What is the second most usefull combat maneuvr after trip?

[ayvango]

The subj. Totally newbie player wants to play fighter and I'd like to introduce him some manoeuvres.

[Forrestfire]

(Note: this advice assumes Pathfinder, thanks to you talking about "combat maneuvers;" if this is for 3.5, then the advice and commentary would be very different)

Honestly, the combat maneuvers can all be situationally quite useful. The problem is that it takes so much investment to use them at all on most characters, and that at higher levels, CMD gets high enough that without heavy investment, you won't succeed. The Dirty Fighting feat can help lower the barrier of entry, at least, but past the very early levels, if you can make attacks, your attacks will tend to be better without that investment. I might recommend instituting some houserules to buff them if the player is new (such as combining the Improved and Greater versions of a given combat maneuver feat, like they used to be in 3.5, and/or making the combat maneuvers no longer provoke AoOs by default).

With that in mind though:


Bull Rush, Drag, Reposition: Pushing an enemy a square or two can be situationally good, but since it takes a standard action, generally this is niche at best. Sometimes, there will be a need to position an enemy a certain way. Most of the time, offensive actions are better.
Disarm: Against enemies who both use weapons and don't have locked gauntlets (an 8gp item that honestly I don't see as often as it probably should be used; if you're the GM, you can decide how good disarm will be by using or not using this item on NPCs), this can remove them from the fight, especially at higher levels when many enemies rely on magic weapons. Against most monsters and scarier high-level threats, though, it's completely useless.
Dirty Trick: This is a standard action to almost remove an enemy from combat for 1 round, in most cases. Blinded is the most debilitating of "soft" debuff—blinded creatures can't target with spells and have to guess at squares to attack with weapons. Even if they guess right, it's a 50% miss chance. With heavy investment, you can also get into longer-duration debuffs and "hard" debuffs like nauseate, that outright stop an enemy from acting.
Grapple: Fairly complicated, but not game-haltingly so. In many cases, this can be a good control effect. However, the biggest issue I've seen playing grapple characters that aren't higher level is that it generally feels bad. The first round of grapple doesn't do much until higher levels; you've slightly penalized someone, but until your next turn, you can't pin, and most enemies worth grappling to debuff will probably just die before your next turn comes around.
Overrun: Somewhat nonfunctional (must be houseruled to actually work with charges), and not great unless you've heavily invested and can reliably knock people prone with this.


If someone is not investing heavily into specific feat synergies and item combos with combat maneuvers (Bull Rush in particular has some good support for chaining damage, attacks, and shoves), then Dirty Trick, Trip, and situationally Disarm are the ones that are good to use (though may often be worse than just attacking). If they are investing, then Grapple and Bull Rush can be pretty decent too.

My recommendation would be Trip and Dirty Trick; Trip knocks foes down, Dirty Trick penalizes or blinds them. Each is relatively simple and to-the-point, without having to build much around them to make them good.

[ayvango]

I beg pardon for planting seeds of misunderstanding. I never played Pathfinder and has no clue what are combat manoeuvres here. I mean bull rush, trip, disarm and others special moves from the SRD. They all has associated feats and I'd like to give that feats to the characters to illustrate conception of feats.

[Malroth]

They're pretty much the same in 3.5 as mentioned in the post about Pathfinder

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/specialAttacks.htm

Disarm: Good against lower level humanoid fighter types or the rare wand build, useless against primary casters and big monsters.
Sunder: Good against spell component pouches or scroll users, bad to use against enemy melee except in an emergency because it costs you loot.
Bull Rush: Can be an ok damage source if you're combining Dungeon Crasher with a ready source of walls or environmental control, usually not worthwhile.
Grapple: Focused build renders pretty much all non grapple builds helpless untill 4th lv spells become avalible then it becomes useless.
Feint: Good for Iaijutsu focus builds and ok for sneak attackers, useless against enemy martials unless heavily optimized.
Demoralize: Weak effect by itself but can be stacked with other fear sources, better used by casters than martials.

[Florian]

I never played Pathfinder and has no clue what are combat manoeuvres here.

PF unified the whole maneuver system so you use a common "Combat Maneuver Bonus" to attack a "Combat Maneuver Defense", which has the positive side effect that a character already good at one maneuver can branch out into a second or third more easily, meaning mostly cost-effective when it comes to feats due to shared prerequisites and the ability to chain-combo with maneuvers.

[Eldariel]

Overall most useful? Well, Bull Rush can be really good when you can push people off cliffs/bridges/etc. Otherwise it's extremely situationally worth not attacking unless you build for it. If you build for it (Dungeoncrasher, Knockback, Rampaging Bull Rush, Shock Trooper, etc.) you can do a lot of awesome stuff with it and get it on every attack making it pretty scary. I also recall something that enables you to knock enemies prone if you reduce the distance you bull rush enemies by 10' too but I can't find it right now. Rampaging Bull Rush certainly works as does Domino Bull Rush from Shock Trooper though. But yeah, Bull Rush can move enemies around, knock them prone, obviously knock enemies off places and with Dungeoncrasher, smash enemies to walls for massive damage.

With zero investment, Grapple is pretty good. Black Tentacles, Polymorph, etc. Situationally useful for warriors too when you're up against a low AB enemy, but the game is full of counters starting from Abrupt Jaunt, Grease, Anklets of Translocation, Benign Transposition, etc. so it's very situational. It can theoretically target any creature though. Freedom of Movement and similar effects are the big detractors of Grapple, particularly since it's so common in the monsters' arsenal and thus something you should plan against. Thus, it's one of those you use when you see an opening, but focusing on it is generally fool's errand unless you're a caster where "focusing" means "pick one spell".


The others: Sunder is very situational since often you don't want to destroy loot but sometimes you have no options. Disarm and Sunder both only work vs. enemies with equipment (and Sunder vs. Hydras randomly), which also restricts them a lot.

[eggynack]

Grapple: Focused build renders pretty much all non grapple builds helpless untill 4th lv spells become avalible then it becomes useless.
Third level spells can be just as problematic, if not more so, because of heart of water. Of course, not all casters get heart, but it's maybe even better than regular freedom of movement at stopping these kinds of effects. Of course, as Eldariel notes, there are a lot of harder and softer counters at various points in the game. There's this whole weird spectrum of grapple destruction where different classes get different tools at different levels. The important thing is that there're a lot of tools at a lot of levels, and that those tools are frequently high in effectiveness.

[Mike Miller]

I think people in general overvalue "loot" when they think of sunder. Most weapons will not be valuable enough to care about. Sunder is so very useful if most enemies will be wielding weapons. If it is mostly a monster enemy campaign, then sunder isn't as helpful.

[Eldariel]

I think people in general overvalue "loot" when they think of sunder. Most weapons will not be valuable enough to care about. Sunder is so very useful if most enemies will be wielding weapons. If it is mostly a monster enemy campaign, then sunder isn't as helpful.

Well, it's also a matter of opportunity cost. Damage you're dealing to their weapon is damage you're not dealing to them. And vs. martial enemies, you have to beat their attack bonus with size modifiers to affect their weapon in the first place, which tends to be far harder than hitting their AC. Shatter is better vs. things like Giants since it autosucceeds and doesn't put you in harm's way. Though it competes with spells like Glitterdust so there's that but it's certainly a solid option.

Smaller things are more likely to have magical weapons, which are pretty key loot; 2300+ for even a simple +1 anything. That's not anything to throw around willy-nilly. You don't wanna break those. Only low HD NPC warriors tend to have no magic weapons, but against them you should just kill the enemy instead. Remember, Sunder always costs you your attack action and tends to require a far more difficult roll than hitting enemy AC. Of course, attacking spell component pouches, holy symbols, metamagic rods, etc. is nice but again, the opportunity cost is not dealing damage to the enemy squishy when you're right next to them and get attack actions off! Extra spell component pouches are like 50gp each and holy symbols are free so chances are your enemy won't be disabled unless they only ever got one by sundering it.

Sometimes though the enemy caster is warded against attacks (say Ironguard or Delay Death) but their equipment may not be so protected; in such cases attacking items might indeed be vindicated, but those are rather cornercases. Same with attacking enemy weapons. It's an option you should keep in mind but it's rarely usable often enough to be worth investing a feat in (though you kinda get it "for free" if you go for Combat Brute anyways), and without the feat there are many buts to its use, not just the lost value problem.

[ayvango]

Shatter is better vs. things like Giants since it autosucceeds

But it allows Will save.

[Deophaun]

Of course, attacking spell component pouches, holy symbols, metamagic rods, etc. is nice but again, the opportunity cost is not dealing damage to the enemy squishy when you're right next to them and get attack actions off!
It should also be noted that this stuff is also better handled with Slieght of Hand, as it only requires a single feat to optimize (Master Pickpocket) and can be done as a free action.

[Eldariel]

But it allows Will save.

Fair, but that tends to be a poor save for brawler types, while with Sunder you're attacking their best stat while also granting them size bonuses and probably bonuses for two-handing (almost all Giants for instance use two-handed weapons). Admittedly, Reflex tends to be even worse and Grease is thus generally even better at this task.

[ayvango]

Is it possible to get +1 enhancement on component pouch, so it would be immune to shatter?

[eggynack]

Is it possible to get +1 enhancement on component pouch, so it would be immune to shatter?
Never seen anything like that, but, again, why not just get dozens of pouches? Or hundreds? They cost 5 gp apiece going by the PHB, and they only weigh two pounds, which means that they're cheap enough that weight will be a limiting factor before price in all likelihood. You could pick up 200 of the things for 1,000 gp, and give dozens to each member of the party, so you have spares, and have enough left over to set up a ton of spontaneous magical hidey holes. Assuming all such a spot needs is a pouch.

[Florian]

Never seen anything like that, but, again, why not just get dozens of pouches? Or hundreds? They cost 5 gp apiece going by the PHB, and they only weigh two pounds, which means that they're cheap enough that weight will be a limiting factor before price in all likelihood. You could pick up 200 of the things for 1,000 gp, and give dozens to each member of the party, so you have spares, and have enough left over to set up a ton of spontaneous magical hidey holes. Assuming all such a spot needs is a pouch.

Ultimately, Ive got to answer the question where you keep that diamond dust, the onyxes and the rest of the expensive stuff in.

[Mutazoia]

If it's a new player, I would keep things simple to start.

Things like Combat expertise and power attack, to allow him to go full offense or full defense, and teach about using flexible feats to their best advantage.
Improved Initiative and combat reflexes would be good choices to illustrate the importance of hitting first, and how to threaten areas effectively.....