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Dec 12, 2012 -- 5:05AM, cheethorne wrote:

Dec 12, 2012 -- 4:51AM, kadim wrote:

And as I said, I don't really see any reason why every single class ability and spell couldn't have an untrained version.

 

And how will the Fighter perform the untrained version of magic missile or lance of faith or a Paladin's aura?

I'd do it through a ritual. Something suitably time consuming, requiring space and materials followed by an ability check. Failure could be anything from a harmless waste of time and resources to a catastrophic backlash with dire reprocussions for the caster, depending on the effect and circumstances.

So you could reproduce pretty much any magical or supernatural effect, but most of the time you probably wouldn't bother. And this fits in D&D really well; hedge wizards and pious gentlemen are strewn about fantasy worlds so there's no reason why their prayers shouldn't be answered from time to time or the hedge wizard actually shows they have some measure of power.

Dec 12, 2012 -- 5:05AM, cheethorne wrote:

Dec 12, 2012 -- 4:51AM, kadim wrote:

You could pull the actual maneuver even further from an improvised base option by taking the monk concept of "more dice = quasimagic effect" and allowing the martial/expert classes to push their ability to a place where you can't really improvise it without dice or a spell.

I agree with this, but I think to make the Fighter feel special enough, and not just a collection bonuses (no matter how good the bonuses may be) to things that anyone can "improvise", the maneuvers have to go further and further into the realm of quasi-magic as he goes up in levels. If the Fighter is stuck purely in reality driven maneuvers, then anyone can try to improvise those same actions, and, as you say, anyone could be desparate enough to try anything given the right circumstances. This is of course, based on the assumption that there are other things in the game that people cannot "improvise," like spells and a Paladin's aura.

I think most folks have assumed that the maneuver list will get more and more outlandish as you go up in level so it's a pretty safe bet that what you're describing will happen.

Dec 12, 2012 -- 4:00AM, kadim wrote:

The trick is to make the generally available version unreliable enough to only be used if someone without training is desperate enough to try, the opponent is so trivial that the chance of sucess very high anyway, or the circumstances are such that the generally available version's unreliability is somehow countered.

Thing is, there are things people will try without training in real life even if they probably won't be able to produce a reliable result, like pushing someone or breaking a bottle to use as a weapon or building a shed. These things are actually highly skilled activities that take practise but can be attempted by anyone. If the fighter is the only guy who can push stuff around, I then have to tell my wizard who's backed in a corner with no spells that the reason they can't try to push someone is that's what the fighter does so shut up and play.

While that makes sense from a realism standpoint, it's killing the game.  If push/knockdown/disarm/etc are made so crappy that they're a waste of an action (and a chunk of HP if you want to bring back OAs for them), then people without the maneuvers are back to "I attack" every round, and people with maneuvers are back to "I choose from my list of powers, because anything off the menu is going to be crap."  

On the other hand, make them decent and open-ended enough that you can improvise without a maneuver and without wasting your action, and we're back to "fighters don't get nice things."  Personally I'd rather fighters not have unique things but be able to improvise, I think that's a more fun way to play than choosing from a short list of things nobody else can do.  But ultimately with maneuvers as they stand he's choosing from the short list anyway because giving up his ED to improvise is too prohibitive even if improvising is as good or better than a basic attack.  Which brings us to my second point.

Maneuvers shouldn't just be phrased as a bonus, they should be more open ended.  DS shouldn't be "when you hit with an attack, gain a bonus to damage" it should be something like "when you make a succeed in a d20 roll against a DL set by the target (such as AC or a contested ability check), deal damage equal to the sum."  Thus, it should apply not just to attacks but to grabs (watch some jujitsu, you can do an awful lot of damage with grabs), knock downs (why not shank 'em on the way down?), disarms (who says you're not disarming them by chopping off some fingers?), running up the wall and landing blade first on your opponent (which may still be "an attack," but lets clarify), slamming their face into the wall to daze them, and any other shenanigans you can think up.  WWA should let you do splash damage not just when you make a melee weapon attack but in all the same scenarios listed for DS (why can't you shank one guy while grabbing the other?).  The OP is right that listing all these powers on your character sheet encouraged the belief that that was all you could do, but there were other factors at work.  Even though there was an entry for bull rush, the fact that cleave was supposed to be balanced against tide of iron and tide of iron was hugely better than bull rush made it entirely obvious that bull rush was a trap option.  Maneuvers are doing the same thing: if you get a bonus to a narrow range of activities, that narrow range becomes the only things worth doing.  So let's broaden the range.

Dec 12, 2012 -- 7:22AM, mellored wrote:

Low level paladins wouldn't neccicaraly notice a vampire lord mascerading as a pimp.

Don't they all?