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I can't see any big downside to doing this! I want players to think that Maneuvers are actually doable with luck and equipment even if you are not the expert on them, given the right situation. I want to see more manuevers done form PCs and from the bad guys as well. I like the idea that if you are an expert (have the feat), and have the right tool, you should actually have a decent chance of pulling one off, even without help from external factors.
Anyone finds this game-breaking?
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It is hugely game breaking, actually. Bull Rush and Reposition make the enemies trigger AoOs, even from the originator of the maneuver. Further, Grapple/Pin takes some enemies out of the fight entirely.
Furthermore, between Improved Combat Maneuver, racial, and gear bonuses, it's ALREADY possible to have a net -2 or +0 to certain maneuvers; a skittermander with a garrote and a nerfed penalty suddenly becomes an unstoppable ball of fuzzy murder.
Armor Storm soldiers with ICM (Bull Rush) can actually get a net +2 if they have Juggernaut Boosters... and they do punch damage on top of the AoO they force the enemy to take.
I mean, do what you want with your game, but I can't recommend it.
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It is hugely game breaking, actually. Bull Rush and Reposition make the enemies trigger AoOs, even from the originator of the maneuver. Further, Grapple/Pin takes some enemies out of the fight entirely.
Furthermore, between Improved Combat Maneuver, racial, and gear bonuses, it's ALREADY possible to have a net -2 or +0 to certain maneuvers; a skittermander with a garrote and a nerfed penalty suddenly becomes an unstoppable ball of fuzzy murder.
Armor Storm soldiers with ICM (Bull Rush) can actually get a net +2 if they have Juggernaut Boosters... and they do punch damage on top of the AoO they force the enemy to take.
I mean, do what you want with your game, but I can't recommend it.
Ok, noted. I don't see anything actually game breaking in what you mentioned. You are confirming that manuevers will trigger a lot more (which is what I intend). I dispute the fact this is somehow superpowering PC or NPCs. Maneuvers don't deal damage. Grappling someone doesn't end them then and there, they can hit, they can grapple back and they can still cast. Besides, if you manage to grapple or pin somebody and that has a non insignificant effect on a fight, good! That's how it should be!
This opens up gameplay and makes everyone more conscientious about their positioning and their tactics. It also makes a lot of gadgets and augmentations much more useful.The fact that the skittermander is effective with a garrote is good. Enemies can garrote you back, or can prevent you from doing it by sundering your flimsy garrote. If that still looks like too good, then I'd much rather eliminate the garrote or change the way it works, and keep the KAC +4 maneuvers.
The fact that an expert with the right gear can aspire at having a -2 or a +0, as your say, is actually very lame, and it's the reason why I want to make that better. To me having a +0 does not really advertise "big badass maneuver expert"
Vanguards are not getting their light dimmed by this, they still benefit from targeting EAC, relative to everyone else, plus the baked-in maneuver feats. And no, I don't find that extreme at all. Again, maneuvers do not deal damage. If you manage to deal damage with a maneuver, good, you earned that through your class and build!
Regarding repositions... it's an AOO, not the end of the world. No problem with triggering one. The enemies can do that too!
Plus Vanguards target EAC (provided they're level 5 or higher and have the appropriate ICM feat.) So you're either stealing their thunder or letting them target EAC +4, which is going to be pretty close to auto hit, most of the time.
Having to best EAC +4 is not an auto-hit. It's a normal difficulty hit for somebody who has invested a feat on this and simply wants to do something cool that doesn't even deal damage...
The farthest thing from being overpowered, in my opinion.
Also, goes without saying, in my case pinning would require a higher difficulty: KAC +8 (one more than the original difference, mainly for easiness to remember)
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I'm with Dracomicron on this one. This would be too good.
I'm currently playing a grappler skittermander in a Dead Suns game. I've never played or seen a more powerful character in Starfinder, and I've played a lot of Society and APs. The pinned condition is a death sentence for the victim. Its nigh impossible for most foes to break out and the penalties are so severe that the victim rapidly becomes a pincushion (or "pinnedcushion" :>). Unlike Pathfinder, there are very very few tools available to get out of a grapple or pin.
Giving this menace another 20% accuracy would be like giving all spellcasters a +4 bonus on their save DCs.
I encourage you to go build your own character optimized for disarm or grapple and play it! I think you'll see that there's no need for your proposed change. I used to think like you that maneuvers needed to be against an easier DC, but in practice they're already probably too strong.
It's native EAC +4, with your house rule, presumably.
It becomes flat EAC, with the appropriate ICM.
It becomes EAC -2, with a weapon with the appropriate property.
Throw another +1 on there, for weapon focus.
So without any help from team members in the form of buffs or debuffs, or any other gear or abilities that might improve your roll, you're letting a Vanguard hit a combat maneuver, at WORST, at EAC -3. If that isn't already auto-hit (I'm pretty sure that's already in the auto-hit range for a good percentage of characters), there's plenty of short term buffs or debuffs to get you there.
I shouldn't have to say it, but allowing anything, player or NPC, to auto hit or auto fail something is bad design.
No, for non vanguards, you're talking about hitting a KAC number that's likely lower than the target's EAC. Given that the game is pretty well balanced about how much damage something will do vs the various special effects it pulls off vs what kind of AC it targets, I'm going to go ahead and say that your idea is still objectively bad.
Now, if its something your players want, then go nuts. I hope you all have fun. But you need to understand that your proposal is unbalanced to the point of absurdity, and you're unlikely to gain much traction here for it.
Hitting at a -3 is not a auto-hit, it's an easy hit. You are still talking about a character who has invested the specific feat required and has the right tool for the job. It's supposed to be EASY for them to pull that off, under those circumstances.
I don't dispute that this makes Vanguard much better at doing maneuvers, what I'm saying is I don't see how the game breaks if ppl can pull off manuevers more frequently (in the given specific circumstances, when you have closed the gap from distance, when your target is a typical humanoid and not a huge beast with 6 legs, etc.)
Why is it bad for a combat maneuver specialized character to actually be able to do what they are built for?
I'm with Dracomicron on this one. This would be too good.
I'm currently playing a grappler skittermander in a Dead Suns game. I've never played or seen a more powerful character in Starfinder, and I've played a lot of Society and APs. The pinned condition is a death sentence for the victim. Its nigh impossible for most foes to break out and the penalties are so severe that the victim rapidly becomes a pincushion (or "pinnedcushion" :>). Unlike Pathfinder, there are very very few tools available to get out of a grapple or pin.
Giving this menace another 20% accuracy would be like giving all spellcasters a +4 bonus on their save DCs.
I encourage you to go build your own character optimized for disarm or grapple and play it! I think you'll see that there's no need for your proposed change. I used to think like you that maneuvers needed to be against an easier DC, but in practice they're already probably too strong.
I did build a maneuver specialist and it was barely capable of pulling maneuvers off, without specific help or buffs.
But I'll try again with a skittermander and see if it makes that much of a difference as you say.I'm still very skeptical in accepting that the possibility of somebody specialized and fine tuned to be good at something specific can "ruin" every fight out there to the point of breaking the game.
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I long felt that maneuvers having such a high "AC" target made them very dissuasive to do because you were likely to fail, didn't deal damage, and ate up your turn.
Now, honestly here's my suggestion to make maneuvers see more use but to ensure things don't get out of control.
Everyone and everything gets the feat Improved Combat Maneuver for free (for all maneuvers). That means they can't stack it with your reduced target DC (which was basically what was going to happen) but it means that no one needs to spend a feat to have a relatively ok chance of success, but can still spend other things to specialize into maneuvers if they want to. But anyone who was going to was already going to take that feat.
The big problem being that having to spend a feat makes it too prohibitive an investment to ever bother for most builds, on something that they weren't looking to specialize in. But unless you decide you want to specialize in it, you're chances of success are very very low.
So just give away the feat for free. It basically accomplishes the same thing as what you wanted to do, but players can't double dip on your generosity.
Edit: To clarify in case you didn't understand the problem, if you lower the DC from KAC+8 to KAC+4 and allow for the improved maneuver feat then their DC is just KAC. And there are weapons and items that improve it still further. Meaning that specialize characters could be looking at a target of KAC-2 or even KAC-4. And at that point you've swung too far in the wrong direction. Disarm, grapple (pinning), dirty trick, and trip are all too powerful if you can basically guarantee them anytime you want. They were balanced against being hard to achieve and the game basically expected you to take Improved Combat Maneuver to succeed on them.
I long felt that maneuvers having such a high "AC" target made them very dissuasive to do because you were likely to fail, didn't deal damage, and ate up your turn.
Now, honestly here's my suggestion to make maneuvers see more use but to ensure things don't get out of control.
Everyone and everything gets the feat Improved Combat Maneuver for free (for all maneuvers). That means they can't stack it with your reduced target DC (which was basically what was going to happen) but it means that no one needs to spend a feat to have a relatively ok chance of success, but can still spend other things to specialize into maneuvers if they want to. But anyone who was going to was already going to take that feat.
The big problem being that having to spend a feat makes it too prohibitive an investment to ever bother for most builds, on something that they were looking to specialize in. But unless you decide you want to specialize in it, you're chances of success are very very low.
So just give away the feat for free. It basically accomplishes the same thing as what you wanted to do, but players can't double dip on your generosity.
Very interesting take, thank you.
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I can't see any big downside to doing this! I want players to think that Maneuvers are actually doable with luck and equipment even if you are not the expert on them, given the right situation. I want to see more manuevers done form PCs and from the bad guys as well.
I'm a big fan of this house rule. (It's one of two non-starship related houserules I've used myself.)
In the default game (in my experience), maneuvers are ignored by anyone who isn't hyper-specialized in performing one. And even then, the specialists generally only use the single maneuver they've specialized in.
Opening up maneuvers to non-specialists makes SF combat more interesting. It makes PCs more likely to try to make use of features of environmental features. And it make PCs more likely to coordinate maneuvers and attacks in a way more interesting than just "let's all shoot at the same target".
That said, this is mostly based on experience with the SF CRB. And I can see how recent publications have changed things a bit. It feels like the devs realized that no one was ever using maneuvers, and so started introducing options (Vanguards, Skittermanders, etc) that made maneuvers a more viable option. But by making it possible to build a viable maneuver specialists (at least for one kind of maneuver), I can see how one might worry that with this house rule, maneuver specialists might now be too good.
In particular, I can see the worry, raised by some, that the pinning effect in particular is too strong. So I might be inclined to make pinning require a harder check (perhaps KAC+8, as LotsofLore suggested).
But for the most part, I'm not too worried about this. Most maneuvers are already of questionable efficacy even if they were easy to perform. Using your standard action to trip someone instead of taking them down, or using your turn to bull rush them and provoke an AOO instead of just dealing damage, is often a poor tactical choice. (And, of course, in many cases maneuvers like this won't be an option -- your opponent will be incorporeal, or an ooze, or firing at you from the other side of a chasm, or whatever.)
Of course, if this ended up being a problem in play I'd happily change my mind. But this hasn't been a problem in my games!
...here's my suggestion to make maneuvers see more use but to ensure things don't get out of control.
Everyone and everything gets the feat Improved Combat Maneuver for free (for all maneuvers). That means they can't stack it with your reduced target DC (which was basically what was going to happen) but it means that no one needs to spend a feat to have a relatively ok chance of success, but can still spend other things to specialize into maneuvers if they want to. But anyone who was going to was already going to take that feat.
This is an interesting proposal. It helps make maneuvers more accessible without making specialists too good. I'd have to play around with this variant to see how maneuver specialists feel given this kind of set-up, but this might be an even better way to go.
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I can't see any big downside to doing this! I want players to think that Maneuvers are actually doable with luck and equipment even if you are not the expert on them, given the right situation. I want to see more manuevers done form PCs and from the bad guys as well.I'm a big fan of this house rule. (It's one of two non-starship related houserules I've used myself.)
In the default game (in my experience), maneuvers are ignored by anyone who isn't hyper-specialized in performing one. And even then, the specialists generally only use the single maneuver they've specialized in.
Opening up maneuvers to non-specialists makes SF combat more interesting. It makes PCs more likely to try to make use of features of environmental features. And it make PCs more likely to coordinate maneuvers and attacks in a way more interesting than just "let's all shoot at the same target".
That said, this is mostly based on experience with the SF CRB. And I can see how recent publications have changed things a bit. It feels like the devs realized that no one was ever using maneuvers, and so started introducing options (Vanguards, Skittermanders, etc) that made maneuvers a more viable option. But by making it possible to build a viable maneuver specialists (at least for one kind of maneuver), I can see how one might worry that with this house rule, maneuver specialists might now be too good.
In particular, I can see the worry, raised by some, that the pinning effect in particular is too strong. So I might be inclined to make pinning require a harder check (perhaps KAC+8, as LotsofLore suggested).
But for the most part, I'm not too worried about this. Most maneuvers are already of questionable efficacy even if they were easy to perform. Using your standard action to trip someone instead of taking them down, or using your turn to bull rush them and provoke an AOO instead of just dealing damage, is often a poor tactical choice. (And, of course, in many cases maneuvers like this won't be an...
Thank you, exactly!
... And at that point you've swung too far in the wrong direction. Disarm, grapple (pinning), dirty trick, and trip are all too powerful if you can basically guarantee them anytime you want. They were balanced against being hard to achieve and the game basically expected you to take Improved Combat Maneuver to succeed on them.
Also, in my opinion these maneuvers are decidedly not too powerful. To pull of a dirty trick at KAC -4 in my version of the rules you still have to have a specialised character, with the right tool, in the right circumstances, and against an enemy who can actually suffer any of those effects, and after all of that what you get is: I briefly inconvenience the enemy before they cancel the effects of my maneuver by simply spending a move action on their turn...
Too powerful? I honestly don't see how, and with the unmodified rules it's actually not viable.
I agree with the base rules it's not a problem, because your chance of success if low.
But if the party out numbers the enemy, having one player dedicated to inflicting status while the rest of the party gangs up on that enemy can be "too good".
But I think we the suggestion I've made you still don't run into that issue. It takes a specialist to reach the level of success where it's virtually guaranteed to succeed but they're not always going to be in a position to use the most effective maneuver on the enemy that really needs to be focused on.
But if somehow everyone got to a point where they only needed to hit KAC-2 on maneuvers I think the pendulum would swing too far in the opposite direction (from being near worthless to try, to being too effective).
As to why, disarm is pretty clearly a very strong option when you fight something that uses weapons. They basically have no recourse if you steal their weapon. Pinned is very obvious why it's powerful. Trip causes prone, which is a -4 to melee attack which is very strong against a melee enemy, and also reduces their AC against melee attacks (if you have more than one melee party member to take advantage of it). And dirty trick is a wealth of debuff options. One of the best of which is blinded.
Sure you can remove those conditions with a move action, but making the enemy waste their action economy when you already have total greater action economy (more people in your party than the enemy) is a pretty good deal.
I agree with the base rules it's not a problem, because your chance of success if low.
But if the party out numbers the enemy, having one player dedicated to inflicting status while the rest of the party gangs up on that enemy can be "too good".
But I think we the suggestion I've made you still don't run into that issue. It takes a specialist to reach the level of success where it's virtually guaranteed to succeed but they're not always going to be in a position to use the most effective maneuver on the enemy that really needs to be focused on.
But if somehow everyone got to a point where they only needed to hit KAC-2 on maneuvers I think the pendulum would swing too far in the opposite direction (from being near worthless to try, to being too effective).
As to why, disarm is pretty clearly a very strong option when you fight something that uses weapons. They basically have no recourse if you steal their weapon. Pinned is very obvious why it's powerful. Trip causes prone, which is a -4 to melee attack which is very strong against a melee enemy, and also reduces their AC against melee attacks (if you have more than one melee party member to take advantage of it). And dirty trick is a wealth of debuff options. One of the best of which is blinded.
Sure you can remove those conditions with a move action, but making the enemy waste their action economy when you already have total greater action economy (more people in your party than the enemy) is a pretty good deal.
Ok, got it.
I still think the situations you described are well owed being able to have an easy chance to a maneuver, all considered, and if you have the case that a well oiled party with a specialist in maneuver manages to gang up on a lonely foe... well that is a well earned win for the players in my opinion. On the GM side I almost always beef up the enemies and their numbers when I run APs for the simple reason that if I didn't the PCs would sleepwalk-destroy virtually every encounter (especially single monster boss fights).In any case, I like your suggestion and I will try it out, thanks.
Actually "pinned" should require KAC +10.
(I was remembering the original number wrong, possibly because no player ever even attempted it in my games. Hopefully that will change now).
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I agree, that encountered should always include a number of enemies at least equal to the number of PCs, even boss fights, even if it means having mooks that are 2 or 3 levels below the PCs. They wont do much to the PCs, but they block the PCs from easy access to the boss and prevent this sort of easy gang up work.
My group tends to run encounters straight from the APs as written (when I'm not GMing) which means you often encounter groups of enemies that are not as big as the party. The other GMs often think raising the CR of the existing enemies is the best approach, but I strongly disagree and think adding more enemies of weaker CR is the best approach to make combat feel challenging without risking making enemies to powerful for the PCs to deal with (without resorting to having to all team together to buff one person and debuff the enemey, which is where PF2 feels like its gone).
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I'm still very skeptical in accepting that the possibility of somebody specialized and fine tuned to be good at something specific can "ruin" every fight out there to the point of breaking the game.
Saying that they're balanced because they don't do damage forgets that you have 4-6 PCs and usually 1-3 monsters in every fight. The PCs have the action economy to sacrifice a turn or two to make everyone more effective; heck, it's the entire mission statement of the Envoy.
A friend of mine has a level 3 vesk grappler soldier that has trivialized nearly every fight we've been in together. With Living Ladder, Ground Fighting, and ICM (Grapple), she can walk up to a foe, fall prone, grapple, and maybe pin the enemy, who is now prone, and a sitting duck for the other PCs... and the next round she, now standing, can full melee attack the downed and maybe pinned enemy with a net +2, if I recall. If there's a Get 'Em! out there, fuggetuhboutit.
I didn't even really plan for my armor storm soldier to be a bull rush maniac, but being able to move, bull rush against a net KAC-2 for unarmed/Hammer Fist damage (and Wound critical), then everyone in melee gets to smack them again when they fly backwards has been absurd ever since I hit 9th level.
I have more plans for potentially horrendously effective combat maneuver characters since COM came out, and none of them require giving an off the wall +4.
I have to agree, a free improved combat maneuver sounds acceptable, if a bit too good. A blanket +4 sounds way overpowered.
There was a good reddit thread on maneuvers a while back. Highlights of the options offered:
1. Just make it athletics, against the regular KAC+8. The DC is the hard DC for that creature. 20+CR*1.5. Upside is that it's tried more often by players since a skill check is usually higher than their attack bonus. Downside is that it doesn't really work with a lot of maneuver bonuses and makes some items/feats/etc not work or OP.
2. Drop the difficulty to Kac+4, BUT also halve all bonuses to maneuvers. So your maneuvers are easier to hit, and someone who specializes has a better shot. Upside is that it's very easy to explain the rule. Downside is that it requires trusting your players to remember the rule and manually override any online builder they're using.
3. Make it opposed. Potentially cool, imagining two combatants, locked in a grapple to see who comes out on top. Downside it's an extra roll and the GM has to prep their maneuver bonus even if the NPC doesn't really do them normally.
Im running Threefold Conspiracy using #2 right now, though I don't really have that many maneuvers being used so I can't tell you in aggregate it works out. Turns out that interrogations don't often involve bull rushing.
I'm hearing these three solutions, and wondering why the default rules aren't good enough.
A dedicated manueverist will get through in the basic rules. Fepending on class with more accuracy than their weapon, or slightly less.
Someone who isn't dedicated likely won't be able to maneuver a boss. That sounds intended.
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One of the things I am a huge proponent of for full BAB in Starfinder is taking Adaptive Fighting with three Improved Combat maneuvers. You have three of them on hand as an option so doing things like keeping the big bad from holding onto the macguffin or tripping a spy to keep them from escaping are options and if you find you like having one of those options you can easily pick it up on a more permanent basis.
Ok I see some people still thinking KAC +4 is OP. I have to say some of your extremely specific examples do demonstrate that it can be "easy" to pull them off even with the current rules. But these cases are outliers imo.
My goal here is make maneuvers MORE easy to do for everyone (this includes monsters), so if an extremely specialized soldier becomes a grappling machine... that's fine! That's what want to see. Enemies can defend themselves. That's not a problem from me.
Somebody said disarm ends the enemy, I strongly disagree: first you have to have a free hand or the weapon goes to the ground and they just pick it back up (doesn't even provoke); second, the enemy can simply whip out their other weapon and third, if they have a natural weapon or an integrated one then disarm doesn't even apply. So no problems there.
However, while testing two things came up which actually need to be addressed and are not outliers at all:
- Grab monster rule
- Escape task of acrobatics.
GRAB:
in the original version brings grapple to a KAC +4. In my version I think it should go to +0 for grappled and +10 for pinned (but without the possibility to add ICM grapple to the monster). This makes the monster a freaking grapple machine, as it should be: stay away or die!
ESCAPE:
I think in my version it should change to: acrobatics VS KAC +8 for grabbed, and KAC +10 for pinned. This makes escaping relatively more difficult than before (unless you are an expert grappler, then you would use a maneuver instead of acrobatics).
Regarding the option of instead giving everybody ICM for free and leaving the rule to KAC +8, yes it really sounds more moderate, no doubts... I just personally don't like it because it doesn't make sense to me that every PC should be good at manuevers.. just a flavour thing basically. If it turns out that my method is indeed negatively unbalanced I will certainly give that one a try.
I am also considering the following tweak:
keeping the model of KAC +4 (+10 for pinned); change to +2 for grab monster rule (+10 still for pinned even in the grab monster rule case); KAC +8/+10 for acrobatics' escape, BUT lowering the ICM bonus to +2, instead of +4 ...
Will test that
So, if I'm reading this right, your basic problem is that typically, a non-manuver based PC or NPC has no good reason to perform a maneuver over dishing out the damage. Death is the ultimate status effect and all that.
But... I don't think tweeking the numbers to make it easier is the right solution.
Boss NPCs will still prefer damage. Non-maneuver based PCs will still prefer to do their thing.
All buffing the numbers does is make maneuverist PCs better, and mook NPCs more annoying to the PCs. That first bit is undesirable, and the second bit can be done under the hood without tweaking the math by giving the NPCs a +2-4 to maneuvers.
If your goal is for maneuvers to be more effective, I think you would be better off tweaking the effects of the maneuvers instead of buffing the accuracy.
For instance, I don't remember if dirty trick is a starfinder thing, but expand the conditions and make them harder to remove. Maybe look into the old greater maneuver feats from pathfinder 1 and add those effects to the regular maneuvers.
Also, I really think you are underestimating how broken easy maneuvers become.
I am testing it, and so far I can assure you, they are not. You seem to be blowing the issue to oversized proportions. And you still ignore the fact that the change affects both sides, not just the PCs. I am making it so that both enemies and PCs will respect the efficacy and validity of maneuvers as options in combat, depending on circumstances. The way the original rules are, maneuvers are just a joke, to put it bluntly, and only usable by the MOST extremely specific builds. That is no fun for anyone.
With my modification they will be easier to pull off for everyone, and therefore become a valid fun option to add to combat and take advantage of scenarios that are the opposite of flat and featureless. This makes enemies with Grab actually dangerous up close, this makes disarming, tricking, tripping shoving creatures actually valid options and not unattractive bloat that takes up space in the core rule book, and interests only the most niche of play styles.