Combat techniques are these any good?

[complains]

I found these combat techniques in the Gitp forums and at first glance I thought they were great boost for mundane combat, but I'm lazier than a good deal of people here and will let my betters see if it is any good.

[RobG]

They're very good. A lot of work here. Many options. Quite useful. Good eye for balance but not perfect (who is?)..

I think it would work best as an entirely new 'book' with the typical 3 classes, even though this is not his intent. This is a lot to stack on top of current classes even if some of them could use a bit more complexity.

[virgil]

Heart was in the right place. Very touch-and-go in terms of quality. In order:

Adapt: Way too weak, and the designer considers them to be the most powerful. Giving up a round's worth of actions, and the most important round at that, to switch out between one and three feats. For something as fast-paced and brutal as 3E combat, you better get at least two rounds worth of actions in that second round if you spend it waiting. Having a better feat or two for the situation is most certainly not that.

Assess the Battlefield: Same problem as Adapt. Not even bards lose a round of actions, and they get bigger bonuses for a longer period of time; and bards are hardly paragons of might.

Blitz: It specifically calls out Spring Attack, where the least version is appreciably worse. You'll be level 13 before you get a mobile Whirlwind Attack (or a limited version of Tome's Whirlwind). Some say this is powerful, and those people are wrong. Fireball isn't considered the virtue of power, and it will do more damage than a single melee attack from a fighter, which is what this technique does essentially (while also likely provoking AoOs). It's weaker than a 3rd level spell, at level 13...

Cripple: This one is actually good and he should feel good.

Dirty Fighting: I'm not fond of the 'end of encounter' language, as that's not commonly used in 3E. Power-wise, it's acceptable. The extra rolling on Fort saves with each attack (and this technique encourages lots of attacks) will make things cumbersome.

Dodge: It does prevent full-attacks and eventual defense against AoEs, so an alright one here.

Engage: It starts by creating teleporting melee attacks, then gives you whirlwind attack that's usable with a ranged weapon in melee, and then makes it dangerous for two or more creatures to be hostile next to you. Acceptable.

Guerilla Warfare: A rather cool variant of HiPS, though it's not really all that impressive once you get to mid-level when continual invisibility is available in some form.

Inspire Fear: The 24hr immunity makes this hugely mediocre at the best of times.

Outmaneuver: While the frailty of your mount is a big concern, this is creating temporary walls as a move action that at least restrict melee brutes.

Parry: Fairly decent, forcing opposed attack rolls at the expense of an AoO to negate melee. I do think that the penalties should be -2 rather than -5 as he thought.

Penetrating Shot: Starts out a restricted Rapid Shot, then it becomes a pitiful lightning bolt[/b] and gradually evolves into a really weak one.

Pursue: An interesting method of dancing around the battlefield; someone takes a 5' step away, and you completely circle them to the other side (so long as you end your move threatening them). You will be all over the place, and as to whether this is actually any help, I couldn't tell you. The highest level of this is actually good.

Rally: A really crappy bardic song that's more restrictive to use, though I appreciate the thought in making it a bullcrap bonus. Then it explodes in usefulness at level 13, making it reasonable.

Recuperate: Makes it so you don't have to spend quite so much on getting new cure wands, and indirectly increases maximum hit points by Level*4.

Shrug it Off: Rather impressive. No checks, no tests, just pure & automatic non-HP healing where you can spend the action before your turn; and even gives an eventual extra action in the event the opponent just spams the condition.

Sic: Give your actions to beasts/magical beasts, at a favorable rate. Really handy with allied monsters who focused on one single attack, especially at level 13, where you turn your one standard action into four to distribute (including yourself)

Spell Disruption: A more detailed, and restricted, way of saying that spellcasters can't cast defensively when threatened by you. Upgrades to an automatic counterspell that can be queued up by hitting them before they ever think of casting a spell.

Take Aim: Only really useful for ambushes, and do we really want to encourage ambushes tactics in D&D?

Team Up: Aid Another is not hard, so getting a +5 to making it is eminently ho-hum. At the cost of AoOs, you and your buddy pool all of your HP. And you get to cash in the occasional AoO for extra damage.

I do wonder how many of these things are worth the effort and would actually engage a player in 3E.

[Whipstitch]

Heart was in the right place. Very touch-and-go in terms of quality. In order:

Adapt: Way too weak, and the designer considers them to be the most powerful.

Yeah, that sank his credibility with me almost immediately. I had planned on reading and commenting upon the whole thing but upon reading the Adapt disclaimer I decided I likely had something better to do with the rest of my lunch break.

[Emerald]

Heart was in the right place. Very touch-and-go in terms of quality. In order:

Adapt: Way too weak, and the designer considers them to be the most powerful.

Yeah, that sank his credibility with me almost immediately. I had planned on reading and commenting upon the whole thing but upon reading the Adapt disclaimer I decided I likely had something better to do with the rest of my lunch break.

I don't know if RoC really considers them to be the most powerful or was just erring on the side of caution with his disclaimer, since from what I've seen of their homebrew boards GitPers tend to be wary of "floating feats" or feat-swapping/-gaining on the fly. When the Tome fighter is brought up, people complain about Foil Action first, Problem Solver second, and other stuff after that, and any fighter fixes that let you swap feats out any more often than once per day in the morning or 1 feat between fights are usually complained about.

[complains]

Thanks for the analysis guys holidays kept me too busy to even think of dnd.

Do y'all think the idea of combat techniques added on to everything is good besides most of the options are lacking?

[Username17]

Thanks for the analysis guys holidays kept me too busy to even think of dnd.

Do y'all think the idea of combat techniques added on to everything is good besides most of the options are lacking?

On the whole: no.

The system presented rewards people for doing the same thing over and over again, and punishes you for not continuing to invest the resources you gain for going up in level into the same thing you already do. The fact that warriors in 3e get more and more focused as they gain levels until they are doing basically the same attack routine every round because they piled all their feats and class features together to allow them to do an uber-charge-trip-bullrush thingy that does an asstonne of damage and hurls enemies onto the ground and then puts the boots in for even more damage and now they can't do any other thing and still do a level appropriate action is the worst part about warriors in 3e. Hell, you can make a good case it's the worst thing about 3e.

The idea of having special combat maneuvers where a character gets one that becomes increasingly better than anything else they can do as they go up in level is atrocious. It's basically hard coding that every single character must be as focused and boring as the triptastic chain fighter because every single character gets that degree of maneuver focus inflicted on them whether they like it or not.

If these special maneuvers were good enough, they would be horrible for the game. Characters should have at least four things they do on a regular basis, and this concept of limited super maneuvers runs completely contrary to that.

-Username17

[Ice9]

Ah, at first I thought these were universally available options, ala trip, grapple, or total defense. Which might be a good way to go, to avoid the excessive specialization problem.

Pathfinder has that issue - they introduced a whole bunch of new combat manuevers, some of which even look interesting, but for every single one you have to take a feat not to suck, and a second feat to actually be worth using.
IMO, I'd rather see something like this:

Forceful Maneuvers: You don't provoke for any forceful maneuver, and your check is Str based.
Agile Maneuvers: You don't provoke for any agile maneuver, and your check is Dex based.
Tricky Maneuvers: You don't provoke for any tricky maneuver, and your check is Int or Cha based.
Personal Style: Your check is based on whatever stat you want, you don't face any limits from size, and maybe you get a bonus.
Unexpected Maneuver: When using a maneuver the target hasn't seen you use (or doesn't see), you get the improved version.
Focused Maneuver: If you take a swift action to focus, you get the improved version of the next maneuver you use.
Master of Maneuvering: (High level) You don't provoke from any maneuver and you always get the improved version.