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View Full Version : Metagaming, Strategizing, or Somewhere in Between?



SpikeFightwicky
2008-05-09, 02:06 PM
How much in-game knowledge does a character have about the D&D combat system rules?

Here's the scenario:

Our party was under attack by an enemy force, and the leader was quite strong. He hit hard and had very good AC (with a mix of high dex and decent armor). My character (a crusader) had A LOT of trouble just hitting the jerk (as did the rest of the party). After slowly wearing us down, I realize that we won't win unless we try something different. In a move that apparently makes most 3.Xers cringe, I decide to grapple the guy, to keep him busy, make him easier to hit, and deny him his Dex to AC to let the rogue gank the crap out of him. Here's the problem: if he hits me as I attempt my grapple, the grapple fails automatically (since I don't have the requisite feats). So here's what I did:

- I move adjacent to the enemy, and then, with my remaining movement, step behind him. This, (of course) provokes an AoO, which he takes. After finishing my move action, I declare my attempt to grapple him. Since he already took his AoO, he couldn't get a free attack on me for the grapple. Thing is, it felt odd doing this, as I'm not sure how combat is interpereted in character (and how 'translatable' an AoO is in the game world).

So how does that translate into actual gameplay? Could my character have known the AoO rules in an in-game perspective enough to make the strategy plausible?

lord_khaine
2008-05-09, 02:13 PM
imo its all a question of how you look upon it.

i would say you dartet in close to him to provoke an attack, and then tried to grab hold of him while he was out of balance.

he is in no way forced to use his aoo, so i see it as decent tactics, nothing more.

Aleron
2008-05-09, 02:15 PM
Ditto on lord_khaine's comment. Was gonna post about the same thing, but he beat me to it.

Chosen_of_Vecna
2008-05-09, 02:22 PM
Characters in the world have a 100% knowledge of the combat chapter in the PHB. Period. Anything else would mean they don't actually know how things work in the world, and they are acting without any knowledge of the possible consequences.

Corinthus
2008-05-09, 02:22 PM
Well, obviously your character knew that it would be stupid to grab this guy from the front, since you'd get stabbed, and he'd get his arms in the way.

Grabbing from behind, even if he has a stab at you while you manuver, is remarkably sensible, expecially as you're holding him so the rogue can get some good hits.

IC, you can largely assume that your character has an innate understanding of combat, and the rules thereof, since its all an abstraction anyway. It's distilling your complex battle into playable chunks, and this sort of manuver will be natural to your character, especially if they are a melee class, and thus trained in the arts of battle.

Edit: Arggh, the Ninjas, they burn!

JaxGaret
2008-05-09, 02:26 PM
I think that it's not metagame-y at all; it could be the equivalent of your character going to grapple the guy, then hesitating/sidestepping at the last moment to throw the timing of the enemy's attack off, and subsequently grappling him when he is off guard. He didn't have to take the AoO initially, he could have saved it to prevent just such a maneuver.

Remember that 5-foot squares are approximations anyway. D&D uses static representations of a dynamic battlefield, and as such the battlemat is not truly representative of what exactly is occurring; it is simply a reasonable approximation of where the combatants are at each 6-second slice of battle time.

Keld Denar
2008-05-09, 02:41 PM
You made a Robilar's Gambit, and it paid off. You are just lucky he wasn't packing the Combat Reflexes feat, or you would have gotten hosed.

If you want to make use of that tactic in the future, consider the White Raven maneuvers Dousing the Flame and Covering Strike. DtF doesn't help you start a grapple, but it can help your allies start one, which you can join without provoking next turn (PILE ON!!!!!) since people in a grapple don't threaten and thus can't claim AoOs. Covering Strike supresses the ability to take AoOs for 3 rounds, so you could follow it up the next round with a grapple attempt with no risk.

Good job though....who said RPGs are a waste of time. You've apparently learned some "thinking outside the box" skills somewhere.

SpikeFightwicky
2008-05-09, 03:48 PM
6 for non-metagaming? Good stuff. I think it made so much sense in my head that I thought it might not make actual sense in game. That and thinking of combat from a character perspective is sometimes enough to make one go insane (after standing around for 6 seconds watching him cast a spell, I charge at him, all the while the world around me is in a strange 'timeout' unless I trigger an AoO). The whole metagame question probably came from the fact that I solved the dilemma by exploiting combat rules and typical PC/NPC behavior.

Unfortunately, it didn't matter in the end (much to my chagrin). The enemy missed with their AoO anyways, and I missed a touch attack against AC 13 with a +8 overall attack...


You made a Robilar's Gambit, and it paid off. You are just lucky he wasn't packing the Combat Reflexes feat, or you would have gotten hosed.

Yeah, I was praying that he didn't have CR, or I would have gotten the equivalent to a slap in the face for my troubles. The look on the DM's face was priceless when he looked at the 'initiating a grapple' rules and was about to roll the AoO :smallbiggrin:


If you want to make use of that tactic in the future, consider the White Raven maneuvers Dousing the Flame and Covering Strike. DtF doesn't help you start a grapple, but it can help your allies start one, which you can join without provoking next turn (PILE ON!!!!!) since people in a grapple don't threaten and thus can't claim AoOs. Covering Strike supresses the ability to take AoOs for 3 rounds, so you could follow it up the next round with a grapple attempt with no risk.

Good job though....who said RPGs are a waste of time. You've apparently learned some "thinking outside the box" skills somewhere.

I'll have to check out those maneuvers. This is pretty much my first ToB character, but it's already quite fun. Looks like all those hours spent playing the various Advance Wars games weren't wasted :smallbiggrin:

Keld Denar
2008-05-09, 04:04 PM
ToB is pretty much one of the greatest things to happen to the tactically minded melee combatant player since 3.0 was released. The versitility and freedom from "I charge" or "I full attack with X power attack" is such a refreshing change of pace over everything else.

And yea, White Raven is really really good. When people talk about the 2 best maneuvers in the book, White Raven Tactics is almost always mentioned, with Iron Heart Surge being a close second (heh, with a roar of effort, I turn off the night!). On top of that though, are beauties like White Raven Hammer (the melee no save just die) and the various WR charge maneuvers that can result in some pretty silly numbers when used properly. If you have a rogue or beguiler in your party, there are a couple WR maneuvers that make a foe flat footed, allowing your sneaky friends to take the opportunity to do their thing. For a large melee centric party, the Wolf Pack Tactics feat can be a god-send, allowing your party to move fluidly and adapt to a shifting foe to take full advantage of flanking and other advantages at all times. Its just so good, if you have a team to support with it.

Come on, nothing wins harder at mid levels than fighting 3 big things, having your wizard open with a Solid Fog on 1, then you WR Tactics him to Solid Fog a 2nd while you charge in w/o an AoO thanks to your WR charge. The next round, flash Wolf Pack Tactics and hit with a Covering Strike or Dousing the Flames while the rest of your party surges in to surround and hack up the first foe. Flawless party tactics win encounters, and a Crusader focusing on WR does just that.

Craig1f
2008-05-09, 04:38 PM
I'd say, if you can come up ith an IC explanation for what you did, then you're fine. lord_khaine and Corinthus both gave very good IC explanations for what you did IC.

JaxGaret
2008-05-10, 01:37 AM
That and thinking of combat from a character perspective is sometimes enough to make one go insane (after standing around for 6 seconds watching him cast a spell, I charge at him, all the while the world around me is in a strange 'timeout' unless I trigger an AoO).

I'm not sure if you meant it this way, but I'm going to just say that the "standing around for 6 seconds watching him cast a spell" is not at all what your character would be doing. The battle itself is not static, it is merely its representation to us via the D&D rules that is so. Your character is not simply standing agape, waiting 6 seconds for their turn to go. There is off-screen activity that is being whitewashed so that there is a streamlined game for you to play.