Topic: Combat Companion: using manuevers you don't know

[Arioch]

Would you allow a character attempt a maneuver not included in his fighting style, at an increased difficulty? I'm thinking mostly of the Disarm and Feint manuevers, since it seems strange to me saying to a player that his character cannot try to trick his foe because his style doesn't allow it...
As an HR I'd let a character attempt a Disarm maneuver at Extremely Hard difficulty (it's a Hard maneuver if it's included in your style) and Feint at Sheer Folly (normally it's Very Hard)... or maybe it's better keeping the difficulty of the manuever at its basic difficulty, but making easier for the opponent to pass his RR?
What do you think?

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

The last Express Additions, IIRC, had a section on learning moves outside styles.

The problem with attempting maneuvers that have not been learned by adjusting difficulty mods is that not every

As for allowing a player to attempt a maneuver that they have not learned, I would do several things.

• First, I would slap a -50 modifier on the character's OB for an attempt to use an unknown maneuver.
• Second, if the maneuver is one that is known for a specific style, but not for the style that the character is attempting to use it with, then I would make the OB modifier be a -30.
• Finally, any and all bonuses from the style should be halved (while the negative mods remain the same).
  
  For example, if a Killing Strike gets -1 to both OB and DB for each +1 added to the crit roll normally. When you attempt to use it without knowing it, you would get -1 to both OB and DB for each +0.5 to the crit roll when you try to us it without having learned it for a given style.

The last point would still apply regardless of which OB mod is applied. And the OB mods would be applied BEFORE any specific maneuver modifiers are applied.

Examples:
Joe has an OB of 100 with a style. He wants to try a Killing Strike. He does not know any styles with that maneuver. So, his adjusted OB for the Killing Strike is 50 (100 - 50 = 50), and then for each point subtracted from OB and DB, he gets to increase his crit roll by 0.5.

Jeff knows a Mace combat style that includes Killing Strike. He is, unfortunately without a mace and only has a short sword. The style he knows for the short sword does NOT include Killing Strike, but Jeff wants to use it anyways. Therefore, Jeff's OB of 90 is reduced to 60 (90 - 30 = 60) when he is attempting a Killing Strike with using the Short Sword, and then for each point subtracted from OB and DB, he gets to increase his crit roll by 0.5.

[vroomfogle]

I've personally made some maneuvers, such as Disarm, Subdual, few others, available to everyone much like parry, figuring that the part of learning to fight with a weapon is learning these things.   I find it has solved a lot of problems.

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

I've personally made some maneuvers, such as Disarm, Subdual, few others, available to everyone much like parry, figuring that the part of learning to fight with a weapon is learning these things.   I find it has solved a lot of problems.

Yup, that is another way to do it -- at least for some maneuvers.

And it sparks another idea -- making certain maneuvers freely available to only certain professions. This then makes each profession a little bit more unique (just as spell users having different base lists makes them unique...)

[Arioch]

Cool ideas, thanks both of you! 

[markc]

 Another option I thought of after reading the comments above would be some sort of chart that had a mod for the "common" maneuvers that gave a penalty based on the number of ranks they had in the combat style. So for example parry might be -50 for ranks 1 to 5, -30 for ranks 6-10 and -15 for 10+ ranks. I do not think I would lower the penalty lower than -10 and I might even increase the penalty so as to have more collumns in the chart so I could spree it out to 20 ranks+.
 Also I think I would have a list of maneuvers that you could not attempt unless it was in your style. That way you do not get PC's that take an easy style to get a big bonus and attempted a skill that you have in a style that costs a lot of DP.
 That is also the problem with allowing some maneuvers that can be done by anybody. Some one with a cheep style will benifit more than someone with a more expensive style. In this case I think I would recomend that all weapon styles get some abilities for free [if you want] and the same go's for are hand to hand styles. Or you could even reduce the style cost for the maneuvers or decrease the DP cost you charge to learn the maneuver if it is not in a style.
 
 IMO there are many ways to go.

MDC

[Dark Schneider]

I've personally made some maneuvers, such as Disarm, Subdual, few others, available to everyone much like parry, figuring that the part of learning to fight with a weapon is learning these things.   I find it has solved a lot of problems.

Those maneuvers only cost 1 style point, so anyone that want to use them must include it in the style. IMO are cheap enough so if you don't include it you should not use them normally.

I see those maneuvers as 'must have', but not for that should be free.

[TomOBedlam]

And it sparks another idea -- making certain maneuvers freely available to only certain professions. This then makes each profession a little bit more unique (just as spell users having different base lists makes them unique...)

An addition to that thought - Create weapon styles for professions that would not afford them according to normal rules. The costs as written are balanced based on a (more or less) free pick-and-choose. But it limits purchase of styles to professions that are "martial" (low cost on weapon skills). Picking a less harmful combination could allow even less combat oriented professions to have a combat style.

In the strongly religious AD&D 4th thread people are saying that adding maneuvers into the rule set makes it impossible to improvise said maneuvers (and WoW is to blame, and everything was better with version 1.0). This thread shows that Combat Companion introduces the same problem. My take would be to divide the manuevers into "Needs to be trained" and "Can be attempted untrained, but with a minus".

The "Needs to be trained" would include those that add to the crit rolls while removing from OB. The reasoning is that I cant see how a thing like that could be improvised.

"Can be attempted with a minus" includes things like "Disarm" and "Feint". The improvised version would be something like "I try to hit him over the knuckles and then hit his sword really hard" or "I make a fake attack for his legs and then hit him in the face". You can do it, but you probably to it better if you are trained in doing it. Not sure what minus I would give yet.

[Arioch]

My take would be to divide the manuevers into "Needs to be trained" and "Can be attempted untrained, but with a minus".

I agree, that's what I was going to do: making some maneuver "free" (but if you include them in your style then you'll get better results with them, because of specialization) but keeping most of the other linked to styles.

[vroomfogle]

There is a fundamental problem with allowing some to use maneuvers while others have to pay for them if you use a flat penalty.  In other words, if you allow everyone to Disarm, but at -50, while people who pay for the Disarm maneuver have no penalty, then there is a subtle problem because of the way maneuvers work.

Maneuvers cost style points which add to the DP cost of the style, thus we can consider every maneuver costs a certain amount of DPs (ignoring that you can actually get a maneuver for free if you currently have an even # of style points).   So, every rank you take you are actually paying some fraction of those DP's toward increasing your ability in this maneuver.    However if you don't have the maneuver then you are simply at a -50 so what you are actually paying for is a +50...do you see the problem yet?  You are forced to pay every rank for a benefit that is realized once you initially take the maneuver (the +50).    This was my fundamental problem with Martial Arts Companion where it was even more pronounced....being forced to continually pay for abilities after you have already gotten the full impact of them.

Of course there's a simple solution if you want to go this route, use a % of your OB rather then a flat minus.  That way your ability in the skill increases as you take ranks.

I personally don't use maneuvers as is anyway but rather treat them as talents where you take them once, or perhaps a couple times.   This way you don't have the problem of having styles increase in DPs.

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

I personally don't use maneuvers as is anyway but rather treat them as talents where you take them once, or perhaps a couple times.   This way you don't have the problem of having styles increase in DPs.

That sounds a bit like the option(s) in the latest issue of EA regarding the gaining of Specific Maneuvers without them being part of a style.

[vroomfogle]

I personally don't use maneuvers as is anyway but rather treat them as talents where you take them once, or perhaps a couple times.   This way you don't have the problem of having styles increase in DPs.

That sounds a bit like the option(s) in the latest issue of EA regarding the gaining of Specific Maneuvers without them being part of a style.

That sounds a bit like the style talents that I've been touting here for the last 2 years and that were on my website.

If I recall I also tried to convince you that was the way to go after your first draft of styles.

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

Yeah, you did try to convince me to do style talents. And now that you mention it, it does sound somewhat like your style talents idea, but personally, I don't consider specific maneuvers to be the same as style talents (i.e. talents being special abilities, not specific training choices/options).

[Dark Schneider]

How about if 'penalty' is simply use half OB?. Is exactly as if you create a style for a single weapon, you can use half OB for other similar weapons.

So, more DPs you pay (more ranks), more bonus difference you have for those maneuvers.

IMO is a bit excesive using like talent, so you have OR not have it, it is radical. In any case if you know combat you know a bit how to do those maneuvers in any manner, but are not skilled.

Let's think about an archer, you always can try to shoot longer, but if you are not skilled you do it worse.

As conclusion I think, as I said, that be skilled in something should not be free, as we can see it is not expensive (only 1 style point anyone), but you should be able to use them in a 'not skilled' form, if you are not skilled is not the same that you can't try it (are your muscles blocked for that movement? i.e. striking to your back).

[Arioch]

Maneuvers cost style points which add to the DP cost of the style, thus we can consider every maneuver costs a certain amount of DPs (ignoring that you can actually get a maneuver for free if you currently have an even # of style points).   So, every rank you take you are actually paying some fraction of those DP's toward increasing your ability in this maneuver.    However if you don't have the maneuver then you are simply at a -50 so what you are actually paying for is a +50...do you see the problem yet?  You are forced to pay every rank for a benefit that is realized once you initially take the maneuver (the +50).    This was my fundamental problem with Martial Arts Companion where it was even more pronounced....being forced to continually pay for abilities after you have already gotten the full impact of them.

But usually CC manuevers improve as you buy new ranks, so what if instead of giving a penalty to OB/maneuver roll, we let unskilled characters use some maneuver, but limiting the number of ranks they can use?
For example: to resist a disarm maneuver, a character must pass a St RR, using attacker's number of ranks in the style as the level of the attack. If a character make a disarm attempt without actually knowing the Disarm maneuver he would instead use one third or even less of his ranks as the level of the attack.

[vroomfogle]

That method would work too Arioch, because it scales with you existing skill.     I'm not an expert but I think you'd find that most martial arts teach how to disarm someone with a weapon.    I just consider it a integrated part of any style, just like parry.

The talents I use tend to be more specialized, such as a critical bonus - e.g. +1 to criticals using this style, rather then having them be options style itself because in the case of crit mods the bonus is so small it makes sense to buy them in those discrete units (e.g. +1, +2, +3 max).  Same with Fumble reduction and initiative bonuses.