Flush Out: Can we optimize this? [3.5]

[Zaq]

Most people here are familiar with Wild Cohort. Not everyone here knows that the web article with Wild Cohort (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20031118x) had other sections (including feats, PrCs, and new Handle Animal tricks). I'm here to talk about one of those new Handle Animal tricks: Flush Out. (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20031125a)

From the article:

Flush Out (DC 20): The animal moves into an area and, if it encounters any creatures, it makes noise and feints attacks toward the creature in an attempt to drive it to you. If the animal makes the creature move, there is a 50% chance that the quarry moves directly toward you. Otherwise, the quarry veers to your left or right (equal chance for each).

I feel like there has to be some kind of hidden potential here. It's a weird nebulous sorta-kinda forced movement effect, and those are rare in 3.5. The interesting part is that it doesn't sound like the quarry has the ability to choose where it's going. If movement happens at all, then it sounds like there's a 50% chance of the quarry moving towards you, a 25% chance of it going to your left, and a 25% chance of it going to your right (whatever "left" and "right" mean in a game that officially doesn't use facing). That seems like the quarry can't fully control where it's going, which definitely has some interesting possibilities.

(Now, technically, what I just said isn't actually what's written there. The rules could be parsed to mean that there's a 50% chance that the quarry moves directly towards you, and if that isn't what happens (no matter whether that's because the GM didn't roll in the correct half of the 50% chance or because the quarry otherwise didn't move), then the quarry has a 50% chance of veering to your left and a 50% chance of veering to your right. This is unlikely to be RAI, and the debatable part is whether the "if the animal makes the creature move" clause applies only to the sentence in which it appears or if it applies to both that sentence and the following sentence, but I still think that there's at least a moderate argument to be made there.)

Anyway, no matter whether we read it the more natural way or the more technical way, the frustrating part about this little nugget of rules text is that there's a lot that's left unsaid. How big is this "area" that your animal moves into? Does this affect multiple targets (as "any creatures" implies), or does it only affect one target (as "the creature" implies)? How far does the creature move, and is it allowed to do anything like Tumble to try to avoid AoOs? Does the creature have to spend an action on its own turn to move, or does the movement happen on the animal's turn? Most importantly, what determines if the animal makes the creature move at all?

The rules may simply be too incomplete to actually do anything fun with them, which would be very disappointing indeed. But maybe we can tease something out of this. I feel like there just has to be optimization potential for this kind of weird semi-forced movement. Is there anything you can think of that would make this worthwhile? Any other rules we can coax into forming a framework for this new bit of rules text? Any neat tricks that become possible if we manage to make this work?

[Jormengand]

What if we combine this with some kind of bull rush, so the wild cohort actually has a way to make them move? Which is also odd, because it may end up moving them back through the cohort's space if it does, depending on your location.

[daremetoidareyo]

What if we combine this with some kind of bull rush, so the wild cohort actually has a way to make them move? Which is also odd, because it may end up moving them back through the cohort's space if it does, depending on your location.

Triggering AOOs?


I feel like there has to be some kind of hidden potential here.
Perhaps a combat trapsmith 5 with improved web (dropping dex modifier web traps as a full round action) can use this to entrap an enemy?

Hold the line would work to trigger an attack of opportunity from you?

[ben-zayb]

You could make it go to a destination that is fatal to it but not to you. To a cliff while flying? To a lava pool while you have fire resist?


Also note that there is no minimum distance between the enemy and you. Heck, do we even need LoE/LoS for this?

[Jormengand]

Are there any useful spells to put Imbue with Spell Ability on the animal so it can move stuff?

[daremetoidareyo]

You could make it go to a destination that is fatal to it but not to you. To a cliff while flying? To a lava pool while you have fire resist?


Also note that there is no minimum distance between the enemy and you. Heck, do we even need LoE/LoS for this?

You do in order to push the animal. But you only need LoS to the animal. Does the creature need line of sight towards the handler? That would make for a pretty good sneak attacky build that includes access to greater invisibility. Animal keeps pushing enemies into full attack range.

Also good for battlefield control when PCs attack from two sides. It can push metamagic sorcerers around by eating up a movement action. That's why I suggested web traps or entanglement. If you lasso or harpoon an opponent to a rope tethered to the animal companion (hippo?) It leaves the opponent relatively actionless. They have to move towards you, even if the animal is keeping them held fast and away from you. Harpoon paired with rideby attack and quick dismount?

[Troacctid]

It's not really forced movement. If you send a giant dog over and have it bark and growl and chase someone, they'll probably run away from it, because most people will be intimidated by a giant dog—but they don't have to, it's just a logical course of action that they might take. If you send a tyrannosaurus over to do the same thing, they're even more likely to run away from it. I certainly would. If you send a ferret, you probably won't intimidate anyone bigger than a rabbit. If you send a rabbit, good luck.

It's similar to placing a Major Image of a scary thing. It's up to the DM how they react.

[Psyren]

As Troacctid stated, this one is really up in the air. The key clause is:

"...it makes noise and feints attacks toward the creature in an attempt to drive it to you. If the animal makes the creature move..."

And it provides absolutely no way to force that beyond the GM agreeing with you that that should happen. Then and only then does the direction percentage bit trigger.

[Cerefel]

Maybe have the animal make an intimidate check vs the target's will?

[Tiri]

Maybe have the animal make an intimidate check vs the target's will?

Intimidate checks are made against a DC of 1d20 + character level or Hit Dice + target’s Wisdom bonus [if any] + target’s modifiers on saves against fear, not their will save.

[Jormengand]

As Troacctid stated, this one is really up in the air. The key clause is:

"...it makes noise and feints attacks toward the creature in an attempt to drive it to you. If the animal makes the creature move..."

And it provides absolutely no way to force that beyond the GM agreeing with you that that should happen. Then and only then does the direction percentage bit trigger.

This is why we're trying to give it ways to force movement.

[Cerefel]

Intimidate checks are made against a DC of 1d20 + character level or Hit Dice + target’s Wisdom bonus [if any] + target’s modifiers on saves against fear, not their will save.

I know how intimidate checks are normally made, but a will save seems more appropriate here. A normal intimidate check could work too.

[Psyren]

This is why we're trying to give it ways to force movement.

You might be, but the OP seems to have skipped over that and gone right to the movement being assumed. Hence my post (and Troacctid's.)

[Zaq]

You might be, but the OP seems to have skipped over that and gone right to the movement being assumed. Hence my post (and Troacctid's.)

You wound me, Psyren. Only one of the two interpretations I posted involved the movement always happening, and you'll notice that I italicized the question of how we determine if the movement happens at all.

(I do still say there is a RAW reading that says that the movement will happen one way or another, but as I mentioned in the OP, that reading is unlikely to be RAI.)

Anyway, in terms of convincing the quarry to move, I feel like fear is both good and bad. On the one hand, the Frightened condition is a RAW-legal way of forcing someone to "choose" to move away (they're forced to by the condition, so they aren't really choosing to, but the movement still happens on their turn and uses their action, as opposed to something like a bull rush or a Setting Sun throw). The tricky part is that the Frightened condition forces the target to "fle[e] from the source of its fear as best it can." Now, yes, facing doesn't exist, but it's still hard to say that something fleeing "from" a scary animal will run through that animal (or past it) on its way "directly to you," as Flush Out specifies there is a 50% chance of happening. (Yeah, if your animal ends up on the other side of the target from you, that's all well and good, but that's by no means the only way this could ever happen.) You could argue that the hard-coded movement specified by Flush Out overrides the "as best it can" part of Frightened, but it's still a little bit dicey.

Still, it might be the best we've got. Anyone got a good way of getting an animal to reliably induce the Frightened condition as part of using Flush Out? Frightful Presence would be a good starting point if it wasn't so bloody impossible to actually make it affect anything worthwhile. Nearly every FP specifies that it only works on stuff with fewer HD than the creature with FP, and it's not going to be easy to get an animal with FP that has more HD than what you're generally fighting, at least if we want to use RAW-guaranteed ways of getting animals (mainly Wild Cohort and Animal Companion or similar abilities that guarantee you access to an animal buddy, as contrasted with Handle Animal, which requires the GM allowing you to find and raise the animal you want as opposed to a feat or feature specifying that you get something). Other methods of forcing any kind of movement would be useful (since once any movement at all happens, Flush Out's text takes over from there), but we'll take what we can get.

[daremetoidareyo]

You wound me, Psyren. Only one of the two interpretations I posted involved the movement always happening, and you'll notice that I italicized the question of how we determine if the movement happens at all.

(I do still say there is a RAW reading that says that the movement will happen one way or another, but as I mentioned in the OP, that reading is unlikely to be RAI.)

Anyway, in terms of convincing the quarry to move, I feel like fear is both good and bad. On the one hand, the Frightened condition is a RAW-legal way of forcing someone to "choose" to move away (they're forced to by the condition, so they aren't really choosing to, but the movement still happens on their turn and uses their action, as opposed to something like a bull rush or a Setting Sun throw). The tricky part is that the Frightened condition forces the target to "fle[e] from the source of its fear as best it can." Now, yes, facing doesn't exist, but it's still hard to say that something fleeing "from" a scary animal will run through that animal (or past it) on its way "directly to you," as Flush Out specifies there is a 50% chance of happening. (Yeah, if your animal ends up on the other side of the target from you, that's all well and good, but that's by no means the only way this could ever happen.) You could argue that the hard-coded movement specified by Flush Out overrides the "as best it can" part of Frightened, but it's still a little bit dicey.

Still, it might be the best we've got. Anyone got a good way of getting an animal to reliably induce the Frightened condition as part of using Flush Out? Frightful Presence would be a good starting point if it wasn't so bloody impossible to actually make it affect anything worthwhile. Nearly every FP specifies that it only works on stuff with fewer HD than the creature with FP, and it's not going to be easy to get an animal with FP that has more HD than what you're generally fighting, at least if we want to use RAW-guaranteed ways of getting animals (mainly Wild Cohort and Animal Companion or similar abilities that guarantee you access to an animal buddy, as contrasted with Handle Animal, which requires the GM allowing you to find and raise the animal you want as opposed to a feat or feature specifying that you get something). Other methods of forcing any kind of movement would be useful (since once any movement at all happens, Flush Out's text takes over from there), but we'll take what we can get.

Not raw, but putting an intelligence cap on what counts as quarry for the trick would go a long way towards making it more clear cut. e.g. A spellweaver is going to do something different than a brown bear.

If we are fear stacking to compel movement, the first things that come to mind are:

* share soulmeld: stack intimidate bonuses, but the companion is only flushing things out within 5 feet of you.

* Shared fury (ROTW) + scary rage enhancers that i don't know off the top of my head.

* Dragon trainer: Any dragon critters out there with less than 6 int and frightful presence?

other idea...
* Paladins with special mounts may be able to take care of biz. A paladin 5/ashworm dragoon 1 gets an ashworm that gets +2 HD from paladin class levels, and another 2 HD from from ashworm levels.

[Zaq]

Not raw, but putting an intelligence cap on what counts as quarry for the trick would go a long way towards making it more clear cut. e.g. A spellweaver is going to do something different than a brown bear.

If we are fear stacking to compel movement, the first things that come to mind are:

* share soulmeld: stack intimidate bonuses, but the companion is only flushing things out within 5 feet of you.

* Shared fury (ROTW) + scary rage enhancers that i don't know off the top of my head.

* Dragon trainer: Any dragon critters out there with less than 6 int and frightful presence?

other idea...
* Paladins with special mounts may be able to take care of biz. A paladin 5/ashworm dragoon 1 gets an ashworm that gets +2 HD from paladin class levels, and another 2 HD from from ashworm levels.

Intimidating Rage (CWar) is the obvious choice for something like Shared Fury, but you've still got the 5 ft limitation that Share Soulmeld has, so that's less useful.

Normal Special Mounts wouldn't work, since they're too smart (and there's actually no rules about teaching Handle Animal tricks to critters with >2 INT). Ashworms might work . . . they have 1 INT, so they're legal normally, and I don't see anything in Ashworm Dragoon that increases their INT. The problem is that if you use the Consecration of the Shifting Sand to turn them into Paladin Special Mounts, they gain the benefits of being a Special Mount, and that includes becoming too smart to be taught Handle Animal tricks. Without the Consecration, though, I don't know if you could get enough HD on them for FP to matter. (I'm also not sure how you're getting FP on them in the first place, since they don't have it normally.) I'd really rather not talk about intentionally damaging or penalizing their INT to get them under the threshold (even if an Evil-aligned Pally of Tyranny/Slaughter might be okay with it, I'm not really okay with it, and it might not even work because a Special Mount appears in full health every time you summon it, so you might not be able to keep the penalty on it long enough to teach it the trick), so let's just not go there.

[Extra Anchovies]

Normal Special Mounts wouldn't work, since they're too smart (and there's actually no rules about teaching Handle Animal tricks to critters with >2 INT). Ashworms might work . . . they have 1 INT, so they're legal normally, and I don't see anything in Ashworm Dragoon that increases their INT. The problem is that if you use the Consecration of the Shifting Sand to turn them into Paladin Special Mounts, they gain the benefits of being a Special Mount, and that includes becoming too smart to be taught Handle Animal tricks.

Ashworms are magical beasts, and other special mounts are treated as such for type-dependent effects - which makes teaching them Handle Animal tricks a bit harder (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/skills.htm#handleAnimal). Intelligence increases and type changes don't erase already-learned tricks AFAIK, so you could teach your Ashworm the Flush Out trick with a DC 43 Handle Animal check and two months' training before you make them your special mount.

As an aside, the epic handle animal uses don't include check DCs for basic handling of non-animals, and the DC 10 check to get a creature to perform a trick they already know specifically mentions animals - you'd need to either use the DC 10 or pick some other number, because by the Handle Animal rules as written (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/handleAnimal.htm) non-animals that know tricks cannot be made to perform them :smalltongue:

[Troacctid]

Creatures with above animal intelligence don't need to be specially trained to do tricks because they're smart enough to follow (or ignore) directions. You can just tell it what to do. (If it has 3+ Int, that means it understands at least one language—and unless otherwise noted, that language is Common.)

[Extra Anchovies]

Creatures with above animal intelligence don't need to be specially trained to do tricks because they're smart enough to follow (or ignore) directions. You can just tell it what to do. (If it has 3+ Int, that means it understands at least one language—and unless otherwise noted, that language is Common.)

Ah, but the issue here is that we specifically need the creature to perform a Handle Animal trick. Making scary faces and shouting "ooga booga booga boo, I'm coming to get you!" isn't enough to reproduce the Flush Out effect - the creature actually needs to know the trick, because it has specific rules of its own.

[Troacctid]

That takes us back to what I was talking about earlier, how the trick doesn't actually force the quarry to do anything. Yes, anyone can walk up to someone and go "Ooga booga booga!" to try and scare them in a certain direction. And if you're a big scary tyrannosaurus, you'll probably get them to run away from you. I don't imagine your success rate will be much different if you're also wearing a headband of intellect.

Handle Animal doesn't give animals any new abilities that they couldn't have done before. It just lets you train them to do it on command.

[Darrin]

By RAW, the text doesn't specify how the animal makes the target move. Maybe a job for Martial Study: Mighty Throw?

[Troacctid]

It makes noise and feints attacks, apparently.

I assume it doesn't go into a ton of detail because this is a trick that people train animals for in real life. Kind of like how the Come trick doesn't specify how the animal comes to you—does it float? Does it teleport? Is it yanked towards you by an invisible tether? Well, no, it just uses its normal movement speed, like normal, because you're not doing anything special, you're just telling it to come.