How would this tripping nerf change the game?

[Coidzor]

So most of us know about reach tripping builds, that use their reach and AoOs to make would-be chargers faceplant in supplication.

The Natural Reach Weapons thread put an idea in my brain of what would happen if creatures had the option of either halting their movement (and possibly taking half the damage of the weapon used to make the trip attempt) or pressing onward and make the opposed check and risk getting halted and proned and possibly receive a followup attack.

Offhand, the biggest thing I see is potentially less wasted actions and not having to spend the extra actions standing up.

[AnachroNinja]

Well, from one perspective it seems really unrealistic because if someone is "charging" it is going to be very very difficult to just stop on a dime because someone swung a stick at you. That is a lot of momentum to abort. I can't really see it working, especially since you can trip a target who is standing still so why would stopping your charge, something that would likely put you off balance by its very nature, prevent you from being tripped?

On the other hand, why would you want to buff one aspect of melee classes (chargers) at the cost of nerfing another aspect of melee (trippers) when neither is particularly powerful to begin with? The biggest beneficiary of this is going to be monsters and NPCs fighting the tripper in the party. Why punish him?

[mabriss lethe]

I'd personally leave it alone. Tripping is one of the few very effective core mechanics melee types can truly excel at. If the party tripper locks down an npc charger, he isn't being cheap, he's doing his job. Sure, it can be frustrating, but as a dm, it's my job to give my players those moments when they can shine. It's also my job to throw in the occasional tripper at the party's charger, because the party's invisible rogue needs his time to shine saving the tripper.

[Andreaz]

So most of us know about reach tripping builds, that use their reach and AoOs to make would-be chargers faceplant in supplication.

The Natural Reach Weapons thread put an idea in my brain of what would happen if creatures had the option of either halting their movement (and possibly taking half the damage of the weapon used to make the trip attempt) or pressing onward and make the opposed check and risk getting halted and probed and possibly receive w followup attack.

Offhand, the biggest thing I see is potentially less wasted actions and not having to spend the extra actions standing up.While this nerf doesn't really nerf the two most important things trip does in this scenario (negating a charge and stopping the enemy RITE NAO), only the follow up benefits, the player will just trip it again the next round anyway. It's adding a second layer of complexity to the scene... And i'm not seeing the appreciable gain, I'm really not.

For starters, why would you want to nerf trip? Why is it too powerful? Last I checked it's just powerful, which is a good thing.

[OldTrees1]

Improved Trip would never be taken again. Improved Trip currently offers 3 benefits, by removing the strongest benefit of the feat(success means you regain an action) you reduce the value of the feat below the "worth a feat slot" value. So people will chose another feat that is worth more than the opportunity cost.

No tripper having the "success means you regain an action" feature means that you have cut the amount of influence the tripper can have in a turn by some percentage. Now they are that much weaker at their role of protecting via ZoC because they have more enemies left alive(due to enemies surviving some percentage longer).

Now we get to the not having to spend actions standing up. This means that the enemies the tripper is trying to deal with now have more action economy than before. With the tripper already facing more enemies due to Improved Trip being nerfed, the increased enemy action economy to deal with quickly makes it so that it is dramatically easier to swarm past the tripper than before. This shifts trip from being a viable ZoC mechanism to merely an anti charge technique. No longer would you have "trippers" since trip would no longer define the people that used to use trip.

Summary: Trippers are stronger than their opportunity cost, but mostly for the parts this nerf would remove. So this nerf would remove trippers.

[Coidzor]

I'd personally leave it alone. Tripping is one of the few very effective core mechanics melee types can truly excel at. If the party tripper locks down an npc charger, he isn't being cheap, he's doing his job. Sure, it can be frustrating, but as a dm, it's my job to give my players those moments when they can shine. It's also my job to throw in the occasional tripper at the party's charger, because the party's invisible rogue needs his time to shine saving the tripper.

Well, he'd still be locking the charger down, the charger just has the choice of risking the trip anyway or losing (most of) their turn.


Well, from one perspective it seems really unrealistic because if someone is "charging" it is going to be very very difficult to just stop on a dime because someone swung a stick at you. That is a lot of momentum to abort. I can't really see it working, especially since you can trip a target who is standing still so why would stopping your charge, something that would likely put you off balance by its very nature, prevent you from being tripped?

On the other hand, why would you want to buff one aspect of melee classes (chargers) at the cost of nerfing another aspect of melee (trippers) when neither is particularly powerful to begin with? The biggest beneficiary of this is going to be monsters and NPCs fighting the tripper in the party. Why punish him?

How would this buff chargers? If they have the reach necessary to get their charge off, they wouldn't have gotten tripped anyway. If they don't have the reach necessary to get their charge off, they've wasted their movement and if they're lucky have a creature within their reach that they can make a single attack against without charge bonuses.

As for why this thread, a thought experiment, mostly.


Improved Trip would never be taken again. Improved Trip currently offers 3 benefits, by removing the strongest benefit of the feat(success means you regain an action) you reduce the value of the feat below the "worth a feat slot" value. So people will chose another feat that is worth more than the opportunity cost.

No tripper having the "success means you regain an action" feature means that you have cut the amount of influence the tripper can have in a turn by some percentage. Now they are that much weaker at their role of protecting via ZoC because they have more enemies left alive(due to enemies surviving some percentage longer).

Now we get to the not having to spend actions standing up. This means that the enemies the tripper is trying to deal with now have more action economy than before. With the tripper already facing more enemies due to Improved Trip being nerfed, the increased enemy action economy to deal with quickly makes it so that it is dramatically easier to swarm past the tripper than before. This shifts trip from being a viable ZoC mechanism to merely an anti charge technique. No longer would you have "trippers" since trip would no longer define the people that used to use trip.

Summary: Trippers are stronger than their opportunity cost, but mostly for the parts this nerf would remove. So this nerf would remove trippers.

I'm re-reading my OP and I don't see anywhere where I said that trip no longer had its follow up attack after a successful trip, merely that when it came to movement-based AoOs, a creature had the choice to just stop as if Stand Still was used instead of proceeding to the trip attempt. They would still be able to trip and have a follow up attack with the bonuses for attacking a prone opponent when they trip from a Karmic Strike or Robilar's Gambit AoO or trip on their turn.

Knockdown would also still work.

I have to wonder how often you deal with overwhelming swarms of enemies that aren't essentially irrelevant mooks, though, given your

[Florian]

@Coidzor:

It would buff chargers because they´d be in a position to re-attempt the same charge attack on the next round. Same as with Stand Still.

[OldTrees1]

I'm re-reading my OP and I don't see anywhere where I said that trip no longer had its follow up attack after a successful trip, merely that when it came to movement-based AoOs, a creature had the choice to just stop as if Stand Still was used instead of proceeding to the trip attempt. They would still be able to trip and have a follow up attack with the bonuses for attacking a prone opponent when they trip from a Karmic Strike or Robilar's Gambit AoO or trip on their turn.

Knockdown would also still work.

I have to wonder how often you deal with overwhelming swarms of enemies that aren't essentially irrelevant mooks, though, given your

1) You made it so nobody is tripped on a movement AoO unless they want to risk being tripped. As such if facing someone with Improved Trip(remember Trip does not have a followup attack by default) then they would halt rather than allow the Trip+followup attack. This is the nerf to Improved Trip I was talking about(and from which the rest of my post follows)

2) How would the Trip from Knockdown on an AoO not also qualify for the "Halt rather than be tripped" escape? I trust you since you are the one making the rule change, but that is not an exception I would have expected given Knock-down's language.

3) Your 3rd thing got cut off. However the answer is more often under this change than before this change. (Because what was on the border of being overwhelming before, now is overwhelming)