You may CA a number of times equal to your Dex mod per battle/skirmish/fight scene.
CAs can be initiated after an opponent misses on an attack roll.
You roll a straight d20, no mods (maybe Dex?), vs their touch AC to determine CA success.
You deal straight weapon damage w/ associated STR or DEX bonus.
I could see scaling feats allowing for better CA damage, or allowing more CAs, etc.
I figured we could possibly weasel some CAs vs wizards in there, too somehow.
No.
Not in favour of per encounter mechanics in the first place.
But all it does is punish those who have a harder time hitting; it discourages people from making melee attacks at all.
It'll cost more time too, the reaction that someone can actually make a counter attack, tracking their CA uses, to deciding if they'll actually spent one of their usages.
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Bigode wrote:I wouldn't normally make that blanket of a suggestion, but you seem to deserve it: scroll through the entire forum, read anything that looks interesting in term of design experience, then come back.
That's still a terrible idea because someone who is fast on their feet and has lightning reflexes is going to be *better* at avoiding a counter-attack than someone who relies on their armor.
In game mechanics, you basically want to give a free attack of opportunity and a free successful feint every time there's a miss.
And it makes melee worse because as a PC you're going to be subjected to eleventy billion more counter-attacks than any NPC you come up with- who only has one combat to get through.
So Mr Fighter is going to be taking counter-attacks up the anus- let's say he's up against 4 NPCs who all have +3 Dex bonus. In one encounter he's going to get it in the shorts every time he doesn't hit that encounter (up to 12 counter-attacks), where his AC is probably going to be worse than normal because you want to make it easier to hit.
So as a low level fighter, or any fighter for that matter, would you want to take essentially 12 attacks of opportunity in an encounter because you're swinging a sword? Or do you want to pick up a bow and arrow and shoot the dude from a distance and not take counter-attacks?
In SR3 initiating melee sucked because you could actually take damage as the attacker, which is what this rule is implementing.
Unless you limit the ability to PCs only and make it a class ability that no NPCs ever have. Which is bad because you're admitting it's a shitty rule and have to have a double-standard.
You shouldn't have reactive attacks be conditional on whether the person decides to use them because they come out of a limited resource, unless that resource also does other things. Every time you add a new game currency to determine one and exactly one thing that serves no purpose but to hold up the game as people waffle indecisively, a game fairy dies.
Almaz wrote:Every time you add a new game currency to determine one and exactly one thing that serves no purpose but to hold up the game as people waffle indecisively, a game fairy dies.
Haha, you may have just given me a new favorite quote.
Are there any thoughts out there that allow counter-attacking in a streamlined, usable, way?
A simple feat, or even a class ability that you could throw Fighters or somedamnclass for free.
Counterattack:
Prereqs: BAB +1, Dex 13
Text: When an opponent makes a melee attack against you and misses, they provoke an Attack of Opportunity.
It's simple, it uses existing mechanics, and it doesn't hose fighters quite as much (because mooks don't invest in this feat or possess this class ability).
You could add a limiter if you want...only works on people whose BAB/Dex/blahblah is less than yours.
Now that I've told you how you CAN do it, the question is, why do you want to? Because your design intent may completely invalidate everything I just said.
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It was just an idea a player of mine and I were talking about. So after we tossed around a few ideas I figured I would put this one through the Den-grinder.
Other ideas were to allow a CA on a crit fail, or have attackers miss hy a certain amount.
The only reason I didn't limit it to a feat was because I sort of likened it to being in the same category as Tome's Power Attack.
The feat isn't a bad idea, though. Think it has room for scaling?
codeGlaze wrote:Are there any thoughts out there that allow counter-attacking in a streamlined, usable, way?
Have you considered "Waiting until your initiative comes up and then full attacking the guy who just attacked you"? Because that seems to work in most D&D games I have played.
Wait, you mean a counter-attack - what happens when one person attacks another, and then the other guy attacks him afterwards but not simultaneously - can be represented by the system where one person attacks another, and then the other guy attacks him afterwards but not simultaneously?
D&D has two published "counter attack" feats of which I know: Reactive Strike (3.0 - reduce your AC for one turn by... 2? 4? If a foe hits you, they provoke off you) and Robilar's Gambit (3.5 - as above, but also take extra damage and they provoke just by attacking at all).
I included a Counter-Attack scaling feat (that eventually makes "attacking you" provoke, but not right from the word go) in Disgaeagame, but not because I felt D&D actually needs more instances of people attacking each other out of Initiative. It was because Disgaea really likes it when one initiated attack results in seven people attacking each other five times each, and enemies spend their action getting killed. Much like how "Penguins explode when thrown" is a specific Disgaea thing and not for general D&D.
So if you're really hooked on the idea of attacking people out-of-turn, maybe look at that, but definitely tie it into your Attacks of Opportunity. But first consider not doing that and just waiting for your combat turn.
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4E has quite a few powers that can be used as an "Immediate Reaction" or "Immediate Interrupt" so you might look at those for ideas. Generally speaking they're Encounter or Daily powers or only usable against marked opponents.
Though personally I'm not a huge fan of them, as they slow the game down, and I imagine that would just be exacerbated in 3.X/Pathfinder where Meleeists have iterative attacks. Whether that's an issue depends on you and your players.
