Does anyone actually use Improved Bull Rush/Overrun?

[Biggus]

Improved Bull Rush in particular seems to appear as a prerequisite for quite a few things, but I've literally never seen anyone use either of them. Are there any circumstance in which they're worth taking? I'm considering just deleting them entirely and replacing them with something more useful as prerequisities and on monster feat lists.

[Telonius]

It can be situationally useful if you use the Dungeon Crasher variant.

In general, Bull Rushing is only useful if you can move an enemy into something deadlier than your regular attack - off a cliff, into a Disintegration trap, lining them up for your Caster to get everybody into an area of effect, that kind of thing. If you've got your damage pretty high, the list of things that qualify is going to be pretty short. It is very situational; I've had entire 1-20 campaigns that didn't use it.

[Maat Mons]

It might be okay on a Bloodstorm Blade with the Knockback and Rampaging Bullrush feats.

[Gruftzwerg]

There is a niche around Bull Rush related abilities like the mentioned Knockback. Driving Attack is a similar feat. Then there are a bunch of class abilities that rely on it (Dungeon Crasher, Warforger Juggernaut, Monk of the Enabled Hand...).

Imho the niche is justified by being a niche^^ there are some enjoyable builds.

[Troacctid]

You primarily see it on dungeoncrashers. They care about bull rushes for obvious reasons. Warforged juggernauts can use it to deal damage while bypassing AC and concealment—very useful against enemies who may otherwise be tough to hit. Shock Trooper lets you turn bull rushes into multi-trips. And, of course, bull rushes can also provoke attacks of opportunity from other nearby allies, which is particularly useful for factotums or marshals, who can get decently high Strength checks, but may suffer from a lack of damage output on their own.

Overruns are pretty useless though.

[Biggus]

It can be situationally useful if you use the Dungeon Crasher variant.

In general, Bull Rushing is only useful if you can move an enemy into something deadlier than your regular attack - off a cliff, into a Disintegration trap, lining them up for your Caster to get everybody into an area of effect, that kind of thing. If you've got your damage pretty high, the list of things that qualify is going to be pretty short. It is very situational; I've had entire 1-20 campaigns that didn't use it.

This is kind of what I was thinking: it seems that's it's only the best tactic in quite specific situations, so it doesn't seem like it's worth spending a feat on. Might be worth getting via the spell Heroics sometimes I suppose.


It might be okay on a Bloodstorm Blade with the Knockback and Rampaging Bullrush feats.

Hmm, I can see that Rampaging Bullrush is decent, like Improved Trip for low-Int characters. You have to be large or have Powerful Build to take it though.


There is a niche around Bull Rush related abilities like the mentioned Knockback. Driving Attack is a similar feat. Then there are a bunch of class abilities that rely on it (Dungeon Crasher, Warforger Juggernaut, Monk of the Enabled Hand...).

Imho the niche is justified by being a niche^^ there are some enjoyable builds.

I've never seen a build based around it, can you point me to one?

[Gruftzwerg]

I've never seen a build based around it, can you point me to one?

Google for Goliath & Knockback as simple example. Knockback requires you to be Large and thus is commonly used with Goliaths.

Driving Attack is similar to Knockback. It doesn't require you to be Large, but requires a much higher feat investment to unlock it. The upside is that it is more efficient/powerful than Knockback is (in the distance you can knock back enemies).
Here are 4 builds (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?517187) I did made a long time ago to play with the Driving Attack feat. The combo comes online on the later levels due to the heavy requirements thou. But if you want to avoid large size it is still an alternative.