Wednesday, 23rd March 2022, 16:52 by Nekoatl
A common ally positioning maneuver is to swap from (enemy) (player) (ally) to (enemy) (ally) (player). This is much more dangerous with the new opportunity attacks mechanic, as the enemy may get a free attack against the player who swaps positions with their ally. Combined with the fact that summoned allies appear at random locations near the player, and often farther away from the enemies than the player, this means that summoners should begin combat as far away from enemies as possible to minimize the damage they take. However, prior to the introduction of the opportunity attacks, this was less important, as the player could often correct for bad positioning at the cost of a turn. Now that they also take damage for doing so, there's considerably more incentive to use noise to lure enemies into long corridors or wide open areas so there's more time to maneuver allies in between the player and the enemies before the enemies can close to melee range... especially in areas with fast enemies. This is especially true when the player must round an unexplored corner which may hide an enemy, but shouting before rounding every unexplored corner is very tedious, feels grindy, and is incompatible with some forms of fast travel.
My understanding is that opportunity attacks are meant to punish kiting enemies while recovering health, in which case punishing players for adjusting their positioning relative to their allies seems to miss the mark. Also, opportunity attacks aren't applied to cases where the player moves faster than the enemies, suggesting that they are not meant to punish the player for moving away from enemies they should be able to escape from, in which case applying them to players who can escape from enemies by using allies to interfere with enemy movement should also not apply opportunity attacks in order to be consistent.
Maybe opportunity attacks should only apply when monsters move next to the player before the player's next turn?