Randomly Occurring Maneuvers

[T O]

Here's a house rule I want to try out in my own campaign if my players are interested:

Basically, it's critical hits, but for combat maneuvers. The idea is that if you get lucky on your attack roll you get a free chance to pull off a combat maneuver on your opponent. Every now and then, melee battles result in opportunities for performing what Pathfinder calls combat maneuvers, without the combatants specifically attempting such maneuvers intentionally. For example, defender could dodge an attack but lose footing and fall to the ground, just as if they'd been tripped.

To simulate this, when a melee attack roll results in a natural 10, it causes an opportunity to perform a randomly-determined combat maneuver, which is resolved after any damage caused by the attack itself. Combat maneuvers performed this way never provoke attacks of opportunity, and never require any kind of action. To determine what kind of opportunity presents itself, roll d6 and then consult this table:

1 - Bull Rush
2 - Overrun
3 - Trip
4 - Grapple
5 - Disarm
6 - Sunder

The attacker may then perform the maneuver as normal (including the need to make a Combat Maneuver roll against the target's Combat Maneuver Defense to be successful). If the attacker has any of the Improved feats for maneuvers (such as Improved Trip or Improved Overrun), the attacker may roll d8 instead; on a result of 1-6, use the table above, while on 7-8 they may choose any maneuver from those they have Improved.

In case you're curious, I picked "10" as the "threat" number so it would be (very) unlikely to overlap with Improved Critical and keen weapons. : P

In addition, I could also see making a feat called Improved Maneuver that causes a combat maneuver opportunity on a 10 or 11, and Greater Maneuver on a 10-12.

There are downsides to these extra rules though. The first would be extra complexity and bother. The second would be that, like critical hits, they actually make the game harder for the PCs rather than easier. This is because, in general, the PCs have to receive many more attack rolls than they dish out, even if in general PCs have better odds when it comes to defending against a maneuver.

[kyrt-ryder]

I do see problems with it. For starters, not all maneuvers even make sense in all cases. For example, Bullrush and Overrun are movement based, the character in question may not even want to move (Now a bullrush based on the weapon hit, that they might like, but it's situational)

Grapple might force the player to drop his two-handed weapon when he wasn't even trying.

You get where I'm going with this?

I'd completely gank overrun out, as it's entirely separate.

Next, make grapple exclusive for unarmed/natural attacks, and take sunder away, as typically these attacks can't handle dealing with hardness anyway.

Now you've got a set of 4 (roll a d4 :D, or d6 if they have an improved feat) that all more or less make sense.

The one last problem though, is succeeding on the attack roll. How do you handle natural 10's that don't beat the target's AC? Does it still count as long as it hit's their touch AC?

Many things to ponder.

[Jabor]

I agree with removing Overrun and rolling Grapple/Sunder into one weapon-dependant thing.

Also, make it optional, so if they decide they don't want to try and sunder that loot, or don't want to risk being disarmed back, they don't have to.

Thirdly:

Quote:

The one last problem though, is succeeding on the attack roll. How do you handle natural 10's that don't beat the target's AC? Does it still count as long as it hit's their touch AC?

I would say it just misses, but you still get your maneuvre attempt. Especially when you look at the example given - "opponent dodges, but still loses footing and slips" is an example of a miss being followed up by a successful trip attempt.

[kyrt-ryder]

Jabor wrote:

I agree with removing Overrun and rolling Grapple/Sunder into one weapon-dependant thing.

Also, make it optional, so if they decide they don't want to try and sunder that loot, or don't want to risk being disarmed back, they don't have to.

Thirdly:

Quote:

The one last problem though, is succeeding on the attack roll. How do you handle natural 10's that don't beat the target's AC? Does it still count as long as it hit's their touch AC?

I would say it just misses, but you still get your maneuvre attempt. Especially when you look at the example given - "opponent dodges, but still loses footing and slips" is an example of a miss being followed up by a successful trip attempt.

Both good points, that I had intended to make but didn't lol. I had wanted to say they could choose whether or not to use the maneuver (Especially bullrush, because a successful undesired bullrush attempt could have severe tactical ramifications.)

And yeah, that was my thought, either the maneuver automatically goes off whether they get hit and take damage or not, OR he uses the touch AC bit where if it misses their full AC they take no damage but as long as it hit the touch AC the maneuver goes off.

[T O]

Erm, I think there may be a misunderstanding here. First of all the attacker is never forced to do the maneuver; the rule says may and not must. It's already optional, as Jabor suggested. I can see how that probably needs to be made more clear. I also need to pick a different example; the idea is that during the fight an opportunity for a random maneuver appears at an unpredictable time, not that it randomly just happens.

Secondly a person wielding a two-handed sword may most certainly attempt a grapple without dropping the sword; they may simply let go with one hand and grab the person with the other (albeit they get a -4 to the maneuver checks in that case). A person wielding a sword and shield would have to drop the sword to try the grapple, but then again they could choose not to do the maneuver instead.

Thirdly, there's no difference between an action being "movement based" or "attack based"; the point is the results. This would occasionally result in a creature getting "free" movement out of it, but what's the harm in that? It's not like folks are going to be able to abuse it given that it will happen at such unpredictable times. I could see where folks would dislike that and want to use a d4 instead; go right ahead if you want -- I posted to get criticism (thanks for it!) and so people could use it if they wanted. :']

I also do intend that the maneuver happens on a natural 10 regardless of hit or miss on the attack roll. That way the opportunity to trip or disarm or whatever sometimes happens along with damage, sometimes not.

In any case, thanks for all the discussion. I'm something of a system geek so I like to tinker with rules.