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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 4939361" data-attributes="member: 710">It's not a gimmie. Is it a gimmie now that I hit my opponent and deal damage? I think if Pathfinder would use action points, this might be fine with me. That is a good alternate approach that it's a lot easier to implement then other approaches. And also an easy house rule should I ever run Pathfinder. No need for hyperbole. Why do you hate Telekinesis? Well, I haven't run the numbers in detail, but it seems the difficulty is typically higher than hitting an opponent. It might also be problematic since it is based on the opponents attack bonus, which does scale very differently depending on level and type of the monster. (Dragons typically have an insane attack bonus, Undead less so.) And it also seems to add two ability modifiers instead of one, so it is bound to even be higher. At what level can you only succeed when you roll a 20 against most foes? Trying "again and again" will probably simply not happen when it is too difficult. The combat maneuvers in 3.x targeted touch AC and created an opposed roll. The "gimmie" problem in 3.x was typically related to two things: - The touch AC is ridiculously low. A good tactic was to use an iterative attack for that. - The opposed roll was problematic if you could ensure counter-attempts were impossible to succeed or just didn't happen. 3E Trip negates the counter-trip, IIRC, locked gauntlets made it nearly impossible to counter any disarm attempt. Of course, against many monsters, their bonuses to the roll were so high that it didn't matter anyway. Quadrupeds, Large or larger, high strength monsters with scores beyond the values of the PCs...In the end, I am distinguishing between two things: - How often can you attempt to disarm or trip.- How easy is it to do it if you attempt to do it.The simplest approach is just make it a high DC. What I am saying is that the simplest approach is not the one that leads to the more interesting game.The frequency of attempts does not need to depend on the difficulty.A Rogue can only sneak attack when he flanks someone or the opponent has lost his Dex bonus to attack. Sneak Attack is not modeled by simply saying "the DC is 5 points higher". (There is feat that works a little like that, though. It's called Power Attack. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> )Similar restrictions could apply to combat maneuvers.The actual difficulty of making a sneak attack is the same as hitting someone in normal melee. But you can only achieve it under certain circumstances. Now, flanking someone is relatively easy to accomplish. Combat maneuvers require something more difficult.But the advantage of sneak attack is that it introduces an interesting combat dynamic. The Rogue is not just standing around and hoping he hits against a higher DC then the Fighter. Instead, he tries to maneuver in a position where he can use his ability and avoids being in situations where he cannot.There are other ways to create "interesting" combat dynamics. If you required an action point to even try a maneuver, the players challenge would be to figure out the situation where he gets the "most bang for his buck". It might cause some maneuvering on the battlefield if he tries to lure his foes into a situation where bullrush-into-firepit is a possibility. We are not talking about the breakdown of a game system. Just a mechanic that I think could work a lot better then it seems to do. But we are talking about this mechanic, not the entire game system. No need to generalize it to the entire game system. Combat maneuvers might be more important than a single broken or useless feat, but they are not as big as, say, the spellcasting mechanics for the major classes. Though... Maybe they should. Combat maneuvers have always been the way for me to make playing a Fighter (and other melee classes) interesting. I hated going the boring Weapon Focus/Specialization route. It was probably always the most effective route, but learning Improved Trip, Disarm, Sunder, Bullrush and so on seemed to be a lot more exciting.</blockquote>

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