So I've been thinking lately about how to spruce up combats and make them a little more dynamic, and had the thought...what if Combat Maneuvers didn't provoke attacks of opportunity? Would that be too over-powered?
How often do your players use Combat Maneuvers?
I usually like the rule that they only provoke if they fail. That way you can attempt them without Improved feats and not have to eat an attack unless you're not good at it, in which case you're probably not going to try it anyway.
Disarm and Sunder at least don't need AoOs. If you're attacking the opponent's weapon, how are they attacking you first?
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
We use a house rule that only provokes on a failed maneuver roll.
It's a very popular variant.
I like it a lot.
|
So I've been thinking lately about how to spruce up combats and make them a little more dynamic, and had the thought...what if Combat Maneuvers didn't provoke attacks of opportunity? Would that be too over-powered?
For the ones that replace standard attacks - I would remove the AoO on a success or fail.
For the ones that can be combined with an attack I would keep the AoO in (on a fail).
I wholeheartedly agree! I rarely try combat maneuvers for fear of counter attacks.
In my current game we are using the rule that you can use Combat Maneuvers without an AoO, but if you don´t have the feat for it, you get a -2 on the maneuver.
So far it worked out quite well. The players use them from time to time, but don´t overdo it.
My aim was to make combats somewhat different from the usual "attack it until it´s dead". So far this resulted in some quite nice scenes with the barbarian grappling flying enemies, disarms from the magus on weapon dependend enemies and some bullrushes into pits.
I don´t think the players would have done anything of the sorts without the houserule, so I can only recommend to widen the ability to perform Combat Maneuvers.