Can anyone recommend some extra optional rules to add some depth to melee combat - you know, something beyond "I roll to hit... now I roll damage?" I'm willing to entertain combat options that will slow melee down, even - I just want something a bit crunchier.
Try using the Armor as Damage Reduction, Called Shots, and Wounds and Vigor options presented in Ultimate Combat. Personally I prefer the Armor as DR as presented in Unearthed Arcana, but all these mechanics are grittier than standard combat.
Also try to get your hands on a critical hit and fumble deck. These will also add a lot of flavor to combat just used by themselves.
Give out a tiny bit of bonus EXP for descriptive attacks. And try the rules Master Crafter mentioned. ^^
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You could remove the limitation that combat maneuvers provoke attacks of opportunity. (Give the "Improved X" feat for free if someone takes the "Greater X" feat, to keep the prerequisites in order.) That would add Bull Rush, Dirty Trick, Disarm, Drag, Grapple, Overrun, Reposition, Steal, Sunder, Trip, and Feint to the list of viable combat actions. That's 11 new ways to attack!
Also, it gives enemies that many options against PCs. I think this change would make combats much more cinematic.
I liked the Armor as DR option, till I found out that bandits in light armor would be pretty much immune to any mundane weapon the city guards could produce :|
On the other hand, Called Shots and Wounds & Vigor, especially Vigor works out great!
I tend to do a few changes, based off a few PDF/threads I've seen:
Remove Power Attack, Combat Expertise, et all that basically are '-X for +Y'. Basically make it so that you convert either -2 dam/attack/dodge AC to +1 dam/attack/dodge AC, based on your BAB. The other rule is you can't convert unless you're attacking, be it melee or spells (since casters can 'attack' with their spells, fe rolling to hit).
This also frees up a bunch of feats so that there's more tactics (such as using Improve Trip/Sunder. Also means you don't have to be a brainy fighter to get useful feats.
Critical Hit/Fumble Decks rock.
Extra Actions:
I also tend to allow at 6th and 12th levels the ability to do more than one standard action. Essentially at 6th level, all characters can attack, use an ability, move again, et all. The only caveat is that if you want to full attack, it eats your 2 actions, though if you have TWF you can use one action to attack with both weapons, and have the other action open for whatever. If you cast a spell, you can't cast another spell (but you can use an ability, such as your domain/school/bloodline/et all abilities).
At 12th, its not so much an extra action, but more of using things that shouldn't be a standard action (such as reloading a weapon, drinking a potion, et all). So at 12th, you basically can use a 3rd action to use up mundane uses of standard actions.
I do this because I get tired of the 'dance' that goes back and forth, especially at higher levels. Most of the time melee is trying to get in close to use FA, caster have spells and abilities but can't use them at the same time, and when you start to need self-healing via pots/wands, you have to waste an action doing so.
But this goes both-ways: monsters and NPCs also have these as well. And I also made a 'Boss' template for NPCs in modules/scenarios you could consider 'the boss', which effectively gives them an extra action, sometimes double hit points, and better stats. Mainly I just got tired of seeing my well-made villains get tromped on because they were against a group of PCs, and I didn't want to play war by having minions around. Generally its fun.
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I had been considering allowing alternative critical confirmation rolls.
So if you crit, instead of rolling to confirm for extra damage, you could instead roll a Combat Maneuver to sunder, disarm, trip, in addition to the base damage. It would be dependent upon the weapon used, so an axe might have sunder, a warhammer, bullrush... If you wanted you could just roll the extra damage instead.
I liked the Armor as DR option, till I found out that bandits in light armor would be pretty much immune to any mundane weapon the city guards could produce :|
On the other hand, Called Shots and Wounds & Vigor, especially Vigor works out great!
That is why I prefer the rules as presented in Unearthed Arcana. It also used your armor bonus as DR, but instead of completely ignoring that damage it was mitigated to nonlethal damage. So I guess you could more accurately call it "Armor as Damage Mitigation" since the overall amount of damage you were receiving/dealing was the same, just combat was less lethal.
It also applied to Monk AC and Natural AC, but held a caution that creatures with regeneration essentially took 1/2 damage from the nonlethal part as nonlethal damage is healed at twice the rate of normal damage. As a result this actually made encounters with such creatures more challenging.
There is a guy integrating the Rolemaster Critical Hits system into Pathfinder... He can be found here.
I also removed 'Combat Manoeuvres cause Attacks of Opportunity' rule, as other posters. What I've found is that people tend to use them and 'called shots' to gain tactical advantage between trading blows. I'm also thinking about getting rid of some of the requirements for Combat Manoeuvre feats to make them more freely available.
You could also take a leaf out of 4th edition and create a combat environment with hazards - like stairs which you can 'trip' people down or pits which enemies can be manoeuvred into. You don't have to do this with every fight (keep it for climatic ones) and you can just use sketch maps. For instance I ran one in an alchemist's factory recently. One of the PCs was being chased around the walkways by an alchemical golem as the factory tore itself apart, sending electricity arcing and acid spewing everywhere. They ended up falling into a chemical vat with the PC fighting to get out as a mechanized lid was coming down. Great fight.
I'm a big fan of the armor rules that appear in Iron Heroes. I modified them a bit to be more flexible in flavor.
Basically, armor grants variable damage reduction.
Very light armor: 1d2
Light armor: 1d4
Medium armor: 1d6
Heavy armor: 1d8
Very heavy armor: 1d10
Bear in mind that Iron Heroes is a low- to no-magic system, so there are a couple ways you could handle magic armor: either increase the DR by the flat bonus (+5 medium armor absorbs 1d6+5 damage), or provide an armor bonus on top of the DR granted (+5 medium armor increases AC by 5 AND gives 1d6 DR).
Alternatively:
I'm not positive how armor as DR was handled in UA, and that may be where my former DM got this idea, but you could also halve the armor bonus and give an amount of DR equal to the AC bonus you took away.
Padded armor: +1 AC, DR 0
Leather: +1 AC, DR 1
Studded leather: +2 AC, DR 1
Chain shirt: +2 AC, DR 2
Hide: +2 AC, DR 2
Scale mail: +3 AC, DR 2
Chain mail: +3 AC, DR 3
Breastplate: +3 AC, DR 3
Splint mail: +4 AC, DR 3
Banded mail: +4 AC, DR 3
Half-plate: +4 AC, DR 4
Full-plate: +5 AC, DR 4
I like the idea of the armor converting the damage to nonlethal instead of negating it entirely.
These are all great ideas - thanks, folks!
Follow up question: for those of you who use armor as DR, do you also use some kind of base defense bonus for each class?
Follow up question: for those of you who use armor as DR, do you also use some kind of base defense bonus for each class?
I use the UA Class defense bonus and only let it apply when unarmored. I combine this with the UC armor as DR rules and it works great especially since i use the Guns everywhere rules.
Instead of removing AoOs for maneuvers, I changed it to a FAILED CMB check provokes. Fun risk bs reward change.
Terrain, hazards and active traps also make the dynamic of combat change.
+1
I currently play a dragon shaman in a game with an archer and battle sorcerer. My guy is good at soaking up hits, but isn't too good at hitting. What he does is use terrain to his advantage. He has a couple magic items that help, like a Ring of the Ram, that help him push opponents into dangerous terrain, like pits or walls of fire.
If you want to encourage more dynamic melees, you have to provide options that are superior to "I hit, I hit again, I hit again."
Terrain, hazards, and active traps will help with this.
Sometimes, you have to encourage it by making the opponent either highly resistant or immune to the attacks of the PCs. One of my favorite battles was with another group that used teamwork to take out a golem. Basically, we had 1 guy be bait and lead it to the edge of a cliff, another PC stoneshaped the edge into a ramp, another greased it, my PC lassoed it and jumped off the cliff (I had a 1 use feather fall item), and another bull rushed the golem with my weight (and a potion of enlarger person to x8 my weight) pulling it off the edge.
Follow up question: for those of you who use armor as DR, do you also use some kind of base defense bonus for each class?
Yes. Iron Heroes classes include a defense bonus that ranges from +0 to +15 at level 20, to +1 to +20 at level 20.
Core rules dictated that this bonus is an active bonus (essentially a dodge bonus) and would thus plummet when flat-footed. There have been a lot of variant rules that have come from this to "fix" the balance issue.
1. Make it a flat bonus that applies all the time.
2. Make 1/2 (round up) active and 1/2 (round down) passive.
3 (my house rule). Tie it to the armor the character is wearing. If a person has a +8 class defense bonus, and they're wearing light armor (1d4 DR), they have a +4 active class bonus and a +4 passive class bonus; if that person was wearing heavy armor (1d8 DR), they would have a +0 active class bonus and a +8 passive class bonus.
4. Class bonus is all active, but effects that override active bonuses only do so by 2 points for every 5 by which they pass the target number.
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Don't forget that you get a melee bonus when attacking from the high ground! Even if you're just on a hillside, a suitably drawn-out grid with various hills, mounds, and bluffs will provide plenty of opportunity for PCs to try and find an advantageous spot.
Play around with battle locations as much as you can. Inside an industrial setting like a laboratory or clock tower provides plenty of hazards and obstacles to be avoided or exploited. Your average dungeon leads itself well to labyrinths and traps going off. Perhaps a skirmish with pirates on the deck of a ship, as the boom swings back and forth and deckhands swing down from the rigging?
I know a lot of this is going to depend on your campaign and plot, but if you can shake up the territory, you can shake up the combats. This applies to the enemies as well as the terrain-- a slog-fest through wave after wave of anything is going to get old fast, so try and aim more for large, high-CR creatures that your party can get a decent challenge from fighting only one of. Ghosts are a prime example-- they're incorporeal so melee fighters have to get creative, and they have their own backstory and specific trigger for defeat, so a clever character could "put them to rest" fairly easily if they figured out how.
Even a regular barroom brawl can have interesting terrain: Tables to hop onto for that +1 bonus for attacking on higher ground, cover from behind the bar or flipped tables, bullrush opponents into the blazing fireplace, swing on the chandeliers, slippery terrain from spilled beer (ALCOHOL ABUSE!), diffuclt terrain from piles of broken chairs--or piles of passed out drunks! Wine cellar pits to push opponents down--then slam the trapdoor shut so they can't get out! Barrels to roll, or throw, or sunder them to make slippery terrain! Douse opponents with strong liquor before bull rushing them into a fireplace for extra damage.
I've just started running a Skulls and Shackles game and decided I wanted to try and spice up combat a little since I wanted 'piratey' fights to be as mobile and dynamic as possible and encourage players to improvise. Basically I want to avoid the below which has happened to me all too often:
Player: Can I knock that guy off that bridge/kick sand in that guys eye/some other cool and dramatic stunt that would certainly make the combat more cinematic?
Me: Sure, that's combat manoeuvre (x) but as you don't have the improved (x) feat it will provoke an attack of Opportunity from him
Player: *looks disappointed, thinks for a moment* never mind, I'll just hit him with my sword again...
I had the idea of removing AoOs for combat manoeuvres so that when that situation came up a player would go through with it (as well as allowing me to have npc's use them more often.) I thought I'd check the forums to see if anyone had a similar idea which led me here :-).
My idea for it was remove the AoO's and modify all of the improved (x) feats so that instead of allowing you to make the manoeuvre without provoking an AoO it allows you to make an AoO when someone without the feat uses the manoeuvre against you. Because I figure someone whose really good at disarming, bull rushing or whatever is going to be able to see that coming and react to it with an AoO. So taking the improved (x) feat allows you to AoO people who use that manoeuvre against you while also protecting you from AoO,s from other people with the improved (x) feat. The same applies to Greater (x) so someone with greater (x) can make an AoO against someone with only improved (x) but not against someone who also has greater (x).
What do people think of the above? anyone see any potential problems?
With regard to removing AoO's from CM's in general (however you decide to do it) have people had success with it? Does it leave the game unbalanced in a way I haven't yet considered?
Loki: That's a great idea! It will encourage combat maneuvers, which are really fun, and still provide a good reason to take the Improved and Greater combat maneuver feats. They also make them both attacky and defensey, which is really interesting.
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I am toying with the idea of using circumstance bonuses for when players use creative tactics or creatively describe their actions. Such bonuses would range from +2 to +5 (usually +2) and would normally only be good for the one strike/skill check if the target is intelligent in any way. Using the same 'move' more than once could allow the monster to take advantage of the player. I am hoping it inspires my players to be more creative.
I have a feeling doing it this way may cause players to come up with a routine of 'moves', but that may also give some fighting style to their character too. We will see what happens.