Beating Bull Rush's size limitation?

[Nettlekid]

After finally buying Skyrim, I want more than ever to make a Fus Ro Dah build. The most flavorful, thematic PrC that seems geared for it is the Voce Warrior, from the 3rd party sourcebook Hyperconscious, who gets a sound sword he makes by shouting.

The build I'm thinking of is Barbarian 1/Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 2/Warblade 1/Bloodstorm Blade 4/Voce Warrior 10. Barbarian is for Pounce, Fighter is for feats, PsyWar is also feats and prereqs, Warblade and Bloodstorm Blade are because I like the whole "ranged melee" thing, and Voce Warrior is the main focus of the build.

What I would love to do is charge in and use a Leap Attack, Shock Trooper Power Attack with the "melee" Echoic Saber at range. To make it Fus Ro Dah-ish, I have two options (as far as I can see.) There's Knockback of course, limited to only Large creatures, which is a bit troublesome. And there's Driving Attack, which I like more, except that it's a full-round action to use. If it was a full attack action I could do it with Pounce, but as is there's no way (besides overuse of Belt of Battle) to Charge to get those Power Attack bonuses and then use Driving Attack. So help on that front would be appreciated.

But the other concern is that you can't use a Bull Rush against anything more than one size larger than you. To have a Dovahkiin feel, I want to be a Medium Humanoid capable of Bull Rushing up to Colossal Dragons! Unless weapon-based Bull Rushes are exceptions to the normal rule, I don't know what to do to make what I want to happen happen.

[Big Fau]

There's a couple of ways to boost it, but I don't know about getting it to Great Wyrm-level. Colossal creatures have a +16 bonus before Strength. Goliaths can get a +4, the Knockback feat can give you a +X (X being your Power Attack penalty), and there's a bunch of abilities that grant bonuses to resist Bull Rushes, but the number of things that just flat-out increase it is fairly low.

Look for things that mention Strength checks. A Totemist and Soulborn Soulmeld both grant bonuses on it, so a 2-level Totemist dip may be a worthwhile investment.

[AstralFire]

Remember that Unyielding Force actually does not move very large creatures, it merely staggers them.

Unyielding Force functions more like the ability to create Gust of Wind at Strong (Fus), Windstorm (Fus Ro) or Tornado (Fus Ro Dah) speeds rather than being fixed at Severe.

[Flickerdart]

Cyclonic Blast or one of the Bigby's Hand spells are probably going to be your best Fus Ro Dah. Twin Split Ray Spellwarped Cyclonic Blast is a great way to defenestrate people you don't like.

[Nettlekid]

There's a couple of ways to boost it, but I don't know about getting it to Great Wyrm-level. Colossal creatures have a +16 bonus before Strength. Goliaths can get a +4, the Knockback feat can give you a +X (X being your Power Attack penalty), and there's a bunch of abilities that grant bonuses to resist Bull Rushes, but the number of things that just flat-out increase it is fairly low.

Look for things that mention Strength checks. A Totemist and Soulborn Soulmeld both grant bonuses on it, so a 2-level Totemist dip may be a worthwhile investment.

I don't mean the size bonus you get from Bull Rush, I mean the actual thing that says "You cannot Bull Rush creatures more than one size larger than you." It wouldn't be impossible to get Bull Rushes of like +50 or more, but if you're Medium and your opponent is Huge with a Bull Rush of +20, you still can't actually Bull Rush them.


Remember that Unyielding Force actually does not move very large creatures, it merely staggers them.

Unyielding Force functions more like the ability to create Gust of Wind at Strong (Fus), Windstorm (Fus Ro) or Tornado (Fus Ro Dah) speeds rather than being fixed at Severe.

Hm, that's actually true. I guess that, as usual, in D&D I hate to allow myself to be limited and instead want to use my main trick on everyone, but you're right, it probably SHOULDN'T work on everyone. That said, for my cap to be Huge is quite limiting. I could go Goliath, or use Expansion, or both, or Goliath with an augmented Expansion to count as Gargantuan (so I COULD Bull Rush Colossals) but I'd really prefer not to be bigger than Medium. It's just kind of uncool. If there was an item or feat that just let you count as one (or two) size(s) larger for Bull Rushes, that would be excellent. (The wording would have to be specific.)

As for the stagger effect, perhaps using Echoic Saber's feat rewriting to use it with Boomerang Daze?

[AstralFire]

I think you'd have an easier time building some sort of melee-gish metamagic build around Cyclonic Blast - I looked it up, Flicker's right, it fits almost perfectly - especially if you can get it added to the Duskblade spell list or adapted as a Warblade Maneuver. Unfortunately, I don't have Hyperconscious, so I can't really give good advice on optimizing with the PrC you wish to focus on.

[Nettlekid]

I think you'd have an easier time building some sort of melee-gish metamagic build around Cyclonic Blast - I looked it up, Flicker's right, it fits almost perfectly - especially if you can get it added to the Duskblade spell list or adapted as a Warblade Maneuver. Unfortunately, I don't have Hyperconscious, so I can't really give good advice on optimizing with the PrC you wish to focus on.

I don't want to default to "spells do it better" because that's usually where my character ideas end up, and I'm getting tired of that.

The PrC in question isn't too much of the important thing. You get a sound sword, which can be used as a melee or a ranged weapon, though I would prefer to use it as a "ranged melee" via the Bloodstorm Blade. It's basically an Aptitude Weapon for free, because all weapon-related feats (so of course it means like Weapon Focus, but just like an Aptitude Weapon technically stuff like Lightning Mace and Three Mountains would also convert) change to be for it instead of their original weapon.

Basically, give me advice for a Bull Rusher, and don't really concern yourself with the weapon I plan to use for it, because that part seems to work okay.

[AstralFire]

Well, it's not bullrushing, per se - but you can arguably replicate the stagger effect with tripping, and Knock-down is a really great and abusable feat for that.

For Bull Rush optimization itself, I'm not finding anything that lets you hit larger sizes, so this may be the wiser route to take if you don't want to houserule in maneuvers or go through spells.

[Nettlekid]

Well, it's not bullrushing, per se - but you can arguably replicate the stagger effect with tripping, and Knock-down is a really great and abusable feat for that.

For Bull Rush optimization itself, I'm not finding anything that lets you hit larger sizes, so this may be the wiser route to take if you don't want to houserule in maneuvers or go through spells.

I can't believe there's nothing that says "You may count yourself as one size larger for the purposes of adjudicating the effects of a Bull Rush," because that would do it.

Yeah, Knock-Down is great. I mean, supposedly a regular Psychic Warrior could manifest Expansion, take the feat, and then make sure they had used Expansion early in the fight. But...It's just not as cool for two big creatures to bash each other than to have the little underdog blast back the big one. That's why I love the Tornado Throw maneuver; if you get your speed high enough, you can trip and throw anything!

[AstralFire]

Well, I'm googling through other Bull Rush optimization threads and I'm not finding anything to that effect. Doesn't mean that such a thing doesn't exist, only that it'd require a better optimizer than I (not a hard requirement to meet!)

[Flickerdart]

I was hoping Jotunbrud would do it, but that only gives you the +4 modifier as though you were Large and doesn't help with anything else.

[Vaz]

Half Cobalt Dragon have a line of Bullrush with a check equal to the Damage dealt (Force, Ref Half).