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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Jacobs" data-source="post: 4935209" data-attributes="member: 23937">The basic idea is that the "vanilla" attack, the one that should be the baseline move in combat, is to simply swing your weapon and hit a foe and do hit point damage. That should always be the standard, but it shouldn't be something that is an inferior choice. By making the combat maneuvers a bit tougher to pull off, we accomplish (I hope!) the following:1) We don't ghettoize standard attacks. They're the things you'll be making most often, and since the BULK of combat is built around this type of action that makes sense. You can go through a combat making standard attacks and not feel like you're playing the game wrong and making sub-optimal choices.2) We reward characters who specialize in combat maneuvers. If they take the right combinations of feats and skills and classes and all that in order to make combat maneuvers easy for them as opposed to someone who has no special training in them, it feels like they EARNED that skill.3) We make fights against less powerful foes feel more exciting. If the typical character is making standard attacks against a scary foe because he doesn't want to risk failing on a harder maneuver, but then when he faces less powerful foes he can do maneuvers a lot easier, that really helps make a character feel like he's growing in power, I think, because a character KNOWS it's hard to do a maneuver but if it's easier to do against all the mooks, he feels tough.4) Combat maneuvers are special. They're the stuff of legends. If you try to trip a dragon and get lucky and do it, that's a story you'll remember for a long time. If maneuvers were simple and dominated every combat, they'd get dull and rote and lose a lot of their appeal. By making them tougher, and therefore (I hope!) not as common sights in combats but instead sights you see specialists perform or desperate people perform, that makes them feel more exciting and climactic.</blockquote>

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