Defense against CMANs

[spraggeth]

Greetings.

Trying to find the best way to hunt bandits as a pure and am wondering all the facts that go into general defense against CMANs. Bandits wreck me as a pure as there are too many crit kills from sbash and other various skills.

My question is, what skills provide general defense to CMANs? I know that cunning defense at rank 5 gives a +15 to end roll against all CMANs. Is there anything else that helps? IE perception, PF, survival, dodge, etc. Anything at all?

Thanks for any help you can give. All I have found so far is that someone told me that training in CMAN itself gives you a +1 to end roll for every 10 ranks of CMAN trained. I haven’t found this anywhere on the wiki or forums, just from an individual.

Thanks!

[Mogonis]

I think perception will help reduce the DS pushdown when a bandit ambushes from hiding, and it'll also help spot traps.

[spraggeth]

I’m 1x perception now...might have to go 2x. I know perception helps with traps and so does survival. Didn’t know about pushdown benefits.

[Mogonis]

I think the only defense against CMans is CDefense and learning any CMan you can that is being used against you. Obviously there's a limited list for pures.

[gs4-PauperSid]

I rub the moonstone cubes too.

Solid moonstone cube
A solid moonstone cube is a magical item commonly found in the treasure system that is imbeded with Martial Prowess (1705), a spell that adds +10 to Combat Maneuver offense and defense rolls within the CML. They give no benefit to non-CML maneuvers.
A solid moonstone cube can be activated using the RUB verb, with no Magic Item Use skill requirement, and generally contains one to two charges. This item is very similar to a heavy quartz orb, however meant to benefit weapon users instead of magic users.
Heavy moonstone cubes are exactly the same as solid moonstone cubes, except that they are rechargeable.

[Fallen]

Solid Moonstone Cubes contain the spell Martial Prowess (1705) to give you +10 against CMANS (but not critter maneuver attacks). Those are good to use for Bandits.

Bah, beat by less than a minute.

[Erous]

CMAN training, physical fitness, perception, moonstone cubes. Not sure what your profession is, but as an empath you have easy access to 3x physical fitness, which assists heavily into defense against cmans. As noted, you should be getting CDEFENSE when the points allow, but multi training cman as a pure is very difficult. Your best bets are training CMAN as applicable, multi training physical fitness and perception.

[cwolff]

Walk slowly when doing Bandits. That will help mitigate traps and initial ambushes but you'll still get hit. Try to survive the first attack and then throw an AOE spell. After that pick them off one by one. Most of us can get spelled up enough that regular melee attacks don't do much, but those CMAN's and maneuvers are a bitch and I've always been surprised how fragile my pures are when they get cman'ed by some A-hole bandit.

[spraggeth]

Sorcerer. Already 1x PF and 1x perception. I have the TPs where I could 1x in CMANs but really the CMAN to help a lot with bandits are cdef. I don’t die unless insta killed from sbash, sstrike, or something of the likes. I guess I can pick up cdef and then go 2x perc. Other than that, just keep tinkering.

[Fallen]

Using Animates to help protect you when you're pinned in RT can be quite useful as a Sorcerer. Bandits themselves make pretty damned good animates if you have the MAL to use them.

[audioserf]

As an empath I can solo bandits but it's not without its risks, even with 140 up. I tend to just do them in groups. Even one other person jacks survival rate up considerably.

[kutter]

Ok, not sure if it actually helps or not, but I keep 402 up whenever I hunt bandits, no matter what alt is hunting them, assuming they have the spell. It is cheap, and it makes me FEEL like it is helping. But if you get RT locked with 3 in the room, well, it just sucks, nothing to be done about it.

[spraggeth]

“Presence also provides about a 20% phantom increase in total perception ranks in defending against ambush attacks.” -gswiki

402 definitely helps.

[megadeth]

I can say that as a mutant wizard, I have around 50 ranks of cman, 2x perception, and 1x PF....I always have up 402. I know I’m not as solid as a warrior, but I feel like I don’t get cman insta-splattered that often. The occasional stupid open roll gets me, but otherwise I usually take minimal damage / round times and I do, somewhat often, avoid bandit maneuvers all together. I hunt the bowels regularly and probably 9 out of 10 times I can avoid stone fist and earthen fury casts, even when I was like level and below.