[3.P?] How would you change Bull Rushing to make it more worthwhile?

[Coidzor]

On the surface it seems like, hey, forcing enemies to move would be a good tool in the arsenal of a martial-type that wants to have some control in their arsenal.

Unfortunately, between the action economy and lack of real consequences beyond being moved away from either a more vulnerable partymember that the creature being bull rushed is singlemindedly focusing on or sometimes moved away from its own allies to cease benefiting from a situational limited range buff or something, bull rushing is largely useless without a way to add damage to it via the Dungeoncrasher Fighter ACF and feats like Knockback and, preferably, a way to not have to move with one's opponent when one bull rushes them unless one wants to move with them.

I've only skimmed the PF section on bull rushing, and I'll go back and revisit it here soon, but aside from being altered to fit into the CMB/CMD mechanic, bull rushing still seems largely in the same place as in 3.5, though there's a couple of feats I still haven't fully learned/memorized in PF that are also nifty uses for bull rushing, I think.

So without making Dungeoncrasher or Knockback a standard part of bull rushing, what would you do? Have you run into anything homebrew-wise or house-rule-wise of note or interest?

Also, what do you think of this idea I recently had of allowing one to make bull rush attempts as part of a full-attack and give a sort of pseudo-spring-attack so that one can, say, bull rush for all of one's iteratives so long as one still has movement left, and one can move double one's move speed as in a charge so long as all of that move speed is spent inside a bull rush or another?

It won't *fix* most of the problems, but it would allow some options for repositioning, say, full attacking an enemy with 3 attacks and using two of the attacks to damage them and the final attack to try to reposition them so that they've got to decide between dealing with you or using a withdraw action to try to get back at another party member, effectively wasting their turn in exchange for part of one's full attack and setting one up for a charge.

I was also looking at the caber weapon from dragon magazine which forces a reflex save in order to *not* have to move out of the AoE and wondering if a feat or related special attack/combat maneuver would be in order to try to force an opponent to make a sort of... off-turn 5 foot or maybe even 10 foot step, though that's just the barest glimmer of a concept right now.

[Dysart]

I'm acutally quite a big fan of Bullrush already but in comparison to maneuvers like Trip and Disarm it's much weaker.

For me the way to make it more viable would be to have it cause AoO from others (without needing Greater Bull Rush feat). My reasoning behind this is that Trip, if successful causes the opponent to be prone which in turn will draw an AoO from all in range due to them standing.
To balance out the gain I would have bullrush failures knock you back 5ft and drawing an AoO from the target.

My change would make it still situational but situational to provide multiple free attacks from allies but also risk the chance of you wasting your turn and drawing an attack from your opponent.

Thoughts?

[Coidzor]

I'm acutally quite a big fan of Bullrush already but in comparison to maneuvers like Trip and Disarm it's much weaker.

For me the way to make it more viable would be to have it cause AoO from others (without needing Greater Bull Rush feat). My reasoning behind this is that Trip, if successful causes the opponent to be prone which in turn will draw an AoO from all in range due to them standing.
To balance out the gain I would have bullrush failures knock you back 5ft and drawing an AoO from the target.

My change would make it still situational but situational to provide multiple free attacks from allies but also risk the chance of you wasting your turn and drawing an attack from your opponent.

Thoughts?

Well, that is one area where I prefer 3.5 over PF, since by default in 3.5 both parties provoke AoOs for the movement of the bull rush.

I'll probably go with a setup where the first or second feat relating to bull rushing alters the chance of being targeted instead of one's foe by one's own allies' AoOs to reduce it or eliminate it and the chance of enemies' AoOs against the bull rushing character instead targeting the bull rushed creature is increased or possibly all of those AoOs are actually just gained by the target of the bull rush instead, which would make it a situational but powerful way to move across the battlefield as well as a way to move enemies around, but that's offset by spending ye feats.

Provoking two AoOs, one for attempting the bull rush and another for failing seems a bit harsh, though, and contrary to my purpose in trying to make the base bull rush more usable, while still maintaining a clear advantage in possessing Bull Rush feats. Granted, without combat reflexes or some special ability like combat reflexes, foes would only have the one AoO to actually use despite the second opportunity for one. And it seems overkill to give every enemy within reach an AoO for a failed bull rush rather than just the one targeted by the failed bull rush.

Switching the AoO to after the bull rush attempt, whether it fails or succeeds, might be interesting though, and then having a failure still hold a bit more consequence than a wasted action may be necessary depending upon other alterations.

[Elricaltovilla]

Well, if you like Path of War at all, there's a feat called Seize the Opportunity that lets you use an attack action or perform a Combat Maneuver with an Attack of Opportunity, meaning that you can use your AoOs to bull rush enemies. It's quite potent on lockdown builds as you can use the feat to knock enemies out of your threatened area, making it a decent alternative to trip (which is much harder to pull off in Pathfinder).

[Seerow]

Depends on you want to go with it. Like for a more super powered feeling game, I could see something like making Bullrush push the target back 5ft per str mod (instead of 5ft for every 5 you beat them by) and by default no following along. Throw in something like 1d6 damage per 10ft pushed back (bonus damage for hitting an object) and you're pretty solid.


For a more general solution, one thing I've considered is making all of the standard combat maneuvers something you can choose to activate as a swift action to add to your next attack. This is kind of like making Knockback baseline, but less powerful.


More control over where you bullrush an enemy would probably be a good idea. Bullrushing straight back makes sense, but even the 1 square left or right per square back that Shock Trooper gives is a huge deal as far as tactical positioning goes.



Honestly though the single biggest thing is going to be environment design. For bullrushing or positioning in general to matter at all, there needs to be battlefield elements that all parties involved care about. On a featureless plain it doesn't matter what you do, bullrush is going to be mostly useless.

...or does it have to be? You could do something like bullrushing an enemy knocks them off-balance. How much would rogues love the bullrushing fighter if bullrushing made them flat footed against their next attack? Or granted a +4 bonus to the next combat maneuver (making it easier to trip or disarm, for example).

[Deophaun]

Honestly though the single biggest thing is going to be environment design. For bullrushing or positioning in general to matter at all, there needs to be battlefield elements that all parties involved care about. On a featureless plain it doesn't matter what you do, bullrush is going to be mostly useless.
^This is really all you need to do to make bullrush meaningful without even touching the rules. Give them cliffs, walls of fire, frozen-but-not-quite-solid lakes, chained animals/magical beasts, anything to make being moved around by your opponent a Very Bad Thing.

[OldTrees1]

Allow a Bullrush as a replacement for an attack rather than only as a standard action. This is one of the 3 benefits Knockback gives but I think that it is distinct enough by itself to be a worthy comment.

So:
Goblin tries to rush past the Fighter? The Fighter can Trip, Standstill, Slash, or Bullrush the goblin.

The 6th Fighter is fighting an ogre and an orc shaman? Bullrush the ogre to get close enough to slash the shaman.

There is a giant next to a cliff? Expend 3 attacks making bull rush checks to push the giant over the edge.