Can you switch to lore warden? It's the best fighter archetype for combat maneuvers.
At level 14 and beyond you are really going to start facing enemies that are either flying, have many legs, too big or just cannot be tripped for whatever reason. What is you character's plan when it can't trip the enemy?
Dirty trick is a nice de-buff that applies to lots of different enemy types.
For my trip fighter build I took a 1 level dip in bloodrager. As a dwarf my con was high enough I got some use out of rage and in addition to fast movement I got access to a spell list that allowed me to use wands like enlarge person and fly. If you already have casters that can help you out here then it might not be needed.
I would think about what your character is going to do when it can't trip or is out-reached by the enemy and try to shore up that weakness.
- Wants as great size and reach as possible to exponentially increase value of investments into control tools (like trip), instead of having them become useless against an increasing ratio of too well defended/immune opponents with each level gained.
- Requires at the very least a decent Dex for AoOs, which is penalized by size increases.
- Wants to keep as far away as possible from any option which requires being adjacent to enemy (pun intended), but may otherwise often have the perfect combos to really benefit from quite a few such options.
- Don't want to trade accuracy for damage and have no interest in boosting damage, but is often forced to take and/or use such options in order benefit from related control/debuff options (such as Witch Hunter and Spell Sunder, or Power Attack, Improved Bull Rush and Cornugon Smash).
- Needs to have at least a few control tools to not become largely useless when facing enemies immune to signature combo, but is often largely forced to focus on a single such tool to make it - and have it remain - viable.
But despite all these issues, it's very much possible to have a melee control build which remains decent even in higher level combat, though in contrast to virtually all other build types, the number of viable builds unfortunately tend to rapidly decrease the further up the levels you go.
In this case, I really recommend you listen to:
I would think about what your character is going to do when it can't trip or is out-reached by the enemy and try to shore up that weakness.
This.
Thankfully, there are quite a few really good options for you to explore besides trip, at least if you're able to change/retrain a few earlier choices. Also keep in mind that great melee control builds are pretty complicated to build (but often easy to play), typically requiring levels in at the very least two classes. So the more competent you want your fighter to become, the more work you should be prepared to put in!
In short, I'd reconsider the following options:
Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack, Whirlwind Attack - I think the last Whirlwind part of this chain can be good on a reach build, but I don't think I've ever seen it being worth the feat slots eaten by the far less valuable options it requires (even if you want Combat Patrol). And think about it: how often do you have more enemies within your reach than you have reasonably accurate attacks in your full attack? (And remember this situation is likely to become increasingly less common the higher up the levels you go, as opponents tend to get larger.) If you think the answer is "very often", Whirlwind may just be worth it. If not, I think there are many other options far more deserving of your feat slots.
Fury's Fall - the Dex bonus unfortunately doesn't stack with the Str bonus you already add to CMB checks (weird, I know).
Lunge - though this can be nifty from time to time, keep in mind that it only increases the reach during your turn, not your threatened area for AoOs (which is the far more important factor for you). I'd trade this out in a second if the feat slot could be used to complete another control combo, but would otherwise probably let it be.
In place of these feats, I recommend investing into dirty trick, which has the great advantage of being useful against virtually every opponent, regardless of which level you have reached. In addition, dirty trick lends itself especially well for characters starting at a higher level, since it requires quite a few options before it really starts to shine. Besides the standard Improved and Greater feats, I think the following are of special interest:
Quick Dirty Trick if you're going to do dirty tricks, there's rarely a good reason for not to having this at your level.
Dirty Trick Master for vastly increased effects. Best combined with an option which allows you to make dirty tricks more than once per round and/or as AoOs.
Superior Dirty Trick I recommend dazzled/dazed if you have Dirty Trick Master and can reliably make two dirty tricks per round against a single opponent, otherwise entangled/pinned or sickened/nauseated
AFAIK, there are three ways to gain the ability to make dirty tricks as AoOs and/or more than once per full attack. The first is to take 6 levels of barbarian (or 8 levels of primalist bloodrager) and get the excellent rage power Savage Dirty Trick. This is probably of less interest to you, but worth mentioning nevertheless, since the barbarian and especially the bloodrager offer the arguably greatest melee control options in the game.
The second way is to grab Kitsune Vengeance, granting the ability to make DTs as AoOs an unlimited times per round. This has the distinct downside of requiring the two far less useful feats in the style feat chain, and perhaps more importantly also requiring you to use the Kitsune Style stance, thereby making it impossible for you to use another style feat stance (unless you dip a level or two into Master of Many Styles Monk, which may very well be a great idea regardless). On the other hand, this is absolutely hilarious when combined with Dirty Trick Master and the many AoOs trip may generate, giving you a very good reason to make this quote on repeat, and really mean it every time!
The third way consists of kindly asking your DM to allow you to take Seize the Opportunity (from Path of War: Expanded by Dreamscarred Press). If s/he's OK with it (which I think s/he really should be in this case), this is of course the best alternative by far.
Besides these dirty trick shenanigans, there a few other combos to consider (such as demoralization), and ways to further pimp you trip combos, but I'll get into those in a later post if you're interested.
And before I forget: make sure you get your hands on a dueling dragoncatch guisarme as soon as possible!
Can you switch to lore warden? It's the best fighter archetype for combat maneuvers.
At level 14 and beyond you are really going to start facing enemies that are either flying, have many legs, too big or just cannot be tripped for whatever reason. What is you character's plan when it can't trip the enemy?
Dirty trick is a nice de-buff that applies to lots of different enemy types.
Agreed on counts. Lore Warden the better option, but what are you going to do against Flyers, Aquatic creatures, creatures who rely on range, creatures who have superior reach, creatures with lots of legs and creatures with no legs at all?
Dirty Trick is indeed a nice de-buff, but really, isn't the entire point of a Fighter to deal as much damage as possible?
As a rule I find combat maneuvers to be underwhelming, especially at higher levels... might want to reconsider the whole thing. I find Whirlwind attack devastating when you take it at 4th level, especially with a reach weapon, but the battlefield (should) become much more dynamic the higher up you go.
As previous posters have pointed out, trip maneuvers fall off in effectiveness quite quickly at higher levels. Dirty trick generally is a more effective (read: more versatile) maneuver to specialize in.
Correction on upho's post. Fury's Fall absolutely allows you to stack both dexterity and strength to your CMB.
While Lore Warden is indeed one of the (if not the) best trip archetypes out there, you may want to also consider the Bounty Hunter.
Still have full BAB, much more versatile than most fighters in terms of skills, can still get decent damage from sneak attack.
Now, the bounty hunter suffers from the weakness of lacking AoE control. There is a feat combination that may let you qualify for sneak attack on virtually any enemy you threaten (if they're on the ground) but it requires a very shaky reading of a feat.
The two feats are Gang Up and Press to the Wall. Effectively, you need to check with your GM if the ground is considered a solid object that takes up a square for the Press to the Wall feat. If it is, you now flank every single enemy you threaten that isn't threatened by an ally, provided they're on the ground of course.
It's a very shaky/odd reading, but it may work.
Dirty Trick is indeed a nice de-buff, but really, isn't the entire point of a Fighter to deal as much damage as possible?
You mean more than it is the entire point of any other full bab classes by Paizo? Judging from the fighter class features, I'd say this is very much not the case. Rather, I think the entire point of the fighter is to be a martial class defined primarily by feats, intended to enable a very large number of different but effective "warrior" character concepts (but sadly often not really working as intended).
And I think DT can be a lot more than a "nice de-buff". In higher levels, a DT focused melee control build can rather reliably daze, pin and nauseate more than three opponents per round, taking them out of the fight for at least three rounds for all intents and purposes. That's some pretty darn serious debuffing IMO.
As a rule I find combat maneuvers to be underwhelming, especially at higher levels... might want to reconsider the whole thing.
I agree many combat maneuvers do risk becoming increasingly useless in higher levels, primarily due to size differences (unless being focused on in the extreme via class support like the tetori). But that doesn't mean all of them are useless, and especially not for all build types. For example, it's not difficult for a build based on a lore warden fighter to end up with a CMB for weapon-using maneuvers exceeding +66 (+70 for those supported by feats). Which also happens to be the CMD of the CR 25 tarrasque, which isn't immune to any of the conditions which can be imposed by dirty trick besides shaken/frightened, and is even 100% certain to end up flat on its back if said lore warden would attempt to trip it.
Correction on upho's post. Fury's Fall absolutely allows you to stack both dexterity and strength to your CMB.
You're absolutely right! My bad. I somehow confused this with Weapon Finess/Agile Maneuvers not stacking with Fury's Fall. Thanks!
The two feats are Gang Up and Press to the Wall. Effectively, you need to check with your GM if the ground is considered a solid object that takes up a square for the Press to the Wall feat. If it is, you now flank every single enemy you threaten that isn't threatened by an ally, provided they're on the ground of course.
It's a very shaky/odd reading, but it may work.
Ha ha! Despite most likely not being intended, I'd might actually allow this in my game, considering the rather hefty costs involved, not to mention the inventiveness of the player coming up with this combo. But regardless I love it, shaky reading or not!
Here's my tripmonster character.
I would consider going for the 4th level aberrant bloodrager ability, which extends your natural reach while raging. Yes, you only have 3 levels to go right now, but the 4th will put you in a pretty solid position. I use the bloodrage reach + enlarge person potions + Improved Unarmed Strike to threaten from adjacent to 30'.
Potential problem with Harder They Fall: Since this requires Aid Another, it won't work with Advanced Weapon Training (Fighter's Tactics), or for that matter even with Inquisitor's Solo Tactics, unless you can figure out a way to clone yourself, because Aid Another really needs to come from somebody else (barring that, I don't think you can Aid Another to yourself, even with class features equivalent to Solo Tactics).
One problem with Polearm Master is that it trades out Weapon Training. You might be able to make the case with your GM that Polearm Training is Rules As Intended supposed to work like Weapon Training but with a restricted set of weapons, although Rules As Written it doesn't. This distinction is important for feat prerequisites and the potential to pick up Advanced Weapon Training. Even if you got your GM to houserule in your favor (which would be perfectly reasonable), you won't be able to pick up Weapon Training with a ranged weapon, which is important if you want to get Ranged Trip and then Ace Trip (lets you trip flying opponents(*)). Note that Lore Warden doesn't trade out or restrict Weapon Training.
(*)Anybody ever figure out what happens if you try to use Ace Trip against something like a flying snake (for instance, Couatl)?
• Dirty Trick is indeed more versatile, though - as it is with every combat maneuver - it can only be kept effective if you max out the bonus to the highest possible, resulting in a one trick pony as in my case. If i'd focus on DT now, it would make me weaker. It would make sense if I made a new character from scratch, but in this campaign I will stick to tripping.
You misunderstand. My recommendation is that you do *both* tripping *and* DT.
• Foes that fly or have no legs...yeah, tbh most of my foes so far were fighting on ground and trippable, so it worked out for me.
So far, yes. I'm afraid that won't last much longer in a typical game.
Well I might be uneffective in these cases, but dazing assault is what I planned to use on those. Besides, pin down works nicely too. And to be honest, a damage dealing Barbarian has no clue against flying creatures either.
Yes they do. Check out their rage powers. And Dazing Assault is nice vs smaller monsters of a CR lower than yours, but the DC tends to be very easily beaten by larger higher CR ones, ie the ones you typically cannot trip either.
I can't dominate every kind of monster :P
Sure you can! Though it does take a little bit more planning build-wise.
• to uphos Post about retraining: I'd rather not retrain lunge. It is my way to deal with superior reach monsters and goes well with whirlwind attacks and full...
Keep it if you have the slot for it. But especially if you retrain Whirlwind I'd reconsider retraining Lunge as well.
Then there is a reason for taking Vicious Stomp, which will allow you to take a second AoO for every Trip.
Recently, I've been thinking that the Throwing Shield is an awesome Trip Weapon. You'd need to get a Blinkback Belt to really activate it.
It can actually be beyond awesome. I'm just gonna leave this here as an example of what I'm talking about.
But you'll have Range, which is even better than Reach, and you would be able to use Vicious Stomp at Range, too if you have Ascetic Style Feats.
Huh? Exactly what part of Ascetic Style allows you to alter the "falls prone adjacent"-trigger of Vicious Stomp?
For that, I believe you need Wolf Trip, just as you would when tripping with reach, for that matter. But this isn't necessarily a bad thing, since both Wolf Style and Wolf Trip can be excellent in the right combos (see for example link above).
Btw, I really recommend NOT to try ranged combat maneuvers without 7 levels of Shield Champion brawler (or similar), as it's too feat intensive and has ridiculously poor action economy otherwise.
Tripping dragons isn't that hard until the very end game. If you're enlarged and can catch one on the ground, you can trip stuff up to CR 16ish, like Ancient Black Dragons and such. You do have to catch them before they start flying or have some way to make them land, though, and the combination of four legs and huge size means you might actually fail the CMB check, unlike against almost all bipeds.
On my guisarme trip fighter, I just kept power attack and have a backup plan of whacking things really hard. Two handing weapons is one of the highest damage attack styles after all, so you should still be able to contribute well when you're not facing an opponent that just gets shut down completely by trips.
I also put two feats into Archery so I have decent ranged combat options for when things won't get close. Since I was already pumping dex for AOOs, I'm not a bad off-archer, especially since I explicitly don't need any of the feats related to shooting into melee (after all, if something is in melee, I should be too).
problem with Harder They Fall: Since this requires Aid Another, it won't work with... Inquisitor's Solo TacticsSure it will.
At 3rd level, all of the inquisitor’s allies are treated as if they possessed the same teamwork feats as the inquisitor for the purpose of determining whether the inquisitor receives a bonus from her teamwork feats.A level 3 Inquisitor can benefit from Harder they Fall as if all his allies had Harder they Fall, too.
{. . .}
I guess if they Aid Another for you, it counts as if they had Harder They Fall even if they don't have that feat, so it's not as problematic as I thought -- you just have to get them to Aid Another to you, not to take the feat.