Zone of Control and Attacks of Opportunity

[Jrandom]

In other RPGs, there are game mechanics that allow players to act as a tank. Standing in front of the squishier PCs and stopping enemies from streaking past them to attack the squishies. Usually, when a combatant comes within 1 hex of another enemy, his movement ends. Also, if the same combatant uses his next action to move past the blocker, the blocker gets to punish him with a free attack.

 

I see no mechanics like this in Hero. Am I correct?

[L. Marcus]

Yup.

[Uthanar]

There is no innate mechanic to simulate this.  If you wish, you could model Power Constructs to do these things. 

[L. Marcus]

Yeah, like HTH attacks on a Trigger ...

[JasonPacker]

The closest you get is a Held Action, where you can interrupt and attack someone as they come into range. This only allows it to happen once, and only after you've effectively given up acting proactively instead of reactively.

 

I've considered using a limited form of SPD just for such things. Make the character SPD 3, but buy +3 SPD, "Only for attack of opportunity" which are automatically held and used only if someone tries to sneak past.

[bigbywolfe]

There is actually a Zone of Control option under the section about Blocking and I thought one of the APGs had something but I don't recall off hand.  

Also, here are several threads where this has already been discussed in detail:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/index.php?/topic/73953-zones-of-control-in-hero/&do=findComment&comment=1890076

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/index.php?/topic/64183-en-passant-extra-attack/&do=findComment&comment=1624604

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/index.php?/topic/83724-facing-and-passing/

[Doc Democracy]

I've participated in one or two if these types of thread and I think that every time I have done so, I have fallen into the trap of pursuing mechanic rather than effect.

 

What is it that is the desired game effect?  The effect is that someone hesitates before trying to move past a defender because that action might cause unwelcome damage.

 

My approach has often been to look to see what mechanics might be put in place to allow a defender to intercept the attacker with all of the complexity that entailed.

 

Thinking about it, it is a decent special power for bricks or martial artists.  It would be possible to build a triggered power that would do damage to anyone getting within a set distance of the defender without unduly requiring any changes to the system.  The special effect would be the defender taking advantage of the passing character's lack of combat focus to cause him/her damage.

 

 

Doc

[sinanju]

There is no innate mechanic to simulate this.  If you wish, you could model Power Constructs to do these things. 

 

And I've seen it done. A player in our face-to-face group built a "Jedi" (with the serial numbers filed off), who possessed (among other powers) the ability to make Attacks of Opportunity with the same restrictions as in 3.5 D&D. It was abusive as hell*. CHAMPIONS combat isn't designed to deal with that mechanic. If it had been MY game I'd have disallowed it; since we were taking turns GMing this round robin game, I let it slide since we were all kinda stretching the rules to the breaking point.

 

 

*ETA: Although part of it was the lightsaber design was ALSO abusive as hell, with a NND HKA (yeah, I know) so his attacks of opportunity were almost always one-shot kills on top of everything else.

[Markdoc]

Just to back up what earlier posters have said, the earlier threads linked to have a pretty exhaustive discussion of this.

 

The very short version is that Hero does not have a mechanism granting extra attacks when someone enters your "zone of control" so that if you want to defend an area you really need to focus on defence (ie: held actions), not attack. A held action should almost always let you get an attack on someone moving in or through your zone of control.

 

One option - a house rule, but worth considering - is that in our game, an attacker can get the "attacking from behind bonus" if their target is for some reason unable to respond. The classic examples are attacking by surprise, or where a target is surrounded by multiple foes. We also allow this to apply if someone moves past an attacker to do something else. So just moving past means little: if they have a held action they can attack you, but you can still defend. Onthe other hand, if you run up to the bomb and try disarming it, or move past the knight to attack the princess, you can reasonably expect to get shot/stabbed in the back as you pass by

 

Otherwise, I'd caution against adding a freebie mechanism to the game allowing extra attacks: that would almost certainly lead to abuse. Even in 3.5/pathfinder, where multiple attacks are built into the system, abuse of AoO means that it is often primarily used as an offensive mechanism, rather than a defensive one: a way of getting free attacks.

 

That said, you can easily build this as a specific power - and we have done so, in past game. As people noted, a triggered attack essentially gives you a  freebie attack, but only one per "reset". This is similar to the D&D AoO. You can buy a trigger that resets more frequently, giving you multiple attacks in one phase. Alternatively, you can actually just build up your guarding capacity by buying a few CSLs only for "attacks of oppourtunity" - that makes you a dangerous guy to try and slip by, if you have a held action.

 

I'm sure there are plenty of other ways you could build similar mechanisms.

 

regards, Mark

[Christopher]

Some ideas why hereo lacks a attack of Opportunity Rule:

- It was propably a way to 'fix' a bug in D&D. IMHO a surprising amount of D&D mechanics are there just to fix the bugs created by other shortcuts (don't ask me about the whole savign throw/AC thing).

- If mooks are that smart, maybe they are played too smart. For mooks to be worth thier points they must be played on a lower level. Wish I could find it but there was this one Video snippet from a 3 Musketter style film: 1 hero, 1 bystand, one master villain and 4 mooks in a (small)room. The 4 mooks battle the hero for 5 minutes without making any headway. How did the fight end? The Master Villain (being non-combatant the whole time) takes the bystander hostage. The 4 mooks together didn't had enough smarts to figure out "taking hostage = good" in Five. Minutes.

- D&D escalates quite a bit. A the difference between level 1 and 10 is gigantic. In comparsion what happens in attack/action in one D&D turn (was it 3 or 6 seconds?) propably fits into a Hero turn (12 seconds).

 

Some things that are there:

6E2 58 "Blocking for Someone Else".

6E2 86 about using "Dive for Cover" for "Protecting other Characters".

6E2 128 "Interposing" and "Guarding an Area"

[NuSoardGraphite]

If you want to simulate this in HERO without a power construct (Naked Trigger advantage that applies to any one of the characters melee/hand to hand attacks) There is a way to do it, while not strictly "legal", fits right into the system without any sort of tweaking that will break anything.

 

A character can declare that he's guarding a "zone".  I.e. an area he can reach with with his or her melee attacks.  The character "Holds their phase".  After that point, any character who attempts to approach within melee range or tries to pass the character may be attacked.  Each attack after the first accumulates a penalty of -2 to OCV.  During this period, the character is not moving far from his "Zone of Control" so he's at 1/2 DCV.  If the character ever misses one of these attacks, his Phase has ended and he may not try again until the beginning of his next phase.  The character can attack each individual who comes into his Zone of Control only once, unless a character moves into his zone, is attacked, moves out, then moves back in again.  At the beginning of the "Zoning" characters next phase, his OCV refreshes.  He may continue guarding the Zone if he wishes.

Any character trying to pass through the zone is attacked.  If the attack is successful, if the damage from the attack Stuns the character, knocks the character down, does Knockback or knocks the character unconscious, the character attempting to pass through the zone fails to do so. (and is possibly pushed back out of the zone).  If the character is not K.O.'ed, Stunned, or Knocked back, they may continue through the zone if their movement can take them that far, successfully breaking through the Zone.  A character may attempt to block or dodge as they pass through the zone, if a 1/2 move can successfully take them out of the Zone of Control.  A successful block will not end the Zoning characters phase (if the attack which was blocked was successful before the block roll was made) however a successful dodge means a miss for the Zoning character, which ends their Phase.

 

Zoning is it's own maneuver.  It is a specialized form of Sweep and as such takes a Full Phase maneuver to perform.  Zoning cannot be combined with other 1/2 Phase maneuvers unless the Zoning character has Rapid Attack combat skill, in which case the Zoning maneuver is considered a 1/2 Phase action and as such can be combined with a 1/2 move, or combined with Martial Maneuvers to obtain those bonuses or special circumstances while Zoning (for example, a character with the Push Martial Maneuver and Rapid Attack, can then protect his Zone using the Push maneuver, successfully pushing back anyone who comes into his Zone of Control)

 

The Zoning Character may activate 0 phase actions before beginning his Zoning action, but cannot activate 0 Phase actions while Zoning. (actions that take no time are fine though)

 

Zoning: OCV -2 (cumulative after the 1st attack) DCV: 1/2  Phase: full phase action*

 

*Sweep variant.  Follow the general rules of sweep except where specified within the rules for Zoning.

 

This is essentially the Melee version of Suppression Fire, allowing a character to designate an area that he can protect and anyone entering that area during that characters phase is attacked, so there is precedent for this within the standard rules!

[mhd]

The D&D opportunity attacks introduced in 2E Skills&Powers and widely popularized by 3E always reminded me of the old "one attack per 1 HD creature" that fighters got in older editions, i.e. a quick way to obliterate hordes of mooks. In practice, they often resulted in lots of messy powergaming with reach weapons, trips etc.

Certainly not something that's actually meant to simulate anything specific from the real world, which -- never mind all the superheroics -- seems to be more in line with the HERO view. Well, at least compared to the rather abstract D&D heritage.

 

And at least to me, "tanking" is rooted in abstract games of rather specialized "units". Especially when it comes blocking lots of enemy actions, as opposed to what Holding actions already covers. Not that you couldn't build it, but then it's certainly some kind of special effect and power and doesn't really need to be covered by the generic combat rules. Conditional SPD, triggers, CSLs for Holding Multiple Attacks, Entangle etc.

 

One thing that I did note a bit is that this isn't as much a concern in GURPS, although it shares quite a few elements with HERO and doesn't have opportunity attacks, either. I think this is mainly due to the more elaborate facing and reach rules there, plus a more limited combat movement. If positional tactics are a goal, that might be a source for some inspiration.

[NuSoardGraphite]

There can also be a defensive version of this maneuver where the character Blocks all attackers that attempt to pass through his Zone of Control and if successful, prevents them from passing through the area.  As with the "offensive" version of Zoning, if the character misses one of the block rolls, then his phase ends and cannot begin again till his next Phase (on his Dex)

[NuSoardGraphite]

The D&D opportunity attacks introduced in 2E Skills&Powers and widely popularized by 3E always reminded me of the old "one attack per 1 HD creature" that fighters got in older editions, i.e. a quick way to obliterate hordes of mooks. In practice, they often resulted in lots of messy powergaming with reach weapons, trips etc.

Certainly not something that's actually meant to simulate anything specific from the real world, which -- never mind all the superheroics -- seems to be more in line with the HERO view. Well, at least compared to the rather abstract D&D heritage.

 

And at least to me, "tanking" is rooted in abstract games of rather specialized "units". Especially when it comes blocking lots of enemy actions, as opposed to what Holding actions already covers. Not that you couldn't build it, but then it's certainly some kind of special effect and power and doesn't really need to be covered by the generic combat rules. Conditional SPD, triggers, CSLs for Holding Multiple Attacks, Entangle etc.

 

One thing that I did note a bit is that this isn't as much a concern in GURPS, although it shares quite a few elements with HERO and doesn't have opportunity attacks, either. I think this is mainly due to the more elaborate facing and reach rules there, plus a more limited combat movement. If positional tactics are a goal, that might be a source for some inspiration.

Attacks of Opportunity in Hero is simply a Naked Trigger advantage applied to their melee attacks which triggers whenever someone enters melee range (without engaging the character in battle) which automatically resets.

[mhd]

Which might be a good way to simulate the exact mechanics, but neither the idea nor the concept of "tanking"...

[NuSoardGraphite]

Which is why i came up with the sweep variation that i did.

[Sean Waters]

The effect here, to my mind, is that someone engaged in combat, giving it their full attention, and fighting for their life, should not simply be able to ignore the opponent and do something else without consequence, or potential consequence.

 

Extra attacks requires a change in the system, a house rule or a particular build.

 

We could, however, use PRE attacks.  you can make a PRE attack at any time.  If you get PRE+10 then the opponent can only take a half phase action i.e. he can not move and attack and hesitates so that the PRE attacker can act before him this phase.  He could still theoretically run past, but you could roleplay it that anyone who has had a PRE+10 attack against them would be concentrating on the threat, not anything else.

 

Sounds good - does it work?

 

PRE attack modifiers:

 

In combat -1d6 is the only one that will always apply.  Assuming that the target needs to get past, so is at some sort of disadvantage in standing and fighting, I'd give you +1d6.  if you have just hit the target last phase, you get +1d6 violent action.  You might be able to make an appropriate interaction skill roll +1d6.

 

So...-1d6 to (maybe) +2d6.  Assuming a Fantasy Character has 18 PRE and the orc has 15, the attack is 2 1/2 dice to 5 1/2 dice.  It is do-able, but extremely unlikely.

 

Ah well.  Thought I'd found a decent use for the PRE attack system...

 

Is there something in one of the options books about action points?

[Sean Waters]

So long as we are making stuff up, we COULD allow a bonus to your PRE roll against an opponent who is ignoring the prime threat in favour of moving.  Someone trying to disengage completely might 'earn' you an extra 1d6, someone trying to get around you or move to attack someone else might 'earn' you +2d6, or even +3d6.

 

That would increase the attack values I gave above to (assuming +2d6 to get around you) 4 1/2d6 to 7 1/2d6: it seems much more likely that you could cause someone to not take the chance.

 

As the mechanics stand you can not (i believe) use block to prevent movement, but the mechanic is sound.

 

You could (with only a minor tweak or two) allow multiple attacks (6.2.73).

 

Zone Control

1. Declare a multiple attack (halve your DCV) but only attack one target (or none if there are no targets currently in range)

2. If someone comes into range or moves in an area you could attack before your next phase you can attack them.  The first target (if you made an attack, that counts as your first target) is at your normal chance to hit, each subsequent target is at a cumulative -2.

3. If you miss you can make no more attacks.  Each opponent can only be attacked once, excepting the first one you attacked, if it subsequently moves through your threat area..

 

The penalties are not as great  as multiple attack (the OCV penalty in MA counts against All targets) and you do not have to declare targets in advance or spend END for each declared opponent or attack BUT you can only attack each opponent once and you might only have one opponent, and it might not move at all so you will have halved your DCV for nothing.