Advantages of sliding and such stuff

I'm fairly new to DDM and am getting slowly accustomed to all the rules...

I finally figured out how to apply poison damage properly (I think), but I'm a bit confused about the whole sliding thing.

I'm sticking to the starter kit for now and am playing mostly with the Yuan-Ti and Dragon (while my girlfriend bashes my head in with all the other critters).

So I figure that there are some strategy elements that I'm not getting - besides constantly forgetting about the Yuan-Ti's special power and previous misunderstanding of poison damage, that is.

The dragon's champion power allows me to: "choose an enemy within 5 squares and slide that enemy 1 square".

I'm not quite sure I understand how it advantages me... any of you finer students in the art of DDM help me out with that?

(I expect that I would find out as I incorporate the other rules, but why wait?)

you can use the champions power as many times as the number of he champion rating. You slide the enemy closer to your hitters or away from

Thanks for the answer Lania... but I think your answer got cut just when it was getting interesting :)

I get the idea of sliding the creature towards one of your other creatures - that makes much sense... especially if your warband has more than 2 creatures.

Pushing away from the dragon seems a bit useless - the creature can always walk back one square and still hit you. It would prevent him from doing a hit and run, though. Still not convinced of that one.

I'm not quite sure if it still works the same, but back in 1.0 sliding was my favorite thing to do.

I dropped so many things with a gnome trickster's slide into a pit back when I was playing InvisiFrenziedRyld. I believe the most points I killed at once was 79 (winning the game when I was losing horribly).

Anywho, positioning is a key part of DDM, and the ability to manipulate your opponent's positioning is huge. It may not seem like much, but 1 square can do a *lot*. I know that doesn't quite answer your question, but it's hard to detail some of the better implications of sliding when a lot of it is just using the power until you're comfortable enough to realize when that one square can serve a huge purpose.

Hmm, that's interesting... Haven't played on terrain with pits yet, but I can see slide being interresting there.

They changed the sliding into pits thing with the latest revision to 2.0. I don't remember how it was with 2.0 without the revision, but here how it stands in the revised text:

Quote :

When an effect (such as push, pull, or slide) moves a creature onto a pit square, that creature might fall
into the pit. After applying all effects from the original attack, the acting creature makes a followup attack
(using the attack bonus and AC or Defense of the attack or power used to move the target); if that attack
also hits, the target creature is Dazed. Regardless of the result of the followup attack, the creature is
placed in the nearest legal position.

Less dramatic then sudden death, but I suppose its better balanced that way.

I wonder if flying creatures still fall into pits...