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Utility Maneuvers

 

A post on sub-classes has alerted me to the utility maneuvers and other out-of-combat type activities that characters can perform. Utility Spells and Utility Prayers would they belong here? No? Martial Heroes and Non-martial heroes can perform these utilities, or only martial heroes. We should bring back more martial classes to (as well).

 

Non-Combat Maneuvers for Consideration

Controlled Fall – Reduce Fall Damage

Great Fortitude – Strength or Constitution Saving Throw

Iron Will – Wisdom or Charisma Saving Throw

Lightning Reflexes – Dexterity Saving Throw

Mighty Exertion – Strength Check

Skill Mastery – Trained Skill Check

Step of the Wind – Specialized Movement

Vault – Jumping

 

Special Cases

Tumbling Dodge to run along a castle wall you are invading that has arrows coming down at you. Protect when used to sacrifice one’s self in situations where combat won’t immediate follow: a siege attack where a giant stone (or tinder ball on fire) that is lobbed at the party members, or some sneak attack that you have the Danger Sense for. Again just a reminder, this doesn’t then lead in to combat, this is outside of combat fluke, and maybe a trap is sprung, unless you consider 1 round vs. an object as combat. What about if it starts raining acid or fire or small rocks and you want to use Iron Root Defense? What if a tree falls on you? Or it falls on someone else, and you have time to push them out of the way, I imagine Dexterity Saving throw is meant for avoiding things before they happen like this. Deflect Missile vs. Poison Dart Wall Trap.

 

A Case for the all new Maneuver: Overcoming the Odds

Composed Attack says that if you make an attack with disadvantage you can use your expertise dice to mitigate that disadvantage. Well that is obviously for attacks, but is there a similar maneuver for non-attack rolls with disadvantage? No. A maneuver called Overcoming the Odds would be great, where any check (Saving Throws maybe, Attacks no) with disadvantage can have expertise dice added to it to mitigate the effect. This maneuver doesn’t exist yet, but I invented it just now, and I’d love to see it exist in some for or the other.

 

Non-Martial Classes and Their Utility Spells

(Since Divine Prayers are Arcane Spells using “Abilities” would be redundant)

 

Aid – Healing

Augury – Knowing if your efforts will go well.

Bless – +1 to Saving Throws (and Attacks)

Blink – For erratic movement, special case seems most useful in combat.

Charm Person – For those diplomatic missions that you need a bit of an edge on.

Color Spray – For disadvantage on Checks (Blue Effect).

Command – “Agree”, wow that King sure seemed happy to rid himself of his finest possessions, and possibly his kingdom. Or “Sign” dang, just signed it all away didn’t he? Or for more fun you could have “Argue”, “Commotion”, “Scream”, and for the naughty “Paralyzed” or “Silence”.

Commune – When would you use in IN Combat?

Comprehend Languages – And here is where I will only explain where necessarily from here on out. S.E. (Self Explanatory)

Cone of Cold – Freeze a body of water to cross that would be too cold or hot (or deep) to cross otherwise, rewarding clever spell use for solving puzzles.

Create Food and Water – S.E.

Create Water – S.E.

Cure [Insert Name] Wounds [Insert Other Name] – S.E.

Darkness – If sneaking past guards and the like are considered skill encounters and not combat encounters and the like, as a situation requires it to be. [That last phrase could be interpreted to attach itself to different parts of the previous sentence giving it different meanings, don’t assume anyone else is right in their interpretation of it.]

Death Ward –S.E.

Detect Magic – S.E.

Detect Undead – S.E.

Dimension Door –S.E.

 

Realization about Spells

Well Okay I’m going to stop here on page 6 because I didn’t realize the volume of abilities available to spell casting magic users that could allow them to (with creative measures) do many things. This just makes me seem all the more reason to focus on martial abilities. I do think non spell expending abilities should be available to other classes though. I imagine some burly clerics who aren’t very priestly might want to have similar benefits to their strength related activities even though they aren’t a fighter per se. The multiclassing and hybrid classing hasn’t even started yet for Fifth Ed.

 

Closing Statements

Yeah so what other maneuvers would you add? Would you separate utility from attack in terms of gaining them, as 4^th edition did for attack powers and utility powers, (attack powers were further subdivided into At-Will, Encounter, and Daily, whereas utility were not). How would you implement them in terms of mechanics and the like, here I’m talking broadly I guess in once sense I mean how often can they be used, how would they get replenished, Expertise Dice are a good way to hold that down, until we decide to split them like in 4^th edition. I should dig that out and look up what other powers were available for ideas. Should a maneuver straight up grant you advantage? Like a reverse maneuver to Overcoming the Odds, Bending the Odds, grants advantage on any one check, requires three expertise dice or something. Thoughts appreciated.

 

 

Added Note

Are Expertise Dice and Maneuvers a Replacement for Class Features in 3^rd Edition and Powers in 4^th Edition? It is possible there are also Class Features, but I meant the Bonus Feats of Fighters, and a lot of the nit grit and meat of the class, where am I going with this? I believe a different forum is discussing Expertise dice so I guess we can dabble in it, but I imagine the major discussion should be had there.

Are expertise dice supposed to be usable outside of battle? Because I always interpreted it as a combat-only thing, since something that replenishes every six seconds would completely break all non-combat scenarios, like avoiding traps or any routine skill check. "Overcoming the odds" in the heat of battle is one thing, but outside of combat it would basically be a free pass on all checks.

Nov 26, 2012 -- 9:38AM, Lord_Kyrion wrote:

Are expertise dice supposed to be usable outside of battle? Because I always interpreted it as a combat-only thing, since something that replenishes every six seconds would completely break all non-combat scenarios, like avoiding traps or any routine skill check. "Overcoming the odds" in the heat of battle is one thing, but outside of combat it would basically be a free pass on all checks.

Yes, there is no distinction made between in-combat and out-of-combat.  While we can say that maybe there should be, and these abilities shouldn't work out-of-combat, that would only lead to silly situations where three party members fence in the smallest kobold so the rogue will get a bonus to whatever.

So it's broken, great. Why wouldn't you be able to use maneuvers outside of combat? What are your thoughts though on separating utility from attack? If they went ahead with that, what other utility maneuvers would you add? Why does expertise die return at the end/start of the next turn? It seems like there should be further distinctions within maneuvers as to how often they can be preformed. I know a few of you will cry, "He wants fourth edition!" but I say it’s not true, not entirely. Powers that get used as often as you want, and some that you can only use so often because of the difficulty of them. Maybe there should be a rule on top of this saying you can only use six dice every 10 minutes (or something). Something to limit their abuse outside of combat, although within combat it seems like as a whole it would be far too often. Without them though, you could only perform a normal "basic melee / ranged" attack. Aren't wizards something similar, with their spells being limited on how many they can perform in a day? Someone once said on a forum, that a wizard could use a higher leveled spell every other round, that seems a bit often to me, but I haven't playtested it so I wouldn't know. Maneuvers should probably be available as often as higher leveled spells (non 0-level). I don't necessarily stand behind this stance one hindered percent, so feel free to convince me otherwise.

After reading Class Design Concepts (This weeks Legends & Lore), I found a comment below on the first page (at the time of reading) that I would love to share here, and hopefully they don't mind it.

Why can't all martial classes have both combat and utility manoeuvres, with more utility manoeuvres for Rogues and more combat ones for Fighters, and Monks with just about equal?  

I find that makes perfect sense.  Rogues should not be left with only one thing to do in combat, and Fighters should not have only one thing to do outside of combat.  Both Divine and Arcane Spells are serve both combat and utility purposes.  Martial characters NEED something equivalent.

By Marandahir

I would love to hear more thoughts about it, I'll ask them.

I have been pondering the question from the caster's side.    For my sort of campaign I want a world were there are either many small magics available or longer low intentisty ones... the "Bless Field" sort of effect.  In genre, in character, reverses nicely to Curse Field, a natural ritual and for clerics easy.  For wizards there are some other utility spells one can imagine from Reinforce Tower to Breed Monster, from casual comforts of personal convenience cantrips at whim ala some versions of Prestidigitation, things that make various styles of wizard feel casually magical in tiny ways.   The ever clean unrippable cloak, heck Umbrella, a cantrip to protect the targt from normal rain or snow.    And finally useful things, spells to enhance normal craftingprofessions or assay normal metals of the like.  Castable as Rituals for extended periods of use or to sell to shop keepeers or workmen, guilds, or kings depending.   

I can see the argument to make such things campaign specific but some basic mechanics are needed and some examples scattered through the lists that are usable and useful and add flavor.    Ultimately specific sets may be more natural from a specialty in lieu of Knack or a Tradition. 

This post seems to be drifting away from the public eye, I wish more people would talk about. In 4th all classes had utility powers, 5th could re-skin them (not all of them, and maybe no specific ones, but get the ideas from there) and re-work them and BAM you have your problem solved of utility maneuvers. I don't believe we can ignore any previous edition, we can use them as a history to illuminate possible solutions to problems we have now. We could talk about ideas there, what sort of powers we could pull from fourth, although I am less familiar with it since it has been a while since I looked at it, I'm sure third has something, maybe bonus feats that were tied to skill prerequisites that allowed for outside combat maneuver-like extraordinary abilities un-performable by untrained people.

Having utility options are great. I, personally prefer to make use of more utility-minded spell. That is, unless I specifically want to be a blasty caster.
The real trick comes with making up abilities that could have combat and utility applications. Not sure off hand how, but those maneuvers would be the best to take, IMO. 

My concern is that I don't want to HAVE TO choose whether to spend a character resource on combat, or on one of the other facets of the game.

I have to say I was never very impressed with the Utility Powers in 4E. To mey they generally felt quite restricted, so there was rarely much creativity invovled in using them. Also they typically still operated on a combat timescale, making many of the powers very short lived.

Many of the above utility maneuvers are in the system as combat expertise options.

Quite often they are quite low powered as utility maneuvers (as an example, the high jump one which lets you add inches to the height you can jump, even at level 10).  Being able to semi-reliably (97% chance) jump an extra 6" up and an extra 6' over is an example of such a D&D next utility combat expertise ability at level 10 (3d10 expertise dice).  The ones that give you a bonus on attribute checks are a bit less ridiculous, especially if you take "DC 25 = demigod" as serious.  Hercules, a demigod, could single handedly wrestle a river to a new course overnight -- a 20 strength character with 3d10 expertise dice can pull off a DC 25 check (demigod level) semi-reliably.  So if a DC 25 check is really that kind of demigod scale, that provides for a whole host of non-combat utility abilities.

It being right next to a 'jump 6" higher' ability makes this questionable.

Yea, that vault ability seems a little... "weak sauce" I beleive the term is. Most of the things it will let you jump over could either be climbed or broken through (fences, stands, ect.). While using it for long jumps is even more problematic. How often do players really risk jumping over a chasm? Is it really worth a manuever for that ability? I doubt it, especially since Mighty Exertion would do it better. (Jumping most likely being a strength check)

All true.