You're the DM; change it so that it works like that. :)
I object! You're forgetting about succubi!
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Seriously though, you're the DM. House rule it if ya need to. That sounds like a very logical and well thought out change. Let us know how it works.
I'm afraid to use it as a GM because spending one round knocking one character over means the other three characters all basically get to wail on me that round without me really doing anything. It's really only worthwhile if you happen to be standing on a cliff or next to an acid pit or interning for a former president...
Wouldn't it make more sense to have Awesome Blow (giggle-worthy name, btw) be an attack action and not a standard action?
Letting one feat effectively apply the Trip maneuver to each attack sounds a little too good to me, I think. Although I admit that, as is, the Awesome Blow feat is really only useful for creatures that have one or two attacks to begin with (otherwise giving up a full attack is painful).
Maybe allow it as an attack action, but a maximum of once per round?
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I replace this feat on almost every monster that has it. It shouldn't be named Aweswom Blow, it should be named "Waste of Time Action to Ensure Monster Dies" Blow. I guess it was made so large monsters could take advantage of reach, but that is no longer much of an advantage since characters do far more damage than monsters per hit and definitely per round. Monsters need stronger tactics to survive and mount any kind of challenge.
I liked combining it with the War Hulk's Mighty Swing ability. (Miniatures Handbook) The look on my players faces when I told them 'all three of you are sent flying by his attack' was priceless.
Yaeh, something like that: make it an area of attack ability, that works within the monster's natural reach. You knock prone all the attackers within the area. Still situational, but very good if the PCs are packed together.
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Monsters already have something that does this:
Push (Ex) A creature with the push ability can choose to make a free combat maneuver check with a certain successful attack (often a slam attack). If successful, this check pushes a creature directly away as with a bull rush, but the distance moved is set by this ability. The type of attack that causes the push and the distance pushed are included in the creature's description. This ability only works on creatures of a size equal to or smaller than the pushing creature. Creatures pushed in this way do not provoke attacks of opportunity and stop if the push would move them into a solid object or creature.
Format: push (slam, 10 feet); Location: Special Attacks and individual attacks.
So use this.
Awesome blow is situational.
Great way to screw over a full attack next round, in the case of, say, a raging barbarian or removing the rogue's flanking buddy. Plus, big critters have reach. They they're in close, use this to push them back and force em to incur AoOs on their way in. Or use Awesome Blow and move so the prone victim is in reach of you, earning you an AoO on them when they get up.
Awesome blow is actually quite useful. Bull-rush+trip+damage.
I'm afraid to use it as a GM because spending one round knocking one character over means the other three characters all basically get to wail on me that round without me really doing anything. It's really only worthwhile if you happen to be standing on a cliff or next to an acid pit or interning for a former president...
Wouldn't it make more sense to have Awesome Blow (giggle-worthy name, btw) be an attack action and not a standard action?
Logical argument 1: It doesn't really require any more energy for a big creature to knock someone over than to bite at them. I see no reason why a dinosaur couldn't bite then blow or blow then bite (heh) in a single round. It doesn't really take any more time than disarming them, for example.
Logical argument 2: The mechanics would work just fine. Big creature uses his main attack for damage, then his tail attack to attempt to send someone sprawling.
Balance argument: Against a single monster it would just make the combat a little more interesting. I suppose it could get hard if you were, for example, fighting a squad of fire giants who took turns knocking over the entire party, but if you are fighting a squad of fire giants you should be high enough level to get around this.
Please consider my interest in "awesome blow" becoming an ability monsters can use as an attack action, not a standard action.
They won't just change the rules like that, but the ability can be useful.
In most parties you have one or two melee types. Awesome blow knocks one of them far enough away that they often provoke trying to reenter your area. Instead of using the AoO to do a regular melee attack for for a trip or disarm, whichever one is used in place of a melee attack.
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Awesome blow is also situational based on terrain. If your're fighting on a ledge, bridge, or near a chasm, etc, it's a lot of fun to use it to hurl PCs over the edge or across a barrier so that a) they take falling damage, and b) they can't return to the battle without magic (or a lot of climb checks).
Also useful with damaging terrain in the area, such as pools of acid or lava, walls of fire, etc.
hogarth, I was thinking more of an instead of an attack thing. So I bite once and knock someone else flying with my trail instead of biting once and damaging someone with my tail, but I still get the other attacks.
In that particular example (damaging bite plus non-damaging push with tail), it wouldn't be much different from the existing Awesome Blow feat, would it (damaging push with tail)?
To add to some of the suggestions above, I have found it very useful in difficult terrain. Combine with reach, the giants that I had use it often had two or three chances at AoO, depending on their weapon's reach, tactical set up and such.
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If it's a dumb beast like a dire croc, I'd just run the rules as written and have it not use Awesome Blow unless it wanted to escape - awesome blow, then move action to retreat is better than withdraw action often. Most of the time, a dumb beast like that doesn't want to send it's foes away - it wants to eat them faster.
Though to make a dire croc nasty, you want it to be in water and bite, grab, submerge and drown while it kept biting. Most PCs can't fight well underwater either (since the fighter types tend not to have freedom of movement and bashing and slashing weapons are far more popular than piercing.)
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In "The Tomb of Haggemoth" there is an encounter featuring two large earth elementals who both have Awesome Blow. IIRC, their tactics include using the blow to knock PCs through each others threatened areas so that they provoke Attacks of Opportunity - treating the PCs rather like volleyballs in that respect.
"Set - and Spike!"
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I find awesome blow to be situationally very useful- especially with Huge sized monsters with Grab. Rather than trade full attacks with the medium sized blender of death fighter-type, knocking him back as a standard and then safely repositioning so hes just at the edge of your monsters reach (and will eat an AOO as he stands) is pretty nifty. However, without some clever terrain or a lot of enemies to contend with, it does tend to be underwhelming. Not recommended on single big bads, though with lots of minions can be great fun- knock one PC into the midst of your waiting warriors who enjoy the +4 bonus to stab him to bits with their lower attack roll...
These are all good ideas, but a lot of our combats lately have been party of 4 vs one big dumb beastie. One round of knocking the party's tank over with awesome blow, say, means another 60 damage or so from the party's two glass cannons, in which I'm not really taking away from their daily resource allotment in any way. I've usually got three rounds, tops, so I opt for a full damage attack just to make the combat slightly challenging.
Sounds to me like vanilla arena combat. Animals are cunning too, especially predators, and they use terrain all the time (thinking of lions or wild dogs using concealment and pincer maneuvers, crocs using camouflage, etc.)
The point is that a L7 party of 4's damage output per round is so high that in a 4 vs 1 encounter spending a round to push someone away just isn't worthwhile.
I'd argue, respectfully, that the problem there isn't that Awesome Blow is bad; it's that this is a badly designed encounter, in that it's not going to be interesting or challenging for this party.
Sounds to me like you are being pointlessly condescending :)
So? That's who I am. See that name up there? "Malignor" is not a reference to rainbows and gumdrops. Consider etymology.
You asked my opinion about Awesome Blow and I gave it and you're welcome.I do not give my blessing for your houserule, because the ability isn't the problem. You have a high-damage party and complain that one giant monster trying to go toe to toe isn't a threatening encounter for them, because of Awesome Blow? Please forgive this vile and dastardly person for disagreeing (the heinous crime that it obviously is).
If you made a character, to play, who was big and strong and had awesome blow, would you use it all the time in an open hitpoint-accounting battle? No.
You would use it when a damaging push-away trip is more advantageous - before fleeing or moving (less AoOs), using terrain (get higher ground, shove into uneven ground), throwing people into each other, and so on. It's a tactical ability, and tactical abilities aren't 1-trick ponies. When you use a screwdriver to bake a cake, and it turns out bad, the problem isn't the screwdriver... it's the bad use of a perfectly good tool.
":)"
Wait a minute. Awesome Blow lets the monster knock a foe 10 feet away, possibly into one of the bad things you mentioned, and also, if the target hits something solid, he takes even more damage. He flies in whatever direction you choose, and falls prone, possibly taking him out of the fight for a round, and possibly provoking AoO from your allies when he tries to get up.
That's worth a feat.
Your comments make it sound like using a standard action makes you more prone to attacks by all the target's buddies (which is not true, obviously), but what you really seem to be saying is that you would like the ability for a creature with multiple attacks to have the possibility of knocking down another target for every attack he has, all in the same round. Which is not a feat. It is a build.
Using the feat as an attack action would not allow it to scale as a single feat. In other words, it would be much more powerful for a creature with multiple attacks than it would a creature with only two. And it would be more powerful for a two-attack creature than it would for a giant worm or snake. For the price of a single feat, a Balor could use this to knock prone up to seven opponents in a single round. Then his demon buddies could swarm over them and end them in that same round. That's ridiculous.