Houserules to Introduce More Dynamic Combat?

[StreamOfTheSky]

The best first step for more dynamic combat is to implement the 3E tumble DCs. The single greatest thing Paizo did to encourage static stand-still slugfests is how they butcherered those rules.

 

[enrious]

Even with Combat Reflexes, you don't get to do more than one attack for moving through threatened space:

I'd forgotten that, thanks for the correction.

I'm seriously at the point of ditching AoOs entirely, but its really how you want combat to feel.

 

[Kaisoku]

Yeah, I disliked the idea of making tumble opposed in the way they did. I did a breakdown before (possibly on these boards), but it's current format doesn't make sense.
Tumbling is the act of defending yourself. Opposing it with a defense score makes no sense whatsoever.. at the very least it should have been against the combat maneuver bonus. But I'm much more of a fan of "normally you have an opening, it takes X amount of skill to close that opening". The attacker's AoO comes from you leaving yourself open, not from any skill he has (since a lvl 1 commoner can do it).
Static DCs made much more sense.

Regarding the removal of AoO, my proposed rule was not to remove a detriment completely, but to remove the "interrupt" factor of it. In my proposed rule, performing these actions around anything with Sneak Attack would be extremely detrimental.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Yeah, I disliked the idea of making tumble opposed in the way they did. I did a breakdown before (possibly on these boards), but it's current format doesn't make sense.

Yup, that was here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/pathfi...321-acrobatics-skill-questions-critiques.html

 

[Ahnehnois]

Any suggestions?

Have you looked at Trailblazer's Combat Reaction rules? They replace AoO's with a set of varied minor actions that are largely based on your BAB. I'd call them dynamic (and simple). It gives the players options when it's not their turn, and improves the noncasting classes as well.

I'd also look at various alternate health systems, including but not limited to vitality/wound. Combat is a lot more dynamic when your characters don't have little green health bars floating above their heads.

 

[Sylrae]

I forgot about TB's Combat Reactions, I'll have to reread those.

As for some of the other comments, when I say "Dynamic" what I want is to avoid the stand still slugfests that are so common, through making movement more viable (vital strike feats for free makes positioning a little less painful), making combat maneuvers be common things you see by people without special training, on a regular basis, adding new combat maneuvers to provide more options, etc.

I want the standstill slugfests to move from the norm, to being unusual.

It would be nice if I could make combat more like a Gore Verbinski(Pirates of the Varibbean) movie, possibly with some John Woo bits, and some Marcus Nispel(Conan, Pathfinder) and Neil Marshall (Centurion). To do that, you need to both allow all the cool tricks and stunts, and mechanically encourage them and make them worth the effort.

 

[Kaisoku]

Yup, that was here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/pathfi...321-acrobatics-skill-questions-critiques.html

I think that one was where I was arguing that it's still viable, even though it makes no sense.

I found the post I was thinking of back over at the Paizo boards, here.

Here's an excerpt from my post on the subject:

Strength modifier - How does strength help you "catch" the person tumbling off guard? I can see the correlation between the attack roll and strength, but that already applies when they actually act on the attack of opportunity. What about strength makes you react quick enough to interfere with someone's tumbling and get that AoO? I'm just not seeing it.
Size modifiers - This is similar to Strength. Being big helps with being pushed around, or forced to move or do something you didn't want, etc.
How it helps your reflexes to hit someone flipping past you, I'm not sure. Typically, size modifiers include a REDUCTION in Dexterity, so I'm not seeing this "big people are harder to tumble past" business. Most aspects of being hard to get by are already inherent in the space they take up and their threatened range.
Bonuses to AC - This is what clinches it for me. CMD is clearly talking about defending yourself against some kind of special attack, since bonuses or penalties to AC are modifiers to your CMD score.
If someone is moving past you and trying their darndest to avoid you in the first place, how does being able to avoid that person help you in stopping them from avoiding you?
It's antithesis to the very concept of tumbling past someone.

I think it was back in Pathfinder beta where I argued against changing this at all from 3e. At least BAB + Dex makes sense, if you insist on changing it to an opposed check at all.


I don't know why people are afraid of letting PCs getting into position in combat. Scratch that.. letting PCs that decide to focus on getting into positions and who's abilities depend on that from getting into position in combat...

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I don't know why people are afraid of letting PCs getting into position in combat. Scratch that.. letting PCs that decide to focus on getting into positions and who's abilities depend on that from getting into position in combat...

It's due to some really twisted old school mentality. Some preposterous scenario of some king in his room and a guard standing in the perfectly 5 ft wide corridor "protecting him." And how it was totally broken that a Rogue could make a check DC 5 points lower than the perform check DC to be taken notice of by extraplanar creatures (just to put DC 25 in perspective) to tumble right through said guard, and...kill the king in one hit, apparently? And somehow not get completely reamed when the guard's turn came up?

But shooting the king with a bow with a mere annoying +4 cover AC, or using spellcasting, or bull rushing the guard, or over running the guard... No one had a problem with any of those...

Sorry to go off on a tangent, but there really was a bunch of people on here making that very argument some years ago. I wish I could find the thread, it was chock full of WTFs?

Long story short: People feel the big stupid fighter not being able to control the space around him, even when he has no class features to do so and doesn't feel the need to expend feats or skill points towards that effect, is less of a man or something. His only purpose is to stand in the way as a big unmoving meat wall and anything (nonmagical...these folks never have an issue with magic doing whatever) that bypasses that is evil and must be nerfed/banned.

 

[Sylrae]

lmao.

Until this thread, that was a change that slipped by me. I've been playing PF since it came out and we just left it as a DC20 check to slip by. lol.

My next game is going to use a mashup of PF and Conan (Mainly conan, grabbing bits from pf, not the other way around). But the things I wanted to do to improve combat apply just as much in pf, or 3.5, so I figured I'd post on the board that gets more activity. lol.

 

[enrious]

Long story short: People feel the big stupid fighter not being able to control the space around him, even when he has no class features to do so and doesn't feel the need to expend feats or skill points towards that effect, is less of a man or something. His only purpose is to stand in the way as a big unmoving meat wall and anything (nonmagical...these folks never have an issue with magic doing whatever) that bypasses that is evil and must be nerfed/banned.

In old-school board games (<3 you Avalon Hill), a unit exerted a "Zone of Control" one hex around it, so that if an enemy unit moved into the ZoC, it had to stop.

So yeah, as you say it's very old-school. How a guard with a readied action (even if he got it as soon as the DM figured out that he needed to have a readied action - Schrodinger was DM, I believe) is any worse than the AoO rules is beyond me.