How to handle spiked chain trippers

[Mephisoth]

As much as I hate to admit it, I'm a bit stumped on how to make my game work out with this character about. I'm the DM of a group of about 7-8 people, and in general I am very happy with the campaign so far, except for one issue which I'm having a hard time finding a fair solution for.

One of my players made a half-giant psychic warrior with a spiked chain, you know the type. He has powerful build, knockdown, improved trip, and expansion (the power), and the end result is a 20 foot reach, combat reflexes, and something like +13 on trip checks. (+8 size, +5 strength)

The campaign has mostly medium sized humanoids as the main opponents, but this guy's character absolutely rips them to shreds, anything he gets his sight on is prone, and very very dead in about 1-2 rounds, tops.

Most of the time this is no issue for me, since they're fighting groups of soldiers, who have larger constructs, aberrations, summoned creatures, etc that spice up the fight and mean that while he goes to town on about half the enemy force, the other 6 people still enjoy themselves handling what he can't take.

However, I'm wondering if anyone knows of any good solid counters to trip for a melee type character, or ways to make it less of an issue. The concern I have isn't for the majority of fights, but sometimes I do like to have a more challenging fight, or a single strong enemy for the group to fight, but it just doesn't work out as is.

I've considered enchanters and other such save-or-suck methods to help deal with him, but I feel like while effective, I'd prefer to find a method of challenging this character without simply removing him from the fight entirely, which I imagine would be quite boring for the player involved.

This isn't an issue of powergaming, as an aside, most of the characters in the group are about as solidly built, and my encounters are quite tough, it's just the tripping method that I'm having trouble finding ways around.

I looked at freedom of movement, but it doesn't apply to trip, AC doesn't help because it's a touch attack, concealment helps somewhat, but has limited applications when he's a melee opponent. I try to build terrain to help the opponents, which helps somewhat, but only does so much.

The character given has no issues tripping reliably anything smaller than size Huge, and while I could simply throw nothing but huge sized ogres and giants at them, it really doesn't seem like a good solution, so I turn to you all.

Has anyone else run into this issue and found a way around it? I'm more or less stumped. I guess what I'm really looking for is a reasonable method of making a more normal, "realistic" character very resistant or immune to tripping, without themselves being a clone of his character. Currently, I can't use any enemy that doesn't have this sort of resistance at all, since the tripper crushes them so horribly.

[arkol]

Flyers. Quadrupedes. Humanoids with... bows! Or spells.

A better triper then he.

[Worira]

Giant Dwarves.

[Telonius]

Rust Monsters. Incorporeal foes. Enemies with miss chance. Mirror Image.

[AmberVael]

Characters with tumbling can easily bypass attacks of opportunity, and if you have characters using reach or ranged weapons with significant enough length, they can use the Prone Attack feat to smack at him and instantly get back up even if they are tripped.

A DC 35 tumble check can also make standing up from prone a free action.

[valadil]

Reduce person. I had a boss fight start out with mass reduce and sculpted black tentacles a while back. Worked pretty well and it should cut a tripper down to size.

[TheThan]

Countering spiked chain trippers is not that hard.

A combatant gets a +4 bonus for every size category he is larger than Medium or a -4 penalty for every size category he is smaller than Medium. The defender gets a +4 bonus on his check if he has more than two legs or is otherwise more stable than a normal humanoid. If you win, you trip the defender. If you lose, the defender may immediately react and make a Strength check opposed by your Dexterity or Strength check to try to trip you.

Clearly large, multi-legged creatures are the way to go, monstrous spiders are nice, centaurs are good if you want something sentient. (Not to mention a centaur uber charger sounds nasty).

[Mephisoth]

Alright, maybe I should be more clear, although I appreciate the responses so far.

To give an example, lets say I have a human warrior type that is in conflict with the party. What kind of abilities, magic items, powers, classes, would help in this situation.

As I mentioned earlier, most of the enemies in the game are in fact human or humanoid, so while they can and do summon ghosts and wraiths to harry them, or construct large golems to fight the party, just ceasing to use humanoids isn't a feasible option for me, hence the difficulty. I do plan on using flyers and mounted opponents against them, since they do have at least some resistance to tripping, but I can't just make every opponent they find mounted, flying, or otherwise abnormal.

[lsfreak]

Casters should be smart enough to realize that he's a huge threat. Rays of Exhaustion, a druid summoning 6 wolves to eat up his attacks. There's a... swordsage maneuver, I believe, that keeps you from making AoO's for a round. Ways of making him flat-footed, stunned, or dazed for a round without taking him out completely but keeping him from tripping whoever runs at him. The commander being smart enough to send in a wave of guys large enough that he can't possibly trip them all. Rogues with super-high Dex and blur/cloaks of displacement.

[Deepblue706]

The solution doesn't lie in pitting things against his strength, but rather his weaknesses. You don't want to outright deny him the ability to use his special techniques, but at least put him in an environment where the same ol' stuff doesn't work.

Although he has impressive reach and smack-down abilities, a group of trained bowmen might ruin his day. You can take a page from the Mongol book of war, and have them ride around on horses, attacking and retreating as he struggles to keep up.

You could make use of some other lockdown feats found in supplements like Complete Warrior, like Ranged Pin. Although less effective as a PC choice, sending enemies that stick him into trees is going to temporarily cramp his style.

If you narrow the range of monsters involved in the campaign, however, you're only going to limit your ways of dealing with the problem. Some monsters are more resistant to tripping than others (quadrapeds like Centaurs), meanwhile others can't really be tripped at all (Gelatinous Cubes).

[Innis Cabal]

They don't have to get up. Sure they get a penalty but hey, they still attack

[Mephisoth]

Sorry for double post, but let me clarify on his tactics a bit.

A typical 30 ft move speed human while tumbling will be able to reach him with a move action, true, but only if they start at exactly 20 ft out. Also, that gives them a single attack versus his character, which is all well and dandy for large groups of mooks, but the trouble is that on his next round he uses his spiked chain to trip them, and then moves 20 ft off, leaving the enemy prone and badly hurt.

If the enemy tries to stand up, they get AoOed, and now their tumble speed isn't enough to bring them back to the tripper. If they dont' tumble, on the other hand, he gets in 1-2 AoOs as they move up and the enemies are just prone again. (The party is level 2, so lots of options for enemies aren't present yet.)

I'm aware of the fact that more abnormal monsters can bypass the trip problem entirely, but throwing nothing but ghosts, pixies, centaurs, and dragons at the party isn't a possibility, since the main foes of the party at present are humanoids, constructs, and undead.

To the comment about prone attacks, yes, they can attack him if they are adjacent, but he just moves away once their prone, so it's good for one attack if they are lucky. (Rules question: Do enemies threaten as normal while prone?)

[lsfreak]

Oh, and there are also ways of standing up without provoking... I think there's a skill trick that lets you do it. If it's some kind of organization that he's going up against, you can bet they'd learn about it and start training a way to counter it. It doesn't lock him out completely since skill tricks are just once per encounter.

[Mephisoth]

Ah, I'll look into the skill trick, and the ranged pin/disarm things sound like a good idea as well.

Suppose I'll just start putting more casters, archers, and otherwise controller type characters into the mix to combat him.

[arkol]

Ranged attacks, ranged atatcks and also ranged attacks.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Ways of boosting speed are pretty common. Barbarian 1, Monk(bleh), Scout, various traits, and of course magic items/spells. And the DC to tumble at full speed is only 25. Not hard to hit, depending on level and whether you use PC or NPC classes.

[Mephisoth]

I think I have a pretty good idea of ways for groups of foes to challenge the party now, but while I'm in the thread, on a smaller more specific scale, one of the big bads they are up against is a human warblade with access to a lot of resources, what could he do to render himself less vulnerable to the tripping?

He's a melee opponent, which makes things harder for me.

Ah, Sstoop, the party are level 2-3, so lots of things are just too high CR or would be too valuable if they went into the party's hands to use, so DC 25 tumble checks are a bit out of the range of the ability of most things they can fight so far. DC 15 works at this level though.

[AmberVael]

A tumbler can take a -10 penalty to tumble at full speed. DC 25 tumble check will allow them to make it up to him without attacks.

I also see nothing in the rules about using Tumble during a charge, which you could either combine with the DC 25 tumble check to charge-tumble at twice speed, or with a DC 15 check to charge-tumble at normal speed.

If you are worried about their effectiveness against him, as they only get 1 attack, I suggest you either allow them some form of Pounce (lion totem barbarian), or give them martial maneuvers from Tome of Battle.

Edit: A Warblade can negate this almost entirely. Stonefoot stance, Charging Minotaur, Roots of the Mountain... just look at all the Stone Dragon stuff.

[#Raptor]

Giant Dwarves.

I think Duergar have Enlarge Person as a SLA 1/day... not to mention invisibility.

A DC 35 tumble check can also make standing up from prone a free action.

And theres some skilltrick in Complete Scroundrel that lets characters stand up from prone for free.
Should be available a bit earlier than the DC 35 tumble check.

Plus, I think anything with more than 4 legs is completely immune to being tripped.

[Mephisoth]

I'm seeing a lot of reference to ToB here, and I think that might well be one of the better solutions.

I hadn't been using it much so far since I don't currently let the PCs take classes from it and I felt it was maybe a bit unfair, but for lack of other options maybe I'll start throwing more ToB at them.

I looked at that white raven maneuver from earlier that stops AoOs and it looks to be the sort of thing that is quite what I'm looking for, but it's only 1/encounter. Is there anything else like it?

Wait, things with 6+ legs are immune to trip? One of my local rules-lawyers informed me that "Being more stable than normal gives a +4 bonus" but the giant insects they were fighting weren't immune to it, as I had thought.

Aha, I just looked up the knockdown feat and it is from a book I disallowed, so that makes my job a little easier. Was an oversight on my part, he likes to take his builds from the internet, and doesn't check sources a lot of the time.

[AmberVael]

Even if you don't allow classes, your NPCs can take Martial Study to gain certain strike attacks against him, which will be much more effective as single attacks than a regular attack would be.

Also, edited in my advice for the warblade. Stone Dragon all the way. Trippers can't touch Stone Dragon.

[Mephisoth]

Ah, that's heartening, this particular warblade does indeed focus on stone dragon, so maybe I just didn't read very carefully. I'll go back and redo his maneuvers then.

[Cespenar]

Apart from tumbling rogues and archers, plain cavalry can simply use Ride-By Attack.

A 4th level fighter (which would be a boss/miniboss since the group is at level 2) can close by with Spring Attack and Improved Disarm the chain out of his hands.

[Mephisoth]

Yes, I like the idea of disarming that chain of his, since he has no backup, or maybe even sundering it. Does ride-by attack stop AoOs, or would I have to combine it with that white raven maneuver?

Another issue is that the enemy in particular has been heavily scouted out by the party who are conducting hit and run raids to weaken their resources, and they have very limited cavalry, so I'd have to use what they have carefully.

Of course, does to powerful build and expansion, a 20 strength, and a huge sized two handed weapon, this guy is going to have, if I understand it correctly, a (+4 large, +4 huge, +4 two handed, +5 strength) +17 to his disarm checks.

How the heck do I make a human beat that?

[arkol]

Have a rogue steal his chain in the middle of the night!

[Cespenar]

Ride-By Attack:

When you are mounted and use the charge action, you may move and attack as if with a standard charge and then move again (continuing the straight line of the charge). Your total movement for the round can’t exceed double your mounted speed. You and your mount do not provoke an attack of opportunity from the opponent that you attack.

Addendum: A 4th level fighter with 18 strength, a two handed weapon, Improved Disarm and Potion of Enlarge Person can match him, though not guaranteed, of course.

[Mephisoth]

Heh, tried the rogue, actually, the guy sleeps with the thing, and they keep a very close watch. They're super paranoid, with good reason.

Thanks, Cespenar, that solves that little issue, so mounted opponents seem to be a good plan in many ways. Maybe I'll have some reinforcements arrive with horses.

As for the disarm... Gaaaah!

So so far what I've gotten:

-Mounted horseback archers
-Mounted opponents with Ride-By-Attack
-Archers with ranged disarm/pin/sunder, maybe mounted archers with the above if I feel cruel.
-Spellcasters that charm/grease/glitterdust/sleep etc
-Ability damage to dex to lower number of AoOs
-Tome of battle is my friend, especially white raven and stone dragon
-Ghosts and fairies and centaurs, oh my
-Other trippers

Anyone have anything else to add?

[Cespenar]

Happy to help. Horseback warfare usually tends to get overlooked.

[Teln]

Move the campaign into a mountainous area.

[Justin B.]

Don't forget simple things. A skilled fighter with a pole arm can simply swing into the guys swooping chain and stop it in it's tracks (more or less). Anyone who sees it coming can jump over it.

Make him use a few attacks inbetween trip attempts using these relatively simple tactics.