D&D 5E Interpreting Maneuvers (Battle Master)

[Mercule]

My question can pretty much be boiled down to: Are maneuvers (as applicable) bonus damage with a special effect or special effects with bonus damage?

I'll use Pushing Attack as an example. What the Fighter really wants is more damage. She really doesn't care about changing the location of her foe because she'll just have to move, next turn. Is it acceptable to say, "I push it 0 feet" and just apply the extra damage? The rules are worded in a way that implies the damage is applied even if the critter is too big to be pushed gives credit to the idea that the effect isn't required.

There are enough "outs" for various maneuvers ("Maneuvering strike? Nah, I'm fine where I'm at.") that I've been ruling that those maneuvers that have damage are bonus damage that happens to have a special effect. Since the fighter does, in fact, have maneuvering strike that the wizard can just routinely pass on, it plays fine. It just gnaws at me enough I thought I'd solicit opinions.

 

[Rod Staffwand]

I'd just let them add the extra damage sans effect. I would also let them do the effect without the extra damage if they so wanted. Why? I don't see any benefit in being rigid about this stuff. D&D 5E is much more about "ruling, not rules" so parsing the books as if they are legal documents doesn't get you anywhere you need to go. You end up with stupid stuff like:

Battlemaster: I do extra damage, but I don't want to push the orc back.
DM: No, the rules say you HAVE to push them up to 15 feet away.
Battlemaster: Fine. I push them 1/32 of an inch backwards...

 

[Jaelommiss]

Is an Open Hand monk's flurry of blows bonus damage with an effect, or an effect with bonus damage? What about a paladin's smite spells?

It'll entirely depend on the situation. When you need to put that dragon down NOW to stop it unleashing another breath weapon on the party, the damage is what matters. When you need to stop the max HP assassin getting away with the magic staff of quest completion, being able to knock him to the ground is far more important than an extra 1d8 damage.

I've started playing a spell-less ranger and I've already used maneuvers for both damage and effects in the first session. During an orc ambush at night I used a maneuver (I don't remember which one) for the extra damage to kill their leader. Later on we were walking carefully along a ledge over a deep pit. Darkmantles attacked us and surrounded us in magical darkness. I used a trip attack there to get rid of the thing so we could see again. The damage was unimportant compared to the effect of knocking it prone so it would fall into the pit away from us. (Incidentally, I missed. It then grabbed my head and pulled me into the pit and unconsciousness.)

 

[iserith]

My question can pretty much be boiled down to: Are maneuvers (as applicable) bonus damage with a special effect or special effects with bonus damage?

I'll use Pushing Attack as an example. What the Fighter really wants is more damage. She really doesn't care about changing the location of her foe because she'll just have to move, next turn. Is it acceptable to say, "I push it 0 feet" and just apply the extra damage? The rules are worded in a way that implies the damage is applied even if the critter is too big to be pushed gives credit to the idea that the effect isn't required.

There are enough "outs" for various maneuvers ("Maneuvering strike? Nah, I'm fine where I'm at.") that I've been ruling that those maneuvers that have damage are bonus damage that happens to have a special effect. Since the fighter does, in fact, have maneuvering strike that the wizard can just routinely pass on, it plays fine. It just gnaws at me enough I thought I'd solicit opinions.

Interesting post. The way I look at it is that fiction comes first (players describe what they want to do). Players aren't playing the Maneuvering Strike card and doing as much of that card as they like. Rather, they are stating what it is they want to do in the fiction and the DM is deciding what rules apply to that (if any), given their goal, approach, and intent.

In other words, the battle master's player might say "After getting past the knight's plate armor, I twist the blade to inflict more pain and call for the wizard to fall back to a more advantageous position." The DM then decides to apply the Maneuvering Strike mechanic to resolve the action (perhaps at the urging of the player) and narrates the results. "The knight cries out in pain as your sword tears him up, creating an opening for the wizard to safely fall back. You do extra damage - roll one superiority die - and Force Majeure moves up to half his speed as a reaction, provoking no opportunity attacks in the doing." If the player wasn't choosing to do extra damage and have the wizard fall back or the wizard wasn't interested in falling back, then this mechanic might not apply.

For example, let's say the battle master's player says this instead: "After getting past the knight's plate armor, I twist the blade to inflict more pain." Assuming the players intent in "inflicting more pain" meant "doing additional damage," how would you adjudicate it? Does the action succeed, fail, or are the rules invoked to resolve uncertainty? If the latter, which? My ruling might be that he or she can have some extra damage at the cost of a superiority die. The player doesn't need to try and play the Maneuvering Strike card in some circuitous effort to get bonus damage.

Now, what if said player wasn't playing a battle master fighter and was instead playing a champion fighter or a bard and just wanted to do extra damage on his or her attack by offering the same fiction? Same deal: I have to decide whether that succeeds, fails, or is uncertain. In this case, I might rule that, sure, you can do extra damage, but your weapon will be stuck in the knight's armor, effectively disarming you - wanna? If that's not a trade the player is willing to make, then the character twists the blade, the knight grimaces in pain, but suffers no extra damage.

This is how it would play out at my tables. Other DMs at other tables may look at it and rule differently.

 

[Tony Vargas]

You have to expect Maneuvers to get used just for the damage at times. Damage is pretty much always worth something, more situational riders, not so much. The player can always pick the Maneuver with a non-applicable rider or rider that can be used in a trivial way.

If you like, you could introduce a Maneuver that /just/ did the extra damage die, but added a little static damage, as well.

 

[Iosue]

"The knight cries out in pain as your sword tears him up, creating an opening for the wizard to safely fall back. You do extra damage - roll one superiority die - and Force Majeure moves up to half his speed as a reaction, provoking no opportunity attacks in the doing."

I believe that's Force Majere, Raistlin's lesser known cousin.

 

[miniaturehoarder]

If you like, you could introduce a Maneuver that /just/ did the extra damage die, but added a little static damage, as well.

Would not recommend that as it would drive folks to take that for optimising damage rather than taking maneuvers that could assist the other players.

 

[clearstream]

My question can pretty much be boiled down to: Are maneuvers (as applicable) bonus damage with a special effect or special effects with bonus damage?

I'll use Pushing Attack as an example. What the Fighter really wants is more damage. She really doesn't care about changing the location of her foe because she'll just have to move, next turn. Is it acceptable to say, "I push it 0 feet" and just apply the extra damage? The rules are worded in a way that implies the damage is applied even if the critter is too big to be pushed gives credit to the idea that the effect isn't required.

There are enough "outs" for various maneuvers ("Maneuvering strike? Nah, I'm fine where I'm at.") that I've been ruling that those maneuvers that have damage are bonus damage that happens to have a special effect. Since the fighter does, in fact, have maneuvering strike that the wizard can just routinely pass on, it plays fine. It just gnaws at me enough I thought I'd solicit opinions.

IMO broadly all these cases are ones of damage with an effect riding on them, that wherever scalable states it clearly. For instance, some use the language "up to" and that by tradition includes zero. So if you can "push up to 15'" you can push 0'. Othertimes the language states an effect that isn't scalable. If the text did say "push 15'" instead of "up to 15'" then you must push 15' and cannot choose 0' unless the wording "may" was also used - which would make it binary. As in "you may push 15'" means you can go with 15' or you can disapply the effect. Note that disapplication is different from choosing 0': the target isn't pushed 0' if you choose not to push, they're not pushed at all. That nuance can matter occasionally. Note of course the combined case "you may push up to 15'" meaning you can push any number from 0' to 15' inclusive and you can not push at all if you don't want to.

FWIW, you can't choose not to do the damage unless the wording states that in a similar way e.g. "you may do d6 damage" or whatever. My PHB is at home but IIRC the manoeuvers don't make it optional. That doesn't mean dealing damage is required to trigger the effect (unless stated). If something did have resistance against manoeuvers or something that could reduce damage to 0 or prevent it at all, that thing shouldn't be assumed to stop the effect unless expressly stated.

Caveat - it's your game: do what you want! I'm just commenting on what I believe the rules mean. But then, the reason we have rules is to create limits that make the game interesting because players have to figure out ways to work within them. Alleviating the limits diminishes interest, typically. If in your game the limits don't seem to make things more interesting then that can be a motive for tweaking the rules. I tend to think one should do some consciously with an ends in mind. Often it is better to introduce such tweaks via a medium that can be ended if need be, like a potion effect, spell or item. That's because often the playtest resources of the designers are greater than what we have around our own tables and so their conclusions can be the right ones and we just don't have all the cases in front of us to understand the reasons that is so. Contemporary game designers are always thinking about the experience of play and they have more opportunity to test permutations than one group is likely to ever enjoy.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Would not recommend that as it would drive folks to take that for optimising damage rather than taking maneuvers that could assist the other players.

Only if the additional non-damage effects of the existing maneuvers were worthless rather than merely situational.

 

[pemerton]

The way I look at it is that fiction comes first (players describe what they want to do). Players aren't playing the Maneuvering Strike card and doing as much of that card as they like. Rather, they are stating what it is they want to do in the fiction and the DM is deciding what rules apply to that (if any), given their goal, approach, and intent.

In other words, the battle master's player might say "After getting past the knight's plate armor, I twist the blade to inflict more pain and call for the wizard to fall back to a more advantageous position." The DM then decides to apply the Maneuvering Strike mechanic to resolve the action (perhaps at the urging of the player) and narrates the results.

Do you apply the same approach to adjudicating spells? Or is using a spell part of the fiction, and so something under the control of the player rather than the GM?

If the answer to the latter question is Yes, could a player decide that the various manoeuvres are particular techniques that his/her PC learned at fighting school, and hence declare their use as part of the fiction also?