How do you rule halfling tossing as a combat action?

Question

The party I am GMing has three characters over 6' tall with 20+ strength as well as a halfling and a kobold, both small and about 3' tall.

A couple of times, they have wanted the big characters to toss the small characters across gaps, and then later on in the game, they found themselves in a position where there was tactical advantage to getting the small characters tossed ahead of the big characters.

On the fly we ruled that picking up a small character was a minor action, tossing it was a standard action, and that landing after being tossed cost the small creature a minor action.

Are there rules that cover this kind of activity? If not, does the action economy we went for seem right?

Answer 1

Here is how I'd rule it and why I'd rule it that way.

The players are trying to use the stronger characters' abilities to compensate for the smaller characters' shortcomings. That's good thinking, and I want to reward it without encouraging it. My goal is to make them happy that the idea works but to find other solutions, like the smaller characters investing in Athletics or magic items.

First, the larger character must pick up the smaller character. This is a minor action. The smaller character must be in a square adjacent to the larger character, and the larger character must have both hands free since humanoids are unwieldy. This is no big hindrance to either party so far.

Next, the larger character must throw the smaller character. This is definitely a standard action. That's a high cost in combat, and it's something the smaller character could typically do for himself as a move action if the player actually invested in jumping.

Requiring a roll makes sense. After all, you have to make an Athletics roll every time you jump yourself. I don't want the smaller character to get the full benefit of the thrower's investment in Athletics, though. I'd say the thrower's running start determines the check result's denominator as normal (5 with a running start, 10 without), but the thrower takes a -2 penalty to the check. That doesn't sound like much, but it should be enough to reliably reduce the maximum range by one square.

The throw doesn't count as the thrown character's movement, which is superior to a jump, but it shouldn't be as safe. The thrown character has to make a DC 15 Acrobatics check as a free action or fall prone in the destination square. For every square of movement that is higher than the thrown character's speed, he suffers a -2 penalty to this check. This should generally eat up a move action on the character's turn, and the trade-off of granting combat advantage essentially washes with the risk and increased speed of running.

Alternatively, the thrower may make an attack with the smaller character. In this case, I'd just rule it's similar to a ranged attack with an improvised weapon. I'd say a character used like this has the heavy thrown property, so use Strength instead of Dexterity. The range is 5/10, no Athletics check required thanks to the attack roll, but the thrown character cannot be heavier than the thrower's normal load (Strength x 10 pounds). The thrown character always falls prone in a square adjacent to the target regardless of whether the attack hits. For damage, use the low normal damage expression appropriate to the level per the Dungeon Master's Guide. Both the target and the thrown character take this damage on a hit.

Answer 2

I've been thinking about the question for a long time now. The major point is, however, to keep the mechanic natural to the system and avoid introducing an awkward or foreign mechanic into the system. The two primary ideas on how to deal with such a situation are:

1. Forced Movement
   The basic idea here is to allow characters to use their body strength/size to apply a push or pull effect to one of their allies. This could be used to simulate a strong character throwing a small character around or pull someone closer with a rope. This mechanic would be independent from a character's skills, only employing the raw ability modifier as a measurement on "how far" the forced movement is able to move the target. The result could look similar to something like this:

   

   For example, a big brawny heroic tier goliath fighter with Str 22 wants to throw his halfling rogue buddy. The distance the fighter could throw the rogue was equal to: 1 + 3 + 1 - 1 = 4 squares. The goliath could even throw his dragonborn paladin ally 3 squares (1 + 3 - 1). However, the goliath's wizard friend with Str 10 could barely throw the halfling 1 square, and the paladin not at all.

   This would keep the mechanic simple and in line with the rest of the system. However, it simplifies the whole situation a bit and removes any random element. This may not be desirable for some DMs/players.

2. Athletics
   Another idea was to employ the Athletics skill rules for Jump. This was the other already existing mechanic for handling non-walking movement. This would extend the skill's description to introduce something like a "Throw Ally" option (or whatever you wanted to call it). The mechanics could look like this:

   Throw Ally

   Make an Athletics check to throw an adjacent ally.

   Throw Ally: The check is a standard action.
   Distance Thrown: Make an Athletics check and divide your result by 10 (round down). This is the number of squares you can throw your ally. Your ally lands in the square determined by your result. You cannot throw your ally into an occupied square. No Opportunity Attacks: The thrown ally does not provoke Opportunity Attacks from this movement. Small ally: If your ally is small (or smaller) you gain a +5 bonus to the skill check.
   Pushing along the ground: If you don't throw your ally through the air but merely push him along the ground you gain a +5 bonus to the skill check.

   This mechanic would keep an element of chance and allow for much greater (and also shorter) distances than the first idea. However, it involves dice rolling and math (none of which is bad, it's just interesting how many mistakes otherwise smart people can make at 1:30am when everyone just wants to finish the last combat of the day) and it's more open to abuse (since everything that boosts Athletics can boost this check).

As a personal note: I really wouldn't bother with having the thrown ally to make any checks or spend actions - at least not when using one of my suggestions above. There are so many powers and items - many of which you'd want to get anyway - that allow great flexibility of movement on the battlefield as a move or even minor action that it's not worth to have two characters spend several actions to gain a little advantage. After all, the big guy that's supposed to beat the monsters up and keep them away from the squishies is spending his standard action to throw one of his allies around instead of doing his job ( ;) ). That's enough of a cost imho.

Answer 3

It depends.

Given: you, as DM, want to support these actions, and you want them to be pretty cool, but not imbalancing.

Given: You want the capability of this being used as an agressive act.

Given: You want use as few house-rules as possible.

As a simple mobility enhancer, the idea of long-jumps has been well articulated by jumping monsters like the Deathjump Spider. Therefore, whatever movement we grant, we'll describe it as a shift X.

Tossing a Halfling is fundamentally a feat of strength or athletics, except in the case where it's an attack. Using the jump rules seems perfectly appropriate as multiple characters are sacrificing their move actions to give one character a move.

Therefore, a Halfling toss that is not an attack requires a move action from the tosser and some way of spending a move action from the toss-ee. Having the toss-ee land prone is the simplest way of requiring both parties to spend a move action. The toss-er must make an athletics jump as per a moving long-jump, using the exact same rules and enhancements. (Keeping rules the same is a good thing. The sacrifice of a move action to do this is sufficient for balance.)

In a combat sense, things become more tricky. Specifically, we want this to be a viable alternative to both characters spending their standard action on an at-will. We also want this to be cool. If this requires 2 checks to succeed, it should hit as if both targets had hit.

Therefore the idea of the Thrown Charge. The thrower must ready an action (thereby spending her standard action) to throw the target. On the target's turn, he/she must take the charge action as normal, moving through the thrower's square. The thrower makes the "running jump" check as normal. For every excess square not needed in the jumpcharge, the target gains a bonus to attack and damage.

The calculations follow:

A normal MBA should do HP/8 damage: At level 1, this becomes (8+24)/8= 4 damage. A successful throw at level 1 should therefore be able to contribute 4 damage on top of the "charge" (not worrying about charge optimization for now.)

At Level 30, the "generic MBA" should be (8*30+24)/8=33

We will assume the normal "chucking" distance to be 4 squares, which is tactically significant because it means the ability to throw the small character past a brute-battleline.

This requires a DC 20 check. At level 1, a trained strength based character will have a +5 (trained) +4 (str bonus) = +9

50-50% is just right at level 1.

At 30, +15 (half-level) +5 (trained) +8 (str) = 28 base. Which is appropriate for an epic level character. Average check of 38 or 7 squares of movement.

The attack expression at level 1 for the throwee is:

(Assuming a +4 in their primary stat and a +2 proficiency weapon, +1 charge bonus)

(1-(14+1-(4+2+1))/20)*(1d10+4)=5.7 In order to get the damage bonus we want, a +3 to attack and damage is necessary. This feels wrong, so we'll say a +2 to attack, +2 to damage for every unnnecessary square of jump, with a +2/+2 for simply getting there.

At level 1, this is: 50% of the time, insufficient distance. 25% of 8.05 (exactly 4 squares of jump), and 10.8 (5 squares of jump) for a really good athletics check. A very acceptable trade, statistically speaking, for a fighter who wants to chuck the halfling at the back lines.

At 30, this same progression at 4 squares (laughable at level 30, but...) Versus an average of a 7 square jump check gets: +4 to hit /+8 damage. (Attack roll of 15 (half-level) 8 (stat mod) 3 (weapon expertise), +6 (enchantment), +2 proficiency +1 charge for a nice 55% hit rate on the bloody treadmill.

(1-(14+30-(15+8+3+6+2+1))/20)*(2*5.5+8+6)=13.75 Or "hahahahaha" damage. Adding, +8/+8 onto that gives us 31.35 which gets the charge into non-pathetic damage numbers. In epic, where most people have fly, teleport, or shift whatever, this technique will never be used, but it will probably be used in mid-to-high heroic and low paragon and it seems to scale appropriately.

Visually, the idea of the huge guy kneeling down with hands cupped into a stirrup and the tiny guy charging is quite compelling, especially with the tiny guy hitting for a decent amount of damage as a consequence of them coordinating.

With a simple bonus added to the normal long-jump rules, all of this falls neatly out of the rules and provides an interesting alternative to attacking with one's standard action at any level of play.

Answer 4

You could look to the 3.5 supplement Races Of Stone for guidance; it had a feat, "Fling Ally", which let you throw allies of one or more size categories smaller (Goliaths, originally from the same book, counted as being Large) and then had ranges scaling accordingly. The most significant elements here are, I think:

1. You had to make an attack roll to throw your ally into the right square, or else they would scatter and land prone;
2. 3.5 had scaling penalties to hit based on how far you wanted to throw them;
3. You had to be strong enough to lift that ally over your head, which in 4e would mean that they would have to not put you over your Heavy Load (400 pounds for 20 strength).

So, asking for a feat (or two!) might not be imprudent, a very real ability to fail and corresponding penalties would be important, and if you aren't already tracking encumbrance and equipment weight, now may be a good time to do so!

(Also, apparently halflings got bigger in 4th edition - they're actually about 4' tall now, and weigh 75-85 pounds, up from the 3e 27-38 pounds. In the event that there's no 4e information for kobold height and weight, 3.5 puts them in the range of 32-48 pounds and 2'0" to 2'9" height.)