Ok! My party is level one and they are having a blast with the roleplay but after moving from 4E to Pathfinder I'm having a hard time understanding the whole mechanics of Combat!
Mind you I get the basics, you swing, check AC, hit etc. But how does one add spice?
In 4E it's basically handed to you, each move is special does x and y and takes z check to pass. But in Pathfinder it's more open ended, less restriction, but adversely, less direction.
I like it! Don't get me wrong. I just want to make sure I'm getting all I can out of my fights. I've DM'd stuff like CoC before and that required some serious improv, but I'd like to hear a few tips on thing my players and I could do that would add more BAM to our combat!
(I am aware that at level 1 what you can do is limited, but still, it'd be nice to throw some wild cards in there for them!)
Ooh we do plenty of that. I was thinking more along the lines of "Bosknir wants to grapple the Bullettes mouth and hold it open, grab its tongue, and make it bite it. I'm trying to disable it's bite attack."
Those kind of things are possible, no? CMB vs CMD and it looks like it would be three rounds?
Well, as GM you have all the right in the world to work with your players on such a maneuver. Admittedly I do not think you should be throwing anything at a level 1 party which had a mouth large enough to wrestle. Maybe have him shove his hand down a wolf's throat instead.
How about you place some nice environmental obstacles they can take advantage of. Crashing into furniture is always a classic. A full oil lantern could also work as a nice improvised splash weapon. Just throw these things out there, make it a bit noticeable for the players, and let them take the hook. Once you start the practice, they will do the crazy things on their own.
Specifically trying to disable a monsters mode of attack, especially one like a bite... it not covered in the rules.
With Combat Manuvers you can disarm a weapon-weilder, but a natural attack is a little more tough.
I'd probably say Bosknir needs to make a heck of a grapple check. If he suceeds in grappling the Bullette, Boskir can theoretically keep him from moving, making the monster very likely to attack Bosknir instead of his companions.
Actually disabling the monster's bite would probably be a sucessful grapple and then a pin. This would be incredibly hard to do, but theoretically possible.
While these things are cool, for PCs, usually the best option is to do what their characters do best, melee attackers make melee attacks, archers shoot arrows, casters cast spells. Combat Manuvers are only seldomly useful for PCs (but they can be very useful for monsters, who typically have much higher bonuses on those sorts of rolls).
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How useful maneuvers are is a subject of periodic and intense debate. I personally think they're very useful against humanoids (at nearly all levels) and monsters at early levels. Later on monsters often fly or are too big to easily affect, but if your campaign has a particular theme/monster focus, that may be different.
None of that is covered in the rules.
HOWEVER, in my opinion, a good GM is likely to come up with a way to work stuff like that in there.
For example, your scenario seems like an interplay between two different combat maneuvers. I would classify them as Grapple and Dirty Trick (since Dirty Trick is basically a catch-all for "Not the other combat maneuvers").
So, make your Grapple check, then make your Dirty Trick check, and if they both succeed you've disabled his bite for X rounds (I'd put it at like 1d4 or so).
You can also try to do things like do a front flip onto a table (Acrobatics check) for a high ground bonus or summat as well.
Of course, this all requires GM cooperation, but then again, anything out of the box kinda does anyway.
You could try the Called Shots variant rules.
I really appreciate all the input and no, they aren't fighting anything with that large of a maw YET, but I do want to leave options like this open.
So when it comes to environements that can be broke (I.E a small tree, chairs, etc.) and a player gets slammed or knocked into these things- should they get swung with the force required to break it. What kind of damage are we looking at? A chair sounds like 1d4 (for player use as well should they bull rush someone into a dresser).
In addition, as the GM I know I have a lot of leway as to what I want to allow in my campaign. I've been thinking about including some variant in combat where using the environment to your advantage (Albeit more risky and less accurate) can warrant short term bleed damage, fire, etc. Depending on the nature of the usage. Personally if Bosknir made the thing take of a small part of its tongue I think a 1d6 rounds 1 bleed sounds fair!
Any thoughts?
I think hitting someone into objects has something like 1d6 damage per object hit into it or 2d6 if pushed 10+ feet into a wall in the Bull Rush rules somewhere, but I can't be sure.
I suggest watching a movie and reading books with good fight scenes. Most of the good ones have more going on than open, flat terrain with two roughly balanced sides fighting to the death. Any time it's about more than raw hitpoint attrition, combat maneuvers and jockeying for position become much more important.
Examples:
- The Princess Bride - duel at the top of the Cliffs of Insanity
- Fellowship of the Ring - the fight at Balin's tomb
- Indiana Jones - on a moving tank
In the Princess Bride, they fought all over interesting variable terrain and traded the advantageous ground several times.
In Fellowship, the group was going to die if that endless stream of goblins flooded the chamber they were hiding out in. The choke-point had to be held.
In Indiana Jones, the fight happened on an unstable platform with unsafe places to stand, and the whole thing was on a timer because the tank was going to drive over a cliff. Use that! Turn it into a riverboat full of pirates -- they keep jumping out of trap doors on the deck, and the boat's going to go over a waterfall in d6 + 8 rounds.
And don't make it just everybody fights to the death. Make the PCs care about more than killing. Give them someone to protect, or a reason to prevent a particular enemy from escaping (say, with an important object).
Maybe the party is waiting for the NPC archaeologist to translate a weird inscription? The undead will not stop until the magic words are uttered.
Maybe there are a lot of NPC combatants, both friendly and unfriendly. Like the PCs got involved in some kind of tribal warfare, and they have to participate in a big battle with twenty or thirty combatants on a side.
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It sounds like you should start by looking at the standard combat maneuvers, which are in the Combat chapter of the Core Rulebook. Grapple, trip, disarm, bull rush, etc add some battlefield control and cinematic maneuvers to the game. I'd say start there, then see if there's more that your group would like to do beyond the available maneuvers once you get used to them.
OT
Just curious...
<snip>For instance, a PC who manages to flank a prone enemy by jumping onto a table gets +7 to his or her attack.<snip>
If the enemy is prone and a character jumps on a table, how do they reach the enemy way down on the floor?