quick question on CMB- more specifically, bullrush- that occured in my groups last game.
had a few characters stuck in the middle of a large swarm of centipedes. our monk decided to try and bullrush us out of the swarm.
looking through the rules, it seems that he still has to make his check against our full CMB, even though we wouldnt be opposing his attempt. it was even harder to decide what the rules wwould be for my dwarf character- can he "shut off" his stability???
so is CMB passive or active?? can a person automatically lower their defensive CMB to allow these types of maneauvers to automatically suceed???
because the monk was trying to do it on his turn AFTER the people in the swarm had already taken theirs.........
a few did their actions, the swarm moved and attacked then the monk wanted to bullrush one of the other PC's out of the swarm.
Of course, he neglects to mention that the monk operates with less than a full deck. Big hero shoves friends outside of swarm - sacrifice himself.
That's alright, I perfer my deck of many things be missing a couple of cards... as long as I get to choose which are missing. ;D
Somebody should be taking AoO's here somewhere, other than that I would either make it a strength check to move them, or just use standard bullrushing rules, afterall most people don't instinctively let others shove them around even to save them.
I think you have to look at it differently. The characters aren't opposing the bull rush, the enemy is opposing their attempt to pass.
Think off it as a goal-line stand in football: One player is helping the ball carrier over the line, the defense is trying to stop him.
There's an opposition check and the “good guys” might get a bonus from the monk’s assistance.
Hope that helps and keep rolling those dice!
What if the situation would have been a bit different. Let's say a monk was bull rushing a fighter near the enemy, so the fighter can get a full attack instead of a standard attack. No enemy involved in the bull rush, and the fighter really wants to get into full attack range. Should the fighter be able to turn his CMB off?
For those who answered no, consider another example. Replace the fighter with a wizard, who has to get a bit closer to the enemy in order to reach him with a move action and get a touch spell off during the same turn. Why would it be easier to move the wizard who wants to be moved than the fighter who wants to be moved?
In 3.5 it stated a number of times in obscure locations that you could always voluntarily fail a check. A similar straightforward statement in PRPG would probably be wise.
If this is the case, please indicate that voluntarily failing a check has the same effect as trying to meet a normal DC and failing. This prevents the very odd situations where a horseman cannot fall off of his cliff-charging horse, or a fighter tries to miss an opponent with his sword and hits.
A similar rule for allowing a CMB to succeed against you would be useful. This allows an unarmed person to grab something from a friend by "disarming" them, the fighter to push the wizard out of harm's way (or the wizard to help push the fighter), etc. etc. The Wizard would still have to roll to see how far that fighter went, though.