5 feet mobility tweak. Need help.

[Thewaitingman]

Ok, I'm working on a homebrew overhaul where I aim to make the encounters a bit more to my liking and vision. What always bugged me in 3.5 is that fights tended to be too... stationary. The boss blackguard tank comes out :smallmad: the heroes flank him :smalltongue: and the fight assumes a I-roll you-roll mode with the bad guy usually being clobbered to death :smalleek:. I know the best encounters involve enemies with more options in their hands than.. well, clobbering, but duels are supposed to be heroic and cinematic. I know the players are supposed to move in a 10-feet area but that still doesn't help in the end. I've always believed that rules are a dm's servants and not his masters so I aim to bend them to my will! :smallbiggrin:

I've thought of a pretty simple tweak that may give me the result I want. I remove the 5 foot step after a hit and instead add a recoil/stagger move where the one being hit must take a 5 foot step to a square that is not threatened by his attacker. If the defender is not hit then he doesn't have to move and if he cannot move then he is trapped and considered flanked by his opponent. I'll probably add that you cannot move an enemy more than two sizes bigger.

Can you think of an abuse of this rule? Or a heavy fault?

[nonsi]

I don't see how this makes combat more mobile.
It only forces you to move or else.
Remember that per RAW, you don't get a 5'-step unles you make no other movement during that round, so if you make any other movement and get hit, you're basically screwed.

[Thewaitingman]

The point is that there are instances where both opponent's best strategy is simply to keep hitting, there's no need to move. Using the rules by themselves and without any cinematic breakoff by the DM's hand the (melee) boss CANNOT disengage unless he loses his round only to continue the clobbering in the next turn where the players will charge and hit again. I offer a necessary breakoff after each successful hit. Following the rules exactly the only need for movement is either because of the appearance of new enemies or some spell/hidden trick making the enemy non-melee. In other words the encounters often look like an age of empires skirmish with units standing opposite and striking lowering the other's health bar and it falls to the DM to embelish this by allowing for hypothetical movements left and right or changing the damage interpretation as blocked swings and grunts.

Imagine this:
Scenario 1 (Rules):The barbarian/melee player enters a tavern to find his target sitting at a table. The two throw initiatives, the target rolls a larger roll but seeing his charging enemy quickly stands up and throws the table infront of him forcing the player to move around it losing his benefits. (everything is fine up to here). The player reaches his target and hits, the enemy cannot disengage without using the withdraw action thus losing his turn altogether so he can only hit back, the same goes for the player bla bla bla, one of them dies. And all of this happened supposedly behind the overturned table since the two players had no strategic need to move any more. (to much work for the DM to make it interesting)

Scenario 2 (5-foot recoil/stagger). The player moves between chairs and tables and reaches his enemy lifting his weapon and hitting. His hit takes his target briefly at his shoulder and the enemy is moved back pushing the overturned table behind him. The enemy has now disengaged so he moves behind the counter and ready's himself for the attack. The player notices this and pulls out his throwing knife (ruining his enemy turn). And this continues on leaving for many different outcomes depending on who gets hit and when.

I just realised that I must stop the enemy from running as soon as he staggers, so I'll either expand the AoO or limit the actions of staggered unit. But you can see that already the encounter has changed drastically compared to the RAW version and without the need of a convenient, DM placed breakoff (the beer barrels suddenly explode and the player must let his enemy flee or he... won't be able to drive back home)

[Thewaitingman]

I don't see how this makes combat more mobile.
It only forces you to move or else.
Remember that per RAW, you don't get a 5'-step unles you make no other movement during that round, so if you make any other movement and get hit, you're basically screwed.

I didn't phrase it correctly so I understand why you would think that. My intention is not to expand the current 5'-step but to add a new element in the encounter of disengaging. The reason I said that I banned the 5'-step after hitting is because it conflicted visibly with this tweak. This is still a newborn idea and in no way something I'm close to implementing.

My scope is not realistic but cinematic and since DnD 3.5 generally focuses more on heroic images and not realism (survival is never the enemy of the heroes who at lvl 10 should be able to kill a whole town) I think it will suit it if I manage to make it as consistent with the current RAW as possible. I plan to make cinematic battles realizable with 3.5 and stationary battles ruin everything. Anakin and obi-wan would never stop hitting eachother while standing on that computer-table, aragorn's duel with lurtz would have been probably lethal for aragorn and hugely unattractive because withdrawing is never a good choice and the RAW forces you to use your full attack (which quadruples you damage output)