Last time, I ended up reverting to my house rules, which allow a five foot roll as a standard action. This makes tripping a lot less lethal, because by the normal rules, standing up is almost a death sentence. More so in 3.X, where we had a house rule that prevented using trip with an attack of opportunity (this is not needed under pathfinder, due to changes in the mechanics- you no longer trip someone, and then respond to them standing up by damaging and tripping them again).

My reasoning here is:
1)- My trip guy was built wrong. He didn't actually qualify for improved trip, resulting him being more powerful than he should have been, so this wasn't a good test of the rules.
2)- I want to play stock Pathfinder on as many of these core rules as possible. I really want to keep my modifications at the level of "stuff Caligo brings", because we shouldn't need all the tweaks that we needed in 3.5.
3)- There are some better options in Pathfinder than there were in 3.5, I think.

Options when prone and threatened:
1)- Crawl 5 feet as a move action. This provokes. This mostly sucks.
2)- Stand up as a move action. This provokes. This at least resolves the situation.
3)- Acrobatics check as a full round action to move without proking, which is an acrobatics check against enemy CMD+5. This can be ok, but the enemy can simply follow you, either with a full round action or Step Up, and you are still prone.
4)- Total defense as a standard action, then stand up as a move action. This provokes, but you have the total defense AC bonus. You may also five foot step after doing this.
5)- Just take -4 on all your attacks and accept that your opponents have a +4 to hit you. This is situational, as often this is a powerful enough debuff that you will be knocked out or killed as a result.
6)- An ally can Drag you. This is a combat maneuver performed by an ally against you, so they will require an attack roll (you will not want to apply your dexterity, base attack, or strength to your CMD, which should give you a 10), and you will want to forfeit the attack of opportunity that they provoke. Drag rules are here: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/combat/ . Being dragged does not provoke an attack of opportunity from anyone (unless your ally is specialized in dragging foes and chooses to use this specialty against you, which, presumably, he would not). Your ally may be able to drag you far enough away that more movement than a five foot step is required.
7)- An ally can Reposition you. This is a combat maneuver performed by an ally against you, so the same rules as above apply. As before, if they meet the attack roll they can move you five feet, and for every five feet by which they exceed it, they can move you an additional five feet. This is a lot more precise than them dragging you, but they don't move as well (which could be good or bad), and they range isn't quite as great (which won't matter in E6 as it would in a full campaign). Being repositioned doesn't provoke attacks of opportunity.
8)- A few low level magic solutions to this, but that requires an ally in all cases. Specifically, if you manage to score a climb speed and are near a wall, or a fly speed, you should be ok.
9)- If you lower the Int of the tripper below 13, he'll lose access to every trip feat he has.
10)- If you know how to grapple, you could always just wrestle the tripper- but this requires dumb grapple feats, so it isn't a good solution for a barbarian.
11)- Get a warhorse, fool!


There are other options available to agility classes- I think a rogue has a trick to let him get up, and a monk has some way to spend ki.
There's debate online about if you can use withdraw while prone. The two arguments against it are: the rule in the acrobatics section wouldn't be there if the withdraw action worked (which I find compelling) and "you don't have a crawl speed, and withdraw only works with methods of movement you have a speed for". I don't find the latter compelling at all- you have a "land speed", and I'm not aware of anything with a "crawl speed". I'd like to avoid this as I think it is unintended and nonstandard, but if everyone feels strongly about it, it isn't like, ludicrous or anything.


In any event, assuming your DM can stop invalidly assigning Improved Trip, and keeping this stuff in mind, hopefully the game won't devolve into some Trip Festival.

In 3.x, there was a combination that meant every martial person should become an expert in tripping. Trip, and then immediately get another attack because you tripped. Then you took your other attacks if you had any. When the person stood, you took your attack of opportunity and, without any house rule preventing otherwise, tripped on the AoO.

The first break would be preventing a trip in an AoO. I don't think a combat maneuver could replace an AoO, so that's good.

I also don't see anything about getting extra attacks for tripping, but not seeing it certainly doesn't mean it's not there. I don't remember where it was in 3.x either.


I disagree that there are better options in Pathfinder, though. You're tripped. Anyone around you gets to hit with +4 until you can act.
1) Crawl: Dumb.
2) Stand. Ok... well, do they get +4 or not? When do the attacks go off? This is what we will end up doing.
3) Acrobatics? Lose an entire turn with a very small chance of success unless you are some specialty class that does this sort of thing? CMD+5 is hard and, perhaps more significantly, unknown. A Tumble vs DC 15 is known, and it also wasn't a full round. I mean... a full round loss that might avoid attacks?
4) Full loss of round, might not get hit. Does the -4 apply?
5) My cousin did this. He dead.
6) Loss of two full rounds.
7) Loss of two full rounds.
8) Spiderpig, spiderpig, does whatever spiderpig does.
9) I'm surprised this made the list but "You could turn him into a newt" didn't.
10) And the barbarian will fall asleep while we try to figure out the rules for initiating a grapple while prone.
11) I managed to get a longbow in 3 fucking levels.

So it seems that if you are tripped and not spiderpig or a monk (though some argue spiderpig is a monk), then you either get hit an awful lot, might not get hit but lose an entire round of action, or lose two full rounds of action (you and someone else). Perhaps that is exactly where it should be in terms of power. It's definitely something I am interested in learning now.

Interestingly enough, I slept WORSE while my wife and kids were out of the house. So I'm hoping that for next time, my usual cocktail of half a bottle of Coke plus an energy drink through the evening will keep me upright.

Under 3.X, there were several things that made it worse.

In Pathfinder, all maneuvers work the same.
First, you provoke if you don't have the "Improved Whatever" feat. If you are attacked in response, the damage you take is a penalty to the CMB roll.
Second, you roll your CMB versus their CMD. Both of these are precalculated, so this is a one roll resolution. This is a Strength and base attack based to-hit roll (leaving out weapon enchantments) versus an AC type roll composed of Strength, Dexterity, and most importantly, base attack. So if two martial characters of roughly equal experience are fighting and one tries a maneuver on the other, the odds start at a bit less than 50% for success, but they do go up if you have some feats invested in the idea. If the tripper fails by more than 10, he's tripped instead, or, if his weapon has the "trip" special, he can instead choose to be disarmed.

In practice, the tripper will make a CMB roll, and lets assume he has Improved Trip and Greater Trip. This lets him just walk up to you, roll his CMB, add +4 for his two feats, and roll the die. If he succeeds, the trip happens, and the character falling prone provokes attacks of opportunity from everyone around him, due to Greater Trip.

In 3.5, maneuvers work differently, so trip is:
First, you provoke if you don't have the "Improved Trip" feat.
Second, succeed on a melee touch attack using whatever weapon you are trying to trip with. This provokes unless the tripper has the "Improved Trip" feat, but even if you hit them in response, it doesn't stop the trip from happening in any way. This almost always succeeds: it's a pretty silly roll in practice.
Third, the tripper rolls a strength check opposed by his opponent's dexterity or strength check, whichever is higher. If this roll succeeds, then the trip happens. This roll gets a bonus of +4 due to Improved Trip. The tripper (but not his friends) then gets a free attack, also because of Improved Trip. This doesn't use up anyone's attack of opportunity.
Fourth, in 3.X, the attack of opportunity provoked from standing up somehow lives in a nether world where it both gets the bonus versus a prone opponent (+4 to hit), and also can be used to trip. So it's double good for the tripper.

The 3.X version is far superior in terms of both tripping, and in terms of having a built in combo.

If two people are roughly equal martial characters in both systems- say, strength of 20, with +6 base attack, and +2 weapons, both wearing armor with AC 20 - both will succeed at their trip attacks about two thirds of the time. If the character being tripped does not have an amazing strength or dexterity, the odds will improve in pathfinder, but will rapidly become almost certain in 3.X. If the character doing the tripping is large for any reason, the odds also improve in pathfinder, but become almost certain in 3.X.

Where the Pathfinder tripper really falls off is, the CMD he is rolling against is improved by almost anything besides armor that improves AC- so if you have a ring of deflection +2, the odds go from 65% to 55%, and there's nothing that makes it easier to counteract that (for instance, your weapon enchantment doesn't apply in any version). If you have a morale bonus to AC, that applies. Basically, anything that improves your AC circumstantially or magically helps you out, in a way that only magically increasing strength or dex (whichever was higher) helped you defend in 3.X. Of course those buffs still help in Pathfinder.

Listing 6 and 7 as "loss of two full round" is unfair, because it doesn't really include the times the trip doesn't work. Being tripped isn't supposed to be great- there are just more mitigations for it than before. Do you want your guy poked into pieces? Well, there's more options to say no to that nowadays. There's also no infinity combo. Tripping is supposed to be powerful. It's not supposed to be an infinity combo. My previous houserules were in a world where a single feat granted +4 to this, and the "opposed strength check" basically ignored every defense the enemy player had besides being either monstrously strong OR supernaturally agile (both doesn't help more), while being huge. That was why it was cheesy, and I felt that the houserules were needed (and if we run 3.5 again I'll assuredly bring them back). We shouldn't need them in Pathfinder, which offers players and NPCs reasonable odds on not being tripped when dealing with human-scale creatures. If Trip really seems too good, I'll reevaluate, but I don't want to bring in an old prejudice versus a game system that got reworked at the dawn of Pathfinder.

Work this trip thing into your stratagem. This isn't like 3.X where there was basically no counterplay except being a centaur or something.

There are ways to get attacks when tripping. In both versions, when you trip, you give up your attack.
In 3.5, you get the attack back with the feat "Improved Trip", which of course a trip guy has. This feat gives a +4 to trip attempts as well.
In Pathfinder, you get something that is a bit different- the feat "Greater Trip". Improved and Greater trip together give the +4 to trip attempts, and Greater Trip makes the victim of the Trip maneuver provoke attacks of opportunity. On the one hand, this means that you have to spend an attack of opportunity to get your attack off... on the other hand, this means everyone around him gets to pummel him as well. Beware of combat maneuvers whilst surrounded! Actually, generally be wary of being surrounded in general. Greater Trip requires base attack 6, and if E6 rules stop a monk from getting it, I'll fix it with a capstone.

In most cases, these feats (one in 3.X, two in Pathfinder) replace the attack you lost by using the trip, in the event your trip is successful.




Yes. In Pathfinder, I'm pretty sure you count as prone.
In 3.5, the rules somehow were setup such that you got fucked both ways- you counted as prone for the purposes of the attack landing, but you counted as standing for the purposes of being able to be promptly re-tripped.



I mean, it's ultimately still D&D- there's always interaction with magic to consider.



Well, there's a few ways to lower intelligence, and usually a trip guy isn't THAT far above 13. I brought it up because it seemed like something a low level party might end up possessing and overlooking.

I will also point out that, while less exciting, your warlock is already throwing around serious real debuffs to enemy actions, and the strength penalty was no joke.



Eh, it's more if someone goes the grapple route. I looked this up and it doesn't make your enemy prone, or let you stand, because they deleted all the confusing "grapple-ball" rules.



If you are very good, you may also be permitted arrows.



I mean, it is, but there's a lot of valuable feat chains. The basic trip line is:
Combat Expertise -> Improved Trip -> Greater Trip
Once you have Improved Trip, you have a +2 to trip attempts and no longer provoke, and then greater trip is extra credit. There's others that play off this as well.

It's a moot point because Ichabod is too stupid to understand any of this. These concepts of making someone fall down... far too complex. If he falls down, do I help him up? Or should I get on the ground too?

I don't think it's unfair to say two rounds are lost. They are lost if the trip succeeds. That was the condition for all of them.

But overall, I hate the concept. So we're going to be up against an enemy at 6th level, and he will be an expert tripper. He's going to have these feats:
Combat Expertise
Improved Trip
Greater Trip
Combat Reflexes
Improved Unarmed Strike
Vicious Stomp

He will delay his turn until his companions engages with one of us. He will then trip. With his +4 and optimized for tripping stats, I'm guessing he will have a 70-80% chance of tripping and no chance of losing his weapon because, let's be honest, that's how you're going to build him. But even if he does fail the trip, he has another attack.

So he trips. Then the tripee immediately gets 2-3 attacks of opportunity as he is going to the ground. Then once he hits the ground, the tripper gets another attack with his +4 to hit. Keep in mind that if the tripper's companions have this same build, they ALL get another AoO. Then the tripper, if he didn't move, gets to take his second attack, again with +4.

We're talking about standing up. Super. Let's suppose you take a full round action to stand up... you're getting tripped again. You lose.



I just don't like tripping at all. I don't like the construction of it in either game. They both allow you to build a Master Tripper, and that might be the dumbest thing I've ever heard. If you get 6 of them together, they will conquer the world.

The dangers of Int 12.



The others don't cost two rounds though, they cost one. The point is, if you are phrasing the cost in terms of action economy, the chances of success need to be brought into it, because that's the metric being used.




He'll also need Int 13, and a minimum Dex of 14. To accomplish this task as a party, he'll need a whole crew of people with Int 13+, Dex 14+, and either a decent strength or a way to deal damage without stacking strength.

But this character isn't just trained in tripping, he's all about it.



In the case he has two attacks, he started pretty close.

Lets assume he has a strength of 22, so +6. His base attack is also +6. He has both feats, so that is +4. Enhancement bonus to weapon, morale bonus to hit, divine bonus to hit- none of that applies. He'll have a hard time exceeding a +16 CMB in E6 without buffs. With Bull's Strength he has +20.

What's your CMD at that level? Lets assume you have +4 Str and +2 Dex (I don't know what you got, but that's not a bad guess). Lets assume at 6th level you have a +2 from any combination of: ring of deflection, dodge, luck, circumstance, etc. That takes you to 24, which is only in that 80% range if he has bull's strength up (and which you could counter by dispelling it, or having up the equivalent Dex buff).



I mean, I definitely recommend kiting Trip Squad Alpha instead of standing and full attacking. That way at least you'll take the trips in a staggered fashion without all the attacks of opportunity



Specifically, this squad of trippers all gets to roll an unarmed strike against you. Do they also all have enchanted weapons and necklaces of whatever the fuck enchants monk fists, and/or is this trip squad some angry Pallian monestary that you have offended?



Yea, but now you're losing to an entire squad of dudes who need to get close to full attack you. If they have friends, you do too. You, specifically, also had a horse that they somehow dragged you down from (or maybe they tripped that too!). Also note that every attack but the trip has to go through your armor class explicitly.


I'll admit I haven't seen this focused of a trip character in PFS, but I have absolutely seen dudes with improved trip as good guys and bad guys, and the game doesn't immediately devolve around them. I think you are letting the theory run a bit wild.

If you really hate it, commission a custom magic item to counter it- custom magic items are always possible. You'll definitely see more trippers as enemies than just this one rando misbuilt orc, but Caligo is a big world with a variety of martial traditions, so I hope that your NPC fightery types are reasonably diverse in interesting ways.




I mean, I do. I like that the game has alternate methods of attack besides strictly attacking armor into hit points for martial characters. If E6 ends up being some disgusting sweet spot where a certain type of martial approach is vastly superior, we'll absolutely house rule that (including rebuild options if that inconveniences a player character). E6 in Pathfinder doesn't have as much searchable feedback, in part because 5ed is vaguely E6-ish for all levels and happened at about the right time to take some of that audience, so in a sense we are walking into a dimmer hallway than normal.




I'm pretty sure the 6 gunslingers with point blank and precise shot will put them down, and without needing a whole pile of feats.


Not too late to reroll Hawkman lol

And if we're talking about other actions you can take to slow down a full attack combo, remember you have normal access to a pretty huge list of alchemical items, and a Str to carry decent numbers of them. From what I can tell, an extract of levitate would also allow you to ignore being tripped, as would a fly spell, or any magical items duplicating this.

I want to have some faith in this system man. I haven't seen it become just trippers and their devoted sex slaves, so I'm assuming that is not its natural state at rest.

I think you're missing the point here. If I'm tripped, I can spend a move action to stand and provoke. Or I can spend a full round action to fail an acrobatics check and provoke. Or I can have another person spend a round dragging me, and then I can spend a move action standing. So yes, I suppose that is a 1.5 rounds instead of two, but it also has the unlikely event of having our turn timing work out and I'm removed from melee with a standard action. Having another person move me is a pretty major effect on losing turns.




Yeah, when I was creating an encounter against evil clerics, some of them weren't wise enough to be clerics, so they had to be ineffective fighters instead.

This is a meaningless filter.


Or attacking someone who isn't a tank? Let's say it's a 6th level wizard, and he has a +1 Str and +3 Dex, which is fairly generous. The trip fails on a 1. With a ring or something else, it's now 1-3. I know wizards should avoid being in contact with melee fighters, but it will be over in a round.


YOU CAN'T KITE BARBARIANS OR MONKS!


If it is possible by the rules in an imaginary world, it exists.


I have no problem with the concept of tripping. I think 3.x and pathfinder have done a poor job of it. I mean, they make it a completely useless maneuver, right? It provoke an AoO! That makes sense because you are focusing on someone's legs while they get to stab at you. It means you can trip a guy with a bow or a caster or something, and that's cool, but a fighter... Oh, well, just take this feat and then it doesn't provoke an OoA anymore (and in pathfinder, you get a bonus).

Now when you go for someone's feet, the existence of your feat makes them so stupid they just fall down instead of stabbing you. If you trip someone you get to attack them... I'm ok with that, because you did give up an action, and now you get a +4 to hit. That seems very judo-ish... Toss to ground, punch. But anyone nearby gets to hit as well even if they are involved with their own enemy? Two guys are battling it out and someone falls nearby, so you take a break to stab the guy on the ground? All because a friend is such an amazing tripper? WTF?


The gunslingers represent another problem. If your criteria to determine whether something is broken is to compare it to gunslingers, then... I think this says something more about gunslingers.



If by "Hawkman" you mean "Wereelephant Monk of Flying Legs Monastery," then yes, I'm considering it.

In the other cases, we have more than just a round going on, we have attack rolls, which represent potential damage. In any event, yes, there's certainly a cost associated with being tripped, just as there are costs associating with landing said trip.



A bunch of clerics are likely to hang around for ideological reasons, such as feeding orphans or eating orphans (a god-dependent mode). Much like any given fighter will have adequate strength, but won't necessarily meet the non-primary stats that I listed. It makes sense to say "lets use our divine/arcane/martial powers for our shared goal", but much less likely for an entire group to have an exact stat comp. Unless tripping is SO beneficial that you shun someone without the requisite feats in your quest to build a team of triptalitarians.

This is further complicated by the fact that some enemies are flying, others are large, etc. A team of PC trippers would have a very hard time dealing with many enemies. Evil NPC adventuring parties are in theory not created wholesale to sink their teeth into PCs- look at past combats for examples. I'm sure you remember that bladed gauntlet guy who was a seething mound of critical hits- he couldn't have made a whole party of him, because there's some thing that critical hits just don't work on.



I don't feel this is at all overly punishing to a wizard, especially given the more anti-caster options (that come online reasonably fast and are still ok-ish even at very high levels). The trip guy in this example doesn't have step up and disruptive, and casting defensively prone doesn't have any penalties over casting defensively. If the wizard doesn't have something good to help out, it's because he already cast something important.



Not for real, but you can try to avoid taking their full attack, if you are concerned it will lead to some kind of anime combo where you fly up and down and get curb stomped, especially if your full attack is just damage. That's what I was saying there. Tactically, some opponents you want to be full attacking versus theirs, and others you do not.



When you aren't 2nd level, you'll have other mitigations available, is my point.



The 3.X chain is:
Combat Expertise (requires 13 Int, allows trade of to-hit for AC)
Improved Trip (no AoO, +4 to trip)
(optional) Greater Trip (get an extra attack when you trip someone)

The Pathfinder chain is:
Combat Expertise (requires 13 Int, allows trade of to-hit for AC)
Improved Trip (no AoO, +2 to trip)
Greater Trip (turns +2 into +4 to hit, people being tripped provoke)



I mean, my reading of what is being modeled is that the tripped opponent has less of a way to defend himself as he is falling. That's how I think you'd parse the Pathfinder Greater Trip feat.



The six summoners? Can these guys even claw their way through the Eidolon swarm?
The six paladins? Six paladins is a little dependent on alignment to land smite, but they can heal each other admirably, and don't at least some of them have a mount?
How about six rangers? Now they have pets to deal with, and their targets are tankier versus trip than the paladins.
Even at 6th level, the 6 wizards would fuck them up pretty good for getting in such a tight ball. Probably lose some wizards though.
Hell, how would the 6th grapple specialized monks fare? I'm sure some would be tripped, but there wouldn't be an AoO storm, because the entire offensive line breaks down if some are grappled. If a trip guy gets grappled first, he's going to be rolling against a serious CMD to break out of that, and many of his feats are wrapped up in tripping.

My point isn't about gunslingers, it is that this strategy is certainly not great versus many similarly constructed homogenous compositions- even if we are comparing spherical cows, it isn't great. There's a bunch of really great strategies that, if invested fully in, end up with glaring weaknesses.




I mean, at least consider getting a war-trained horse of some sort. A bunch of low level characters without much wealth or opportunity to tweak anything has much to grouse about, but I don't think that some warband of rogue trippers is that high on the list.

We ought to get fully-equipped warhorses now, because I'm sure it's going to be 4 more gaming sessions before we see a merchant again.

We have enough gold for a full party's worth of fully-equipped warhorses, right? Let me just sell all of these silver bars....

Honest to Fedahar, I am a 3rd level paladin and still can't afford a combat trained heavy horse. 300gp.

However, I can probably afford 10 otters and a sled.

"Lets leave the rogue I intimidated out of his property alone with the NPC warrior in the scary city that just murderized his friend and the shit tier guard his friend had hired"

Regardless, you are in a city with at least two groups who want your help and understand that compensation is involved, so hopefully your somewhat dire lack of cash should resolve soon.

Also- If I had been writing these rules, I wouldn't have ever considered "Vicious Stomp" something that even needs to be in the game. I can see the purpose of Improved Trip, and while I'm not a huge fan of Greater Trip, I can see why you'd want it around. Stuff that piles extra attacks onto debuffs is not amazing, and the feat seems to be kinda crap unless you are explicitly setting up the exact combo Zem did above. If I end up doing the same type of drama I did for 3.5, with the merged feats and heavy handed balancing, it would certainly something I'd look at. At the end of the day, I don't have the system mastery with Pathfinder than I do for a system that I've ran since the dawn of the millennia, and I'd prefer to not dick around excessively into its internals until I'm convinced it suffers similar woes.

We're still running custom armors, shields, and tura gems, and those are meaningful overlays, especially in E6. I'm still allowing an incomplete set of Pathfinder (the stuff I think is playtested the best and the most likely to be balanced), but it's a more aggressive list than we'd have if we had switched to Pathfinder on launch.

EDIT: Pathfinder FAQ updated sometime in the last couple years to allow weapon enhancement bonus to trip CMB.

For whatever it's worth, if I run a pathfinder game, Greater Trip is right the fuck out. It rewards ganging up too much.

"Lets leave the rogue I intimidated out of his property alone with the NPC warrior in the scary city that just murderized his friend and the shit tier guard his friend had hired"
Oh, cool, you think we had some understanding of the 94 NPCs that we met on day one. It sounds like one of them was a rogue and another was a warrior.

I am confident we have a bard because I leveled him. That's pretty much it.

I clearly expected everyone to memorize everyone who was on those three wagons!

The entire thing had numerous opportunities for social and technical misplay. I actually think you guys did really good, and in game everyone who made it out certainly understands that in the context of their own experiences.

You may change your mind as the game moves forward, maybe not. The feat set is different than it 3.X, after all.

Speaking of, I should really finish capstones.

Just let me know when you put 2 monks, 2 barbarians, and a couple other guys together as an enemy group. I'll know I'm up right after the TPK that follows.

You'll just be centaur bolt aces. It's the natural order of things.

In seriousness, that exact combo may or may not happen, but you will absolutely see combat maneuvers, and many will result in you provoking attacks of opportunity from more than one foe. Greater Trip, Greater Reposition, Greater Drag, all do this. You will see this the entire game- you'll see this the entire time you play Pathfinder. You should have magical items soon enough, and quite a bit of customization available, so consider this when selecting and purchasing and whatnot.

These are not cheesy tactics, or some obscure thing in the backpages of the DMG like some old overbearing rules. They are not uncommon things, they are not unusual, or historically unrealistic. These rules are right there, available as combat options for PCs and NPCs, and they are present in plenty of fights, system wide. If this is unacceptable, we need another system and Pathfinder is a mistake and unsuitable for this group, full stop


PS: I'm fine banning Vicious Stomp if you guys are worrying about that one. I came up with several scenarios where, if you know an opponent has this feat, it is optimal to literally kneel before him. That one can go- it's not even core.

We'll certainly give it a go, but if I had to choose right now, I'd guess there's only a 40% chance my next game will be Pathfinder. I was under the impression they had generally made things more streamlined like "Do we really need to roll hide and move silently versus spot and listen? Can't we reduce that?" I thought battles would be more streamlined.

But getting into this more, it looks like it was developed by min/maxers. That these powerful combos exist and in great number mean that I need to read and understand them, determine my final build to ensure I am a Master Tripper, Master Dragger, or Master Whatever at the end, and then create my character to ensure I qualify for all of the relevant feats. Then while perhaps the mechanics have been cleaned up a little since 3.5, they will be happening every battle and assuredly running into problems.

I'm so good, I trip his horse. Does he take falling damage? Is there a chance he is pinned under the horse? Since he must also fall, does that mean both he and his horse provoke an attack of opportunity? Or just one and we can choose?

I would prefer a gaming system without such combos where a new player stands a chance. This is melee, and I assume all the classes have similar setups that we'll uncover when one tries to kill us.


Again, we'll see how it goes because we're in it now. I think 6 levels is a good way to try it out. I certainly may change my mind, and it will be a fun campaign either way.

" I thought battles would be more streamlined"

I mean, they are, but it's not like anyone spends most of their time at the table rolling dice- certainly not until high level anyway.

"it looks like it was developed by min/maxers"

I think that's a reasonably accurate statement, actually. I'll say that there was definitely care put into trying to make more stuff fair.

"determine my final build to ensure I am a Master Tripper, Master Dragger, or Master Whatever at the end"

I generally disagree with this, however. I don't think you need to drive every character to some specific build, by any means. I've seen people come up with odd combos just like in 3.X, but they aren't the sort of thing you'd expect to see work at most tables. I don't think your character will miss not qualifying for tripping feats unless the E6 part of the game goes on for a really really long time.

"I'm so good, I trip his horse. Does he take falling damage? Is there a chance he is pinned under the horse?"

The Ride check has the answer here: he makes a DC 15 ride check. If he fails, he takes 1d6 and is prone. If he succeeds at Soft Fall, then neither of those things happens. I think this is the same rule as 3.X.

"does that mean both he and his horse provoke an attack of opportunity?"

No, because if you trip the horse, the horse is tripped, triggering Greater Trip, and the rider falls prone (if he can't make the DC 15 ride check), but he isn't tripped. That's a strict reading of the rules, but I don't see why it would go any differently than that.

"Or just one and we can choose? "

You can't trip him while he's mounted. I think you can dismount him with a bullrush, reposition, or drag, or trip the horse.

"I would prefer a gaming system without such combos where a new player stands a chance"

I think Pathfinder requires a lot of system mastery, which is absolutely a fair complaint about it (and I've seen this exact line being used as a reason to play 5ed over Pathfinder, honestly). But I'll point out a few things: we haven't changed our system much since 3.0 came out. Pathfinder added a bunch of stuff that is, in my opinion, worth caring about. You pretty quickly got the hang of the Pathfinder Paladin, who is much improved since 3.5. Most of those complaints are from people who go to PFS, which is generally filled with players who play weekly or even more, and have kept up with everything actively since 2009 (and the game publishes minor splat stuff every two months, entirely separate from their major releases). None of that stuff is "this is broadly assumed valid in all Pathfinder games unless your DM is a meanie" stuff, it is optional stuff (and by default I'm not allowing it- hence my earlier list of allowed content, with a promise to look into something else if someone wants it).

My ideas for this weren't really, Pathfinder or 5ed. It was, do we want the same 3.X thing we've been doing (to which I added Pathfinder classes mostly without issue), do we want to try Pathfinder, or do we want to play on Kylon under 2ed rules. 5ed isn't unreasonable, but I don't like the lack of OGL, and I definitely don't like that I'd have to fight really hard to bring in my custom classes and concepts all over again. Regardless, I have friends that are picking up and playing it and liking it, so it wouldn't be impossible. But who knows as regards build combos and whatever. In any system where feats are meaningful, there will be a "best way", you just hope it isn't a huge deal. I don't think that the combat maneuvers are a huge deal. Maybe they are in E6 world, and maybe I need to house rule. Look at the work we've done on absolutely minor details of 3.X- we're not about house rules.

You know there will be more difficult answers. I would still argue it makes no sense for the horse to provoke an attack because I'm so good at tripping him but the fellow on top who goes flying to the ground doesn't. By the rules, sure, but not by sense.


The issue is that it's your decision on how frequently to make these particular combos, and I assume they are all part on your ninja fetish. It's not like the frequency is determined by the game rules... it's only that the game rules allow for it.

It is plausible to have an encounter where a Master Tripper gets one of us on the ground, and since he would do this frequently through his career, he would hang out with someone with combat reflexes who knows to threaten the square. So then we get smashed.

You can't trip a prone person, but you sure as fuck get a +4 to drag them because they are prone. Since Baddie3 is a Master Dragger, he gets another +4 from feats. More AoO!!! It doesn't take much work to ensure that the soon-to-be-deceased PC will still be threatened and flanked by 3 people when he attempts to stand. He could lay on the ground, I suppose, but that seems like an unlikely survival technique when he will assuredly get dragged next round.

This sort of thing doesn't include magical weapons that may or may not be rare. This is just building a character.

My point is simply that it exists. It might not be "broken" because it is available to everyone, but it does require a plan to min/max from the beginning.

Well, I guess my actual point is I'm going to check out 5th edition because I give zero shits about ninjas.

My opinion on this has evolved, in that I believe I'll absolutely need to add some mitigation for this at or slightly before 6th level. The math on CMD seems to slowly favor the CMD guy in a warrior versus warrior type of situation- the base attacks increase at the same rate and cancel, the bonuses to attributes progress slowly and mostly cancel (with the edge going to the defender), but in a normal game the attacker's weapon enchantment and ability to buy +2 with feats caps out pretty quick, but the deflection bonus to AC chases the weapon enchantment, and every other AC buff besides armor seems to contribute.

Meanwhile, on E6 Caligo, the weapon enchantment can get up to +4, and the defensive options stop before then. So if nothing else this shows an issue with E6 that we'll need to address, probably with itemization (because itemization changes from E6 are causitive).


While I love the combo dragger / tripper / blenderline thing, and I'll absolutely do that as soon as you guys aren't in diapers any more, I have a more subtle thing with this in Pathfinder- tons of monsters have massive CMD values. I think this is why the maneuvers got buffed while I wasn't looking (you look away for three years, and BLAMMO all of a sudden...). But even with the buffs, taking a feat chain to be good at this stuff means that there are several monsters that you will simply not be effective against, whereas investing in damage doesn't have this fall off. If the PCs have to gear for everything, and the NPCs gear to assassinate PCs, that's probably an unfairly built group, and a group built solely around maneuvers would never be able to conquer a dragon or whatever (see my earlier example about the bladed gauntlet guy not being a viable group, but being a valuable member of one).



I mean, you should check it out. People's criticisms are like "it feels like E6", and I feel that's not really a grand issue for you, you know? Pretty sure it has teleport and such though, so I suspect they are overstating the eesixiness of it.

Ladies and Gentlement, I present, the untrippable creature!

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monste ... pede-house

This is a common centipede, with a CR of 1/8. His CMD is 6, so pretty much anything can grab him, reposition him, or grapple him.

But he can't be tripped.


Because he has too many legs.


So what you need to be, is centipedes.



The monster entries are carefully curated in this regard. Every leg past the first 2 gives a +2 CMD to be tripped. So a creature without legs is immune to trip, one with one leg is just as easy to trip as one with two, and then it starts ramping up. Here's a tiny spider:
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monste ... let-spider

And here's its CMD entry:
CMD 9 (21 vs. trip)



This amuses me greatly.


EDIT: Also: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wo ... the-weasel

The belt of the weasel has a +2 Dexterity on it, and per your unanimous requests, we aren't using the stat boosting items (you all preferred the Caligan stats instead). This means that the version of this you could acquire would be cheaper by roughly the cost of a belt of Dexterity +2, which is 10,000 - 4,000 (there's probably a more accurate formula, but 6k isn't too wild). This weasel-enchanted belt lets you move at half speed whilst prone, which means a withdraw action would function.

There's also boots of levitation, jaunt boots, and probably other stuff. No one I asked on the forum had any suggestions. Regardless, low level magic items definitely provide, you know, magic.