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Ok I have to ask why is it that being a small character in Pathfinder is such a negative thing when it comes to combat maneuvers.
More to the point why does there CMD have to suffer from it CMB I understand and agree with because the CMB is what you use to be able to grabble and other tricks. But I don’t feel that the smaller you are the worse your CMD needs to be because lets face it its had to catch a cat that doesn’t want to be touched or a fly for that matter.
But for some reason pathfinder thinks that everybody should be a kung fu master able to catch flies with there hands without any issues. Am I the only only thinking the size needs to be relooked at?
Honestly, CMD 6 for a housecat seems about right. If I have my cat out in the open, I can grab her without too much difficulty. Usually there are complicating factors, such as squeezing penalties, cover and concealment to deal with as well (cats are crafty). If the cat was hostile to you it could make an AoO and potentially add between 1 and 3 to the CMD, depending on how many attacks land.
A Fly will have a high Dexterity bonus, and a bonus on Escape Artist checks as well.
I was hopeing to see if anyone has come up with alternate rules
Ah - you'll want this in the homebrew section then. The Rules forum is for clarification on the rules as written.
Atarlost, I would suggest they don't use the 3.5 rules because that will result in a greater chance of failure.
Touch vs CMD:
Similarities: both use Dex, Dodge, Deflection.
Differences: Touch gains size bonus/penalty to AC while CMD gets a size penalty/bonus to CMD. However, that is balanced by CMD gaining BAB and Strength to CMD which places it as much better than touch AC.
CMD is better (defensively) than a Touch AC.
Lets use Grapple:
Opposed Grapple check vs CMD:
The grapple check uses BAB and Strength just like CMD but it also has 4 times the size bonuses and penalties compared to Pathfinder. That just kills little creatures because the special size modifier for a Grapple check favored the larger creature by a much larger margin in 3.5 than it does in Pathfinder. A Small creature in 3.5 had a -4 penalty while in PF it has a -1 penalty. A large creature had a +4 vs the +1 in PF.
And of course, CMD gains benefits from Dodge, Deflection, and Dexterity.
CMD is again better (defensively) than the Opposed Grapple check.
Ok, what about Trip?
Opposed Dex/Str check vs CMD:
Much the same as grapple, the larger creature benefits disproportionally from its greater size when compared to Pathfinder size penalties/bonuses. Again, the winner is clearly CMD for defense.
So that is the defensive side of the coin, what about the offensive side?
Well, things are harder to pull off in Pathfinder than they were back in 3.5. The Touch attack mechanic is laughably easy to pull off. If you are a larger creature you can pretty much guarantee that you will bull rush, trip, or grapple your opponent. But, a small creature has a much harder time doing any of those things because the size modifiers were such a big deal in 3.5. Creatures smaller than medium had a -4 penalty per size category while creatures larger than medium had a +4 bonus per size category larger than medium.
Summary: Many combat maneuvers in 3.5 were extremely favorable to larger creatures and there was really no way to pull them off if you were not a large creature. Paizo's CMB/CMD is a more balanced system and has reduced the disparity between small and large creatures.
- Gauss
Still, the size penalty to CMD leads to some... interesting results at times.
According to RAW, grabbing a pixie from mid-air, or sundering its shield with a well placed swing is considerably easier than actually touching it in the first place.
For maintaining a grapple or things like that, the size penalty to CMD works quite nicely.
For actually establishing physical contact, my group has been using the house rule of having to hit CMD or Touch AC, whichever higher.
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According to RAW, grabbing a pixie from mid-air, or sundering its shield with a well placed swing is considerably easier than actually touching it in the first place.
yeah, we had this come up whilst playing RotRL back when we had PF Beta and we were all failing to hit a tiny flying foe, so I grabbed it knowing that its size bonus would make it much easier to grab than to simply hit. I felt a bit dirty about doing that though and so its one of the reasons I prefer 3.5 Grapple to PF Grapple.
Midnight Angel, that is a very interesting house rule. There are a number of creatures with a touch AC higher than their CMD due to small size and low strength. I agree that it is unreasonable to allow them to be hit by a combat maneuver if they cannot be touched.
- Gauss