Combat Maneuvers

During combat, you can perform maneuvers that can hinder or even cripple your foe. Although these maneuvers have vastly different results, they all use a similar mechanic to determine success.

Performing a Combat Maneuver

• To perform any combat maneuver, you make an applicable Skill roll, and if it equals or exceeds your target's Maneuver Defense, your maneuver is successful, inflicting the listed effect of the maneuver and a small amount of damage.

• Some maneuvers, such as bull rush, have varying levels of success depending on how much your skill roll exceeds the target's Maneuver Defense. Rolling a natural 20 while attempting a maneuver adds a bonus (usually +5) to the result like other skill rolls, while rolling a natural 1 is always a failure. Rolling a natural 20 does not qualify a combat manuever for additional damage, the bonus to the result is what you get.

• Maneuvers are considered to be attacks. As a result, they do damage (just a little), and may benefit from damage buffs such as a Warlord's Formation dice, a Bard's song, a Paladin's Smite, and may be used to lay a Fighter's Challenge. They may not be used to add other types of precision damage, such as a Rogues Sneak Attack, Ranger's Quarry, etc.

• Maneuvers do not benefit from bonuses to hit, such as flanking or a Warlord's Battle Standard any more than any other skill does. Maneuvers do benefit from bonuses to skill rolls, such as a Bard's ability to grant re-rolls.

• When performing a maneuver, you must use an action appropriate to the maneuver you are attempting to perform.

• Maneuvers may only be attempted on your turn, never as part of an attack of opportunity or a bonus attack, such as an attack granted by Haste (Spell).

• Each maneuver may only be performed once per round. This means a character can't use two attacks to perform a pair of trips in the same round, but could use those two attacks to perform a trip and a sunder.

• If your target is immobilized, unconscious, or otherwise incapacitated, your maneuver automatically succeeds (treat as if you rolled a natural 20 on the skill roll). This allows you to drag or reposition unconscious creatures automatically, for example.

• If your target is suffering any condition which denies it an action of any type, you receive a +4 bonus on your skill roll to perform a maneuver against it.

• If the target creature has concealment (miss chance), cover, or otherwise inflicts penalties on attacks made against it, those same penalties are also applied to any Maneuver Offense rolls made to perform combat maneuvers against it.

Maneuver Offense

Maneuver offense is a generic term for a skill check to perform a combat maneuver. The combat maneuvers and their associated skill checks are:

Combat Maneuver	Skill	Action Required	Description
Bull Rush	Might	Attack Action	Shove an enemy away from you
Charge	Movement	Standard Action	Move directly up to a foe and attack them
Clamber	Movement	Attack Action	Crawl underneath, or climb on top of a foe
Cleave	Might	Attack Action	Attack a foe adjacent to a foe you just attacked
Demoralize	Intimidate	Attack Action	Shake the confidence of a foe
Dirty Trick	Sleight of Hand	Attack Action	Discombobulate your foe using an unconventional attack
Disarm	Sleight of Hand	Attack Action	Strip a weapon out of the hands of your foe
Dismantle Trap	Disable Device	Attack Action	Deal siege damage to a trap
Drag	Might	Attack Action	Pull yourself and a foe backwards
Feint	Bluff	Attack Action	Make your foe drop their guard momentarily
Grapple	Might	Standard Action	Tackle your foe and wrestle them into submission
Overrun	Movement	Standard Action	Run through an enemy's space and knock them prone
Reposition	Sleight of Hand	Attack Action	Shove an enemy into the space of your choosing
Shield Bash	Might	Attack Action	Rattle an opponent by hitting them with your shield
Steal	Sleight of Hand	Attack Action	Why wait until they're dead to loot them?
Subdue	Sleight of Hand	Attack Action	Incapacitate your foe instead of killing them
Sunder	Might	Attack Action	Destroy your foe's weapon or shield
Trip	Sleight of Hand	Attack Action	Sweep the leg, and lay them out flat
Tumble	Acrobatics	Move Action at half speed	Get yourself into a bad situation, hopefully unscathed
Withdraw	Movement	Standard Action	Get yourself out of a bad situation, hopefully unscathed

Combat maneuvers are performed by making a skill check with the appropriate skill, versus a DC of the target creature's Maneuver Defense. If the check equals or exceeds this target DC, the maneuver is successful. Refer to the individual maneuvers to resolve the outcome of this success.

Maneuver Defense

Each character and creature has a Maneuver Defense value that represents its ability to resist combat maneuvers such as Trip, Overrun and Bull Rush, among many other uses. Maneuver Defense can be thought of as a general statistic used to represent how well a character or creature can handle rough physical treatment. It is related to but different than Armor Class, and is derived in a different way. Maneuver Defense is based on a character's overall experience with the school of hard knocks; the physical size, power, and deftness of the character, combined with their ability to dodge or deflect events. A player character's exact Maneuver Defense is determined using the following formula:

10 + ½ Character Level (round down, min 0) + Size Modifier + STR modifier + DEX modifier + Dodge AC + Natural Armor Bonus + Shield AC + Shield Enhancement Bonus + Miscellaneous + Penalties

• Size Modifier: Fine -4, Diminutive -3, Tiny -2, Small -1, Medium +0, Large +1, Huge +2, Gargantuan +3, Colossal +4, Titanic +5.

• Dodge AC: This typically comes from feats, such as the Dodge feat, but can also come from class features, racial traits, etc. Unlike most bonus types, dodge bonuses stack (are added together) with other dodge bonuses.

• Natural Armor Bonus: This nearly always comes from a magic item, such as an Amulet of Natural Armor, but it can sometimes be gained through other means, such as class features or racial traits. Natural armor bonuses do not stack; only the highest available bonus is used.

• Shield AC: This is the bonus to AC provided by the shield itself, typically ranging from +1 (a buckler) to +4 (a tower shield).

• Shield Enhancement Bonus: This is a magic bonus applied to the shield, in the form of plusses. For example, a +3 shield is "plus three" because it has a +3 shield enhancement bonus, which adds to the AC granted by the shield and also contributes to the maneuver defense of the wearer, while the shield is being actively wielded or worn.

• Miscellaneous Modifiers: Some feats and abilities grant a bonus to your Maneuver Defense when resisting specific things.

• Penalties: Any penalties to a creature's AC also apply to its Maneuver Defense for physical attacks. For example, a flat-footed creature suffers the same -4 penalty to its Maneuver Defense as it does against its AC.

Basic Maneuver Damage

• In addition to the special effects of the chosen maneuver, you may also deal damage to the creature equal to the base weapon damage of the weapon you are wielding, not including any adders (such as enhancement bonuses, STR modifiers, feats, spell effects, precision damage, bonus damage, etc). Note that base weapon damage increases at 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th levels, which also improves the damage done by maneuvers. If you want to do more damage with a combat maneuver, you can take feats to improve your combat maneuvers, or use weapons which are good at certain combat maneuvers.

• If you have natural or class-based non-weapon attacks, you may roll just the dice you would normally roll for an attack you are allowed to make during an attack of opportunity, not including any adders (such as enhancement bonuses, STR modifiers, feats, spell effects, precision damage, bonus damage, etc).

Example: a 3rd level fighter would roll just the dice from his +1 longsword (1d8), while a 3rd level Monk would roll just the dice of his Echoing Strike attack (2d8), and a 3rd level Brawler would roll just the dice of his Cross attack (also 2d8).

• Maneuvers gain bonus effect on a roll of a natural 20, but do not do any extra damage, and thus do not need to roll a confirmation roll.