Knock back rage power


Rules Questions


This question is not so much a rage power question as it is a bull rush question.

If my barbarian knocks a creature back 5 feet into a square occupied by another enemy what is the effect??

I have scanned all over faqs and message boards and the rules and have found nothing. I think there is a rule that the creature pushed falls prone in the enemies square but I cant find anything on this. Please help. Can you reference the books where I can find the rule in question?

Dark Archive

If you go to push a creature and there is another creature in the way you can make another at -4 to push both creatures back. If you fail/choose not to target the next creature the movement ends. So if you had a line of 5 people in front of you, you would have a bullrush attempt that is as follows:

Person 1: no negative
Person 2: -4
Person 3: -8
Person 4: -12
Person 5: -16

Now if you succeed in succession at pushing all five people the entire line would shift 5ft. If at any point in this line you failed then no one would be moved.

If you bullrushed, say, 15ft and person 1 was adjacent and person 2 was 10ft back, you would be able to push person 1 to person 2 before having to attempt the second check.


It is described in the last paragraph of the Bull Rush combat maneuver in the Core Rulebook.

Core Rulebook, Combat chapter, Bull Rush wrote:
An enemy being moved by a bull rush does not provoke an attack of opportunity because of the movement unless you possess the Greater Bull Rush feat. You cannot bull rush a creature into a square that is occupied by a solid object or obstacle. If there is another creature in the way of your bull rush, you must immediately make a combat maneuver check to bull rush that creature. You take a –4 penalty on this check for each creature being pushed beyond the first. If you are successful, you can continue to push the creatures a distance equal to the lesser result. For example, if a fighter bull rushes a goblin for a total of 15 feet, but there is another goblin 5 feet behind the first, he must make another combat maneuver check against the second goblin after having pushed the first 5 feet. If his check reveals that he can push the second goblin a total of 20 feet, he can continue to push both goblins another 10 feet (since the first goblin will have moved a total of 15 feet).

When the target creature would be knockbacked into the space of another creature, roll a fresh bull rush maneuver (no action required) for the second creature. If the second bull rush fails, treat the second creature as an immovable object. No-one is knocked prone. If the second bull rush succeed by less than the first creature would move, the second creature moves back as far as the second bull rush indicted and then becomes an obstacle. If the second bull rush succeeds by as much or more than the first creature would move, the first creature pushes the second creature far enough to finish its move, but no farther.

The second creature is not damaged by the knockback rage power.


Thank you for the responses. So there are no "rules" for failing to "knockbacking" a creature into a creatures space. Correct? Where does it say that a creature becomes an obstacle if you fail your roll on the second creature?

Another question is Can any enemy end up in another enemies space or are they automatically shunted to an open square?

Another question for your answer above. If a barbarian tries to knockback and creature with another creature behind it and the barbarian chooses to fail that roll, does that mean nothing happens to the first creature? That seems a rather odd result.

Dark Archive

So the issue is, is that you can't knock a creature into an occupied space, you can only move both the creature and the obstacle. So if you try to move a creature and fail to move the obstacle, there is nowhere for the creature to go, meaning it auto-fails.


Maybe I am not telling it right. My scenario has nothing to do with an obstacle. Just 2 enemy creatures. No walls around at all. No obstacles. Say in an open field. One in front of the other. My barbarian knocks one into the other one. I dont follow at all. I stay in the space that I started in.

What are the "rules" for what happens if I knock that first creature into the second enemies square? I dont try to push him any farther or I purposefully fail my roll for the second creature.

I think 3.5 has rules for creatures ending up in other creatures squares. I think it says that they fall prone. I cant find any rules in Pathfinder that tell me what happens in this situation. If there are no rules in Pathfinder then we will just use 3.5 rules and move on.


In PF the target will never end in another creature's space, it will stop short instead. You get the second check to see if opponent #2 is shifted back to allow opponent #1 to be moved to the now empty spot.


OK, thank you everyone for trying to clear that up for me. I appreciate your responses.

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