Community

'Creature hugging', Its the concept of moving around a character in such a way that you don't provoke opportunity attacks, for example if A fighter bursts through a double door an takes up a defensive position while a wizard stands 5-10ft behind him, a creature shouldn't be able to just walk up to the fighter, walk around him in such a way that he never leaves 5ft and hit the wizard. At the moment that example is doable, yet feels incredibly unnatural. Its caused by the nature of opportunity attacks as they are, and the fact that as long as you never move away from a creature you can conceivably do a little dance around him never provoking opportunity attacks, even to go as far as to turn your back to someone who is intending to attack you.


Personally the way I think it should be handled is with a kind of 'line of sight' system, It functions under the assumption that since you provoke opportunity attacks from leaving a creatures range, therefore looking away from him, he can hit you pretty easily. This also fits into the idea of shifting and disengaging, as it is assumed you kind of back away from a creature rather then walk away, hence it is harder, requiring special skills (feat) or specific focus (action).


I think one possible way to make it seem more natural could be:
-Firstly if you want to move while adjacent to a hostile creature you should have to put some effort into it, as such it should be treated as difficult terrain or something to that effect, requiring twice as much movement, to somewhat emulate edging around a creature while keeping your guard up.
-And secondly if you want to engage something, or preform some action, your facing direction is taken into account. You are assumed if you are adjacent to a hostile creature you are facing it, so if you try to preform some action that requires you to look away from it, e.g. attacking someone behind you, or pulling a leaver, you are assumed to have turned and faced the action or lowered your guard enough to not be paying attention to the person and as such provoke an opportunity attack.


This causes a few different things, firstly it justifies opportunity attacks from people walking past you, for example if someone chooses not to 'edge' past you, hence not to be affected by the difficult terrain effect, they provoke an opportunity attack, secondly it means that if someone chose to walk past you then use their action to disengage, they can but it will be difficult and will allow someone to move no further than a few feet away from you (how far they can disengage), and finally will make attacking while surrounded incredibly risky, for example if I find myself with a fighter on either side of me to attack one would provoke opportunity attacks from the other. However if they aren't positioned in a way that I would put myself at a disadvantage to attack one of them, similar to how flanking works, then I am still able to engage them both normally.



I feel these changes would make the game feel a lot more tactical and interesting  requiring you to think about your movement before making it, for example not putting yourself into a bad position, or choosing to be in such a place as to protect an ally therefore placing a much higher value on correct positioning. Also it would remove the notion of standing there staring as an enemy runs around you an attacks your friends, which seems a bit unnatural. However that's just my take on how it should be handled.

Sort of, adjacent is one thing, but if you are standing facing two opponents, that;s hardly grounds for an opportunity attack, perhaps "Attacking a hostile while flanked by another hostile provokes opportunity attacks from the flanking hostile"

I agree the "hugging" is a problem, but I don't think making it difficult terrain will fix it.  Imagine your fighter throws open the double doors and steps in.  It is a guard room, and the baddies are in the middle.  The closest is 10 feet away and the farthest 20.  The near guy can still spend 10 feet getting to the fighter, and then still go to the back with his remaining movement, even at double cost.  Even the farther ones can move up and still get to the fighter's sides.   If the ones in back attack the wizard, the fighter gets an OA, but so would baddies in (what was) front of him.  The fighter still can't block off the door.  I really think you just have to make all movement adjacent provoke.  Otherwise, the best you are doing is delaying it by one round at best.   

I just don't understand why they don't use the 4e rule for AoO's and shifting (instead of this "disengage" horse ****). It was simple and easy to understand, and all of this just seems like trying to reinvent the wheel.

"If an enemy within your reach moves without shifting or makes a ranged attack while within your reach you can make an opportunity attack (a special melee attack) against them as a reaction. A creature can avoid provoking opportunity attacks and move up to five feet by sacrificing the remainder of their normal movement for that turn. "

There. Problem solved.

Now, you may have to play around with the wording to include casting spells in melee and make "shifting" less jargony, or you could just make that a separate rule, but regardless, there really isn't much of a problem here that I'm seeing.

Anyway, as for enemy hugging, all you really have to do is add a clause in there so that if an enemy attacks an ally while within your reach you can make an opportunity attack. I'd honestly just make this a fighter class feature, but all the people who see 4th edition as a pestilence from Satan would probably develop a new hate boner.