Bashing two heads together - how would you do it?

[Delgar]

Like I said,

I don't think you need new rules.

A 1st level monk has flurry of blows, he could unarmed strike two opponents with each attack and say, "I try to smash their heads together!"

If he succeeds in both attacks their heads come together in a sickening thud and they both take the monks unarmed damage.

Also, rather than coming up with a new mechanic to reward a creative player, reward the creative player with bonus experience for trying to enhance play, or give him a circumstance bonus on his attack roll (It's in the DMG).

Much easier, keeps the game moving, plus it rewards creative players. Let your players know that by describing their combat maneuvers they can get bonus XP, etc. It can do nothing but enhance game play from:

Player 1: I hit for 12 points of damage
Player 2: I'll just 5' step here and cast my spell Magic Missle. 11 points of damage.

To:

Player 1: I duck under his blade and slash out with my sword, striking for 12 points of damage.

Player 2: Carefully dodging the blade of my opponent I begin speaking the words of power and feel myself fill with magic. At the culmination of my casting I point at my opponent and 4 yellow points of light streak from my hand to my opponent doing 11 points of damage.

Delgar

 

[Macbrea]

The rules to this are pretty simple. I don't know why anyone is trying to make up special rules for it.



4th level barbarian (+4 bab, raged 20 str, +9 melee) and 2 halflings

xxxx
xxbx
xhhx
xxxx

Map of the situation.

1) Barbarian chooses to make an undarmed strike with right and left hand as per the two weapon fighting rules.
-4/-8 (light weapons)

2) This attack provokes an attack of opportunity from both halflings because she lacks improved unarmed strike.

3) She makes both attacks halfling 1 (+5 melee, 1d3+5 damage subdual) and halfling 2 (+1 melee, 1d3+2 damage subdual)

If she only hits one you describe the situation as you landed a blow upside the right halflings head but the other one ducked under your hand. If you hit both of them you stat that you landed a hand on each side of their head and slammed them together.

Its a plain and simple system. Description of a combat is part of the combat. No combat should be without it.

 

[Painfully]

I stand corrected (finally). Thanks to Macbrea and Pagan for clarifying the "rules." That's exactly what I was looking for. It was the end of a long work day when I posted and I just couldn't focus on the rules enough to keep it straight in my head. What can I say, except the new player caught me off guard. I don't even think of two-weapon fighting unless I'm thinking of a ranger. It's just so uncommon in my games.

I do feel that a half-orc barbarian standing invisibly behind two halflings grants a fair bonus/penalty total in the end [off-hand attack penalty, plus invisiblity bonus, vs a flat-footed touch AC on each halfling; and don't forget size modifiers to halfling AC, and the half-orc's grapple checks].

When talking to the new player I kept reminding her to "freely ignore all the numbers" which were being very technically and correctly explained by a more experienced player. Keeping the description of her character and background story visual, and letting her know that she could let her character do anything a storybook character could do was more important. She's been quite a refreshing change from the power gamer/rules lawyer type of players at my table. I hope they don't contaminate her with the concept of metagaming any time soon.

Thanks again to everyone for posting.

 

[Pielorinho]

When talking to the new player I kept reminding her to "freely ignore all the numbers" which were being very technically and correctly explained by a more experienced player. Keeping the description of her character and background story visual, and letting her know that she could let her character do anything a storybook character could do was more important. She's been quite a refreshing change from the power gamer/rules lawyer type of players at my table. I hope they don't contaminate her with the concept of metagaming any time soon.

IMPORTANT PARAGRAPH! You sound like you're handling it wonderfully. Personally, I think the two-handed weapon rules are a bad fit for this maneuver because they impose too great a penalty: instead of encouraging such cool maneuvers, use of the two-weapon rules would discourage them.

Daniel