COMBAT MANEUVER: Or Can You Shove A Werewolf Off A Cliff?

 

There is a lot of kudos going around about maneuvers in D&D made simple by a very nice rule brought to light on Odd Skull from an earlier post on Tales from the Rambling Bumblers. The gist of the rule is this: 

Attacker declares a maneuver. If the to-hit roll is a success, the defender can choose to either accept the maneuver OR take normal weapon damage.

Very elegant, easy-to-understand rule. Which is the reason its caught fire in the D&D think-space. And I like it too. Now, the Odd Skull post acknowledges that this rule most likely will not allow a PC to shove a full HP opponent into lava. The opponent will always accept the damage. 

But this brings up some questions for me: 

(1) What about opponents who are immune to normal damage? A werewolf would then accept all damage from non-magic, non-silver weapons bringing it to 0. So effectively the PCs would be unable to maneuver the werewolf off a cliff. But being able to maneuver such opponents can allow low-level parties to overcome or defeat them. Like lassoing them to a rock which you then push over a cliff. Or pinning it with a couple of pitchforks.

(2) If you can't force the maneuver during a critical time, like shoving the full HP werewolf off a cliff when you are at 2 hp-- then how much utility will you get out of this system?

The alternative to this rule, up to this point has been something along the lines of: 

If the attacker rolls a successful to-hit, the attacker can perform a maneuver in lieu of dealing damage to the defender. That maneuver is constrained to weapon type and other fesibility.

And I think it might have to stay with the attacker. It does take away agency from the defender, but that is the point of a maneuver in lieu of damage- the ability to manipulate your target without them being able to interfere. In the asymmetric, combat-as-war realm of classic-play D&D this can really help the PCs overcome otherwise indomitable threats. Sand to the face, blinds, and allows the PC to run. Dis-arming prevents the gnoll captain from landing blows with the two-handed sword. The wizard and the thief tackling a vampire might allow the cleric to stake it.

But if the option remains with the defender, then the DM might choose to negate any of the advantages of the maneuver simply by taking the damage. And if PCs can build up enough damage that the DM would choose the maneuver then they most likely didn't need the maneuver anyway.

Another more minor problem that is created is that because the DM knows the HP totals of all combatants and therefore has complete information the PCs don't have, the DM needs to come up with "rules" for which opponents will choose a maneuver all of the time, some of the time or never.

This might have to range over humanoids, animals, insects, fay, dragons, talking animals, oozes, puddings, skeletons and ghouls etc. In the end, if the decision is back on the attacker to call damage or maneuver most of this is reduced down. These attacker-decided maneuvers were demonstrated in this battle I ran.