One Bull Rush Man

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I've been watching a lot of One Punch Man (http://www.daisuki.net/us/en/anime/detail.ONEPUNCHMAN.html) lately, and I really like how the most powerful characters punch each other across the battlefield, so I'm trying out a bull rushing build, and I've already got a lot of the common bull rush boosters on:

Dungeoncrasher Fighter
Shocktrooper
Mauling Gauntlets Soulmeld
Jotunbruud
Totem Avatar Soulmeld
Boosted Strength
Knockback + Power Attack
Cobalt Power
Improved Bull Rush
Luckstone/Pale Green Ioun Stone
Factotum's Intelligence to Strength Checks
Marshal's Charisma to Strength Checks

But the most I can manage is a mere +112, and flinging someone away just over 100 feet is pretty good...if they don't resist. But resistance, despite being futile, is also inevitable.

Is there any way to multiply the distance you can fling someone after smacking them with a Knockbacking unarmed strike and knocking them for a loop? Flinging someone 1,000+ feet would, of course, help with battlefield control, but it also increases the awesome factor considerably. Is there any way to do it without getting into infinite Str/Int/Cha shenanigans? Even if it's just adding damage to the bull rush check, that'd be great.

[AvatarVecna]

Find a way to stack size increases or effective size increases; that should get you some more bonuses, although that won't make a huge difference at this scale. Finding more ways to multiply your PA damage bonus would be good as well, maybe.

[Waddacku]

Power Attack return boosters sadly do nothing whatsoever for Knockback's bonus, since it is entirely dependent only on the penalty you gave yourself with Power Attack.

[AvatarVecna]

Power Attack return boosters sadly do nothing whatsoever for Knockback's bonus, since it is entirely dependent only on the penalty you gave yourself with Power Attack.

Oh right, that's just a houserule my group used; we saw that Knockback's bonus increases from using two-handed weapons and decided to extrapolate it out to apply to other PA multipliers, but I guess that's not an actual rule...

For what it's worth, it never really broke things for us, if OP wants to use it, but it's not RAW, so...yeah.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

What annoys me is that you can never throw a rock more than 50', even if your Strength modifier is seven digits long (and can't throw an enemy at all), whereas a wizard can use telekinesis at minimum caster level to do it to 9 targets out to a full 760 feet by default.

Knockback is nice if you can boost your Strength checks to ridiculous levels, but it shouldn't be this difficult to do something that should logically be fairly simple. You can't knock an enemy back a couple dozen feet unless you can literally bench press mountains? What?

[Aletheides]

The first thought I had when reading this, was that you need to get access to the Awesome Blow feat by any means necessary!

Now, the weakness of that particular feat is the 10-foot distance cap. So, if you could work with your DM to allow an ability, or feat(s) to extend your hitting distance, there you go! Better yet, this could synergize perfectly with your bull-rush build, since Awesome Blow has Improved Bull Rush as a prerequisite anyway.

Also, AB normally only applies when hitting smaller opponents than you, so there's that...but it's a start. :smallsmile:

[MaxiDuRaritry]

The first thought I had when reading this, was that you need to get access to the Awesome Blow feat by any means necessary!

Now, the weakness of that particular feat is the 10-foot distance cap. So, if you could work with your DM to allow an ability, or feat(s) to extend your hitting distance, there you go! Better yet, this could synergize perfectly with your bull-rush build, since Awesome Blow has Improved Bull Rush as a prerequisite anyway.

Also, AB normally only applies when hitting smaller opponents than you, so there's that...but it's a start. :smallsmile:Knockback is better in every possible way.

[Waddacku]

The first thought I had when reading this, was that you need to get access to the Awesome Blow feat by any means necessary!

Now, the weakness of that particular feat is the 10-foot distance cap. So, if you could work with your DM to allow an ability, or feat(s) to extend your hitting distance, there you go! Better yet, this could synergize perfectly with your bull-rush build, since Awesome Blow has Improved Bull Rush as a prerequisite anyway.

Also, AB normally only applies when hitting smaller opponents than you, so there's that...but it's a start. :smallsmile:

That's exactly what Knockback is, actually.

[Psyren]

What annoys me is that you can never throw a rock more than 50', even if your Strength modifier is seven digits long (and can't throw an enemy at all), whereas a wizard can use telekinesis at minimum caster level to do it to 9 targets out to a full 760 feet by default.

There are ways to increase this I think (e.g. Far Shot)

[AvatarVecna]

There are ways to increase this I think (e.g. Far Shot)

A lot of ways. For starters, if you play a giant, they canthrow rocks much further without any boosters. Secondly, if you're a Hulking Hurler bigger than Large (such as via Giant Body), your range increment increases by 5 ft per size above Large IIRC. Thirdly, Far Shot doubles your range increment, as does the Distance enchantment (although it takes a bit of working around to apply weapon enchantments to improvised weapons. Fourthly, if you manage to fit it into your build, Ranged Weapon Mastery extends your base range increment by 20 ft (before it gets multiplied). Fifthly, I'm pretty sure there's some spells that extend range increments as well, but I can't recall what they are ATM. Finally, if you can get access to epic feats (whether via reaching epic levels or more controversially by building a dragonwrought kobold), you can take the Distant Shot epic feat to make your range increment "Sight".

[MaxiDuRaritry]

That seems like a huge amount of bother to go through when A.) IRL, a person with high strength can throw much farther by default, and B.) a single spell can still outdo it by a huge margin.

'Tis very sad.

[AvatarVecna]

That seems like a huge amount of bother to go through when A.) IRL, a person with high strength can throw much farther by default, and B.) a single spell can still outdo it by a huge margin.

'Tis very sad.

True enough. Similarly, the size of object you can throw is based only on your size, rather than your Str or CC; if you're Medium, you can only wield an improvised object weighing up to 50 lbs as a weapon, whether your Str is 2 or 200.

Still, it's pretty simple to make Hulking Hurlers with decent range increments (Large+Distance+Far Shot+Ranged Weapon Mastery=120 ft range increment), although I wish both the size and range increment could be based on Str.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I suppose you could always take a level in martial monk to go for Distant Shot, though giving up the Infinite Exceptional Deflection combo seems like a sad trade. I guess there's a reason for monk 6, after all. Combine with a throwing Improved Unarmed Strike, and...

Regardless, I think we're getting a bit far afield.

[AvatarVecna]

I suppose you could always take a level in martial monk to go for Distant Shot, though giving up the Infinite Exceptional Deflection combo seems like a sad trade. I guess there's a reason for monk 6, after all. Combine with a throwing Improved Unarmed Strike, and...

Regardless, I think we're getting a bit far afield.

Using Martial Monk to pick up Epic feats is one of the key points of evidence for why DM material is unbalanced. However, this conversation has reminded me of the Giant Body spell, which gives you a sizable untyped Str bonus (although therecs a strong argument it's intended to be a size bonus, even though the bonus type is never clarified) as well as making you Huge, Gargantuan, or Colossal.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Using Martial Monk to pick up Epic feats is one of the key points of evidence for why DM material is unbalanced. However, this conversation has reminded me of the Giant Body spell, which gives you a sizable untyped Str bonus (although therecs a strong argument it's intended to be a size bonus, even though the bonus type is never clarified) as well as making you Huge, Gargantuan, or Colossal.If you combine the giant size spell with a shrink collar (from A&EG) to stay at Small size, would you keep the ability score adjustments while skipping out on the size penalties to AC and such?

[AvatarVecna]

If you combine the giant size spell with a shrink collar (from A&EG) to stay at Small size, would you keep the ability score adjustments while skipping out on the size penalties to AC and such?

After tracking down the page number and reviewing the item in question, I think this would be rules-legal...but good luck getting any DM to allow you to have all the benefits of Colossal size without the accompanying penalties to AC/attack rolls. If nothing else, there's an incredibly strong RAI argument that this combo is BS.

[Mr Adventurer]

You might want to check out Tome of Battle Setting Sun manoeuvres instead.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Can you combine the Fling Ally and Fling Enemy feats (from Races of Stone) with Distant Shot? Being able to hurl an epic level enemy to the moon seems pretty...well...epic, honestly.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/K6k5MutQMOU/maxresdefault.jpg

[AvatarVecna]

Can you combine the Fling Ally and Fling Enemy feats (from Races of Stone) with Distant Shot? Being able to hurl an epic level enemy to the moon seems pretty...well...epic, honestly.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/K6k5MutQMOU/maxresdefault.jpg

By RAW? ...I don't think so. Distant Shot specifies that it affects ranged weapons, which people are not. However, allies flung using the Fling Ally feat have a range increment (probably 10 ft normally) and a maximum range (5 range increments), so an argument could be made that they could be counted as a ranged weapon. The argument is weaker with Fling Enemy; while your maximum range is the same as with Fling Ally, the distance you throw them is determined by an opposed check, rather than the nature of the enemy being thrown.

By RAI, I as a DM would probably allow you to reset the max distance thrown to "Sight", but I wouldn't change anything else. So with Fling Enemy, you'd still have to beat their grapple check by an ungodly amount to throw them to the moon...and that's ignoring that another houserule I have regarding Distant Shot is to require Spot checks to make sure the thing you're throwing them at is something you can see well enough to target.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Anything that isn't a previously defined weapon can be used as an improvised weapon, which is still a weapon. And even an improvised weapon has range increments, albeit 10' ones. So it might not be as clear cut as all that.

[AvatarVecna]

Anything that isn't a previously defined weapon can be used as an improvised weapon, which is still a weapon. And even an improvised weapon has range increments, albeit 10' ones. So it might not be as clear cut as all that.

If the improvised weapon rules applied to creatures, though, these feats would by literally pointless, because they have you spend a feat on something you can already do. But even if you say that creatures can be wielded as improvised weapons using the improvised weapon rules, that means they have to abide by the normal weight limits defined in the back of Complete Warrior (10-50 lb objects count as two-handed weapons and require a full round action to throw, with the weight limit doubled per size category up you are from Medium).

Going purely by RAW, though, while Fling Ally requires you to make an attack roll "wielding" your ally, and has a range increment and max range, no such attack roll is required to have your flung enemy hit the right square. It's less "I'm making an attack using my enemy as a thrown weapon" and more "I'm doing some weird bull-rush/grapple combo". By RAW, I guess you could hurl a creature if they were PAO'd into an object, and then you could hurl them to the moon, but that's not quite as awesome as hurling the creature themselves.

[AvatarVecna]

Also, pretty sure creatures aren't objects unless they're dead, and the Improvised Weapons section of the SRD indicates that objects not specifically designed as weapons can be wielded as improvised weapons, not "anything", as you claim.

In the future, if you have a pure RAW concern, like whether Distant Shot applies to Fling Ally/Enemy, I would suggest taking it to the dedicated RAW Q&A thread stickied at the top of the sub-forum; the people who hang there are very thorough and obsessive, they'll probably have a much better answer than the random wannabe's who show up to give their opinion in the rest of the sub-forum.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Well, if a DM rules that Fling Enemy works with Distant Shot, you can do a super judo throw to hurl enemies as far as you want, so long as you're within line of sight.

And building off of that, I found the Scorpion's Grasp feat, from Sandstorm, which allows you to make a free action grapple check if you strike an enemy with an unarmed attack, light weapon, or one-handed weapon. You might be able to get away with using that freebie grapple check to Fling your target away -- though that requires that Scorpion's Grasp overrides the need for a standard action on the Fling Enemy feat. Or you could use an extra action (via celerity, synchronicity, the belt of battle, cunning surge, and so on) to get that standard action far more quickly than normal, essentially getting it as a second free action.

So give your enemy a whack, activate your free standard action, and "I swear, one of these days, straight to the moon!"

That day is today.

More ways to accomplish this would be appreciated, however.

[AvatarVecna]

Well, if a DM rules that Fling Enemy works with Distant Shot, you can do a super judo throw to hurl enemies as far as you want, so long as you're within line of sight..

...and as long as your grapple check was sufficient; Distant Shot only changes the maximum distance you can throw them. Even if the DM rules that they work together, your grapple check still has to be sufficiently greater than their grapple check to cross the distance.

So that I'm not being totally negative, here's a method I found a while back for launching somebody into space (not necessarily to the moon, but still):

If you take enough levels of Spellsword (admittedly a terrible PrC) to get the "Channel Spell" class feature. Get enough caster levels somehow to use "Channel Spell" to channel "Reverse Gravity". Here's the important bit: "Even if the spell normally affects an area or is a ray, it affects only the target". Normally, Reverse Gravity effects everything in its area, but there is no area when you use Channel Spell, the target is just affected, and only the target. Since there's no "top of the area" to stop falling to, they just fall up until the spell wears off. While the spell can't be Persisted without some work (including metamagic reduction and messing with the spell's range), it can be extended. Assuming terminal velocity is reached basically immediately (~1000 ft/round for our purposes), and that you Extend the Spell, doing this with CL 20 gets 40 rounds of falling up, for 40000 ft. Now, I don't think that gets you even out of the atmosphere, but it gets you most of the way. At this point, you just need some way of bumping up your CL to ridiculous heights (I'm sure there's at least a few methods). Once your spell ends, your fake gravity will go away and they'll be subject to real gravity again; normally, this would be "they fall back to earth", but they might be close enough to the moon at this point to be in its gravitational pull instead, if you've got your CL high enough. Alternatively, if you could find a method of extending the duration even further, it would make the CL shenanigans easier.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I think the hulking hurler's really throw anything should work, as it explicitly says 'anything.' It would combine with Distant Shot. Unfortunately, that means taking a level in the PrC or stealing it in one or more ways (such as via illithid savant or the greater doppelganger's consume identity feature, the latter of which needs some hoop-jumping to make work).

[AvatarVecna]

I think the hulking hurler's really throw anything should work, as it explicitly says 'anything.' It would combine with Distant Shot. Unfortunately, that means taking a level in the PrC or stealing it in one or more ways (such as via illithid savant or the greater doppelganger's consume identity feature, the latter of which needs some hoop-jumping to make work).

Yeah, Hulking Hurler would be the way around this. I'm not sure why you think a single level of it is an issue; honestly, the bigger issue is going to be the DM frowning on you bodily lifting your enemy, but it looks RAW legal. Of course, Distant Shot+Hulking Hurler shenanigans are always fun, especially if you can pump up your Str high enough to lift huge monsters (or the planet).

"You what?"

"I pick up the earth and throw it into the sun."

[GnomishPride]

Ah, yes, the age old struggle of throwing your enemy...


...to the moon.
Absolutely classic. :smallbiggrin:

I'm AFB ATM, but I'll try to find some stuff to help.
So far, it looks like your original Bull Rush +100something is really nice, though if you pumped your Jump high enough, I could see you jumping at/with someone and then throwing them even farther.

Though Distant Shot + Throw Anything/Fling Enemy is awesome, Epic levels are not a guarantee and are ridiculously broken, so be warned.

I guess my biggest question is are you looking for just straight distance, or Bull Rush shenanigans, or actually picking them up and throwing them. It'll make my job easier if you chose one of the latter two (really narrows it down).

Looking really good so far!:smallbiggrin:

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Scorpion's Grasp + really throw anything + Distant Shot should do it, though I don't think I can swing the PrC prereqs with a refluffed Dragonwrought kobold, even with flaws, Human-Blooded, and Jotunbruud.


Ah, yes, the age old struggle of throwing your enemy...

...to the moon.
Absolutely classic. :smallbiggrin:

I'm AFB ATM, but I'll try to find some stuff to help.
So far, it looks like your original Bull Rush +100something is really nice, though if you pumped your Jump high enough, I could see you jumping at/with someone and then throwing them even farther.

Though Distant Shot + Throw Anything/Fling Enemy is awesome, Epic levels are not a guarantee and are ridiculously broken, so be warned.

I guess my biggest question is are you looking for just straight distance, or Bull Rush shenanigans, or actually picking them up and throwing them. It'll make my job easier if you chose one of the latter two (really narrows it down).

Looking really good so far!:smallbiggrin:I have the bull rushing shenanigans already, but anything else to do some seriously impressive feats with physically knocking enemies about for ridiculous distances would be welcome.

[Mr Adventurer]

I think the typical answer would be that one Setting Sun manoeuvre plus Footsteps of the Deity.