A poll to see how often folks are getting attacks of opportunity. I was in a discussion not too long ago that suggested martial classes are getting these fairly often. I wanted to see if that held up with your experiences!
The answer changes based on the creatures that are in the encounter. Beasts, unintelligent creatures, and creatures who have no tactical thinking will provoke OAs often. Intelligent creatures and enemies that understand tactics and strategy, OAs are rare. It doesn't matter much if it's martial or caster, granted for casters it's more effective if you grab the feat.
The answer changes based on the creatures that are in the encounter. Beasts, unintelligent creatures, and creatures who have no tactical thinking will provoke OAs often. Intelligent creatures and enemies that understand tactics and strategy, OAs are rare. It doesn't matter much if it's martial or caster, granted for casters it's more effective if you grab the feat.
This is a great point a good reason why I ask.....how often are DMs utilizing this tactic? Or are they not thinking that deeply about how the creature would/should act? Or is it for the sake of combat simplicity.
The paladin in my campaign uses a glaive with pole arm mastery. He gains an opportunity attack whenever an opponent steps into his reach. Of course if they hang back and wait for him to come to them he doesn't get this attack. Monsters can play at tactics too.
It is 100% DM dependent. If the DM appropriately directs creature tactics according to their stat blocks & descriptions, you're likely to see more creatures provoke AoOs. If the DM treats every creature like a master tactician... you have bigger problems than not getting to make AoOs.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Totally dependent on whether the DM uses the disengage action. Every monster can do it, regardless of what their intelligence is. When they decide to flee, disengage makes sense for just about everything. (Except zombies, but they're not fleeing anyway.) Obviously, fleeing isn't the only way to get AoO's, but it's the most common. If you ever have a monster get in one last hit, then run, that's your DM giving you a free attack. (Vs it disengaging then running)
This depends stongly on the nature of the opponents and the capabilities of the characters.
A character with PAM or Sentinel may get far more AoO than a normal character.
Intelligent opponents are far less likely to give AoO and more likely to use the disengage action than low intelligence opponents. As a result, if you are fighting beasts you might get one result and if you are fighting orcs/kobolds/goblins or other intelligent opponents you might get a very different result.
Against unintelligent opponents or if you have a feat you probably get a few every fight. In the other cases, maybe one or none.
And it is is also not really a complete question. The more comprehensive enquiry is "How often do you you get to take an Attack of Opportunity, and how often does the threat of that attack allow you to control or strongly influence enemy movements and decisions?". If your tank is engaged with an enemy and the threat of an AoO prevents that enemy from moving to engage a vulnerable spellcaster, then the AoO has already done its job without being used.
And it is is also not really a complete question. The more comprehensive enquiry is "How often do you you get to take an Attack of Opportunity, and how often does the threat of that attack allow you to control or strongly influence enemy movements and decisions?". If your tank is engaged with an enemy and the threat of an AoO prevents that enemy from moving to engage a vulnerable spellcaster, then the AoO has already done its job without being used.
I purposely asked the question to not include this. My thoughts on the discussion that prompted this was that most of the time you don't actually get AoO as the threat is enough to prevent it from happening.
Hence why I simply wanted to know how often it's actually happening.
Depends a lot on the DM, but if you know how to piss off an enemy, you can often cause significantly more AoO.
In a recent game we fought a young dragon, used a decanter of water to do 1d4 damage and cause him to fall into the river when he failed his save. Resulted in him provoking attacks from multiple people to chase after me while I took the dodge action.
In the group I’ve been playing in (as a player) entering melee range was basically instant death if you couldn’t make yourself untargetable. He was a very big fan of Homebrew monsters that had various effects such as “if you touch them or they touch you, you take massive damage every turn.” Not round, turn. I Polymorphed myself into a Huge Giant Crab (CR 8) once and grappled the boss. I immediately had to ungrapple or die before my next turn because I took 40-ish poison damage from the contact. Bosses without that effect would deal massive damage with their melee weapons. I made a point never to enter melee range unless I was sure I could cast shield to block the attack. So, I wasn’t exactly going to even get the opportunity for opportunity attacks.
I base it on the creatures INT score, martial/combat training, and desperation. Low INT would mean the creature would probably provoke opportunity attacks often, not realizing the opponent can regularly strike back in this way, but they also probably wouldn't flee or move to change targets until their self-preservation instinct kicked in. Med INT would mean they would recognize the danger and disengage unless desperation called for a different use for their action. High INT and creatures with martial/combat training might never provoke them deliberately, and might use tactics like circling around the target to get at other targets, or other options available to them that might go beyond simply disengaging.
In the group I’ve been playing in (as a player) entering melee range was basically instant death if you couldn’t make yourself untargetable. He was a very big fan of Homebrew monsters that had various effects such as “if you touch them or they touch you, you take massive damage every turn.” Not round, turn. I Polymorphed myself into a Huge Giant Crab (CR 8) once and grappled the boss. I immediately had to ungrapple or die before my next turn because I took 40-ish poison damage from the contact. Bosses without that effect would deal massive damage with their melee weapons. I made a point never to enter melee range unless I was sure I could cast shield to block the attack. So, I wasn’t exactly going to even get the opportunity for opportunity attacks.
That sounds... extreme. By that I mean pretty terrible. Any character set up for melee becomes basically unplayable in that scenario, and would pretty much have to sit out any and all Boss fights. I would be really unhappy with a DM who did that if either I had made a melee character or there was one in the group.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
As the title suggests.
A poll to see how often folks are getting attacks of opportunity. I was in a discussion not too long ago that suggested martial classes are getting these fairly often. I wanted to see if that held up with your experiences!
The answer changes based on the creatures that are in the encounter. Beasts, unintelligent creatures, and creatures who have no tactical thinking will provoke OAs often. Intelligent creatures and enemies that understand tactics and strategy, OAs are rare. It doesn't matter much if it's martial or caster, granted for casters it's more effective if you grab the feat.
This is a great point a good reason why I ask.....how often are DMs utilizing this tactic? Or are they not thinking that deeply about how the creature would/should act? Or is it for the sake of combat simplicity.
The paladin in my campaign uses a glaive with pole arm mastery. He gains an opportunity attack whenever an opponent steps into his reach. Of course if they hang back and wait for him to come to them he doesn't get this attack. Monsters can play at tactics too.
It is 100% DM dependent. If the DM appropriately directs creature tactics according to their stat blocks & descriptions, you're likely to see more creatures provoke AoOs. If the DM treats every creature like a master tactician... you have bigger problems than not getting to make AoOs.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Totally dependent on whether the DM uses the disengage action. Every monster can do it, regardless of what their intelligence is. When they decide to flee, disengage makes sense for just about everything. (Except zombies, but they're not fleeing anyway.) Obviously, fleeing isn't the only way to get AoO's, but it's the most common. If you ever have a monster get in one last hit, then run, that's your DM giving you a free attack. (Vs it disengaging then running)
This depends stongly on the nature of the opponents and the capabilities of the characters.
A character with PAM or Sentinel may get far more AoO than a normal character.
Intelligent opponents are far less likely to give AoO and more likely to use the disengage action than low intelligence opponents. As a result, if you are fighting beasts you might get one result and if you are fighting orcs/kobolds/goblins or other intelligent opponents you might get a very different result.
Against unintelligent opponents or if you have a feat you probably get a few every fight. In the other cases, maybe one or none.
And it is is also not really a complete question. The more comprehensive enquiry is "How often do you you get to take an Attack of Opportunity, and how often does the threat of that attack allow you to control or strongly influence enemy movements and decisions?". If your tank is engaged with an enemy and the threat of an AoO prevents that enemy from moving to engage a vulnerable spellcaster, then the AoO has already done its job without being used.
I purposely asked the question to not include this. My thoughts on the discussion that prompted this was that most of the time you don't actually get AoO as the threat is enough to prevent it from happening.
Hence why I simply wanted to know how often it's actually happening.
Depends a lot on the DM, but if you know how to piss off an enemy, you can often cause significantly more AoO.
In a recent game we fought a young dragon, used a decanter of water to do 1d4 damage and cause him to fall into the river when he failed his save. Resulted in him provoking attacks from multiple people to chase after me while I took the dodge action.
In the group I’ve been playing in (as a player) entering melee range was basically instant death if you couldn’t make yourself untargetable. He was a very big fan of Homebrew monsters that had various effects such as “if you touch them or they touch you, you take massive damage every turn.” Not round, turn. I Polymorphed myself into a Huge Giant Crab (CR 8) once and grappled the boss. I immediately had to ungrapple or die before my next turn because I took 40-ish poison damage from the contact. Bosses without that effect would deal massive damage with their melee weapons. I made a point never to enter melee range unless I was sure I could cast shield to block the attack. So, I wasn’t exactly going to even get the opportunity for opportunity attacks.
Honestly, even with Polearm Master I'm lucky to get one Opportunity Attack in a given combat.
Altrazin Aghanes - Wizard/Fighter
Varpulis Windhowl - Fighter
Skolson Demjon - Cleric/Fighter
I base it on the creatures INT score, martial/combat training, and desperation. Low INT would mean the creature would probably provoke opportunity attacks often, not realizing the opponent can regularly strike back in this way, but they also probably wouldn't flee or move to change targets until their self-preservation instinct kicked in. Med INT would mean they would recognize the danger and disengage unless desperation called for a different use for their action. High INT and creatures with martial/combat training might never provoke them deliberately, and might use tactics like circling around the target to get at other targets, or other options available to them that might go beyond simply disengaging.
So it really depends on the creature in question.
That sounds... extreme. By that I mean pretty terrible. Any character set up for melee becomes basically unplayable in that scenario, and would pretty much have to sit out any and all Boss fights. I would be really unhappy with a DM who did that if either I had made a melee character or there was one in the group.