification then a houserule.

But you know what needs houseruling? Concentration DCs. Make that 2x spell level. An experienced caster can still get off the easy incantations even under duress, the more complex ones remain challenging. Slightly so. Until the custom-made item of Concentrate +10 that is...


...because the couple of touch spells that there was required that you had to hit against the enemies entire AC a feat that was nearly neigh impossible for a caster due to the low thac0.
And nowadays they attack Touch AC that is a real B*tch to get to any decent levels. Don't leave home without your RoP +5. And whoever heard of a wizard wasting spell slots on giving touch-attack resistant Mage Armour to those mellee losers...

No, we don't want to make wizards worthless. We just want them to still have a small reason to still have anything but other fullcasters in the party.

Becaue artillery ought to be screwed if the enemy gets close. That is one of the defining traits of artillery: Awesome powerful but needs protection. Otherwise, why would there be anything but artillery? See? That is the point.

Lycar

[Triskavanski]

All casters however are not artillery. Like all rogues are not thieves.

Tumble still doesn't beat readied action. As a DM you are allowed to not be forthcoming with information, or make general statements on the wording of your ready action. If the players are allowed to rules lawyer things the DM can easily as well.

Tumble only beats AoO. Ways to beat tumble include difficult or hazardous terrain, multiple assailants, and the Knight class. I'm quite certain there is also feats out there that do similar.


He five foot steps and you hit him. Why not grapple/trip/strangle the caster?

Sure he might have mirror image up, but not all casters do or are even capable of such a spell. And even if the caster does, there is still a chance you can hit him as oppose to the one 50 feet in the air raining down fireballs or whatever else.. being the artillery you so believe they all are.

Touch AC, yes its a real bitch at level 1. However, classes such as monk, duelist, swashbucklers, sword sages, ect have outstanding touch AC. The wizard still has wizard bab.

The amount of casters in the group will drop or they will become even harder to hit due to them taking even more precautions. Kinda the opposite of a person who puts on a helmet and does even more stupid stuff because they are wearing the helmet than if they weren't.

Regardless however, anything you try to do to your players, they will do back to you. You will have players who's entire goal is to rush your casters as quickly as possible. You think that you will be oh soo good at crushing the caster players, but if they are as much of powergamers as you guys seem to make them sound... Well then you will have to use far less casters or pull d*** maneuvers in order to keep them out of the players melee.

If you absolutely loathe the idea of finding things already in existence to fight against casters, instead houserule that tumble gets harder as the bab of the creature is there, as does concentration checks.

This still leave 5 foot steps sure, but you still have the ability to ready the action to cause nastyness.

[Eldariel]

Actually in AD&D you weren't "damn able to have teammates who can keep bad guys off you" you just had wizards who sat waaaay in the back casting magic missiles and fireballs and DM's who just won't go past the fighter up in front.

Course some of that actually changed in 3.5 where DMs were actually courageous enough to slip past the 5 foot square of fighter (you know, go around him) and then attack the wizard.

Umm, I'm pretty sure with how the turn structure and combat worked back then, it was a perfectly legit action to just "stay in front of the bad guy"; they can't move through you. Or at least that's how we always played the combat turns.


No this doesn't just "give them a weakness" or keep the non-caster 1/100th of the power of a caster.

It just makes the caster ignore anything that would put him in melee. So touch spells? Gone.

That means no healing in combat until later levels. most buffs are touch. The caster is instead going to focus on Magic missiles and fireballs and standing as far away from the party as possible.

#1: No. As pointed out below, this wouldn't happen. In fact, I happen to know this doesn't happen since I've played games with these rule changes.

#2: You prefer it that casters actually don't need to care about anyone or anything? That just doesn't really seem sensible to me. 3.X's design overall bones melee without reach. Why? Because 5' steps. Get next to archer? Doesn't matter, he 5' steps away. Next to caster, even with Mage Slayer? Same deal. If you don't have reach, you actually aren't a melee threat even if you're a melee type next to a person supposed to be inconvenienced by melee threats. If you have a Spiked Chain, that's a different story but if the game design forces every decent Fighter to use one specific silly exotic weapon, something is wrong.


The entire goal of this rules change isn't to "give them a weakness" to jack diddly. Its to put in an instance that should come up often were the caster is just completely boned.

If you're completely boned as a caster without defensive casting/5' steps, you're just a bad caster. Also, casters and the party should work to avert those situations in the first place so caster doesn't have to use the limited escape/defense resources on themselves. This suddenly means casters have use for a party/allies; OH DAMN! Wait, isn't that good for a supposed team game?


You are next to the monster.. It uses full round attack on you. You are dropped to 1 hp. Can't five foot step. Can't tumble. Can't cast defensively. You stand there, wishing that you could actually do something useful.

...chances are that full attack would kill you anyways if you have 50 HP, it connects, and you have no defensive magic available. And honestly, are you saying it's "ok" for caster to be able to just ignore the fact that he let a melee monster get next to him and just cast spells like there was nobody bothering him? I don't know about you but when the game includes rules for AoOs on spells, I'd expect those rules to actually get some use at some point.

[Doug Lampert]

Tie 5ft step to the full attack action. Force it to be taken towards the person you're attacking, if at all. That'll help. Then just fix Tumble DCs and suddenly life is good and not having reach isn't the end of the world for martial types (and indeed, a guy with a polearm is at a disadvantage against a melee range warrior that got up to his skin, as it should be).

This both, achieves the original intent and avoids all the bothersome "5' step away, lol you in the face"-crap. Though you'll also have to make defensive casting somehow impossible 'cause else all this is for naught. Yeah, there are 3 different things you gotta fix for casting near opponents to be dangerous in the least; but once you're aware of that, fixing those 3 things is easy and suddenly life is much more interesting.

Nice, I'd allow 5' steps that keep you at the same distance, so you can manuever arround someone. But that's a good suggestion as a solution to the presented problem.


Casting on the defensive. With full ranks in the spell (especially if you get Combat Casting at lower levels), you don't provoke and have a minimal chance of losing a spell (if at all).

Don't take Combat Casting unless your DM uses retraining, it's a wasted feat by level 10 or so as Skill Focus (concentration) will let you make your roll on a 1, and skill focus helps on other concentration checks while Combat Casting is limited to the easy ones.

[Waker]

Unless he uses Still/Silent Spell and/or spells without somatic/vocal components. In which case the mage in question paid a price in feast and spell slots to spare himself an AoO. He deserves to get that spell of unmolested.
Just a small thing to note, but a Silent/Still spell still provokes an attack of opportunity. Even if the spell doesn't require verbal or somatic the effort of casting the spell still leaves the caster open for attacks from AoO or a Readied Action to interrupt. I'll try and find the specific clause for it later, but for now I'll leave you with the example of spell-like abilities, which require neither verbal or somatic but still provokes the attack.

[Triskavanski]

Umm, I'm pretty sure with how the turn structure and combat worked back then, it was a perfectly legit action to just "stay in front of the bad guy"; they can't move through you. Or at least that's how we always played the combat turns.


Exactly what I mean though, the DM apparently never really tried to slip past you. Even now, it still fairly easy to slip past the defender, though.. with some of these changes, nixing 5 foot steps or whatever it might actually become harder.




#1: No. As pointed out below, this wouldn't happen. In fact, I happen to know this doesn't happen since I've played games with these rule changes.

#2: You prefer it that casters actually don't need to care about anyone or anything? That just doesn't really seem sensible to me. 3.X's design overall bones melee without reach. Why? Because 5' steps. Get next to archer? Doesn't matter, he 5' steps away. Next to caster, even with Mage Slayer? Same deal. If you don't have reach, you actually aren't a melee threat even if you're a melee type next to a person supposed to be inconvenienced by melee threats. If you have a Spiked Chain, that's a different story but if the game design forces every decent Fighter to use one specific silly exotic weapon, something is wrong.


I remember a quote somewhere here...





If you're completely boned as a caster without defensive casting/5' steps, you're just a bad caster. Also, casters and the party should work to avert those situations in the first place so caster doesn't have to use the limited escape/defense resources on themselves. This suddenly means casters have use for a party/allies; OH DAMN! Wait, isn't that good for a supposed team game?



Ah here it is!

What happens when big bad meanie caster is flanked? Can he five foot step? Not likely. Can he tumble? well probably can tumble, unless you are using knights.

I know, using teammates is hard to do.

But still If I was in your game, I'd play melee. And make your DM cry as his casters continuously die due to the overwhelming power of Helga, Strong Woman.




...chances are that full attack would kill you anyways if you have 50 HP, it connects, and you have no defensive magic available. And honestly, are you saying it's "ok" for caster to be able to just ignore the fact that he let a melee monster get next to him and just cast spells like there was nobody bothering him? I don't know about you but when the game includes rules for AoOs on spells, I'd expect those rules to actually get some use at some point.

No, I'm not say its "okay herpaderp"

I'm saying there is far more things you can do. Grapple, Reach, Mage hunter, Monks, dispell magic, counter spell, ready actions, flank, trip, throat punch, donkey kick, SR, Spell immunity, high saves, laser from the sky, anti-magic field.

I'm also saying that there are far more casters than wizards who only throw (insert spell) from the back ranks.


However, I would agree that Tumble should have adjusted DC's based on the monster you are fighting. I think 10+bab of the target would be good. Could still be 15+bab, or 10+ab of primary weapon.

[jpreem]

I'm saying there is far more things you can do. Grapple, Reach, Mage hunter, Monks.

ROTFL
:smallbiggrin:

[Triskavanski]

Your laughter means you have yet to have seen a properly built monk using proper actions within combat.

[Aspenor]

Your laughter means you have yet to have seen a properly built monk using proper actions within combat.

Let me guess, Use Magic Device? :smallcool:

[Triskavanski]

I mean more of not using foot to face style.

[Eldariel]

Exactly what I mean though, the DM apparently never really tried to slip past you. Even now, it still fairly easy to slip past the defender, though.. with some of these changes, nixing 5 foot steps or whatever it might actually become harder.

He can attempt that but it's eminently blockable; a person can stand in front of somebody when the movement is simultaneous and it's very hard to get past them. We allowed trying to bypass somebody but as that was basically an unlisted action it's something DM had to rule - in our case it got defaulted to a Dex-modified combat bonus roll between the two; that is, the more experienced guy had the edge which was usually the Fighter.

In 3.5, the combat round works differently with initiative order making bypassing somebody far easier...unless they are a properly built Fighter with 20'+ reach and ability to interrupt Tumbles, Spring Attacks, casting and all that but that, again, requires the friggin' Spiked Chain which is just ridiculous. No, we do it all the time; that's the whole problem.


Ah here it is!

What happens when big bad meanie caster is flanked? Can he five foot step? Not likely. Can he tumble? well probably can tumble, unless you are using knights.

I know, using teammates is hard to do.

But still If I was in your game, I'd play melee. And make your DM cry as his casters continuously die due to the overwhelming power of Helga, Strong Woman.

Big Bad Evil Casters tend to have summoned, bound, animated, charmed or otherwise controlled henchmen along with thralls and other things more than willing to throw themselves in the harm's way. It's not easy to get past 40' diameter animated boulders, for example. Or 20 skeletons. Evil guys have teams and that's good. If you surround him and strip off his defenses, good job, you won! It won't be easy tho and the fight won't start with him alone in a place you can reach with you knowing who's the real BBEG.

Not to mention, quickened spells don't provoke. Someone adjacent? QUICKENED BENIGN TRANSPOSITION! You're suddenly adjacent to Beat Stick X or a Random Bunny now while the caster is 30' away in perfect safety with his whole turn's worth of actions left; feel free to go hulk smash on the bunny/Ogre if you want to. And casters being completely immune to damage is quite doable so getting next to one doesn't even do as much. Mirror Images, Displacements and so on give you plenty of layers of defense against physical attacks and you can also pump sickening amounts of AC out of magic. It's also possible to completely block attacks with simple immediate action spells. Casters have ways even if melee being next to them would inconvenience them.

Now, realize this:
It's already possible to make all movement (including 5' steps & co.) provoke and casting provoke and so on. Thing is, it pretty much requires certain build and use of ridiculous weapons like the Spiked Chain. Your standard Fighter with a Longsword is horribly gimped by comparison. Which, in my books, is not ok. Spiked Chain being a viable weapon is fine; Longsword being unviable is not.

Longsword should be just as viable as Spiked Chain, at least. Spiked Chain being unviable would be more desirable than Longsword being unviable simply due to Longsword being an iconic weapon not to mention rather commonplace; you basically lose out on an entire classic archetype if you cannot use Longswords (or contemporaries).

Big reason to Longsword-type weapons being unviable is the fact that 5' steps make reach a requirement for being an efficient melee threat. If you aren't being an efficient melee threat, why are you melee in the first place? You can dish out similar damage just the same through any other way. Melee's advantage is that if you get into melee with an archer or a mage, they have to fight a fight that's not their forté; they can't use their magic or archery or even polearms efficiently in close-quarter melee. Or it should be. But it just so happens, 5' steps, defensive casting and company make that edge non-existent. Indeed, unless you have at least 10' reach you cannot threaten anybody respectably.


No, I'm not say its "okay herpaderp"

I'm saying there is far more things you can do. Grapple, Reach, Mage hunter, Monks, dispell magic, counter spell, ready actions, flank, trip, throat punch, donkey kick, SR, Spell immunity, high saves, laser from the sky, anti-magic field.

I'm also saying that there are far more casters than wizards who only throw (insert spell) from the back ranks.

Thing is, normal fighters should be dangerous when they get to melee. They aren't. Grapple helps...a bit, but it's incredibly dangerous for both grapplers (since any other foes treat you as flat-footed) and it's very easy to ward against. Not to mention, caster can actually reach better Grapple-checks than warrior very easily since they can grow their size for massive +4 bonus per size category. Quickened Polymorph into something huge and watch the Fighter try to grapple you, promptly getting squashed while being unable to escape the grapple and dying.

Monks...are a joke. They're basically bad Fighters that get nothing that helps against casters. Spell Resistance is not nearly as helpful as one would like to believe mostly because many of the good control spells (that disable you while the more imposing party members are being dealt with) don't have spell resistance while casters regularly reach level + 5-10 + die roll caster level checks for penetrating Spell Resistance (not to even mention True Casting/Assay Spell Resistance/other specialized tools for penetrating it); only way to get that kind of spell resistance is through magic. Same with Dispel Magic; yeah, casters can counter casters but that doesn't really help the guy with the sword do his part. Indeed, even if the caster's magic gets dispelled, the guy with the sword still can't do anything but move up, attack and be useless once the caster defensively casts, moves away or whatever. Anti-Magic Fields are more of the same (except they're very unwieldy since you need a very specific skill set for them to help you more than they hurt you).


The issue is not that casters lacking the tools to combat other casters, the issue is that in order for a warrior to pose a respectable threat even for an unprepared caster when they get to melee (notice how many "if"s he's already conquered; caster doesn't have his wards up and the fighter has reached melee) they need to go for very specific builds that fly all over the faces of classic warrior heroes that many people would no doubt want to portray when playing warriors. You basically need Thicket of Blades, Spiked Chain or Polearm+UA Strike, Mage Slayer & Stand Still/Improved Trip to really begin to bother casters in melee.

Notice how I said "begin to bother"; without all of that, you literally just don't do anything even if you do get into melee with one. And getting into melee with one is not easy (his Dumb Brutes™ try various AoO trips block actions on you and provided you miraclously beat all of those, he spends an immediate action to Abrupt Jaunt 10' away denying you your attack and denial anyways, and that's with all of the above).

[Last Laugh]

I mean more of not using foot to face style.

example build perhaps? I must admit I am quite biased against monks, but would welcome conversion.

[Vistella]

example build perhaps? I must admit I am quite biased against monks, but would welcome conversion.

i currently play a staff-using trip based monk which works quite well (if you dont count rolling only 4 or lower on the opposed check, and i mean the dice and not the endresult)

but granted, hes lvl5 and our group isnt that overpowered

[Last Laugh]

i currently play a staff-using trip based monk which works quite well (if you dont count rolling only 4 or lower on the opposed check, and i mean the dice and not the endresult)

but granted, hes lvl5 and our group isnt that overpowered

Stupid dice, this would be a much better game without them. Don't know the last time I rolled higher than a 10 on a non-initiative check :D

Edit: I'm interested to know how you stack up to larger critters. Or what tactics you rely on against them?

I'm wanting to play a shapeshift ranger, and given its access to tripper/grappler forms it could be a lot of fun!

[Eldariel]

i currently play a staff-using trip based monk which works quite well (if you dont count rolling only 4 or lower on the opposed check, and i mean the dice and not the endresult)

but granted, hes lvl5 and our group isnt that overpowered

Yeah, Trip Anything Martial is fairly good, but Trip Barbarian is by far the best. Since they get massive bonuses to the opposed check from Rage. Anything with Guisarme Proficiency (or bonus feats for Spiked Chain proficiency) is pretty high up there too; I'd say Ranger & Fighter comes after Barbarian. Well, ignoring casters of course; Cleric using Righteous Might with a Guisarme or Spiked Chain is just ugly.

[navar100]

Yeah spellcasters should never have any limits on them, ever.

There's a difference between limits and you can't do anything, you suck. So what a spellcaster takes a 5ft step and casts a spell? It's only an attack of opportunity he's avoiding, not I Win D&D Screw You DM! His opponent can just take a 5ft step on his turn and whack at the spellcaster all he likes.

It's possible for a spellcaster to always makes his defensive casting roll to avoid the AoO. The spellcaster can take Combat Casting, Skill Focus (Concentration), and max Concentration skill. With a 14 Con, he always makes his defensive casting roll even on a 1 for his highest level spell starting at level 4.

[navar100]

So another example of melee should never have any nice things?

Ridiculous.

A spellcaster not being able to take a 5ft step gives warriors nothing. They still lose speed in heavy armor. They still only get one attack if they move more than 5ft. They still have a terrible will save.

If you have issue with warriors not doing so well, then improve their lot so that everyone is equally happy rather than screw over spellcasters so that everyone is equally miserable. A spellcaster taking a 5ft step to avoid an AoO does not a D&D apocalypse make.

[navar100]

Man look at all this straw it's just everywhere

I kind of agree that 3.5 makes it a bit trivial to cast spells with a raging barbarian next to you, but spellcasters should have some recourse in such a situation.

I think Pathfinder does a somewhat decent job at making defensive casting an actual risk. The "5-step to complete safety" thing is a little harder to fix right. It's almost like the sort of broad issue we might need a whole thread for or something.

In 3E it takes two feats and skill points dedication for 100% defensive casting success. For such an effort the character should enjoy his shtick, and it's only an attack of opportunity that's being avoided. This is good for clerics and druids who like to wage into battle. Wizards and Sorcerers don't want to be in melee so won't make the effort, unless they really like touch spells. Personally I don't find this such a big deal that Pathfinder needed to take that away, but it's done. No more 100% defensive casting. It's still not a tragedy the spellcaster can move 5ft to cast.

[Eldariel]

There's a difference between limits and you can't do anything, you suck. So what a spellcaster takes a 5ft step and casts a spell? It's only an attack of opportunity he's avoiding, not I Win D&D Screw You DM! His opponent can just take a 5ft step on his turn and whack at the spellcaster all he likes.

What? If the spellcaster casts a spell, one of two things happens:
#1: The warrior is no longer capable of acting in a manner that threatens the caster.
#2: The caster is no longer in a position where he's threatened by the warrior.

Either way, the warrior can't 5' step in and attack. Spells are strong in this case. Melee is built so that it acts as a threat against non-melee meaning non-melee is strong against melee when engaging at range (like archers like fighting against melee from long range as do casters; no ****) while melee is strong when in, y'know, melee. But 5' steps make that not the case.

Basically, you engage at 200'. Enemy archer/caster does something to your melee type. What does the melee type do? Well, tries to get close. While taking free pot shots. That's the price of being melee. He can also pick up a bow and absolutely suck at using it since his feats and levels have been spent on being good at melee. Melee is supposed to suck at range while ranged abilities are good at range. Simple, eh?

Then, what does melee get for this? Well, melee is supposed to be very good at melee, while ranged abilities (archery provokes AoOs in melee, polearms can't attack in melee, casters provoke AoOs in melee) are supposed to be bad in melee. But guess what: due to 5' steps, polearms can attack in melee, archers can shoot in melee and casters don't even need to make Concentration-checks to cast in melee.

In other words, due to 5' steps, melee isn't actually any better in melee than anybody else. Melee gives up potential to act at range for nothing. Unless melee has range while still threatening adjacent; in other words, the only melee that functions like melee should uses Spiked Chain (or is naturally Large or bigger).

5' steps are terrible game design and should have never been made in their present guise. Instead of giving warriors with lesser reach the ability to close in on their greater ranged melee opponents, it gives everyone the ability to ignore the fighter with 5' reach completely by just moving away and doing whatever being in melee should dissuade you from doing (it's right there in the rules; there's AoOs for doing stuff in melee so being in melee is supposed to make it harder to do that stuff but obviously you need to be a friggin' Troll for that to be the case).

[navar100]

You are assuming the fighter will fail his save, the wizard casts a spell against the fighter, the wizard has the the most opportune spell at that most opportune time. That's the game. The wizard could very well cast a spell to take out the fighter. The wizard could very well not be able to take out the fighter. Just because it's possible the wizard could take out the fighter does not mean there's a problem that needs a solution of the wizard not being to do anything at all because the fighter is right next to him.

[Eldariel]

You are assuming the fighter will fail his save, the wizard casts a spell against the fighter, the wizard has the the most opportune spell at that most opportune time. That's the game. The wizard could very well cast a spell to take out the fighter. The wizard could very well not be able to take out the fighter. Just because it's possible the wizard could take out the fighter does not mean there's a problem that needs a solution of the wizard not being to do anything at all because the fighter is right next to him.

Caster can pick a spell that requires a save or simply something like Web that'll make it extremely unlikely for the melee to be able to move even if he makes his save. Or the caster can just Benign Transposition away. Or cast a spell that can knock out the whole team.

Ultimately, that's irrelevant. Melee should be at an advantage when he gets to a melee. It should be more than apparent that he's not. If caster has e.g. Mirror Image up the melee is extremely unlikely to beat both the AC and the images. If the melee happens to have abnormally good Will-saves, he may almost have a 50/50 chances of making the first save. Caster 5' steps away and uses The Generic Will-save Spell For The Level (say Color Spray on level 1); we now assume the caster doesn't use a disabling no-save spell like Web or Wall of Force or whatever.

Caster's spell can hit multiple targets but in the event that it does not, he still has 50/50 chance (assuming 18 Wisdom from the melee) of knocking the melee out kold without the melee having a chance to do anything about it. The melee, provided he makes this save, will then proceed to have way under 50% chance of knocking the caster out in what's supposed to be his playfield. Imagine the same engagement taking place 100' away; the melee will take multiple rounds just getting to the caster.

There'll be a ward or sleep or whatever cast; the melee will have to make many 50/50 rolls to just get a chance at attacking the caster let alone having nearly even odds of winning the fight. That's range's turf. In melee, melee should be good, while it demonstrably is not due to 5' step, defensive casting and few other bull**** mechanics in 3.X. The point here is that spells are friggin' powerful. Poor use (that is, hitting only one target), tends to still be roughly as efficient as attacking. Trading spells for attacks, like 5' step logic assumes, is a losing proposition for the melee. And that's supposed to be where melee shines.


5' steps break melee into "those with reach" who can do what melee should do (i.e. restrict options and threaten non-melee next to them) and "those without reach" who can only deal damage just like archers, except they have no range. I don't see how you could possibly argue that's good game design, or good for the game. And if you've played AD&D you'll know that casters don't need 5' steps, quickened spells or any of the bull**** 3.X contains to be fine if you know what you're doing.

Even without all those, the casters are perfectly ok. Why give them stuff that makes them even more overpowered than they are already? And why screw melee using traditional weapons over for no good reason?

[Telasi]

The 5' step is one of the most useful moves in the game, in my opinion. Getting rid of it hurts mundanes more than casters, I think. Instead, look at Step Up (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/step-up-combat---final) and it's friends from Pathfinder for dealing with casters.

[Eldariel]

The 5' step is one of the most useful moves in the game, in my opinion. Getting rid of it hurts mundanes more than casters, I think.

Which is why tying it to full melee attacks and forcing it towards the opponent works. Keeps the polearm/reachless/archer balance intact between various melee types while allowing for AoOless closing in on ranged types and positioning for full attacks.


Instead, look at Step Up (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/step-up-combat---final) and it's friends from Pathfinder for dealing with casters.

I find that's just a really silly feat. Instead of tackling the problem, it builds on the problem to make for even more random adjusting to match opponents' adjusting. Overall, I don't see why that kinda stuff would be necessary; axe the issue, don't build around it.

[Zeful]

Spellcasters are entitled to do what they're supposed to do, namely cast spells. Being in melee should not be "Thou shalt not cast spells thus must be punished to eternal damnation of suckiness if thou dare try."


Man look at all this straw it's just everywhere

Except what is unspoken in his argument can be summed up as "Mundane (lit. non-magical) characters are not allowed to be as competent as a spellcaster". If casters are entitled to cast spells than a Fighter should be entitled to fight, which means casting spells within his range should be suicide for a caster because the fighter can fight and the caster cannot. Normal martial arts of today teach principles that would crush a caster's ability to cast non-stilled, non-silenced spells within reach of this professional. If people want to keep casters the same then all mundane characters need to be given the same level of assumed competence in their fields or else there's no point to the mundane classes.

[navar100]

Except what is unspoken in his argument can be summed up as "Mundane (lit. non-magical) characters are not allowed to be as competent as a spellcaster". If casters are entitled to cast spells than a Fighter should be entitled to fight, which means casting spells within his range should be suicide for a caster because the fighter can fight and the caster cannot. Normal martial arts of today teach principles that would crush a caster's ability to cast non-stilled, non-silenced spells within reach of this professional. If people want to keep casters the same then all mundane characters need to be given the same level of assumed competence in their fields or else there's no point to the mundane classes.

Male-cow feces. That is not what I said.

WOTC erred by overvaluing the power of an attack and undervaluing the power of a spell. That is shown in 3.0 with two-weapon fighting taking two feats while the Haste spell allowed a spellcaster two spells a round.

Near the end of 3.5 they finally got it. Better feats in Player's Handbook II and the second Complete series improved the warrior's lot. Tome of Battle allows warriors to move more than 5ft that's not a charge and not suck for it, even improving charging.

Improving the warrior's lot is easy, and it does not require more plus numbers. Allow full attacks moving more than 5ft. For each iteration a character can move 5ft and full attack. For example, a character with +11/+6/+1 can move 15ft and still full attack. If you prefer, make this available only for warriors and rogues. Optional, no AoO for this movement through a threatened area, but that might be better off as a house rule feat with Mobility as a prerequisite so that reach still has meaning. Don't lose speed for wearing heavy armor. Those two house rules alone help warriors greatly without making spellcasters the suck for the audacity of casting a spell.

[Triskavanski]

Not to mention, quickened spells don't provoke. Someone adjacent? QUICKENED BENIGN TRANSPOSITION! You're suddenly adjacent to Beat Stick X or a Random Bunny now while the caster is 30' away in perfect safety with his whole turn's worth of actions left; feel free to go hulk smash on the bunny/Ogre if you want to. And casters being completely immune to damage is quite doable so getting next to one doesn't even do as much. Mirror Images, Displacements and so on give you plenty of layers of defense against physical attacks and you can also pump sickening amounts of AC out of magic. It's also possible to completely block attacks with simple immediate action spells. Casters have ways even if melee being next to them would inconvenience them.


Ha tiny man makes Helga laugh. Helga loves when caster put big beat stick in front of her. Makes for better throwing!

Tiny man thinks wizards only exist at level 20 and is always able to cast spells. Tiny man is wrong! Tiny man still continue to think that only caster is wizard. Tiny man is wrong!

Tiny man can only think of ever negative of things that fight casters, never of positives.

Seriously though.

Doing this to fight against your powergaming PHB1 spell casters. (Not bards rangers or paldines) cause less face it, those are the ones you are really angry at here... Like I said opens up for the same thing to happen against your NPC casters.

Oh ho! you say, My NPC casters have trillions of troops at the beck and call at every hour of the day!

Really now? Gee what does that do for your melee players you want to boost so badly. Oh right. It makes them more depressed. So the monk, yes I said monk, charges through the enemy ranks and gets to your wizard.

Oh ho you say! my wizard casts spells at him! Fireballs and rays!

Monk's ability to defensed against spell casters isn't SR. Its the high Touch ac. Its the high saves. The SR is just icing on top of the cake. Like I said, you've not seen a real monk in action, possibly because your table might ban or not have books that really help mundane characters. (Like complete scoundrel) Lets just say the monk does get to your wizard though for sake of argument.

Ha! you say. I have displacements and mirror images! it is impossible for you to.. wait why are you closing your eyes?

Thats right, Blind fighting. Sure you might have lots of bonuses and stuff, but If I close my eyes what are my negatives?

The character cannot see. He takes a –2 penalty to Armor Class, loses his Dexterity bonus to AC (if any), moves at half speed, and takes a –4 penalty on Search checks and on most Strength- and Dexterity-based skill checks. All checks and activities that rely on vision (such as reading and Spot checks) automatically fail. All opponents are considered to have total concealment (50% miss chance) to the blinded character.

and what happens with blind fight?

Blind-Fight [General]
Benefit

In melee, every time you miss because of concealment, you can reroll your miss chance percentile roll one time to see if you actually hit.

An invisible attacker gets no advantages related to hitting you in melee. That is, you don’t lose your Dexterity bonus to Armor Class, and the attacker doesn’t get the usual +2 bonus for being invisible. The invisible attacker’s bonuses do still apply for ranged attacks, however.

You take only half the usual penalty to speed for being unable to see. Darkness and poor visibility in general reduces your speed to three-quarters normal, instead of one-half.

Since Mirror image is simply that.. an image, It relies on you being able to see. Thus negated. Regardless of amount of displacement, you get to roll twice.

And opening and closing your eyes is a free action.

[Zeful]

Male-cow feces. That is not what I said.Which I make clear, but what is left unsaid in that line is far more damning than what is said.


Improving the warrior's lot is easy, and it does not require more plus numbers.
If you notice, I made no statement on what needs to change, or how to change it, just that a Fighter needs to be as competent at fighting as a caster is at casting spells. I am more than aware that simply making the fighter's numbers bigger are useless for this.


Those two house rules alone help warriors greatly without making spellcasters the suck for the audacity of casting a spell.
Except with those house rules, you have not made the fighter as competent at fighting as the spellcaster is at casting spells, thus you have not granted the fighter his entitlement.

[Triskavanski]

Arg! why didn't I see this sooner.

You say you need to ban these features that allow casters to move out of melee to "balance" long sword fighters.

But then you go on to say that casters will have tons of protection and be capable of surviving in melee because of all their spells.


So truely what the hell freeking changes other than the subpar casters like the hexblade getting the dicebag shoved even further up cheek, and mundane types getting shafted as well?

[Eldariel]

Ha tiny man makes Helga laugh. Helga loves when caster put big beat stick in front of her. Makes for better throwing!

Tiny man thinks wizards only exist at level 20 and is always able to cast spells. Tiny man is wrong! Tiny man still continue to think that only caster is wizard. Tiny man is wrong!

Level 20? Seriously? I haven't even mentioned a single spell over level 5. That'd be level 9 spells, FYI. Do I really need to explain all the ways in which Shapechange, Gate, Astral Projection, Time Stop, Disjunction and company completely bone D&D in the real and leave anybody without the same spells whimpering in the grass?

I'd imagine it would be kinda obvious; Astral Projection for immortality, Gate to call creatures up to twice your CL in HD as perfectly loyal for 1 round/level, Shapechange to change form as a free action once per turn giving you AC in the 70s without trying, access to just about every spell in the game as a Su (that is, uncounterable, unresistable, generally HD-based saving throw, infinite use) version, better physical stats than any warrior can have by this point, extra actions, etc. And Disjunction to remove all magic no save from target and break their magic items vs. save for good measure and Time Stop to basically play solitaire making unescapable death traps with tentacle monsters molesting your poor victims, calling hordes of angels or just making world-ending cataclysmic blasts in one turn.

I know casters win on level 20; I don't need to rehash that. I know casters win on 13 and 15 and 17 for that matter. I know they win on 11. It's irrelevant. We don't need to discuss those levels, the stuff casters get then is stupid. Until level ~9 or so tho, the whole 5' step matter is still quite relevant though and its removal does wonders for non-casters' ability to impact casters.


For the record, I've made a Barbarian with the following attributes for level 20:
- Radiates 10' Anti-Magic Field (affected by it himself, of course)
- Natural Flight
- Touch AC in the 40s
- Rock-solid saves
- Immortal for ~10 rounds or so at will
- +35 or so to hit with the ability to deal 200 damage per hit and full attack on charge
- Can charge like 100' away
- 300+ HP
- 20' reach and gets nasty AoOs for basically any actions within that area

And I'm aware he'd have no chance against a caster who gives a damn.


Tiny man can only think of ever negative of things that fight casters, never of positives.

Seriously though.

Doing this to fight against your powergaming PHB1 spell casters. (Not bards rangers or paldines) cause less face it, those are the ones you are really angry at here... Like I said opens up for the same thing to happen against your NPC casters.

Oh ho! you say, My NPC casters have trillions of troops at the beck and call at every hour of the day!

Really now? Gee what does that do for your melee players you want to boost so badly. Oh right. It makes them more depressed. So the monk, yes I said monk, charges through the enemy ranks and gets to your wizard.

What are you talking about? The NPC casters have support whether or not they can 5' step; the difference is that if they can't, getting next to them is useful. Not a single caster should ever be without some quantity of mind thralls, undead, animated objects, planar bound creatures, simulacrums or any other of the plenthora of means they have of creating more or less loyal underlings that can do the silly stuff like sticking swords to things for them.


Oh ho you say! my wizard casts spells at him! Fireballs and rays!

Monk's ability to defensed against spell casters isn't SR. Its the high Touch ac. Its the high saves. The SR is just icing on top of the cake. Like I said, you've not seen a real monk in action, possibly because your table might ban or not have books that really help mundane characters. (Like complete scoundrel) Lets just say the monk does get to your wizard though for sake of argument.

I've played with full 3.X for years now; it just so happens it doesn't really matter what defenses the Monk has. He's still stuck in Webs or Solid Fogs 'cause they don't have relevant saves, and he's still just as dead to Quickened True Strike into e.g. Stun Ray as anyone else. It doesn't matter whether your touch AC is 10 or 30 when we're talking over +30 To Hit, and it doesn't matter what's your save when you get Stunned for N turns no save and can just be Coup de Graced. It doesn't matter. He doesn't have natural flight; one chained dispel disabling all his magic gear and suddenly he can't even reach a caster with Overland Flight or Air Walk or what the hell ever.

Or maybe a caster Polymorphs/Wildshapes into something big and just rapes the Monk and his silly multi-attribute dependency, poor BAB and AC in melee. Have you ever seen a 12-Headed Hydra with a truckload of hour/level and 10 min/level bonuses fighting a mundane warrior? It's not pretty unless the mundane has AC in the mid 30s (and if Wraithstrike is game, we're talking Touch AC instead of AC). Or maybe he just hits Monk with a save-targeting spell that succeeds anyways 'cause Monk can't afford to pump all his stats. Clerics, Druids and to lesser extent Barbarians can reach rather respectable saves but just about everybody else is stuck in mediocrity most of their careers. Wizard/Sorc makes do by bypassing the need to save but that's about it.

And that fabled Spell Resistance Monks they get? Level 13, when the game is already over and casters are swimming in Contingencies and Action Economy Abuses with the ability to bind extraplanar entities to any servitude with ridiculously low chances of failure. Seriously, Wizards get free Glabrezus as class features at that point. Or hell, Simulacrums of Hecatoncheireses or Planetars or some such. The spells are so ridiculous at that point it doesn't really matter what anybody without the same spells does; they're bringing fists into a nuclear war.

Thing is, Monk is a weak enough class that casters beat Monks in melee without really trying. Monks can't beat Fighters or Barbarians in melee and Fighters and Barbarians struggle against slightly buffed Clerics, Druids or Wizards. When Clerics, Druids or Wizards go all-out, it doesn't really matter.


Ha! you say. I have displacements and mirror images! it is impossible for you to.. wait why are you closing your eyes?

Thats right, Blind fighting. Sure you might have lots of bonuses and stuff, but If I close my eyes what are my negatives?

The character cannot see. He takes a –2 penalty to Armor Class, loses his Dexterity bonus to AC (if any), moves at half speed, and takes a –4 penalty on Search checks and on most Strength- and Dexterity-based skill checks. All checks and activities that rely on vision (such as reading and Spot checks) automatically fail. All opponents are considered to have total concealment (50% miss chance) to the blinded character.

and what happens with blind fight?

Blind-Fight [General]
Benefit

In melee, every time you miss because of concealment, you can reroll your miss chance percentile roll one time to see if you actually hit.

An invisible attacker gets no advantages related to hitting you in melee. That is, you don’t lose your Dexterity bonus to Armor Class, and the attacker doesn’t get the usual +2 bonus for being invisible. The invisible attacker’s bonuses do still apply for ranged attacks, however.

You take only half the usual penalty to speed for being unable to see. Darkness and poor visibility in general reduces your speed to three-quarters normal, instead of one-half.

Since Mirror image is simply that.. an image, It relies on you being able to see. Thus negated. Regardless of amount of displacement, you get to roll twice.

And opening and closing your eyes is a free action.

Oh no, you only have a 25% miss chance plus whatever AC (that can be gargantuan) we're talking about! So...you'll hit maybe 3/8th of your attacks of which you get one after movement. And then, you need for that one attack to do something and then the caster 5' steps away and laughs at your face. Without the 5' step you might at least (if you didn't have total concealment negating any chance of getting AoOs at any rate) inconvenience them by being there even if your attack missed.

With 5' steps though, your whole action was inconsequential; you have accomplished whole diddly squat. Though even if you have Pounce (say you're playing something a bit better like a Barbarian) and the ability to kill the caster in one hit, it's still a lot of defenses you have to go through and that's before immediate actions, contingencies and company come into play. At that point 5' steps won't really be that big a deal but if you can position yourself adjacent to a caster and just attack, they suddenly begin to matter a great deal. 5' steps are like a Get Out Of Jail For Free Card vs. guys without reach (that is, any unoptimized melee; why do you have to optimize in an unintuitive way to be any good again?); Quickened Benign Transposition is one too but at least it takes a level 5 slot.



Arg! why didn't I see this sooner.

You say you need to ban these features that allow casters to move out of melee to "balance" long sword fighters.

But then you go on to say that casters will have tons of protection and be capable of surviving in melee because of all their spells.


So truely what the hell freeking changes other than the subpar casters like the hexblade getting the dicebag shoved even further up cheek, and mundane types getting shafted as well?

Because without 5' steps the somewhat more fair levels become even more fair? And because even without 5' steps, casters still aren't boned in melee so removing them doesn't make casters worthless or anything but forces them to respect a swordsman who gets to them?

And because this is just as big a deal for archer vs. polearm vs. melee range weapons, not just casters? For the record, it's the melee that's getting hosed in each and every circumstance. Honestly, 5' steps as they stand down do nothing but negative things for the game and everything is better off without them.

[Telasi]

Which is why tying it to full melee attacks and forcing it towards the opponent works. Keeps the polearm/reachless/archer balance intact between various melee types while allowing for AoOless closing in on ranged types and positioning for full attacks.

No. No it doesn't. Sometimes you want to step in a direction other than directly towards something. What's even worse is that you want to tie it to melee full attacks. Go ahead, screw my archer even more than the system already does. I can see full attacks, but come on, just melee full attacks?

I'm not willing to defend Step Up, really. Just wanted to point out that the option does exist.

[Triskavanski]

So then you completely admit that getting rid of the five foot step, tumbling out of combat and defensive casting is stupid, as it doesn't actually balance jack diddly (As I said before) and only serves to hose people who play subpar casters such as the hexblade, casters who don't go totally power-gamer, archers and fighters with longswords who the very thing is set up to try and help.


If mean if this was actually a contest of Archer fighter vs Longsword fighter, then sure.

But like I said before, you get casters who end up sitting in the back ranks, who cast spells that prevent you from getting to them. You've only gone to further prove that point.. that it was NEVER the party in AD&D that got between the nasties and the player character, but the wizards wall o' spells.

[Worira]

So then you completely admit that getting rid of the five foot step, tumbling out of combat and defensive casting is stupid, as it doesn't actually balance jack diddly (As I said before) and only serves to hose people who play subpar casters such as the hexblade, casters who don't go totally power-gamer, and fighters with longswords who the very thing is set up to try and help.

That is the opposite of what was just said. The literal exact opposite.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

It seems to me that eliminating caster 5 ft steps only serves to screw over casters without Abrupt Jaunt or some other means of obviating melee threats - the very same casters who don't need nerfing. I suppose you could systematically get rid of every single get out of melee free card, but (1) perhaps there are less time-consuming ways to let melee have nice things and (2) if you do go through with it, eliminating the 5 foot step for the caster should probably be the last thing on the list.

[MeeposFire]

What caster really cannot handle a nerf? The only one I can think of are warmages and maybe duskblades+hexblade. Those classes are all devoted to being in combat so if you did this variant you might consider giving them an ability to still 5 foot step. Other casters get no sympathy from me. Even with this casters at all high levels do not care about hardly anything you do unless you go after their spells directly.

[Triskavanski]

That is the opposite of what was just said. The literal exact opposite.

Yes, he said one thing out of the side of is mouth. While also explaining that mirror image, and displacement would stop the long sword fighter. While also explaining that a quickened true strike ray of stun would stop the monk.

And that his super duper barb wouldn't even stand up to a caster.

amongst other things that still continue to point that other than level 1-3 the caster would still win.


What caster really cannot handle a nerf? The only one I can think of are warmages and maybe duskblades+hexblade. Those classes are all devoted to being in combat so if you did this variant you might consider giving them an ability to still 5 foot step. Other casters get no sympathy from me. Even with this casters at all high levels do not care about hardly anything you do unless you go after their spells directly.

Warmages, Hexblades and Duskblades would be 3 "true" casters that would be hurt.
Bard would tend to be as well, but to a much lesser degree.
Non-powergamed spellcasters would also be hurt in this as well. Course from his super barb, I doubt some people's tables have this problem.. Which are the ones who truthfully believe that this would not just be a way of nerfing casters, but actually be able to effectively nerf them.

Then depending on which variant you go with, lots of other classes get caught in the crossfire who can't even pick up a wand.

[Eldariel]

No. No it doesn't. Sometimes you want to step in a direction other than directly towards something. What's even worse is that you want to tie it to melee full attacks. Go ahead, screw my archer even more than the system already does. I can see full attacks, but come on, just melee full attacks?

Thing is, if you wanna make archery and melee interact as intended, allowing archers to 5' step back and full attack just screws it all over. And yeah, you'd want to take the 5' step away, but again, that just screws the whole system over; what's the point of finally getting adjacent to the polearm guy if he can just 5' step back? Honestly, when you think of your archer, do you envision him picking up his bow and just shooting the guy attacking him with a sword in the face? 'cause that's not the real use of a bow; a non-Elvencraft version, at any rate. And if you really want that, you can just pick up Close-Combat Shot through various PrCs.

Warriors carry multiple weapons for that very reason anyways; it's not a large investment for an archer to become competent with a Greatsword too, for example. So switch it up when you are in melee; if anything, that'd give people some kind of an incentive to become competent at multiple things. Then just remove the obscene feat taxes involved in archery and TWF and make S&B worth a damn and suddenly you can have WARRIORS instead of Archers, TWFers, Two-Handers and company. Sure, you can focus on one or the other but that doesn't mean you are absolutely helpless in whatever isn't your focus.


So then you completely admit that getting rid of the five foot step, tumbling out of combat and defensive casting is stupid, as it doesn't actually balance jack diddly (As I said before) and only serves to hose people who play subpar casters such as the hexblade, casters who don't go totally power-gamer, archers and fighters with longswords who the very thing is set up to try and help.


If mean if this was actually a contest of Archer fighter vs Longsword fighter, then sure.

But like I said before, you get casters who end up sitting in the back ranks, who cast spells that prevent you from getting to them. You've only gone to further prove that point.. that it was NEVER the party in AD&D that got between the nasties and the player character, but the wizards wall o' spells.

I don't know about your AD&D party but our Fighters certainly did a great job getting between the nasties and the squishies. They also dealt very respectable damage but fact was that you simply could not walk past them unless they let you. There's simply a body there and given that most things can't go through matter, that body moving wherever you try to move while hacking at you with a pointy stick tended to form a very efficient obstacle.

Yes, spells can be used to defend too; a lone caster isn't helpless. Still, caster only has so many spells (especially with AD&D-style preparation and lack of bonus slots), and every defensively prepared slot is a cost. Also, the spells themselves came with costs and weaknesses; you can penetrate Stoneskin with high frequency low damage attacks very easily, for example. You'd far prefer to have a warrior between you and the nasties and then cast the Stoneskin on the warrior. Which gives you group dynamics. If the warrior can't protect you tho (á la 3.X) then the Wizard suddenly has to focus his efforts on himself since the warrior is effectively useless to him. If we make it so it's non-trivial to bypass a warrior and so that it's non-trivial for a Wizard to escape a warrior, we get a paradigm where Wizard can use resources to protect himself or more efficiently his allies that can in turn, with those resources, protect them both better (or best of all, if the Warrior protects the Wizard, the Wizard can focus his efforts too to disabling the opposition together with the Fighter which is the best option of them all). A wizard is inconvenienced in melee because that's not where he wants to be and thus wants to be allied with people who can keep him out of there. He's not disabled but he's not at his best there either.


Sure, Hexblades will be hurt but that class is trash anyways; use one of the reworks and they'll still be fine. And Duskblades and true Gishes wouldn't be terribly hurt to start with. And honestly, for all I care, you can give a combat casting-like ability to Gishes as class features; that won't overpower them and the cost of losing caster levels will still dissuade straight casters from picking them up. Hell, allow everyone with all martial weapon proficiencies to cast defensively if that's what you want. Still, aside from channeling (which is a special action and shouldn't provoke anyways) warrior mages don't really need to cast non-immediate action spells when already engaged in melee.

That's why they're warrior mages, they go in using magic while closing up, and to buff themselves and then engage with their melee weapons because they also possess that skill set. That's why a mage learns to fight in the first place; so when magic isn't safe/an option, you have a fallback. That's where the whole warrior/mage archetype comes from. This here change would actually give people incentive to play one besides "it's cool" (which is certainly a fine incentive but it's even more awesome when mechanics support the cool options and the classic archetypes make sense to pick mechanically).

[Hawriel]

I think taking away defensive casting would be a better option for what the OP intends. It's one of the most retarted options in the game.

Casting 'defensivly' just does not work. How do you cast a spell that require both hands to eather make a gesture and or use a component at the same time denying a melee type from beating the crap ouf of you? Keep in mind that wizard also has a staff or dagger in one hand already.

Lets use a lightning bolt spell for an example.

The wizard gets blindsided by an orc warrior taking a full move action through thickets. The wizard turns and spots 3 more orcs right behind the first. The wizard casts lighting bold 'defensivly'. Lighting bolt requires you to hold a glass rod and a swach of wool then rub them together. However the wizard is holding a staff on one hand. How does the wizard with to hands grab a glass rod and swach of wool from his pockets and rub them together in a way that the orc does not chop him into piecess? Also what happened to his staff? did he drop it? Did he put it in a pocket?

[Eldariel]

I think taking away defensive casting would be a better option for what the OP intends. It's one of the most retarted options in the game.

Casting 'defensivly' just does not work. How do you cast a spell that require both hands to eather make a gesture and or use a component at the same time denying a melee type form beating the crap ouf of you? Keep in mind that wizard also has a staff or dagger in one hand already.

Lets use a lightning bolt spell for an example.

The wizard gets blindsided by an orc warrior taking a full move action through thickets. The wizard turns and spots 3 more orcs right behind the first. The wizard casts lighting bold 'defensivly'. Lighting bolt requires you to hold a glass rod and a swach of wool then rub them together. However the wizard is holding a staff on one hand. How does the wizard with to hands grab a glass rod and swach of wool from his pockets and rub them together in a way that the orc does not chop him into piecess? Aslo what happened to his staff? did he drop it? Did he put in it a pocket?

Without taking 5' steps out, that does nothing. And without severely nerffing Tumble, removing both is still relatively insufficient. And on the other hand, there are many classes which could reasonably be seen "casting defensively" (swordmages á la Spellswords, Duskblades and so on); after all, if you can cast a spell while fighting with a sword, you can probably keep yourself semi-protected while casting.

Your average Wizard with little martial skill though? No chance in hell. Which is why I like somehow keeping the option open for some warrior/mages but closing it utterly from full casters. I mean, Gishes could use a bone anyways.

[Zeful]

Without taking 5' steps out, that does nothing. And without severely nerffing Tumble, removing both is still relatively insufficient. And on the other hand, there are many classes which could reasonably be seen "casting defensively" (swordmages á la Spellswords, Duskblades and so on); after all, if you can cast a spell while fighting with a sword, you can probably keep yourself semi-protected while casting.

Your average Wizard with little martial skill though? No chance in hell. Which is why I like somehow keeping the option open for some warrior/mages but closing it utterly from full casters. I mean, Gishes could use a bone anyways.

With the way spells are designed? Not really, even taking your focus off a fight for a second leads you to being quickly losing momentum in a fight between two people of equal martial skill, but considering that as a martial force the fighter should eclipse the Wizard by a good amount? Taking time to cast any spell, even immediate action spells, should result in that spell failing because the caster can't keep up the momentum in a fight, to push back an attacker.

If you wanted to keep it for Gishes, it'd probably be better off as a Class feature of specific Gish classes.

[stainboy]

Readying actions to counter the 5' step keeps coming up in this thread, and I have no idea why. If you believe readying melee attacks is an effective way to stop casters, answer this:

Drizzt and Sememmon, as statted in FRCS, square off 30 feet apart. Neither has any buffs active and neither is allowed to use activated items. Drizzt wins initiative. He draws his scimitars and moves adjacent to Sememmon. He knows that Sememmon will either defensively cast Dimension Door, or take a 5' step backward and THEN defensively cast Dimension Door.

What action must Drizzt ready to have a chance interrupt the spell regardless of which option Sememmon chooses?


Difficulty: This is about the effectiveness of readying an action. Drizzt could grapple but that would defeat the point. Grappling would be equally effective whether Drizzt readied a grapple or just did it on his turn.

If you don't have the FRCS handy,
Drizzt is a dualwield fighter with some ranger and barbarian levels, and Sememmon is a straight wizard. Drizzt can't oneshot Sememmon even on a max damage critical. Sememmon's Concentration bonus is +15, with another +4 for Combat Casting. Drizzt has Combat Reflexes, Quick Draw, and a +3 frost scimitar mainhand. Sememmon has Quicken Spell but for this exercise he's not using it. Both of them are unoptimized characters with haphazard core-only feats.

[Triskavanski]

Drizzit readies "The moment he does anything other than stand there, I stab him in the face"

This is a kin to "The moment i see an ugly enter than door I fire my bow"

Of course you might have a DM who would totally require you to write down a 30 page legal document on terms and conditions of the readied action in order to make it so it can be used only in psychedelic blue moon.

[Doug Lampert]

Drizzit readies "The moment he does anything other than stand there, I stab him in the face"

This is a kin to "The moment i see an ugly enter than door I fire my bow"

Of course you might have a DM who would totally require you to write down a 30 page legal document on terms and conditions of the readied action in order to make it so it can be used only in psychedelic blue moon.

He takes a free action to talk, you stab him, and then he does whatever he wants. The net result is that you've done nothing you wouldn't have done with a single standard attack.

Or he steps away, you stab him, and have done nothing you wouldn't have done with a single standard attack.

In neither case have you interupted his spell in any way.

[Triskavanski]

Note though I said "stab him in the face"

If the entire thing is to be taken literally, he is stabbed in the face with my scimitar.

Tell me how he is gonna be able to cast a spell when his face is frosted?

If its not taken fully literally, I instead quick draw a thunderstone and hit him with it.

[Doug Lampert]

Note though I said "stab him in the face"

If the entire thing is to be taken literally, he is stabbed in the face with my scimitar.

Tell me how he is gonna be able to cast a spell when his face is frosted?

If its not taken fully literally, I instead quick draw a thunderstone and hit him with it.

You readied an action. It has a game effect. He losses a handful of hitpoints and casts a spell because there's NOTHING in the rules about not casting after being stabbed in the face.

Apperantly though, you've now CONCEADED that a readied action melee attack is WORTHLESS since you are now going with a different action. If you throw that thunderstone at a level 1 wizard with no defenses and no relevenant feats he fizzles 12% of the time (then DC 15 against a +2 from con, and if he misses that he still casts 80% of the time).

The other 88% he ownes you, along with anyone with non-verbal spells or a bonus to fort.

And that's assuming you don't roll a 1 when you throw the stone which does require an attack roll to hit the space.

Congradulation, the best thing you can come up with for a high level fighter to do faced with a caster is something he is trivially better at than a level 1 commoner!

[randomhero00]

Thinking of another solution (already posted an idea in this thread)
make the 5ft step a feat after dodge, mobility, except all full martial classes get it for free at lvl 1

then make step up free too at level 6.

Casters become a lot more difficult to make everything easy mode. Unless they want to spend a ton of feats, which only evens things out. And even then nerfs them a bit, at least feat wise.

[stainboy]

Doug is correct. Readying a melee weapon attack doesn't work. If Sememmon 5-foot steps back, he gets hit during his 5-foot-step. He takes some damage and then casts the spell unopposed.

(Also, the trick isn't that the DM is a jerk about triggering conditions. RAW never sets out any restrictions on how the player can describe the trigger.)

[Typewriter]

I've scanned through some of the posts (not all) and had a couple thoughts someone might be interested in.

For the record my group uses 5 ft. steps, and we have no problems with them, these are just a few thoughts I had. Mix and match as you like:

1. You can only 5 ft. adjust a number of times per day equal to your BAB.
2. You can not 5 ft. adjust 2 rounds in a row.
3. Five ft. adjusts are now considered move actions.
4. Five ft. adjusts are now considered swift actions.
5. Five ft. adjusts are now considered immediate actions.
6. If someone makes a 5 ft. step away from you make a reflex save DC 10 + ECL/CR of the opponent to make a 5 ft. adjust to follow them. If using variant rule 1 this counts as one of your daily 5 ft. adjusts.
7. Using a 5 ft. adjust results in a -2 to all ac/saves/checks/skills/attacks for one round due to being mildly off balance.
8. You can not provoke from the square you are leaving, but if entering a threatened square the adjustment provokes attacks of opportunity.

Hope you find some of these of interest :P

[stainboy]

If its not taken fully literally, I instead quick draw a thunderstone and hit him with it.

What thunderstone? FRCS lists equipment for NPCs and Drizzt doesn't have any. But let's say he does.

If you're going for "distracted by a nondamaging spell," you're on shaky ground by RAW (a thunderstone isn't a spell) and the DC is 19. Sememmon makes it on a 4. Combined with the Fort save to avoid Deafen (Sememmon makes that on an 8), and the 20% chance for Deafen to ruin a spell, a Thunderstone gives slightly worse than a 18% chance to interrupt the Dimension Door. And Drizzt has to drop a scimitar to do it.

Anyway not what I was going for but it's close enough. My answer was throw his scimitar as an improvised weapon. Either way the problem is that melee cannot interrupt casting with melee attacks. They have to disarm themselves and make weak-ass ranged attacks even against targets who are next to them.

[Hawriel]

Without taking 5' steps out, that does nothing. And without severely nerffing Tumble, removing both is still relatively insufficient. And on the other hand, there are many classes which could reasonably be seen "casting defensively" (swordmages á la Spellswords, Duskblades and so on); after all, if you can cast a spell while fighting with a sword, you can probably keep yourself semi-protected while casting.

Your average Wizard with little martial skill though? No chance in hell. Which is why I like somehow keeping the option open for some warrior/mages but closing it utterly from full casters. I mean, Gishes could use a bone anyways.

This is just...silly.

Get a friend, a stick, and two randome objects that you can stick in your waist band and or pockets. Have your friend beat you with a stick wile you pretend to cast a spell wile resiting a poem or song lyric. See how far you get and how many wacks you take.

[Claudius Maximus]

Yeah, you'd need to be really good at concentrating or something to pull that off.

Now if only the game could model that.

[cfalcon]

Mage Slayer (3.5) + Step Up (Pathfinder) = Only broken casters will be casting.

What do you have against non-broken casters?

Edit: I'd like to add that I do really like the Pathfinder concentration mechanic. For those not in the know, Concentration isn't a skill in Pathfinder. You instead just use your caster level. However, the DC on defensive casting now scales with TWICE spell level, not just spell level. This means that while your odds of defensively casting a 1st level spell are similar in both editions, your chances on casting a 7th level spell defensively at 15th level are moderate instead of almost a guaranteed success.

My line at the top was more about mixing the most potent of both systems to end up with something you may not have intended. Mage Slayer in 3.5 still gives casters several other options, and it offers a counter to the cheesy auto-success. By itself it doesn't guarantee you free punches on a pure caster trying to do his job. Whereas in Pathfinder, stuff doesn't just shut down the caster, who actually has a real check to pass, and in fact Step Up encourages him to have to make that check. Together, as a hybrid of editions, they send a strong message to all casters in your game world past about 5th level: you need to never ever let a melee near you, or you are over. Meanwhile, a greater invisible overland flying guy in a lesser orb of invulnerability still can't be touched without decent magic, not merely magic items like winged boots or anything else duplicating the 3rd level fly spell- and at high level, things get even crazier.

Meanwhile, the level 6 dude can't get off a fireball because he's getting shadowstep glyphed garroted or some nonsense.

[MeeposFire]

That would work better if weapon attacks worked more like 4e and your attacks tend to do more damage (such as 4(W)) rather than making more attacks like we do in 3.5. At high levels you need a really accurate and damaging attack to knock out a casters concentration check.

[stainboy]

Mage Slayer (3.5) + Step Up (Pathfinder) = Only broken casters will be casting.

What do you have against non-broken casters?

E: You edited while I was typing, nevermind.

Honestly spending two feats to wreck anyone who tries to cast against you in melee sounds like a fair deal. Two feats for something situational is expensive.

Also, yes, Pathfinder handles this crap much better but it still needs to close the 5' step loophole. Making defensive casting and tumbling nontrivial just makes 5' step the default answer. Step Up, sure, but letting characters spend feats to fix bad rules is no excuse for having bad rules.

[cfalcon]

I definitely feel that a caster should be able to cast in melee, but there should be a risk of interruption, damage, and spell loss. I agree that baseline 3.0 rules don't really do this, and Pathfinder handles it better, but unless you just want your casters getting rolled by anything with two feats (one of which is legit good- Step Up is not just for casters), then you shouldn't just import them both wholesale. If a pure caster faced with a fighter/barbarian's correct answer is to hope he has like Quickened Dimension Door, then I don't think that's any more helpful than "I stroll this way, and exhale. DC 22 Will save or be my slave". Hell, at least he can't do that but so many times a day.

[stainboy]

Talking about stopping casters with AoOs or readied attacks is a red herring anyway. Those feats are a waste when you can usually just grapple.

That's the biggest problem. You can stop casters in D&D but not the way the books tell new players to stop casters. If you read the ready action rules and the concentration rules and the AoO rules they all talk about interrupting a caster by hitting him while he's casting. Those are the rules as apparently intended and they don't work. The 5' step cheat completely shuts down both AoOs and readied melee attacks.

Either WotC didn't know about the 5' step cheat (bad) or they did and left the AoO and readied action stuff in as a trap for noobs (worse). And Paizo most certainly did know about the 5' step cheat. (They may have kept it for backwards compatibility, but still.)

If you're only supposed to stop casters by grappling them, then the rules should say that. But they don't say that, they say over and over that you stop casters by running up to them with a sword. If the rules say something works, it should actually work.

_____________________________________________

Additional note for all you people running to the defense of the poor gish casters: There are two gish strategies. You've got battle cleric / blade bard / eldrich knight, who throws up buffs or field control while the enemies close and then acts like a fighter. They don't want to cast from melee, they want to use spells to make melee their best option. Then you've got spellsword / duskblade, who can't use their channeled attacks if they step out of melee.

Neither type of gish uses the 5-foot step cheat.

[MeeposFire]

Meh most of Paizos "fixes" are window dressing. I am sure they knew how easy it was for casters to get out of problems. It is more of a problem of trying to find a fix that the 3.5 crowd will still accept and get the job done. Frankly casters have so many options to get to do what they want that even changes in 5 foot steps will not solve them. They would need to make changes to a good number of classic spells and the people Paizo is catering to will not accept that on the whole.

[Yahzi]

but once you're aware of that, fixing those 3 things is easy and suddenly life is much more interesting
Wow, it looks like this sparked a big thread. Which is good; I hadn't thought of a lot of this stuff.

OK, so here is what I've cobbled together, using all these suggestions:


1. Anytime an opponent adjacent to you takes a 5' step, you may immediately choose to take a free 5' step to occupy the square they just left (unless for some reason you are prevented from taking 5' steps).

2. Casting on the Defensive is gone. But Still Spell allows you to cast without provoking an AoO.

3. Tumble checks - Add 1 to the DC for every HD you are tumbling past?

What do you guys think?


For the record:

The players already tumble past my NPCs to slaughter the BBEG (seriously, I left one hole in the line and they used it!).

I do want to gimp casters in melee. They dominate the world from outside of melee; the least we can do is let swordguy have fun when he's 5 ft away. Also, all notions of game balance aside, it's the flavor I want.

[Triskavanski]

Casting defensively shouldn't be gone. Its about the only reason concentration even exists in the first place.

but using something like 10+spell levelx2+bab of best threatener+ 1 * each additional threatener.

But I'm trying to figure out a way to get AB of the caster involved.


Tumble should also be based in the same. Use the ab of each person the person is trying to tumble around.


Also five foot step should be an opposed roll using ab. Tumble helps a little bit.


Though this still doesn't really help that longsword fighter everyone keeps clamoring about vs casters.

[Yahzi]

Casting defensively shouldn't be gone. Its about the only reason concentration even exists in the first place.
You can still make a Concentration check to complete the spell after being damaged, right? So a caster with a maxed-out Conc skill could still cast in combat, just with some risk. And Combat Casting/Skill Focus would be a feat tax to the the guy who casts in melee; that actually sounds kind of OK to me.


Tumble should also be based in the same. Use the ab of each person the person is trying to tumble around.
That sounds good - the DC is 14 + the BAB of the opponent.

[Triskavanski]

Yes you still make Con-checks after getting hit.

But putting them in this situation is absolutely terrible and doesn't actually serve to balance anything other than making it suck again for people who don't go the total power gamed wizard with mirror images and displacement.

Like the more combative based classes such as bard, duskblade, hexblade ect.

[stainboy]

1. Anytime an opponent adjacent to you takes a 5' step, you may immediately choose to take a free 5' step to occupy the square they just left (unless for some reason you are prevented from taking 5' steps).

2. Casting on the Defensive is gone. But Still Spell allows you to cast without provoking an AoO.

3. Tumble checks - Add 1 to the DC for every HD you are tumbling past?



1. That works, provided you deduct 5' from the character's next move like the Step Up feat does. Don't want any 4e Conveyer Belt cheese.

2. You might take a look at the Pathfinder system. Casting defensively still *exists*, the DC just scales properly and it's not a skill so you can't cheese it with +skill items. Also I agree about making sure duskblades and psychic warriors and such can still cast defensively without rolling.

3. I'd go by base attack bonus (DC 10+BAB or something). Just remember that skill bonuses from items are super cheap. A determined player will still tumble past anything; you'll just close the option for anyone not willing to invest in it.

[Yahzi]

1.That works, provided you deduct 5' from the character's next move like the Step Up feat does. Don't want any 4e Conveyer Belt cheese.
Heh, I rarely need to worry about that much cheese with my players. Still, a good point.

What do you think about the limitation that you can only occupy the vacated square? This does mean if you retreat from several people that only one can follow you. Should I change it to "remain adjacent?"


2. You might take a look at the Pathfinder system. Casting defensively still *exists*, the DC just scales properly and it's not a skill so you can't cheese it with +skill items.
Ah, OK, good point.


3.A determined player will still tumble past anything; you'll just close the option for anyone not willing to invest in it.
That sounds good enough for me. I don't want to stop people having fun; I just don't want the average battlefield to look like Wuxia.

[Eldariel]

This is just...silly.

Get a friend, a stick, and two randome objects that you can stick in your waist band and or pockets. Have your friend beat you with a stick wile you pretend to cast a spell wile resiting a poem or song lyric. See how far you get and how many wacks you take.

Hence why I said limit it to those who have trained for their whole lives for it (and let's face it, are mechanically in a bit of a sorer need for it since they're expected to be in melee) - Gishes.

[Triskavanski]

This is just...silly.

Get a friend, a stick, and two randome objects that you can stick in your waist band and or pockets. Have your friend beat you with a stick wile you pretend to cast a spell wile resiting a poem or song lyric. See how far you get and how many wacks you take.

You think that's the hard part. Sir you make me laugh.
You have six seconds to cast a spell, often less than six seconds.

You don't recite poems, you don't sing songs, and most of the time you don't even use M components.

My warlock used baleful utterance. Before you even had a chance to swing stick, I have already cast shatter on it with a simple word. "Domo"

One good example of this though is Scrapped princes when The mage of the party would say "Flame fire dance" and cause a lightbolt or something.

You cannot tell me that power word spells also are "reciting poems". or that spells that are swift actions or immediate actions are long complicated manners of dancing and chanting.

You know that time of preparation at the beginning of the day? Yeah... That's when most of it is done.


No, the reason why you get an AoO from someone throwing off a spell isn't because they are acting like a drunkard, but because they glanced a way from combat for just a second.



A WIZARD DESCRIBES
PREPARING A SPELL
Have you ever seen a scribe readying a page to copy a piece of
text? The scribe scrapes the sheet clean, then carefully traces
out perfectly straight lines to contain the text and set it in order.
Finally, the scribe sharpens a quill and carefully forms each letter
in the text, stringing the characters together to form words,
paragraphs, and finally the whole page.
Preparing a spell is like that.
I have my spellbooks, the original manuscript. I begin the
processes by resting my mind and body, erasing the detritus
from the previous day. Sleep wipes my mental parchment clean.
When I awake, a focus for a while. I cast off the details left over
from my dreams and set my thoughts in order, just like a scribe
setting the rules and margins on a page. When I finish, I have
built a mental structure for my spells. This is the essence of
magic. As I have continued to hone my magical art, I find I can
create more and more mental pages to contain my spells.
When I have created as many blank pages as my mind can
hold, I turn to my spellbook and copy the spells I need. I don’t
use pen and ink, of course, I carefully review the arcane formulae
recorded in the book and fill the empty structures in my mind
with magical power. There’s no feeling quite like finishing preparation
for a spell. Thoughts swirl like autumn leaves through my
mind. By sheer force of training and will, I force those mental
leaves into motes of arcane power. The motes collect on the
framework like beads of dew on a spider’s web. The final result
is a thing of stunning and sublime beauty. With every breath I
take, I can feel the structure thrum with power.

[Eldariel]

No, the reason why you get an AoO from someone throwing off a spell isn't because they are acting like a drunkard, but because they glanced a way from combat for just a second.

Shooting somebody in the face with a bow at pointblank range provokes AoO; chances are he didn't look away from his opponent at any point. AoOs are provoked when you take actions during which you cannot defend yourself martially from opponents defending yourself.


Mage Slayer (3.5) + Step Up (Pathfinder) = Only broken casters will be casting.

What do you have against non-broken casters?

If the system didn't include the pointless 5' step mechanic, there would be no need for Step Up. And honestly, you can accomplish the same with a reach weapon + some way to threaten 5' (UA strikes, armor spikes, spiked chain, etc.) which is basically always a better deal anyways. Doesn't help me if I wanna actually play the Longsword-using Fighter tho.

[Triskavanski]

For the bow, you began to draw an arrow.

Requires quite a bit more than saying a single syllable of dark speech.

[navar100]

Spellcasters are not overpowered simply because they have a way to cast a spell when an opponent is next to them. That's the game. Spellcasters are supposed to cast spells.

[Zeful]

Spellcasters are not overpowered simply because they have a way to cast a spell when an opponent is next to them. That's the game. Spellcasters are supposed to cast spells.

No they are overpowered because their spells are all absolutes, and their only counter is more spells. That they can cast even when the actions required for casting any spell would against any competent fighter leave them open for any number of hard shutdowns is just an insult.

Also your rhetoric wears thin when you fail to respond to the opposite point (Fighters are supposed to fight) at all.

[BrainFreeze]

If you don't like full casters just don't allow them in your game. Eliminating the 5 foot step does not solve anything and in fact makes it even harder on the classes you are trying to empower.

Your argument that the long sword should be just as effective as the spiked chain is silly and ignores the fact that the chain requires a feat to use. Make the long sword an exotic weapon then we will have that conversation.

There is no quick and easy fix to make the melee characters as effective as spell casters. You need to just design your own game and make that the goal from the ground up, when you are done well you will most likely have 4th edition and might as well be playing a MMO.

Seriously all of your posts saying "well this does not hurt my NPC caster because ....etc" is not taking into account that the NPC only has to fight 1 combat a day usually...if he does not have all the answers he requires for that 1 fight a day then well your doing it wrong.

Pick up the Pathfinder book and read about the CMD, try using that as a target number for casting defensively and tumble, and for gods sake remove concentration as a skill. Also shouldn't this be in homebrew?

[Another_Poet]

Consider giving it to any class with +1 BAB at first level. Fighters & their kind get the five foot step that way, no one else.

For everyone else I would let them 5' step if they give up their standard action to do so. That allows near-dead casters to use it defensively and hope the enemy isn't willing to risk AoOs to follow them.

[stainboy]

Spellcasters are not overpowered simply because they have a way to cast a spell when an opponent is next to them. That's the game. Spellcasters are supposed to cast spells.

Then the spells shouldn't provoke AoOs. But they do, so we have to infer that the developers meant those AoOs to matter.

[Triskavanski]

Consider giving it to any class with +1 BAB at first level. Fighters & their kind get the five foot step that way, no one else.

For everyone else I would let them 5' step if they give up their standard action to do so. That allows near-dead casters to use it defensively and hope the enemy isn't willing to risk AoOs to follow them.

So what are rogues? Or heck any "battle" oriented non-caster that has a M attack bonus.

This is why I believe attempting a 5 foot step should invoke an opposed roll.

If you 5foot around the opponent thats okay.

If you 5 foot away from them however, both make checks.

1d20+ BAB + Initive + dodge AC (Not dex) - movement/armor penalties... something else I want to add, but can't figure out what.

If you are within 5, both characters move. If you are above five, and the winner is the invoker, only he moves. If you are the defender, the invoker doesn't move.

[MeeposFire]

Just what we need more opposed rolls every round to slow down the game further. We need to invoke KISS. Keep it simple silly.

[Triskavanski]

Thats the kind of mentality that led to this in the first place.

They introduced half a complex system, but not the other half. Then just simply trying throw knives in the dark as you do, you cause even more complications due to over simplifications of complex systems.

You've got to gut the entire game from the start, remove all the mechanics and replace them with a simple system. when you are missing your liver, you don't just get better by putting a simple bandaid on it. Especially when said bandaid is applied with a blowtorch.

[MeeposFire]

Thats the kind of mentality that led to this in the first place.

They introduced half a complex system, but not the other half. Then just simply trying throw knives in the dark as you do, you cause even more complications due to over simplifications of complex systems.

You've got to gut the entire game from the start, remove all the mechanics and replace them with a simple system. when you are missing your liver, you don't just get better by putting a simple bandaid on it. Especially when said bandaid is applied with a blowtorch.

Remember this is a game. If the game becomes too slow and bloated it stops being fun and it ruind fun even faster than a lack of balance so lets not get carried away.

Well if you actually want to make the change then stop fiddling with this stupid AoO stuff and get to the real issue at hand, the spells themselves. Unless you change the general power level of spells all the changes you and everybody are talking about are just window dressing.

[Triskavanski]

True, that's why normally, I almost always say "But this doesn't actually fix or balance jack diddly."

At least, not as far as casters are concerned.

Was proven a few pages back, when a caster would just cast a bunch of spells and even a high speed monk character would be dead before reaching the caster.

Now I'm more on fixing things related to a few rogueish troubles.


And while yes it is a game, this is more of "fixes" for the extremely bloated power gamers who absolutely ruin the game absolutely.

[Eldariel]

If you don't like full casters just don't allow them in your game. Eliminating the 5 foot step does not solve anything and in fact makes it even harder on the classes you are trying to empower.

Your argument that the long sword should be just as effective as the spiked chain is silly and ignores the fact that the chain requires a feat to use. Make the long sword an exotic weapon then we will have that conversation.

Look, you don't solve anything by changing any one thing. This game is complex and broken in a dozen different ways; if you really wanna touch that, you need to do more work than change one little thing. However, changing 5' steps, it helps. A lot. Hell, you remove full casters and it still helps warriors without reach be slightly less underwhelming compared to warriors with reach. Obviously if you wanna balance things you need to rewrite most of magic. And see, the issue with Spiked Chain is that feat or no, it's the only good weapon in the game. You can also use some combinations like Guisarme + Armor Spikes/UA Strikes, but the fact is that weapons without reach aren't good for anything specifically due to 5' steps.

That doesn't fall flat on anything. Weapons without reach should be a viable alternative to weapons with reach. The handful of weapons threatening both reach and adjacent shouldn't be so eminently superior to weapons without those traits that crunch-wise, you should always be using them even at the cost of a feat.