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Peace_Keeper
2005-11-02, 12:16 AM
Well Usally most of the rule threads have something to do with magic. If you started adding all of these to your game, fighters and other people seem like much less flexible characters. So I though we could add more combat techniques (like grapple, sunder, trip) to make people like fighters seem more flexible again



Chop / Break
You can use a melee weapon to cut or break your oppenents arms and legs.
Making a Chop Attack: Making a chop attack requires a full action, you only get one attack when making a chop attack.
Step 1 Hit: You make a melee attack with your weapon (normal, not touch attack at a -6 penalty unless you have the improved chop/break feat).
Step 2 Opposed Roll:Your oppenent makes an Opposed roll, they attack with any chosen melee weapon they are currently wielding. If your oppenents roll succeeds yours (or is a natural 20) your attempt fails.
Step 3 Deal Damage: To finally chop/break your oppenents roll, you must deal at least 1/3 of their remaining Hp in damage(damage reduction applies, your damage is reduced is so). If you do your oppenent loses that chosen arm or leg. The damage dealt is only half to their Hp, no matter if its a failure or a success.



Feat for technique

Improved Chop/Break
you are skilled at choping or breaking your oppenents arms or legs.
Prerequisites:Str 17, Power Attack, Base Attack Bonus +6
Benefit:You no longer occur a -6 penalty to hit when choping or breaking your oppenents leg/arm and get a +1 to damage rolls when dealing chop damage.
Normal: You get a -6 penalty to your attack rolls when choping/breaking.
Special: A fighter may select Improved Chop/Break as one of his fighter bonus feats

Serpitus
2005-11-02, 09:12 AM
A few quick comments and disregard as you see fit just thinking out loud here.

1) You might need to say something as to what exactly can and can't be chopped. A broken arm on a zombie might not mean much. What about things without arms but with things that can be "chopped"? A chopped eyestalk on a beholder is a bit powerful.

2) Also seems a bit overpowered. Though a full round action, any burly fighter will/could do this every round until the opponent looks like the knight from Monty python "its just a flesh wound" (thats a stretch cause it isn't dismember but that was the image I had) smacks a bit of the old knockdown feat from 3.0 which was IMHO completely broken.

3) 1/3 of remaining hit points could be a very small amount after a properly excecuted ranged attack to get the fighters into melee.
Example a 1st level fighter with, 18 str, a great axe and weapon focus.
+6 str dam (1 1/2 for two handed weapon)
7 dam (avg for great axe)
13 *3 = 39 hitpoints or more remaining or automatic broken arm
-6 to hit
+4 Str
+1 WF
is a mere -1 to hit roll overall

4) What about a miss. Is that just a miss or has the fighter over balanced and left him/her self exposed (-2AC maybe for the rest of the round)

5) Does a chop attack have to be declared or is it just swing batter and let the arms break. This is implied with the -6 but I think you might want to specifically say this somewhere.

6) I think you might want to limit this to slashing and bludgeoning only. I can't see a rapier (piercing example) doing this type of manuever regularly.

7) Final thought is it is a bit clunky with 3 step process.

Peace_Keeper
2005-11-02, 09:40 AM
Ok all very good comments

1: You can only target an arm,leg or a tentacle.
2: -6 to hit, the defender gets an attack, if they beat yours they win and they are +6 against you. this means its hard to pull off and just because you have no arm, doesn't mean you can't fight.
3:Its supposed to not realy come into effect until 6th level(then you can take the feat), you know when everyone has like 60-70 hit points and the spell caster is using fireball, which makes this look underpowered. I'm sure a fighter would have to roll at least a 15(after -6 +bonuses) to hit a creature with 39 hit points. the creature would only have to roll a 10. remember this is all sort of average.
4:sounds good
5:yes you must declare first.
6:No because with a rapier or a spear (they deal less damage) if you effectivly hit the shoulder or the leg enough to shatter even a bit of the bone its broken.
7:ok....

Kelen_Rai
2005-11-02, 10:32 AM
I like this idea.
Personally i would change the three step process to an opposed roll and result in more of a stun on bare passes, broken bones on great results and the chance of breaking your own arm on a fail.

Disable

you may declare a disable atempt as a full round action, using this technique has a -6 penealty.

This action prevokes an attack of oppertunity.

You then make an attack roll against you targets AoO roll
If you pass by 1-5 your opponent is at -2 to hit for the number of rounds equal to the amount you supassed thier roll by to a maximum of 4 rounds.
If you pass by 6-10 this penalty is -4
If you pass by 11+ the penealty remains at -4 but the target cannot use thier off hand until they have regained Hp equal to the amount you passed by or they have max Hp.

If you fail or equal thier roll you must apply the above table to yourself

Feat : Improved Disable

Prerequsite : Improved Sunder

You may make disable atempts at -2 penealty.

Normal : Disable has a -6 penealty
Special: A Fighte may select this feat as onr of thier bonus feats

So what do you all think?

Spuddly
2005-11-02, 02:17 PM
Destroying your opponents appendages seems like a very obvious way to win a fight. So obvious that one wonders why it's not included in the RAW.

It's not in there because it doesn't work with the d20 system. Too unbalanced or unwieldly. Not to mention deadly for low level PCs. Imagine that horde of goblins at attempting to chop off your level 2 fighter's legs every round. Sheer dice rolls will guarantee that your fighter loses something important and costly to reattach.

Peace_Keeper
2005-11-02, 05:53 PM
yes well you go ahead and try hitting Ac 19 (fullplate and +1 dex)at a -5 let alone dealing 1/3 of his Hp to him.

Thrune
2005-11-02, 06:04 PM
Three things.

One: In general... well... it looks cool. But I feel that it shouldn't reduce it all the way down to -0; but just to -2.

Two: You can't afford full plate before level 3 if your very lucky; 4-6 if you aren't.

Three: The point is; all you need is 10 scimitar-wielding goblins and you might cripple the party fighter.(Remember; 18-20 crit hit.) Just repeat that for a while and watch the group DIE.

Peace_Keeper
2005-11-02, 06:25 PM
ok about the feat, again fireball.... 6d6 damage that keeps increasing makes this look underpowered.... just because you can score a critical hit doesn't mean that you've actually hit someone. For example if you had a +1 to hit and rolled an 19 while attacking a person with Ac 21 you still miss. Only natural 20 always hits, if a natural 20 hit your there ac before becoming an auto hit (you know just after bonuses) you have a possible critical. Of course the goblin will be sitting the swinging, hoping for natural 20s and survive before the PCs start killing them.

Bitter_Elf
2005-11-02, 08:05 PM
Well, my initial response was negative, and along the lines a few of the other posters here who think that this could get overpowered... but I also think it's kinda cool.

But isn't there already some sort of rules in the RAW for called shots? I could be wrong, but this seems exactly like the called shot idea (which i may or may not be hallucinating...).

If there aren't already rules for called shots - attacking a specific limb/area of the target - I'd really like to tweak this to fit that profile. If you are going to try and implement specific hit locations, then it makes sense to me to have different outcomes, depending on whether you're targeting arms, legs, etc. For example, I seem to remember NWN having a called shot feat where you could learn to target an opponent's arms (give them a -2 attack penalty) or legs (-20% ish movement).

I might make the benefit a little better (maybe -4 to attacks, or a chance to give them a 'dead' arm) but also provoke an attack of opportunity if you fail... Maybe using the opposed attack rolls, like disarm and sunder do?

The_Werebear
2005-11-02, 08:47 PM
What you could do, instead of the opposed rolling, is to say "when you are targeting a limb, the limb is two size catagories smaller, and gets extra ac as such. So, if you are trying to break the knee of a hill giant, it counts as if you are swinging at a small creature, so instead of getting -1 to ac for being large, it gets +1 since you are aiming at a small portion.

Also, you need to half set effects for swinging at a certain limb. My suggestion is moving at half speed for a leg shot, and only 1/2 of your dexarity bonus is applied to ac. For arm, -2 on all attacks, unable to use the broken arm, either for a shield or a weapon.

Raum
2005-11-02, 08:57 PM
Called shots are only covered in variant rules.

Here's another possibility for you that may be easier to fit into the system. It may also be overpowered...no playtesting has been done.

Critical Attack [General]
Prerequisites
Dex 13, Great Cleave, Cleave, Power Attack, base attack bonus +9.

Benefit
As a full round action, you may choose to subtract a number from your melee attack roll and add one third that number to the critical threat range of your attack. You may not subtract more than your base attack bonus or add more than one third your base attack bonus to the critical threat range. The penalty on attacks and bonus to critical threat range apply until your next turn.

Special
A fighter may select Critical Attack as one of his fighter bonus feats.