I've been playing Baldur's Gate 3 with some friends and wanted to highlight a neat intersection of rules that leads to a very expressive play pattern.
My friends are all playing casters (Wizard, Warlock, Cleric), while I'm playing a Barbarian. I'm the only one who's consistently in melee range of the enemies, and I really do feel like a scary martial warrior. Here's the set of rules that leads to this:
1. Characters can Move, take an Action, and take a Bonus Action on their turns.
2. In Baldur's Gate 3, player characters can use their Bonus Action to attempt to shove a creature away from them (if successful, the enemy flies back in a fun animation)
3. When a character moves past an opponent, the moving character takes an "Attack of Opportunity" from the opponent.
4. Low-level characters often don't have much to do with their Bonus Action.
What this means is that nearly every turn, after my low-level Barbarian takes her Action to attack, the most efficient thing to do with my remaining resources is to shove the opponent away from my squishy friends using a Bonus Action and then Move up to the just-shoved opponent, meaning they can't leave her reach to get to the backline without taking an Attack of Opportunity. What makes this sequence notable is that it's not possible in base 5E (well, not really), it's an efficient use of the default three resources you get every turn, and it gives this feeling of really "menacing" the opponent, which is further sold by the animaiton of the shoved enemy flying backwards.
Here some MtG interactions it reminds me of:
1. Blocking with and then sacrificing a Sakura-Tribe Elder.
2. Discarding my reanimator target due to hand size
3. Tapping Equipment cards for Improvise costs or Tangle Wire
I suspect what they have in common is that they are very mechanical interactions, but each of them has a flavorful interpretation (well, the first two do. The third just feels cool).
Does this make sense to anyone or am I off my gourd?
(I know there is a Video Game Thread, so feel free to move this there if needed.)
My friends are all playing casters (Wizard, Warlock, Cleric), while I'm playing a Barbarian. I'm the only one who's consistently in melee range of the enemies, and I really do feel like a scary martial warrior. Here's the set of rules that leads to this:
1. Characters can Move, take an Action, and take a Bonus Action on their turns.
2. In Baldur's Gate 3, player characters can use their Bonus Action to attempt to shove a creature away from them (if successful, the enemy flies back in a fun animation)
3. When a character moves past an opponent, the moving character takes an "Attack of Opportunity" from the opponent.
4. Low-level characters often don't have much to do with their Bonus Action.
What this means is that nearly every turn, after my low-level Barbarian takes her Action to attack, the most efficient thing to do with my remaining resources is to shove the opponent away from my squishy friends using a Bonus Action and then Move up to the just-shoved opponent, meaning they can't leave her reach to get to the backline without taking an Attack of Opportunity. What makes this sequence notable is that it's not possible in base 5E (well, not really), it's an efficient use of the default three resources you get every turn, and it gives this feeling of really "menacing" the opponent, which is further sold by the animaiton of the shoved enemy flying backwards.
Here some MtG interactions it reminds me of:
1. Blocking with and then sacrificing a Sakura-Tribe Elder.
2. Discarding my reanimator target due to hand size
3. Tapping Equipment cards for Improvise costs or Tangle Wire
I suspect what they have in common is that they are very mechanical interactions, but each of them has a flavorful interpretation (well, the first two do. The third just feels cool).
Does this make sense to anyone or am I off my gourd?
(I know there is a Video Game Thread, so feel free to move this there if needed.)