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131de9.jpg
Dark Honey Breeze
131de9
So I took a stab at explaining all this stuff with AOOs and flanking, but visuals help.
THREATENED SPACES
Down the left here, we have some examples of how stuff threatens stuff. It all comes down to being in threatened spaces and trying to do stuff. Being in a threatened space means some dude is all up in your grill.
If you have no weapon in your hands, or you have a ranged weapon, you don't threaten anything. People can totally feel free to ignore you and walk right by. There are feats that make exceptions, but, taking AOOs with pistols and bows and such? Normally that is not a thing.
If you have a plain ol' melee weapon, you threaten every space around you (including diagonals if we're going square grid). Pretty simple.
If you have, say, a 10' reach you threaten things up to 10' away (so, 2 spaces out).
This is not the same thing as having a reach weapon. Reach weapons are unwieldly long things (pole arms, whips, lances), so they can hit stuff that's 10' away, but not stuff that's 5' away (at least, not in a damaging way). As such, blind spots exist.
FLANKING
This is pretty simple, but hey, let's illustrate it anyway. If you and your friend are on opposite sides of something with melee weapons that can hit it, you're flanking it. You each get +2 to hit (because it can't watch for attacks from both sides), and if we had a rogue in this party, they'd be able to backstab while flanking. The important bits are you have to be straight across from the other person, and be threatening it with a melee weapon. Pretty basic.
ATTACKS OF OPPORTUNITY
Now, this is the big one where people start getting confused, so here's a lot of examples down the right, OK? Attacks of opportunity are free shots you get to take at people you're threatening, because they do something that leaves a big ol' opening. There's quite a few things that can trigger these actually. The biggies though are regular movement, attacking with ranged weapons, casting spells, charging, and using any sort of combat maneuver (tripping, grabbing, throwing sand in eyes, disarming, etc.). A lot of these you can get around if you have a certain feat (our cavalier here has one for charging for instance). The spell casting one you can get around by "casting defensively" (which I guess is keeping your arms all tucked in by your face). To do that, you declare the spell you're casting, make a concentration check (1d20+your level+your casty stat bonus against a TN of the spell's level*2+15 (so, level 1 spell? 17). A few other things require concentration checks too, but that's the biggie.
Really though, movement is the confusing thing here. If we want to get real technical (and let's!), every round you can do 1 swift action (certain special spells mainly), and then either 1 full-round action (eats your whole turn), or 1 standard action (HIT THING, CAST SPELL), and 1 move action (usually, you know, moving). If you aren't otherwise moving at all, you also get to take a 5' step. And all these things you can do in any order.
OK now let's have the less technical version. When it comes to moving around, you've got 6 ways to go:
1- Just move all regular. You go up to your speed, however you want, if there's crud on the ground, it costs double to walk through that space, before or after moving you can do some basic thing.
2- Double Move. You move up to your speed, and then you do that again instead of doing something else. Pretty simple.
3- Charge! This kinda takes your whole turn up (full-round action), but you can move up to twice your speed in a straight line to someone and hit'em, if there's nothing in the way. They get to AOO you, you get a +2 bonus to hit them (but not to damage). Also, your AC drops by 2 from when you start charging until your next turn starts. Technically you also have to go at least 10' to do it, but if someone is only 5' away, why would you want to charge? (Well, at low levels I can see it.)
4- Withdrawing. Withdrawing is basically the opposite of a charge. It still eats your whole turn (full-round action), it still lets you move at double speed. The special thing it does is that the space you start out on stops counting as threatened. So usually, you can back away from stuff safely by saying "I'm withdrawing!" and moving the hell away.
5- Run! When you run, you can go up to 4 times your normal speed, but like charging, it needs to be in a straight line with nothing in your way.
6- Take a 5' step. 5' steps are @#$%ing magical. You will end up taking them all the time. They are their own special thing in terms of how much you can do in a turn. If you don't do any of the other 5 movement things, you can take a 5' step on top of anything you're doing, and taking a 5' step is always safe. So like, you want to shoot someone or cast a spell, but someone's in your face? 5' step away first. You're fighting someone and want to slide around the side of them to flank? 5' step! The only catch with a 5' step is that if the ground's all uneven and doing that double movement cost thing? You can't take a 5' step into that space.
All that said, AOOs from movement are pretty simple. If you are, at any point, in a space something is threatening, and you move out of it, they get an AOO against you. Period. Moving into it is cool. It's always safe to walk up and hit something (unless it has a bigger reach than you). What's dangerous is moving away, or moving past. Here are some diagrams. Green arrows don't provoke, red arrows do. 5' steps are, again, always cool. One of these has a pile of rubble so, you can't 5' step there. Purple arrows are safe [i]if you are withdrawing[/b]. You will notice in the bottom right though that if you are fighting something huge with a big ol' huge reach, you can't really withdraw safely there. The first 5' are safe, but as you keep backing away, they still get their free shot.
Finally, without a certain feat, after something takes an AOO on someone, they can't take another until their turn comes around. Their friends all can though. So, you and your pal both running past that troll? Only one of you gets smacked in the face. Running between those 4 trolls though? All 4 will hit you and you'll probably die.
FULL ROUND VS. 1 ROUND
One last fiddly rules bit I want to touch on here. Different spells take different amounts of time to cast. Most are a standard action, so, as long to cast as attacking. Some are faster. Swift is almost a freebie (but you only get one a turn), Immediate is so quick it doesn't even have to be on your turn. Full round is, that's your whole turn, no moving along with it (except a 5' step). But then, there's spells that say they take "1 round" (or more. And it is really important to realize that a "full round" spell and a "1 round" spell are not the same thing! The one round spell takes 1 whole round. As in, you start casting it at the start of your turn, instead of moving or doing a thing. Everyone sees you start to chant and wave your arms around. Everyone else takes their turn. They have time to run over and try to hit you and interrupt the spell and stuff. Then, just before your next turn starts, the spell finishes. The most common 1 round spells are summons and such, and they're kinda balanced around this whole idea that someone has to be able to get away from the action to pull off the spell that gives them backup. So... if the GM goes to have someone just instantly summon help, or a PC just instantly pulls out some giant bugs? We call BS on that. Things have time to hit'em in the face and force a concentration check to avoid botching the summon.
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