Maneuvers
From D20advanced
A maneuver is an action in combat that falls outside the normal bounds of the rules. These rules are a tool to help you come up with imaginative, clever, and exciting actions in combat. If you can imagine it, the maneuver rules allow you to attempt it. You might throw a fistful of sand in an opponent’s face to blind him, run along the narrow top of a wall to maneuver around a foe, or crack open a keg of beer to send a stream of liquid into an opponent’s face. Maneuvers reward you for coming up with interesting and visually engaging actions in combat.
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Maneuver Mechanics
The mechanics behind a maneuver are relatively simple. When you attempt a maneuver, first you pick out the effect you want to create. The following sections list several different possible results for a maneuver, broken down into two categories: trade-off maneuvers, and condition maneuvers.
Next you describe the maneuver. How do you attempt it? Do you use the terrain and combat situation to your advantage? What do you expect to happen if the maneuver succeeds? Think of the game as if it were a movie, and describe the scene as you put the maneuver into action. As part of this step, you must choose the mechanical effect you want to gain from the maneuver.
Then choose which skill you wish to use to make the check with. You make this "maneuver check" opposed by your opponent’s maneuver check. If the maneuver check succeeds, you gain its benefits or your foe suffers its effects.
Maneuvers and Actions
Listed next to the name of each maneuver is the action required to complete it. Most maneuvers require one action to complete, which means you can use the maneuver with one action and attack with the other.
Fast Maneuver
You might want to use a maneuver while both moving and attacking in a round. In this case, you can attempt a maneuver as a free action. You suffer a -5 penalty to your opposed maneuver check. Alternatively, if you are using Attack of Opportunity or Combat Advantage rules, you may instead provoke an Attack of Opportunity or grant Combat Advantage, in which case you do not suffer a -5 penalty to your opposed maneuver check.
Combining Maneuvers
If you wish, you may attempt to combine multiple maneuvers into a single check. For instance, you might combine an Affect Area maneuver with a Gain Combat Advantage maneuver to represent ripping the rug out from under a group of enemies and tripping them up. In this case, each component maneuver still has its normal action cost, but you only make one opposed maneuver check for all of the attempted maneuvers. If you attempt those maneuvers as fast maneuvers, you can attempt to combine more than two, but each maneuver imposes an additional -2 penalty on your opposed check.
Maneuvers and Skills
You may choose the skill you use to complete a maneuver, but the GM chooses the ability your opponent uses to oppose it. The GM may rule if a particular skill is inappropriate for a given maneuver.
Maneuvers or Zones?
If you are using the rules for environmental Zones described in Chapter VIII: Environments, it may seem like some of these maneuvers step on the toes of those rules, allowing players to designate Zones in combat on the fly, making the two systems incompatible. This is not the case.
Some maneuvers allows players to create effects similar to Zones on the fly during a fight. This helps to keep combat dynamic without requiring the GM to detail every last inch of a battlefield. By allowing the players the ability to interact with the environment on the fly in this way, it removes some of the burden for creating colorful combats from the GM and spreads it around to the whole group, so everyone can help make combat more exciting.
However, it should also be noted that both Maneuvers and Zones are capable of being used independently of one another. For GMs with less prep time, relying more heavily on the players to describe and interact with the environment using Maneuvers exclusively might be beneficial. Alternatively, for GMs who would really rather make designing battlefields and environments their exclusive domain, using Zones to the exclusion of Maneuvers (or at least certain Maneuvers) is a good way to accomplish this.
 Option: Other Maneuver Resolutions
There are different ways to resolve maneuvers than the use of opposed skill checks presented above. You could, for example, just use ability scores to resolve the checks (such as using Strength vs. Dexterity to resolve being tripped, or Wisdom vs. Charisma to avoid a feint). You could also make all the maneuvers resolve exclusively off of opposed Weapon Group checks. And of course, if none of them are a good fit for your group, maneuvers are easily removed, with many of their effects still available through Zones if the GM likes to have tighter control over what options are on a given battlefield (see Chapter VIII: Environments for details).
Under this option, perception ranged attacks can be used, but they do not automatically succeed. A melee or ranged attack roll is still required.
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Maneuver Descriptions
There are seven types of maneuvers. Some allow you to trade an action or a bonus in one area to gain a bonus or additional action elsewhere, and others allow you to gain an advantage over your foe more directly. All of them count as one action.
