Pathfinder How do you handle the trip/reach combo [Archive]

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Kurnagar

2017-10-19, 03:45 AM

Hello to everyone

I have a question on how other pathfinder's DM handle the following:

One of my player wants to use a guisarme and this way trip opponents at distance without provoking attacks of opportunity and also tripping opponents trying to get close to him (also thanks to reach and AOO).
I think i read the rules correctly and what he's trying to do seems valid.
My problem is not of technical nature but more of "fun" nature. What i mean is that i think putting every creature to the ground every round of every combat for the whole campaign will be not only boring but also kind of ridicule.
My view is that combat maneuvers should be the exception and normal attack the most often used stuff.

So i wonder, do other DM around here find the guisarme "overpowered" ?
How do you deal with it ?
Do you forbid guisarme ?

Thanks for your advice

Castilonium

2017-10-19, 04:11 AM

Use enemies that aren't affected by tripping, are difficult to trip, or don't have to worry about melee AoOs. Creatures with:

No legs
Multiple legs
Stability
Flight
Large+ sizes for high CMD
Reach
Ranged attacks
Spells
High acrobatics checks
Teleportation
Invisibility/total concealment
Debuffs that prevent the player from making AoOs like blind

Or, just add a few more weak medium sized humanoid mooks to encounters so that your player will get the satisfaction of tripping the fodder.

Quertus

2017-10-19, 04:51 AM

First and foremost, by giving him things to trip! If he is investing in an idea, help make it happen!

Now, is it unfun? I've never found it unfun, on either side of the GM screen. Because it's strong (hooray, fighters get nice things!), but not as guaranteed as, say, a Wall of X BFC, nor does it shut things down as completely as, say, successful SoD effects, or removing their heads does.

Things I have found unfun (as a GM, where my one joy is "how will the PCs handle this?") are a well-built grapple monster (which guaranteed that any singletons in the campaign would die the same death), and the original printing of the orb spells (15 monsters save or take no action this turn, spam until there are no monsters left).

bahamut920

2017-10-19, 04:52 AM

Anything that's not standing on the ground can't be tripped. Period, end of sentence. Anything flying, swimming, or burrowing is completely 100% immune to trip attacks. I think climbers can be tripped, however. Creatures with the ability to teleport can be tripped as long as they can't fly, but they don't provoke attacks of opportunity for moving, which decreases his opportunity to trip them. Swarms of small opponents (as in creatures with the swarm subtype) also can't be tripped, but use them sparingly at low levels, because they can also be difficult to effectively damage. Giant bees or air elementals bypass his schtick entirely. At low levels, slip in the occasional flying enemy and gradually increase their numbers as the party levels up, and many higher-level opponents have the ability to teleport around.

Large and larger creatures get size bonuses to bot CMB and CMD, in addition to their usually prodigious Strength scores. This makes them difficult to trip without rendering them immune. Quadrupeds gain a +4 bonus to CMD against trip attacks. A (literal) Big Bad quadruped with a high Strength score will be virtually immune. Some creatures, including dwarves, have the Stability racial trait, which gives them a +4 racial bonus to CMD against some combat maneuvers, including trip, bull rush, and overrun. A dwarf with a decent BAB and a high Strength score will be difficult to trip.

You could always turn his schtick back on him; not only do feats like Improved Trip grant bonuses to CMB to trip opponents, they also grant a bonus to CMD to avoid being tripped, IIRC. So by taking the feats that allow your baddies to do what he does, they become inherently less vulnerable to the tactics they employ. Enemies similarly wielding reach weapons also become significantly less vulnerable to being tripped, due to not provoking AoOs when closing for melee, and (if the PC does not have the Improved Trip feat) still getting their AoOs when he tries to trip them.

Spellcasters, being the classes that get all the nice things, of course have multiple spells that allow them to avoid being tripped, mostly by allowing them to replicate one of the conditions above. Spells like levitate or fly put a spellcaster up in the air, and thus render him immune to being tripped. Alter self allows the caster to assume the form of any non-giant humanoid, which can get them stability (change into a dwarf). Beast shape allows the caster to assume a variety of different forms, including Large, quadrupedal, and/or flying forms. Druids get wild shape as a class feature, even, which allows them to essentially use beast shape for free several times per day.

Finally, simply allow the player to have his fun. Presenting trip-immune opponents exclusively to the party will leave the player feeling targeted for his choice of combat strategy, and may end with him accusing you of "ruining his character". As Castilonium suggested above, you can simply reduce the levels of the BBEG's minions and add a bunch more of them. Your player only has a certain number of attacks per round, including his attacks of opportunity. A throng of lesser minions allows the player to make use of his reach weapon and specialization in tripping foes (giving the player what he wants and allowing him to enjoy playing his character in combat), while still posing a threat to the PCs. And of course a conniving and selfish BBEG thinks nothing of sacrificing minions on the end of the PC's guisarme if it allows him to enter melee unchecked.

Personally, I'd recommend using the last strategy most frequently, and sprinkle in variations on the others. They can also be combined to great effect. Imagine an evil dwarven druid with a bunch of ranger minions and a giant bee or an eagle for an animal companion. He can summon swarms with his spells.

Kurald Galain

2017-10-19, 05:01 AM

It's not overpowered; characters can do this with any reach weapon (or any spell that gives reach), and tripping without provoking can be done with low-cost feats. Maneuvers are an interesting part of the game for martial characters, and this is working as intended. And as Castilonium points out, not everything can be tripped.

My view is that combat maneuvers should be the exception and normal attack the most often used stuff.
That should be for the player to decide. If a character wants to use a bow as the "most used stuff", or unarmed attacks, or a magic missile wand, or whatever; why would that be a problem?

bahamut920

2017-10-19, 05:13 AM

My view is that combat maneuvers should be the exception and normal attack the most often used stuff.
Oh, geez. I missed this line in your post. This is A Bad Idea; non-casters already have severely limited options compared to spellcasters, and limiting them further makes them weaker and more boring to play than they are already. Do you ban spells on spellcasters because "normal attack should be the most often used stuff"? If you don't, then don't ban combat maneuvers or things that make combat maneuvers easier to use. Let the fighter have something besides "Round 1: Charge, Round 2+: Full attack", please.

Fizban

2017-10-19, 05:38 AM

Anything that's not standing on the ground can't be tripped. Period, end of sentence.
So, did Pathfinder get rid of the part where tripping a flying target makes them stall?

I too find uber-tripper builds ridiculous and unfun*. My first change is to use BAB+str instead of just str, but from what I understand of Pathfinder's combat manuever system, this is already included. Well actually my first change is to remove the free attack from Improved Trip, but from what I understand Pathfinder did that too (making it a separate feat that annoys trip-builders). Point is, if they have to actually roll to land the maneuver, and it's actually replacing an attack (or has limited use, such as from turning into a Wolf for their Trip ability), then it should be fine. You don't want it to never work, obviously, just be less than perfect.

If the problem is their bonus is still too high, I'd expect they're using size enhancement. Reducing that bonus or barring them from pumping size is the next obvious nerf.

Finally, I have a custom item: by tried and true 3.5 optimization logic, there is a 1st level spell for that so all you have to do is make an at-will item. Stand (PHB2) stands you back up as an immediate action with no AoOs. I give it a slight price up to match the Ring of Feather Falling, which is also an immediate action fall related effect. Hosing a PC by giving their enemies custom items with little sale value is quite poor form, but it's meant to be more of a deterrent. The item exists, the PCs can have it, the NPCs can have it, you know I'm not going to do it, so if you go all-in on a trip build even after I've given you the frowny face then hey you had fair warning. Dunno if Pathfinder has a 1st level spell for it though.

*Seriously, the "lol, everyone falls down automatically for approaching me and then dies" thing is what the bad guy's scary henchman has, not the heroes. At least this guy's using a polearm instead of a lolchain. Sure, you can use trip resistant enemies, but that's a pretty specific thing to need to constantly hammer on in order to have your guys do *anything*. It's not high AC, where there's still nat 20's and magic; it's not grappling, where you're limited to one guy at a time; it's not even ubercharge where positioning, terrain, or just luck on the initiative can negate it without otherwise changing the monster. Trip build says "any melee foe in my reach no longer matters," which is a bit of a problem when the usual method of wearing down resources is efficient melee threats. Perfectly chain tripping people before they even threaten you consumes no resources, ergo those foes are not a threat, ergo you gain no xp and why are we even doing this?

Kurald Galain

2017-10-19, 06:55 AM

If the problem is their bonus is still too high, I'd expect they're using size enhancement. Reducing that bonus or barring them from pumping size is the next obvious nerf.
That's also in Pathfinder :smalltongue:

It strikes me that your point is not so much tripping is no fun, but that hyper-optimized tripping in a way that's not even possible in most campaigns and that doesn't work in Pathfinder is no fun. That's a bit of a difference there :smallbiggrin:

Fizban

2017-10-19, 07:38 AM

I did consider adding another paragraph to that effect, but I figured I didn't need to, as you indeed got it already. But even when people concede that the damage of an ubercharger or a mailman might be too high or free persist isn't really necessary, they always seem to give ubertripping a pass because. . . reasons? I mean, I'm assuming the guy is actually putting some build in his trip, if it's literally just a guy trying out trips with a guisarme and nothing else then I'd have to say the DM is jumping the gun a bit. Which I suppose might be the case as he asked about banning guisarmes rather than Improved Trip, but then I wouldn't get to rant about all my anti-ubertripper nerfs :smallbiggrin:

lord_khaine

2017-10-19, 09:11 AM

Fizban

2017-10-19, 10:46 AM

lord_khaine

2017-10-19, 11:21 AM

Fizban

2017-10-19, 11:49 AM

I feel like you're confusing PC actions with monster actions. This is the DM's response to a PC tripper. PCs carry an assortment of weapons and magical items for all situations, and so when unable to melee might have other things to do. Melee monsters do not, unless the DM has specifically rebuilt them to do so in response to a PC specializing in trip build. I'd also like to know where someone who doesn't use a [long]spear main was carrying their longspear.

And uh, yeah. Ubercharger kills the guy, gets him off the field and not cluttering the game. Continuous tripper merely "annoys" the DM by rendering the guy obsolete but requring a bunch of extra rolls as he's slowly chipped to death while the DM can't actually use this melee unit in melee. Merely annoying. Kinda like how Glitterdust merely blinds entire groups of sighted creatures, leaving them completely able to do anything that doesn't require sight. If I'm going to allow cheese it's going to be of the charger/mailman variety.

Elder_Basilisk

2017-10-19, 11:53 AM

I have a trip fighter in my Red Hand of Doom in Sterich campaign. He's effective but not fun-destroying and there are a number of hard and soft counters.

1. Use a variety of monsters. Hobgoblin mooks trip well (though it's entirely possible for an 8th level fighter to miss a trip (ok, usually this happens when power attacking, using combat expertise, and/or penalized) on a hobgoblin fighter 2 mook-especially if the book is buffed. Fighter 2, str 14, dex 16 is a 17 CMD before you figure things like mass bull's strength and mass enlarge person from a greater barghest or haste from a 1st level Bard's scroll. In a different campaign, orc barbarian 2 also gets a surprisingly good CMD and you can have lots of orc barbarian 2s). Chimera, hellhounds, dracolisks, dire wolves, ghost dire lions, greenspawn razorfiends, and elite plague zombie bison do not trip well.

Occasionally toss a humanoid with a hard-counter in. A hobgoblin elite like a weapon master fighter 5 with mobility and step up is a pain for the trip master to deal with. CMD is going to be upwards 26 before buffs figure in so there is a very good chance the trip AoO misses. After that, the trip fighter tries the five foot step attack dance. Step Up. Darn. Looks like you need a new strategy.

Use soft counters frequently (though not all the time). Enemies with ranged weapons are another soft counter. If they can shoot you (don't forget a sergeant luring cavalier 1+ to grant volley fire to all the mooks), they don't need to close and provoke AoOs. And if you try to close, they can tanglefoot bag you and step back and keep shooting.

Other things that provide soft counters are debuffs. That trip is not looking so automatic after you get hit by a prayer and a dazzling display (remember that cavalier sergeant. Make him a lvl 2+ and order of the cockatrice with skill focus intimidate and he can dazzling display and use tactics in the same round). Add a net or tanglefoot bag and with -5 to hit the trip isn't even automatic against the mooks.

Enemies who have reach weapons themselves are another good soft counter. They don't need to provoke in order to attack him and if he's trading trip attempts to their damaging attacks, he may not come out on top.

Don't make combat manuevers rare. Use them all the time. Grapple him (obviously with a way to avoid AoOs on the way in. Disarm him. Blind him with glitterdust from an enemy caster and then have the mooks charge in while he can't see to take AoOs. Cast fog cloud to limit vision and prevent AoOs on the way in. Have some battles in darkness or fog. Sunder the weapon. If you expand the situations the characters face, they will need to adjust their tactics and try new things. This will prevent one strategy from dominating the game and will make your combats more dynamic.

Here's a link to my campaign log if you would like to read how it plays out.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?494229-Pathfinder-Red-Hand-of-Doom-in-Greyhawk-(Sterich)&highlight=Red+hand+sterich

Kurnagar

2017-10-20, 05:15 AM

Thanks a lot for all of those answers !
I never tought about this in terms of options compared to a wizard ... I'm really glad i asked for adivce !
I think i'll try it and see how it goes.

Thanks again!

Gnaeus

2017-10-20, 06:33 AM

{scrubbed}

Andreaz

2017-10-20, 07:04 AM

Hi, Kurnagar!

One of my player wants to use a guisarme and this way trip opponents at distance without provoking attacks of opportunity and also tripping opponents trying to get close to him (also thanks to reach and AOO).
I think i read the rules correctly and what he's trying to do seems valid. Yes, this is valid.
My problem is not of technical nature but more of "fun" nature. What i mean is that i think putting every creature to the ground every round of every combat for the whole campaign will be not only boring but also kind of ridicule.I prefer to call it ecstatic :p You'll see a few auxlliary points to it in a minute.
My view is that combat maneuvers should be the exception and normal attack the most often used stuff.Largely the best combat maneuver setups do both at once. Even trip, largely the best and most applicable maneuver, isn't worth doing standalone without more setup to it.
So i wonder, do other DM around here find the guisarme "overpowered" ?
How do you deal with it ?
Do you forbid guisarme ?
I forbid nothing of the sort, as it's not overpowered by any means.
Here's the core of it: A trip build will either be Cheap or Potent, or Bad. His is, so far, Cheap. It works fine against a single dude with a sword.

But that's about all it'll do, keep a single dude with a sword at bay.
Almost every large opponent has extended reach and thus he'll be open to AoO.
Almost every opponent with reach too.
Large or Quadruped enemies generally don't get tripped easily either, wasting his action.
More importantly, almost every time he's outnumbered he just won't be able to keep both at bay and will have to keep moving, which can be pretty bad on difficult terrain or if he has to hold.
Just as important, without building for it Trip attacks do roughly zero damage, extending the fight at the expense of little else. A round where he only trips stuff is a round where he's a mini buff to the rest of his party at the cost of halving or nullifying his own damage.

My advice is let him. Cheap Trip is a tiny one-trick pony with a rather niche functionality.
The good Trip builds get around most of those issues, particularly avoiding AoOs and guaranteeing some damage. They are fine too, and particularly joyous.
It's not boring unless you're throwing only single dudes with a sword at them, because at a minimum the player has to choose who is more important to trip. "Everyone" is almost never feasible.Sometimes you want to trip the big dude with a big axe, sometimes you want to trip the dude with a stick tripping your own dudes. Sometimes you trip his horse because god dammit stop outrunning us easily. Sometimes you trip the dude with a dress to force him to spend spells to move or risk extra impalement.

Thanks for your advice

Thanks for asking :D

Elkad

2017-10-20, 07:06 AM

On defending against trips, I'll add one more I didn't see.
Swarm him. Bunch of mooks run in, maybe trying their weak tumble checks. 1-(dexmod) of them get tripped.
The rest surround him, give their friends on the ground cover, get inside his reach weapon, and generally ruin his plans.

He gets to trip lots of them, take his free whacks, take more free whacks (possibly with a cover penalty) when they stand back up.
So he gets to use what he built for, and still has to deal with a problem.

9 goblins instead of 1 ogre.

Fizban

2017-10-20, 07:08 AM

Hahaha, score another mark on the "Fizban says melee can't have nice things" board, how many am I up to now?

I mean, you could just ask me about all the nerfs and bans I have for everything you just complained about (Glitterdust: 1 round blind only, PF Witch: emblematic of the main problem with Pathfinder and you're not playing it in my 3.5 game, PF Alchemist: same thing, Stinking Cloud: one save shuts it down and it ends 1 round after you escape [and I'll hit it harder if I need to]). But please, keep telling me how I don't understand problem game elements while you apparently disregard the OP's complaint about a problem game element because it's not your favorite problem.

Now if you want to complain about how I'm not considering "Pathfinder standard RAW," that's a valid point*. Which is why I actually explain what I'm doing instead of just shouting a list of other broken things. So that if those points do not apply to your game, you can read for yourself and disregard them. Much more useful. And incidentally, if the OP is just now noticing the problems with trip lockdown, they probably haven't encountered problems with all the other lockdown. So thanks for bringing it up I guess? OP: don't be shy about nerfing magical lockdown if you think it needs doing too.

*Aside from RAW being dumb and wrong, easily discounted by the many references to DM-based game balance in the DMG. At least in 3.5, but I doubt Pathfinder actually enshrined a RAW-is-god rule in their DMG. :smallamused:

**Now let's see how many people pile on me for calling it a problem because they've forgotten the context of uber-trip builds and invalidating a large swath of (but not all) monsters, vs all the parts where I said "as long as it's not shutting everything down it's fine."

Gnaeus

2017-10-20, 07:29 AM

Hahaha, score another mark on the "Fizban says melee can't have nice things" board, how many am I up to now."

Not enough, apparently, since the bad advice continues.

Slow is a third level spell, beats trip at everything it does. Summon monster beats trip at everything it does. Walls generally beat trip. Basically anything your tier 1-3 caster does beats trip.

So, you can nerf trip and everything better, which is everything, and have all your fights consist of
I hit him for 8
He hits me for 6
I hit him for 12
He hits me for 9

Or remember you are playing dungeon and dragons, that control is part of the game. That the game has no taunt mechanics so for your “tank” to “tank” he needs tools like trip. OP has already chosen to play Pathfinder, so he has already chosen a better form of the game than Fizban suggests.

You can rewrite the entire spells section of the PHB, which seems absurd because the spells he lists as problems aren’t, as well as a huge waste of time, or you can realize that trip is not a significant issue. It fails a lot of times on its own (ranged, fliers, incorporeal, casters etc) and when it succeeds the Magic’s can do it better.

Fizban

2017-10-20, 07:57 AM

Also funny- do the opposite of everything I said about tripping, when half of what I said to do is already part of Pathfinder's tripping rules (3/4 if size boosts are nerfed, can't tell if Kurald Galain was being facetious). Pure Gold :smallbiggrin:

Oh, ninja'd.

Slow is a third level spell, beats trip at everything it does. Summon monster beats trip at everything it does. Walls generally beat trip. Basically anything your tier 1-3 caster does beats trip.
Slow still allows move+attack via partial charge, Summon Monster can be waited out and at least allows the illusion of combat when attacking the summons, Walls stop the PCs from attacking just as well as the monsters, and all of those come online later than basic multitripping. Yawn, next.

Or remember you are playing dungeon and dragons, that control is part of the game. That the game has no taunt mechanics so for your “tank” to “tank” he needs tools like trip. OP has already chosen to play Pathfinder, so he has already chosen a better form of the game than Fizban suggests.
(Half of my trip suggestions are already part of Pathfinder). You could also DM in such a way that the players don't need RAW tanking mechanics, you know, they way it's done by DMs that want to engage their players rather than win. No, the reason the player has decided to try tripping is because he realized it's powerful, that means the ball is in the DM's court as to weather they should up their own optimization and encounter planning, or be prepared to nerf tripping if it gets out of hand. Just because you think the DM needs to suck it up doesn't mean that's actually how it works.

You can rewrite the entire spells section of the PHB, which seems absurd because the spells he lists as problems aren’t, as well as a huge waste of time, or you can realize that trip is not a significant issue.
Or, you could read the spells section of the PHB, and realize that there are only a few select spells that actually need rewriting.

That's another funny one: complaining about how the "worst offenders" are in the PHB, when that actually means that WotC was following their own advice by trying not to print spells that were directly better than spells in the PHB. In fact, many of the non-core problem spells are either from 3.0 /updated from 3.0 or trying to do completely new things, while one can quite clearly see how save or lose spells printed later in 3.5 are significantly worse than those in the PHB, almost like they realized mass save/lose spells should wait until higher levels than they originally printed*. Of course a 3.75 update wouldn't have gone over well so. . . And yes, I realize you're specifically saying that those spells aren't problems because RAW is god, this is a more general observation.

It fails a lot of times on its own (ranged, fliers, incorporeal, casters etc) and when it succeeds the Magic’s can do it better.
Funny how I said all you need to do is make sure it fails often enough, eh? I'm sure you started your post before I repeated the reminder though.

I think I've spent quite enough time repeating myself here.

*Granted, this is more of a gut feeling, I haven't done a full inventory. Probably shouldn't use "see clearly" then, heh.

Deophaun

2017-10-20, 08:58 AM

Perfectly chain tripping people before they even threaten you consumes no resources, ergo those foes are not a threat, ergo you gain no xp and why are we even doing this?

What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease. Hence his victories bring him neither reputation for wisdom nor credit for courage nor XP for overcoming a challenge.
- Sun Tzu, level 0 fighter.

Andreaz

2017-10-20, 09:04 AM

" Summon Monster can be waited out "

Brother... this is d&d. Combat seldom lasts more than 4 or 5 turns, almost never reach the 10 mark.

"wait it out" is indifferent from "remove them from combat permanently", for they will almost always last "most of the fight".

Fights that last longer generally have a secondary element like constant movement (a chase or race), and there are summons good for those situations as well.

You forget that a decent trip build will consume about half of a character's build space, and has a broad, but not all-encompassing niche.

Don't overly focus on what it is good at, look at where it actually applies.
Fighting monsters? Trip is limited.
Fighting something with high mobility? Trip is limited.
Fighting large numbers of enemies? Trip is limited.

By the time a character builds up enough tripping power to reliably hold a bottleneck against mooks you're already talking about adventurers near the 2 digit levels. They are supposed to be small armies unto their own.
Just like the ubercharger, the ubertripper at this level will largely shut down anything coming directly his way. If you find one more annoying than the other, I'm sorry to tell you... that's just your particular preference. You are particularly peeved by having a character shut down in a manner that isn't expedient.
That's fine... but please don't run all over everyone else's exercise because of it.

Trippers have ample space to both shine and suffer, and the dm barely has to put work into making that happen that isn't already the normal work of building interesting and challenging encounters. Unless his encounters are largely composed of "here's a bunch of humanoids with swords", i guess.

Kurald Galain

2017-10-20, 09:16 AM

- Sun Tzu, level 0 fighter.

Level 0. Really now :smallbiggrin: That man is legendary, as proven by the fact that he lived 2500 years ago and we still know who it is.

Deophaun

2017-10-20, 09:50 AM

Level 0. Really now :smallbiggrin: That man is legendary, as proven by the fact that he lived 2500 years ago and we still know who it is.
Yes, but he always won battles before fighting them, so he could never earn XP.

Psyren

2017-10-20, 10:01 AM

*gingerly steps around the dumpster fire that the thread is becoming*

OP, I'm not sure if you're even still reading this thread, but the simple answer is that trip is not overpowered. You should include some enemies that can resist it, where the PC might need a lucky roll, and even a few that are outright immune (like fliers and incorporeal), all to challenge the PC in question. But you should also be sure to include monsters that succumb to it (even otherwise strong ones like Giants, corporeal Undead, and Monstrous Humanoids) so that the player feels powerful and has fun. Your job as a GM is to strike that kind of balance.

If you need more detailed advice than that, check out the GM's Guide to Challenging Encounters in my sig, which is specifically designed for Pathfinder.

Grod_The_Giant

2017-10-20, 10:39 AM

every creature to the ground every round of every combat for the whole campaign.
It's not that bad. As has been mentioned, there are tons of enemies where AoO-tripping simply won't apply, or will be ineffective-- monsters with reach, ranged attackers, flyers, really big strong things, things with lots of legs, things fast enough to move around the guy and attack someone else, and so on. You're also limited in how many AoOs you can attempt each round, and even if you invest in Combat Reflexes, it's keying off a different ability score. And when you do get a trip attempt, it's not an auto-success-- CMD is a thing, and my understanding is that it scales faster than CMB unless you invest a lot of effort into boosting it.

And if your player did invest a lot of resources into being good at tripping... then he should be able to trip lots of things and control the battlefield real well. That's how the game works. He'll be weak in other places, don't worry.

Fizban

2017-10-20, 10:40 AM

Just like the ubercharger, the ubertripper at this level will largely shut down anything coming directly his way. If you find one more annoying than the other, I'm sorry to tell you... that's just your particular preference. You are particularly peeved by having a character shut down in a manner that isn't expedient.
That's fine... but please don't run all over everyone else's exercise because of it.
And there's another mark on the "my preference invalidates your preference because my preference is actually RAW (except it's not)" board. With a bonus even, since apparently discussing how I handle trip builds is ruining the excercise of a thread about how people handle trip builds*. So you run the game in optimized RAW because you prefer it that way, that's nice.

The core of the ubercharger and ubertripper both come online by level 6. If they aren't crushing things at that level, it might be because your DM is putting in more effort to keep them from doing so (or it might be luck), which is what you say they have to do later anyway. Yours and their preferences align, that's good. If the DM does not want to do that, then they can nerf the build instead. You can argue all day about how little of a problem you think it is and how easy it is for the DM to up their game, but it doesn't matter unless you're the DM, and you are not the DM of the OPs game, or my game. The DM has the RAW ability to ban, nerf, or do whatever else it takes to keep the game fun for everyone, including the DM, and no other evaluation or RAW matters.

So, I have phrased my advice conditionally: if you have problem, try solution-because I'm not going to order you to change your game in ways you haven't asked. Your advice is: there is no problem, git gud.

Once again, notice how you're telling me all these points on how trippers aren't perfect, when I have already agreed that tripping is fine if they aren't causing a problem then there is no problem literally in my first post and it's a freaking tautology anyway. So why are you arguing with me? I can only assume it's because you can't stand hearing answers other than git gud, because my preference for less-powerful trippers is wrong, just wrong because it doesn't match yours and anyone who doesn't play up to your standard of optimization for any reason is wrong, because by your standard it's just impossible that tripping could ever be overpowered and that's not a preference it's a fact. Because that's how literally every one of these arguments goes: I present my opinion, someone tells me I'm "factually" wrong, I tell them that's not how DnD works, they tell me I'm wrong, ad nauseum.

Y'all want to stop arguing with me, all you have to do is stop arguing with me. State your preference as an alternative and be done with it. Kurald disagreed with me, but we're not arguing. He stated that he believes most trip builds weren't that bad, I agreed that trip builds can be used without being that bad, we threw some smileys and it's good. Admit that other people can play the game differently than you and we can all go back to our lives.

*Well, admittedly that last post had some unneccesary pontificating in addition to being pulled aside for the mandatory spell comparisons. And if no one had responded, it would have just been pontificating.
Short version: Don't argue about power levels, because power levels are personal in multiple senses of the word. State your view as an alternative, but don't try to tell someone they're wrong about their interpretation of a game which includes human arbitration based on personal preference as a core mechanic. We all have better things to do with our time.

Bucky

2017-10-20, 10:49 AM

The fighter has two jobs to do in a fight: do damage and control space.

A vanilla fighter controls squares next to him in a weak way by doing damage to things that are near them. The threat of a full attack discourages enemies from stopping near him and the threat of an AoO discourages enemies from moving past him. The threat of an AoO also discourages enemies that are already within his zone of control from taking certain actions.

Your fighter trades away some damage for better control.

The guisarme has a bit lower damage than a greataxe but it grants influence over a larger area.

Tripping trades soft control from threatening to kill with hard control*. If an enemy wants to move through his threatened area, he can outright prevent them from doing so. In exchange, he doesn't do damage with his action or AoO.

Rather than being boring, your fighter is more interesting because the area around him is different from the rest of the battlefield.

My recommendation, as usual, is to use more advanced enemy tactics. Humanoid enemies can see that he's using a reach weapon and pull out their own reach weapons. Mobs can run him out of AoOs and flank him to keep him from stepping away for free. Fast monsters can skirt the fighter's area of control and threaten other party members. And so forth.

The main concession you need to make is that your bosses must have good CMD vs. trip, be able to operate while prone, have their own reach or have minions that occupy the fighter.

In summary, the guisarme is not overpowered but will make your combats more fun.

*for high HP enemies. Since killing is even stronger control than tripping, he should use normal attacks on low HP enemies.

Psyren

2017-10-20, 11:04 AM

Tripping trades soft control from threatening to kill with hard control*. If an enemy wants to move through his threatened area, he can outright prevent them from doing so. In exchange, he doesn't do damage with his action or AoO.

Or they do both, in exchange for the necessary feats (like Greater Trip.)

Note that I agree with you, just wanted to point that out.

Kurnagar

2017-10-21, 07:17 AM

Yes, i'm still following the thread ;)

Keep the advices coming, different points of view are always welcome, even those we don't agree with.

To continue the discussion, i'll add some details:
I 'm aware that there are opponents type that would be difficult or impossible to trip. But i'm planning to run rise of the runelords anivversary edition and won't have much time to adapt monsters. I'd rather run it as it is. But i'll see how it works. In fact, this discussion as somehow made me curious and somewhat eager to see how it performs.

thanks again

Psyren

2017-10-21, 10:37 AM

zlefin

2017-10-21, 12:10 PM

Psyren

2017-10-21, 02:24 PM

a thought occurred to me on this topic: how much of hte issue comes from shifts in the number of attacks/turn the pc effectively gets?
I mean, a low level PC gets 1 regular attack a turn; but with AoO setup, they could be gettign like 4.

If they're getting 4 it's because there are 4 different enemies attacking or trying to move past that PC - either way, all 4 would be needed. It's not like they'd be getting all 4 against one target.

DeZrog

2017-10-21, 03:47 PM

Except it does prevent you from acting? You trip someone, they're on the ground. They have to spend a move action standing up, thus making them unable to hit you in melee, because you tripped them before they were in melee. If they close, you withdraw and do it all over again. That's literally the whole point of tripping someone with a reach weapon. They never get to attack you in melee. Their actions are completely denied. Being tripped is only an annoyance for non-melee units that are totally fine laying there with an AC penalty while someone with full BAB hits them. That is a very specific sort of annoyance.

Unless the standard disclaimer applies and Pathfinder made getting up/just staying prone way easier.

Let me see if I follow this:

On your turn, you trip them at 10 feet away (let's pretend they haven't acted yet this time). Then:

They spend a move action standing up (provoking an AOO, which let's pretend misses), and since they didn't actually MOVE any distance, they still get a 5-ft step. They step and take a standard attack.
Alternately, the trip hits, and they crawl towards you (provoking another AOO, but you can't trip them again, 'cause they are already prone), and attack. If YOU take more than a 5-foot step, you provoke an AOO, but this is worth it, because...

If they start 20 ft away from you... they move 10 feet, provoke an AOO, and you trip them (successfully, I assume). They spent their Move already, so they have to take a Standard to get up (EDIT: but you cannot trip them again, because the AOO happens before they get up). On your turn, you attack them with Reach and move 20 feet further away, so they don't crawl or 5-ft step towards you and attack. Repeat.

What if enemies have a ranged or thrown weapon? They shoot you until you move within 10 feet and trip them. On their turn, they use a Move to stand up, provoke an AOO, and you trip them again get a free attack before they finish standing up. They can't take a 5 foot step since they are on the ground, and if they use a Move action, they can't also attack, EDIT: They can now take a 5-ft step and attack you in melee, or if they instead attack from 10 feet away with a ranged or thrown weapon, you get another AOO (assuming you have Combat Reflexes and a decent Dex, or assuming they just fire from prone, for example, using a Crossbow or Thrown weapon).

What if enemies crawl or step towards the trip specialist and grapple, preventing the tripper from moving away, or at least spending a standard action breaking the grapple, or spend their time switching weapons, because they can't attack with a 2-handed weapon (Glaive, per the original post) during a grapple?

What if enemies crawl / take a step and disarm?

What if enemies ALSO have reach weapons, or just simply have reach?

So... is the problem more that the Trip specialist is overpowered because he gets an additional attack per round against trip-able enemies using Combat Reflexes and AOO's? Or because most of the enemies the DM is using don't have ranged weapons, and can only attack effectively from 5 feet away? If it's the latter, I'm perfectly okay with players creating a build that punishes their typical enemies' lack of flexibility.

Edit: Or is there a level range where the trip specialist excels, and you don't really have CR-appropriate enemies to use when his repeated-tripping-schtick starts to get old?

The other way to render this tripping pattern ineffective is to prevent your trip specialist from backing up - set the fight in some terrain where it's expensive to move more than 10 feet (difficult terrain renders med/heavy armor movement to 10 feet per Move - edit: wait, this doesn't work - they'll still end up 15 feet away, out of crawl/step range, and can you crawl in difficult terrain?), or just put their backs against something so they can't repeatedly back up. Sure, fine - let them pull this trick a few times per fight, because it's their go-to method that they built for, but don't let them be a 1-trick-tripping-pony.

I like the other suggestions of multiple enemies. Spellcaster or item-using enemies can also levitate/fly (as mentioned), forcing the tripper to go for a ranged weapon, or just simply cast defensively from prone.

Can you trip an invisible enemy? How do you know where its legs are? I don't believe there's a rule on this situation, except to say that a lack of specific rules means that you can just do it?

I haven't actually encountered a player who tried this, but I'm quite confident in my ability to foil them occasionally with aspects of the fight setting and choice of enemies. However, I thank you guys for getting me to think about this, and thus be prepared.

I agree that it would be boring if every melee BBEG just gets tripped...

Deophaun

2017-10-21, 03:59 PM

What if enemies have a ranged or thrown weapon? They shoot you until you move within 10 feet and trip them. On their turn, they use a Move to stand up, provoke an AOO, and you trip them again.
You cannot trip them again because your AoO occurs before they have stood. So, they try to stand, provoke an AoO, either get hit or not, then finish standing.

Roland St. Jude

2017-10-21, 10:17 PM

Sheriff: Keep it civil in here.

Andreaz

2017-10-22, 08:28 AM

Adapting the encounters in an AP is easy. Did you check the guide in my sig? I haven't read through that module (no spoilers please) but even if every single fight in it is against bipedal melee humanoids, you shouldn't have much trouble throwing in some backup of the hard-to-trip variety in some of the fights.

A good start is having some pikemen. That alone should shut down the Cheap trip setup. Mixing melee and ranged characters as well. Mounted combatants...

With any multiple combatants setup trip is less absolute in its shutting down of the enemy and becomes more of a "your party deals a little more damage and takes a little less damage" thing.

Fizban

2017-10-22, 10:25 PM

For anyone wondering what I mean when I keep saying 3.5 uber-tripper, I've broken it down below. If you're only interested in Pathfinder, well like we already worked out early on the first page, Pathfinder is missing a lot of the problems with the 3.5 version.

What if enemies have a ranged or thrown weapon?
As one would expect, a ranged enemy is fine as long as they're out of tripping range. The problem is that the standard dungeon environment is fairly enclosed spaces at fairly short ranges, specifically so that ranged builds don't completely dominate the game. This, combined with the fact that most melee monsters have very poor ranged attacks if any at all, and the assumption that a good DM will use melee foes against the melee PCs, means that an uber-tripper is too strong in the "standard" environment. The DM has to go more out of their way in choosing monsters and designing dungeons for the uber-tripper than he would for a simple barbarian, or even an ubercharger. As always, if they're cool with it that's fine, but if they're not then it's not.

What if enemies crawl or step towards the trip specialist and grapple, preventing the tripper from moving away, or at least spending a standard action breaking the grapple, or spend their time switching weapons, because they can't attack with a 2-handed weapon (Glaive, per the original post) during a grapple?
Crawling is 5' per move action, vs a 5' step or move action every round. It's possible you may get one attack in while they're distracted by someone else, but generally crawling is just a good way to provoke AoOs on yourself.

What if enemies crawl / take a step and disarm?
Disarm is actually one of the better counters, except just like tripping you need to have the build for it. With Improved Disarm and a ranseur or spiked chain, you can shut down their trip (as long as you don't fail and get counter-disarmed), but without equivalent reach you'll be tripped first, and without Improved Disarm you'll provoke and they can trip you before you disarm (giving you a -4 for prone now), or if they're savy they might damage you to completely stop the disarm. And all of that assumes the monster wields weapons at all.

What if enemies ALSO have reach weapons, or just simply have reach?
And that's where the uber comes back in: an uber-tripper (as opposed to a guy who happens to trip) boosts their reach specifically to counter this. A basic tripper is annoying to medium guys, but once large guys start showing up it'll start sorting itself out. An uber tripper typically walks around chugging potions of Enlarge Person and has one or more feats that give +5' reach, so the only way to match them is with a Huge creature wielding a reach weapon- who then needs to have Improved Trip or Improved Disarm. This is not a typical monster: the over-optimized build requires an optimized counter.

So... is the problem more that the Trip specialist is overpowered because he gets an additional attack per round against trip-able enemies using Combat Reflexes and AOO's?
The uber-tripper typically controls a 20' radius or larger area- the goal being to cover the entire room at once, and in dungeons without cavernous rooms that's enough. Within this area enemies that try to move instead fall over and take damage, enemies that try to get up take more damage, and don't forget that ranged attacks provoke-so enemies that try to make ranged attacks also fall over and take damage. This is limited by their number of AoOs, but as the saying goes: if there's so many enemies that Whirlwind Attack would be useful, they're so weak you don't need Whirlwind Attack (or the Wizard already Fireballed them). If you assemble enough trip-resistant long-reach foes to break through, you've probably exceeded a "fair" encounter. Number of AoOs is also a mysterious figure which depends on the dex of the character involved: many groups use extremely generous stat generation methods, meaning more str and more dex, meaning more and easier trips.

If your main shtick is so strong that attempting to engage with it blow-to-blow requires the DM to exceed expected encounter limits, I think that's a fair place to draw the line and start saying it's over-optimized. At this point it becomes player-op and tactics vs DM-op and tactics, and the game's attempt at internal balance cannot be expected to hold. Which as always is a perfectly fine way to play, if that's what the group wants.

If it's the latter, I'm perfectly okay with players creating a build that punishes their typical enemies' lack of flexibility.
Then you don't need any advice on nerfing trip builds, you're already cool with modifying things to compensate.

Edit: Or is there a level range where the trip specialist excels, and you don't really have CR-appropriate enemies to use when his repeated-tripping-schtick starts to get old?
The 3.5 uber-tripper needs Combat Reflexes, Improved Trip, and Aberrant Blood+Inhuman reach or Willing Deformity+Tall. With Barbarian variants a human can assemble those at level 3 without even taking Fighter levels. With the elite array they'll have 20' reach with 3 AoOs, or 30' reach and 2 AoOs while enlarged, but expect number of AoOs to go up as stat generation gets more generous and they can buy dex buffs. Rounding up to 4th level, trip bonus is +3 str, +2 rage, +4 feat= +9 when not enlarged, +14 when enlarged, again with bonuses going up the more stat points they have and the stronger their starting race.

The Pathfinder caveat now applies: Pathfinder separates the bonus attack into another feat and probably doesn't have the reach bonus feats, dunno how easy it is to skip straight to Improved Trip without Combat Expertise though. Pysren implied the size bonus was smaller, and BAB is used as well. So overall Pathfinder has significantly impaired the uber-tripper, and for people who haven't studied the 3.5 uber-tripper or forget that when I mention the worst I'm talking about the 3.5 version, I can see why tripping wouldn't seem so crazy.
The important question is: how uber can the Pathfinder tripper get? From what I've seen of the basics, PF trip shouldn't break standard encounter budgets, so yeah there's less reason to worry. I'd like to see the breakdown on the Pathfinder high-op tripper build to compare.

Either way I'd still support the DM if they found that tripping was too disruptive to the game they were running.

The other way to render this tripping pattern ineffective is to prevent your trip specialist from backing up -
Indeed, but most published adventures don't cover every room in difficult terrain, and the backing up is not as important once you factor in the rest of the party. People like to point out how combat only lasts X rounds, and if the tripper can reliably steal 2-3 rounds from the enemy, he might as well be Stinking Cloud at-will.

Can you trip an invisible enemy? How do you know where its legs are? I don't believe there's a rule on this situation, except to say that a lack of specific rules means that you can just do it?
Common sense would say that you can't take AoOs against actions you can't sense happening. In order to prevent arguing about fuziness, I'd say you need to properly see them, no guessing about "hey I hear spellcasting in that square." Regardless, specifically tailoring invisible foes to get up in a trippers grills is still a tailored countermeasure.

Quertus

2017-10-22, 11:46 PM