The original 3rd Edition game came pre-packaged with a hand full of specific combat maneuvers (bull rush, disarm, etc.). I’ve always found it odd that this list was so rarely expanded upon in supplements, with designers apparently preferring to ladle on more feats instead. Over my nearly 20 years of running D20 systems, however, the Rule Supplement document I maintain for my personal campaigns has slowly accumulated a number of new combat maneuvers. These are presented below, along with a few expansions to the existing rules where appropriate.

ACTION OF OPPORTUNITY

Instead of attacks of opportunity, characters may take actions of opportunity. An attack of opportunity can be taken as an action of opportunity, but actions of opportunity can also be used for other purposes. Feats and abilities which normally grant additional attacks of opportunity instead grant additional actions of opportunity. If a character has used all of their actions of opportunity in a round, they may still attempt an action of opportunity by using their immediate action (if it is still available to them).

AID ANOTHER [Standard]

If you’re in position to make a melee attack on an opponent that is engaging a friend in melee combat, you can attempt to aid your friend as a standard action. You make an attack roll against AC 10. If you succeed, you can choose to grant a +2 circumstance bonus to hit, a +2 circumstance bonus to AC, or provide flanking if you are not doing so already (regardless of your relative position).

Any character with a base attack bonus of +5 or higher may be able to offer additional assistance with a successful Aid Another check. For every 10 points that their attack roll exceeds DC 10, they grant an additional +1 circumstance bonus.

AIM [Attack]

When making a full attack, you can choose to sacrifice all of the attacks you could normally make and take careful aim at a specific target. On your next attack against that target, you gain a +4 circumstance bonus for each attack you sacrificed. You cannot take any other action or move more than a 5 foot step before making your attack without losing the circumstance bonus. Since you are focused on aiming, you are considered flat-footed until you make your attack.

Quick Aim: If you can make more than one attack as part of a full attack maneuver, you can choose to sacrifice one of your attacks in order to gain a +2 circumstance bonus to a single attack taken on the same turn. You can sacrifice multiple attacks to gain multiple circumstance bonuses, and these circumstance bonuses stack with each other.

Example: If you can normally make four attacks when using the full attack maneuver, you can sacrifice your third and fourth attacks to gain a +4 circumstance bonus to your first attack. You could also sacrifice those attacks and gain a +2 circumstance bonus to each of your first two attacks.

BACK-TO-BACK [Free]

On your turn you can choose to fight back-to-back with an ally as a free action. The ally must be within 5 feet, and must choose to fight back-to-back with you. While fighting back-to-back, you and your ally work to protect each other – shoring up each other’s defense and, literally, watching each other’s back. You and your ally make attacks at a –2 penalty while fighting back-to-back, but so long as you are fighting back-to-back you cannot be flanked.

Note: You can fight back-to-back with multiple allies. However, in order to fight back-to-back with multiple allies, all your allies not only need to be within 5 feet of you, but within 5 feet of each other. (This clarification is only significant for odd-numbered groups wishing to fight back-to-back.)

BIND WEAPON / SHIELD [Attack]

As a melee attack you can attempt to bind an opponent’s weapon or shield. Attempting to bind a weapon or shield provokes an attack of opportunity from your target.

After the attack of opportunity has been resolved, you and your target make an opposed melee attack roll. The wielder of a two-handed weapon gets a +4 bonus on this roll, and the wielder of a light weapon takes a -4 penalty. If you and your opponent are of different sizes, the larger combatant gets a bonus on the attack roll of +4 per difference in size category.

If you beat your opponent’s roll, you have successfully performed a bind on your opponent’s shield or weapon. Weapons and shields involved in a bind, whether yours or your opponents, cannot be used: Bound shields provide no armor bonus and bound weapons cannot be used to make attacks.

The instigator of a bind may end it as a free action. The target of a bind can attempt to break the bind as an attack action by succeeding at an opposed attack roll.

Special: Binding a weapon or shield is considered a variation of the sunder action. Characters with the Improved Sunder feat do not provoke attacks of opportunity when attempting to bind a weapon or shield.

CALLED SHOT [Free]

When using the attack action or the full attack action, before making attack rolls for the round, you may choose to accept a penalty on all attacks from the round in order to gain a bonus to the damage roll of your first attack. For every -2 penalty you accept you gain a +1 bonus to damage. The total penalty cannot exceed your base attack bonus. The bonus to your damage roll applies only to your first attack (even if it misses or otherwise causes no damage), but the penalty to attacks lasts until your next turn.

Design Note: This effectively makes Power Attack a feat which improves a basic maneuver.

DISREGARD FLANKER [Free]

You can disregard attacks from an opponent flanking you. When you do, that opponent doesn’t get the +2 flanking bonus when attacking you and that opponent does not provide a flanking bonus to any of its allies. Ignoring a flanker, however, provokes an attack of opportunity from that flanker, and you lose your Dexterity bonus to Armor Class against that flanker. You do, however, continue to threaten that flanker. If the flanker is out of attacks of opportunity, you can ignore the flanker (and deny the flanking bonus) with impunity.

You must make the decision to disregard a flanker as soon as the foe moves into a flanking position. You can change your decision as a free action on your turn. (You still have to disregard a flanker you can’t see.)

DRIVE BACK [Attack]

As a melee attack, you can attempt to drive back your opponent. In doing so, you are attacking in a way that should force your opponent to back away from you. When you perform the drive back maneuver, your opponent can either choose to move 5-feet directly away from you or remain where they are.  If they choose to move, they suffer no adverse effects. However, you can choose to follow them (also moving 5 feet) if you have the necessary movement remaining this turn. If they choose not to move, you resolve your attack against them with a +2 circumstance bonus.

The movement taken as part of the drive back does not count against your opponent’s movement for the round. Your movement does not provoke an attack of opportunity from your opponent, nor does their movement provoke an attack of opportunity from you. However, this movement may provoke attacks of opportunity from other combatants.

ENGAGE [Attack]

As a melee attack you can choose to engage one opponent within reach. If an engaged opponent attempts to move away from you or if they attack anyone else before your next turn, you may take an attack against them at the same Base Attack Bonus as the attack you used to engage them (this attack is in addition to any attacks of opportunity you would normally be able to take and does not count against the limit on the number of attacks of opportunity you can take each round). You gain a +2 circumstance bonus to this attack.

If your opponent attempts to make an attack of opportunity against a different character while you’re engaging them, you take your attack normally. If the attack is successful, however, your opponent must make a Concentration check (DC 10 + damage dealt). If the Concentration check fails, your opponent loses the ability to make that attack of opportunity (although they may still take an attack of opportunity later if one is provoked).

Note: Even if you have more than one attack per round, you cannot engage a single opponent more than once (although you can engage multiple opponents at once).

FIGHT DEFENSIVELY [Free]

When using the attack action or the full attack action in melee, before making attack rolls for a round, you may choose to accept a penalty on all attacks from the round in order to gain a bonus to your AC. For every -2 penalty you accept, you gain a +1 dodge bonus to your AC. (For example, by accepting a -6 penalty, you would gain a +1 dodge bonus to your AC.) The total penalty cannot exceed your base attack bonus, although characters with low base attack bonuses (less than +4) can still accept a -4 penalty to their attack rolls for a +2 dodge bonus to their AC. The penalty to attacks and bonus to AC apply until your next turn.

Total Defense: When using the attack action or the full attack action in melee, you can sacrifice all of your attacks and dedicate yourself to a total defense. You gain a +2 dodge bonus to your AC for each melee attack that you would normally make. (For example, if you could normally make three attacks using the full attack action, then you could gain a +6 dodge bonus to AC for using total defense as a full action.) This bonus is in addition to the normal bonus you would receive for fighting defensively or using Combat Expertise at your maximum penalty.

INTERVENE [Action of Opportunity]

If you are within 5 feet of an ally who is targeted by a direct melee or ranged attack you are aware of (but not an area effect), you can use an action of opportunity to attempt to take the attack in your ally’s stead. If the attack hits you, you take damage normally. If it misses, it also misses your ally. You must declare your intention to place yourself in harm’s way before the attack roll is made.

OUT-OF-TURN-DODGE [Immediate]

Any time a character is about to be attacked, they can give up their next turn to gain a +4 dodge bonus to their AC as an immediate action. A character must be able to apply their Dexterity bonus to AC against the attack (so a character can’t use an out-of-turn dodge while flat-footed, for example) and the out-of-turn dodge is declared before the attack roll is made. The character’s initiative does not change, they simply do not take an action on their next turn. The character gains this dodge bonus until the next time their initiative comes up after their “skipped” turn.

PROTECT [Immediate/Action of Opportunity]

If someone within your threatened area is about to make an attack of opportunity against a target other than yourself, you can use an action of opportunity as an immediate action to prevent them from doing so. You and the combatant attempting the attack of opportunity each make an opposed melee attack roll.

If you succeed, you use your attack of opportunity to preoccupy them and prevent them from taking the attack of opportunity. (This does not count against the total number of attacks of opportunity they may take in a round, however, and they may still take an attack of opportunity later if one is provoked).

If you fail the opposed melee attack roll, they can resolve their attack of opportunity normally. This counts as an attack of opportunity for you.

QUICK DODGE [Immediate/Action of Opportunity]

At any time when you are about to be attacked, you can use an action of opportunity to gain a +2 dodge bonus to AC as an immediate action. The dodge bonus is only effective against a single attack. If you can take multiple actions of opportunity in a round (through the use of the Combat Reflexes feat, for example) you can still only gain a single bonus against one attack, although you can use additional attacks of opportunity to quick dodge additional attacks.

SPRINT [Move]

You can sprint at twice your normal speed in a straight line as a move action. You lose any Dexterity bonus to AC while sprinting unless you have the Run feat. You cannot sprint if your maximum run speed has been reduced to three times your normal speed (due to wearing heavy armor or carrying a heavy load, for example). Sprinting twice in the same round is the same as running.

This material is covered under the Open Gaming License.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Harvesttime – Part 3: Tee and the Greeting of Old Friends

This fracture, however, is minor compared to the Reformist movement which began in Astalia (one of the Vennoc Protectorates).

When creating our fantasy worlds, one thing I think we inherit from both published examples and our grade school textbooks is an encyclopedia impulse: We want to list every elven king. We want to create a comprehensive map. We want to nail things down.

What I’ve learned, however, is that it’s better to leave yourself room for future ideas.

For example, I’ll consciously avoid constructions like “The Last Blah-Blah” or “there’s only two Bleurghy-Bloogedy-Bloogs in the whole universe!” This is something that I think is even more vital when developing a shared universe, and something I very specifically cautioned writers against when I was working as the Line Developer for the Infinity RPG: Unless your idea requires a hard limit applied to the entire setting… don’t do it.

And of course, sometimes you do need to draw a hard line. The One Ring isn’t the One Ring if it isn’t the One Ring; it can’t be part of a JCPenney jewelry collection.

(How to know if your idea requires its uniqueness? Simply ditch the uniqueness and see if the idea still works. Is your “Only Female Ninja in the Whole World” still a cool character even if she’s not the only female ninja? Probably. Can you throw the One Ring in Mount Doom and save the world if Sauron has a whole cabinet full of Master Rings? Probably not.)

But the real trick I use is to create deliberate “gray spaces” within my world design. There are actually two of them featured in the Harvestime PBeM campaign journal entry: The Vennoc Protectorates and the Reformists. I have very specifically avoided defining exactly how many nations there within the Protectorates and I have similarly avoided figuring out exactly how many or what all the Reformists sects are.

Why?

When I was creating the Western Lands, a very early step was drawing a map of the Five Empires. (Which were, at the time, called the Five Nations. I renamed them when Eberron ended up using the same nomenclature half a decade later. Personally, I had Kipling and the Iroquois Confederacy bouncing around in my head to make “Five Nations” feel particularly catchy when I brainstormed it. I’m guessing Baker did, too.) But I immediately spotted the trap: I had designed Seyrun, Barund, Arathia, and Hyrtan to cover a broad swath of fantasy tropes, giving me a lot of canvas for fitting in all kinds of ideas. But they were also inherently limited: I had one Emperor. If I needed a different Emperor, I didn’t have one.

So the Vennoc Protectorates – inspired by the Holy Roman Empire and Ancient Greece – exist as a confused tangle of ever-changing city-states, duchies, kingdoms, principalities, and alliances all operating under a loose, common banner. So if tomorrow I think to myself, “You know what would be a cool? A kingdom secretly ruled by Deep Ones!” all I have to do is squeeze in another Protectorate.

The other option, of course, would be to just keep adding bits to the edge of the map. That works, too. But it can also be a little too easy: It encourages you to keep spreading your ideas out, instead of bringing them together, forcing them to rub up against each other, and seeing what happens in the collision.

For the same reason, I limited the Western Lands to a single pantheon of exactly nine gods. I’ve recently discussed how that decision has forced me to develop that pantheon in depth rather than just cramming more thinly realized gods into the setting, but I also recognized that I needed to give myself room within that pantheon to develop cool ideas and variants. If there were just nine gods supported by nine specific churches, the resulting palette would be fairly limited. I wanted the ability to continue adding cool fantasy religion ideas to the game world, and I also wanted to be able to create stories based around religious tension.

The Reformists were a gray space that allowed me to accomplish both goals. The Nine Gods cover a broad array of divine/mythological archetypes; the Reformists allow me to interpret those archetypes into myriad forms. If I need a nature cult that venerates nymphs, that can be reflected within the imagery of Sayl or Tohlen or both. (Maybe the cult believes nymphs are the divine children of those gods?) If I need steampunk machine worshipers, I can place them within a facet of Vehthyl. If I need a repressive religious autarchy, I’m not prevented from doing that by the limitations of the Imperial Church. These will all fit into niches within the Reformist gray space.

The Temple District

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

HARVESTTIME – PART 3: TEE AND THE GREETING OF OLD FRIENDS

PBeM – November 12th through December 1st, 2007
Harvesttime in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

When Tee said her farewells to Tor and asked him to pick up her dress from the Jade Woman her intention was to return to her room and recuperate the injuries she had suffered. Instead she found herself pacing endlessly, lost in eddying currents of hopeless thought.

She knew that only a scant distance away, the Harvesttime Festival in Narred was getting ready to begin. There would be song and dancing on the green. The community hall would be opened for food and drink. All her kin and friends would be there.

It was more than she could bear – to be so close to her old life and yet unable to touch it.

Unable to stay where she was, but unwilling to lead any danger to her community, she decided to seek counsel from Doraedian. She headed towards Iridithil’s Home. But when she arrived, Doraedian wasn’t there. He had been summoned away to a meeting of the Twelve Commanders and would likely go straight from there to the festival at Narred.

Intensely frustrated, Tee returned to the Ghostly Minstrel. By the time she got there, she’d made her decision: She sat down and quickly wrote out notes for her childhood friends – Aradan, Rissien, and Santiel – saying that they should meet at her house as soon as they could. She paid a messenger to deliver the letters and then hurried over to her house.

By this time she knew that the crowds of the Harvesttime Festival would have already gathered around the communal hall and Moon Lily Pond. So, being as discrete as possible, she circled south around the Herbalists’ Guildhall. Approaching her house from behind, she came up Vadarast Street. The familiar, if somewhat disturbing, scents of Bueles’ potion shop just a few buildings down Iron Street brought back sharp memories as she slipped around the corner of her house and, with a cautious glance, unlocked the door.

She was fairly certain she wasn’t noticed, although she could see the crowd gathering across the Narred green. Her thoughts were naturally distracted as she quickly gathered up the drop-cloths and tried to make the house look a little less deserted – not so much lived in, but at least a little more familiar… a little more welcoming.

Then she sat down to wait. (more…)

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Harvesttime – Part 2: Dominic and the Guidance of Vehthyl

When Dominic headed across the bridge into the Temple District, he made gentle inquiries into the worship of Vehthyl and discovered four options: First, the Order of the Silver God. Second, the Temple of the Clockwork God. Third, the Temple of the Ebon Hand. And, finally, an itinerant minotaur priest named Shibata.

What I’m going to talk about here isn’t really a preconceived or formal technique. It’s something that I’ve just kind of instinctively done in the past without even really thinking of it as being a distinct “thing” that I’ve been doing. But as I was re-reading the campaign journal and thinking about what I had done as a GM, it kind of jumped out and bit me. I’m not even sure I would have noticed at all if it wasn’t for the close proximity of what I did with Tor and Dominic here.

So this installment of Running the Campaign is probably going to be a little more rough around the edges as I kind of grope my way towards both understanding and articulating the technique here.

To start with, you have a PC who has an interest.

• Tor is interested in becoming a knight.
• Dominic is interested in learning more about Vehthyl.

Dominic’s interest has arisen out of play and is primarily player-driven, and so the response is being created on-the-fly. (Fairly literally in this case, as the bluebooking for this session allowed me to basically roll along with the player’s intentions and develop material in a very reactive way.) Tor’s interest was collaboratively built up in character creation, so I built a good chunk of this material up in parallel with that character creation process and have been waiting to incorporate it into the campaign for several sessions now.

(Although the specific impetus, it should be noted, was still ultimately player-driven even here: Tor’s player had seen the tourney fields on the map of the city and said, “I want to go to there.” I just needed to figure out how I could use the existing material I built in support of this impulse, and vice versa.)

He cantered Blue over to the Board of Ranks, on display just outside of the lists. Each name was noted with heraldry, and he noted that most of the names were accompanied by the three prominent heraldries on display (along with a smattering of others): The cross upon a field of a crimson of the Knights of the Golden Cross; the sword-and-vortex of the Knights of the Pale; and the dawning sun above the martial field of the Order of the Dawn.

The key technique here is that, in response to these PC interests, I haven’t built one thing which would satisfy that interest: There’s not one Church of Vehthyl for Dominic to go ask his questions at. There’s not a single order of knighthood in Ptolus for Tor to pursue.

Instead, I’ve created – or pulled forward – a nest of factions surrounding their area of interest. In the case of this particular session, the factions are actually quite explicitly spelled out (although that doesn’t necessarily need to be the case; there are a lot of different ways to introduce these factions into play), as you can see in the quotes above.

These factions all inherently have overlapping interests and competing agendas regarding those interests because they’re all specifically related to the PCs interests. (Which means that the PC – and presumably their player – will also be inherently vested in those interests.) At this point, I don’t really have a firm idea of how the interactions between these factions are going to play out, but if you’ve got enough people pointing guns at each other (either literally or figuratively) something interesting is probably going to fall out as a result of the PCs bouncing around like ping-pong balls.

WHY DOES THIS WORK?

First, it gives the player a meaningful choice in how their character is going to pursue their interest.

What you want to avoid here, of course, is reverting this back to a meaningless choice where, for example, there are eight different Churches of Vehthyl, but it doesn’t matter which one the player chooses. The factions Dominic has to choose between can, on a certain level, be boiled down to:

• The Imperial Church
• A well-established Reformist Church
• A Reformist cult
• A lone, unaffiliated religious teacher

Ignoring all of the other details about those factions, this essential choice about where Dominic will turn first in his desperate need for guidance is going to speak volumes about his faith and about who he is as a person.

Tor, by contrast, isn’t really in need during this session. He’s really just checking out the buffet and seeing what’s available, so you can see that the distinctions between the different orders of knighthood are not as sharply drawn here. That’s partly because the player wasn’t motivated to dig deeper: Tor could’ve taken the opportunity of the tourney to meet more of the knights and learn more about their different missions and ideologies. The fact he didn’t at this particular time is actually a meaningful choice in itself. But even if it wasn’t, that’s fine: The meaningful choices are going to come later for Tor and they are going to have a ton of weight.

Second, the inter-relationships between the factions turns the PC into a billiard ball. The player’s initial choice is their first shot, and the effect they’ll have on the table full of balls is impossible to predict. As a result, the outcome of that choice (and their subsequent choices) will be completely surprising to everyone at the table, including the GM. The campaign will be forever different as a result, and it’s quite likely the campaign world will be, too.

As a result, it’s not just a meaningful choice, it’s a momentous choice.

Players can sense that. They know when their choices have completely and irrevocably shaped what the experience of the campaign is. And they love it. They eat it up.

OTHER THOUGHTS

As you’ll see, Tor’s and Dominic’s factions actually end up overlapping and interacting with each other as the campaign continues. This increases the chaotic unpredictability of your campaign once you set these forces in motion; it also helps to draw the PCs closer together.

This overlap is something that you can specifically design into the factions when you set them up, but you’ll also find it arising organically through play: After all, these factions will all end up having a common connection through the PCs. Eventually, that will bring them into orbit with each other… and send them crashing into each other.

What about wasted prep? I’ve been talking about smart prep lately, and here I seem to have deliberately set up wasted prep: Dominic chooses one of the Vehthyl-related factions to seek advice from and then nothing happens with the others.

Well, first, this stuff usually doesn’t require a heavy initial prep load. Most of the time you can probably get away with one or two paragraphs, and then you can develop more in response to the direction the PC chooses to leap. Prep will also overlap. For example, knowing how the orders of knighthood operate in the Five Empires is going to be meaningful to Tor’s character goals regardless of which order of knighthood he chooses to pursue.

More importantly, the prep you don’t immediately use will almost certainly end up getting reincorporated in other ways down the line. These are, after all, significant factions. The whole point is that they’re deeply involved in your campaign world. And they are, after all, related to each other, so no matter which one the PC chooses, the others are likely not too far away.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

HARVESTTIME – PART 2: DOMINIC AND THE GUIDANCE OF VEHTHYL

PBeM – November 12th through December 1st, 2007
Harvesttime in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

Although he didn’t speak of it to the others, the loss of his memory worried at Dominic’s soul. Given a day in which to pursue his own goals with a freedom of conscience, Dominic quickly ate his own breakfast and then headed towards the Temple District – intent on seeking out the guidance of Vehthyl, the god of mysteries whose strange holy symbol he had found upon awaking at the Ghostly Minstrel. (more…)