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So a 5 foot burst has four safe squares to stand in? Do the squares directly bordering the 5 foot burst force a save for creatures standing in them, or is the boundary between squares?

The spell in question, Blessed Boundary.

Basically a burst in 5 foot increments, boundary is two inches thick, attacking through the boundary gives cover, trying to cross or stand on the boundary has a chance to deal damage and forcibly move you.

A goblin, kobold, and orc cleric each cast Blessed Boundary.

"Hah!" says the goblin. "Anyone attacking me will have to attack through cover, I am protected, even if enemies don't have have to make any saves to attack me from 5 feet away."

"Nonsense," says the kobold. "You want to move the boundary further out so enemies have to try to pass through it, if they fail their save they're kicked out and have to try again. This is better than having cover from all attacks, even if it means someone who makes the save is safe and sound in the barrier with you and you don't get cover."

"Amateurs," says the orc. "I get the best of both worlds. Anyone attacking me has to deal with cover, plus every square within 5 feet of me forces the saving throw to not get punted away. And even if they make their save once, they have to keep making a save each turn to not get pushed away."

So which clerics have valid interpretations of Blessed Boundary in this case? Where exactly is the two inch boundary and what squares does it impact?

"A creature within your reach uses a move action or leaves a square during a move action it’s using."

If the second half didn't exist, then doing a Long Jump past a Fighter wouldn't trigger a Reactive Strike. The triggering action would have been the jump and now they're just flying through the air.

The second half clarifies that if the creature leaves a square and the cause of that is a move action, Reactive Strike is triggered.

If you rule that the Stand Still disruption goes before the 5ft square exit, then it also goes before the Stand Up, and that foe is re-Proned.

No, because the devs specifically said that in the case of something like Stand Up that the reaction happens after the action completes. It's an exception to the usual rule.

Trip.H is just trying to tell you about the special timing rules of when a reaction happens in regard to move actions: namely, upon exiting a square or (for move actions without leaving a square) at the end of that action. These rules apply solely to reactions triggered by move actions.

If Paizo specifically called out reactions happening after move actions that don't leave the square, then that indicates move actions that would leave a square have the reactions happen first.

Saying a Stand Still crit or Rooting rune crit can't prevent someone from leaving the initial square is not a reasonable interpretation. It also means something like a Maul or Flail crit would knock the foe down outside of your reach, meaning they can stand up without provoking.

The Disrupting Actions rules say "When an action is disrupted, you still use the actions or reactions you committed and you still expend any costs, but the action's effects don't occur."

You tried to leave a square, you got punished for it, that action's effects do not occur, you do not successfully leave the square.

Yes, exit, as in after that little 5ft mini-move. The acting creature must have completed the "exit" from a square, then the Reaction is allowed to pause the movement and execute.

Then manipulate actions (such as a spell or interact) would complete as well, yes, in terms of a hit not stopping them?

It says "uses a manipulate action" not "starts a manipulate action."

Exit as opposed to enter. Entering a square within a creature's reach doesn't provoke.

If you can't disrupt movement with Stand Still, you wouldn't be able to disrupt spells or manipulate actions with Reactive Strike, for the same logic -- it says you have to "use" a manipulate action, which means it has concluded by your logic.

But we know you can in fact disrupted manipulate actions and spells with Reactive Strike.

To be clear, that Stride IS still disrupted via Stand Still, etc, but because of that specific sidebar, that disruption only happens after the target has exited the square (always moves 5ft).

I'm still not seeing how the sidebar is making you reach that conclusion.

If you try to rule otherwise, and claim that a disruption overrules Reactions to Movement, then you also rule that Stand Up will get disrupted and prevented, smacking the creature back into the Prone position.

No, because it says "If you use a move action but don't move out of a square, the trigger instead happens at the end of that action or ability."

So...move action that would leave a square, happens at start of action, move action that would not leave a square, happens at end of action.

PF2 Lead Dev confirmed that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0Cbhna33RE

The Reactions to Movement sidebar.

"Each time you exit a square within a creature's reach, your movement triggers those reactions and free actions (although no more than once per move action for a given reacting creature)."

If you can disrupt a spell or manipulate action with a crit from Reactive Strike and prevent it from happening, you can disrupt a movement with a crit from Stand Still and prevent it from happening, it's the same language.

Reactive Strike: "A creature within your reach uses a manipulate action or a move action, makes a ranged attack, or leaves a square during a move action it's using."

Stand Still: "A creature within your reach uses a move action or leaves a square during a move action it’s using."

What happens on a hit is up for debate, but the crit effect seems pretty clear.

You are both being intentionally silly. Moving has its own explicit reaction rules and was even discussed here earlier.

Claxon's principle is that defense actions finish before offensive reactions, so I'm not being intentionally silly here.

And also Reactive Strike should be stronger than simple Ready. So yes, you need to Ready more cleverly and differently to have a chance to stop something.

So if Readying is weaker than Reactive Strike, and Reactive Strike can't stop someone from drinking a potion (unless you crit), then there's no way to stop someone from drinking a potion at low HP with a hit, correct? You can't go "Yield or die" and smack them down if they try to drink a potion instead of surrendering. With either Reactive Strike or Ready.

"no, it's a [movement] action. All Reaction 'pause' timings are delayed until after 5ft of movement; even Stand Still's disruption doesn't stop that"

(Yes, if you have ever seen a Monk's Stand Still prevent a foe from moving at all, that was in direct defiance of the rules. Creatures are supposed to get to move 5ft, no matter what. I'm assuming dev intent is to prevent Reaction dogpiles where foes cannot escape.)

Er, where do you see that rule? I've never heard of that.

Yes it would, which is why you ready for when they move into position.

Edit: I would as a GM warn them that if they want to intercept the enemy, they should ready for when the enemy moves into position, not when they pull the lever.

Which also means you couldn't ready an action to prevent anything, right?

I can't ready an attack if the enemy tries to cast a spell.

Or if they try to drink a potion.

If I ready an action for if they move away from me, and their action completes first, how does that work? Sounds like your position means they'd wind up 25 feet away and either unconscious (because you hit them after they moved 25 feet somehow) or conscious (because they moved out of range of your readied action)?

It's also worth noting that the fighter could have in slightly different circumstances readied an action for when the cultist got close or used a range attack to hit the cultist and down them.

Speaking of readied actions, your interpretation does mean if the Fighter says "I ready an attack that triggers if the Cultist tries to pull the lever" then that readied attack gets resolved after the lever is pulled.

If someone gets hit (but not crit) by a Reactive Strike that drops them to 0 HP, does it interrupt their action/activity?

Is there any distinction in this regard depending on if it is a ranged attack vs an interact action vs a spell?

Thread discussing it here, apparently it's not obvious.

Didn't read the whole thread, but unless the ability specifies it functions by disrupting or interrupting I don't allow it do so ever.

Please look at the Heal example here and the Doomsday Lever example here and explain how you would rule in those two scenarios, please.

Choose a different order that doesn't disrupt actions that are not disrupted.

So what would happen in the Heal scenario I gave?

Another scenario: say there's a Doomsday temple and on the wall is a lever that when pulled instantly disintegrates the world and everything on it.

The PC Fighter at full health does not want this to happen. The cultist at low health does. Both are two move actions away from the lever on either side.

Fortunately, the Fighter is higher on initiative. He spends two actions to run right in front of the lever.

The cultist spends two actions to move next to the lever (and adjacent to the Fighter) and uses an Interact action to pull the lever, which triggers a Reactive Strike, which is enough to drop the cultist (but does not crit, so no disruption). What happens?

1, the cultist pulls the lever and everything and everyone is disintegrated, Reactive Strike never gets the chance to happen

2, the Reactive Strike goes off, dropping the cultist, but the cultist's action also goes off, so the world disintegrates anyway

3, the Reactive Strike goes off, dropping the cultist, and the world is saved

Killing the enemy doesn't change that.

New question. Say the enemy is casting Heal on themself. They have 10 HP to start. They get hit (not crit, no disruption) for 30 damage. The Heal is for 40 damage.

Do they...

1, die

2, end up at 40 HP (10 - 30 = 0, 0 + 40 = 40)

3, end up at 20 HP (10 + 40 - 30 = 20)

4, something else?

I will point out a standard Champion with a Steel Shield will have...

10 (base)
+ 6 (full plate)
+ 1 (potency rune)
+ 4 (expert)
+ 10 (level)
+ 2 (raised shield)
= 33 AC

So this guy really only has +1 AC over a basic character that's focused on defense and that's because of the Fortress Shield.

A standard level 10 Fighter will have 29 AC baseline, for reference, so it's +2 from being a Champion (defensive class) and +2 from the shield (giving up a hand and taking extra actions).

And the Champion would be using their Reaction to try to punish enemies attacking other party members (and shield the party members).

Meanwhile the Guardian spending an action per turn to maintain the taunt which is giving -1 attack to one enemy and potentially off-guard. Those are minimal penalties compared to things like being Enfeebled/Stupefied, the Champion getting a free Strike, etc plus the friendly party member getting 12 resist all for the attack.

He's also a monk, so he doesn't have the Barbarian Rage damage, Ranger Hunter's Edge, Rogue's Sneak Attack, or Fighter's accuracy. Plus has a d10 weapon at best without reach, yeah?

Sounds like the party is the Monk/Alchemist/Sorcerer/??

Sounds like at least two squishy backliners to go after and maybe the party can't even really punish the enemies being put off-guard by the taunt.

Even CR 12 mobs are going to have less than a 50% chance to hit on their first attack.

Level 12 mobs should have 26 attack as the baseline, so that's an 8 to hit, or a 65% hit chance. Even 24 attack (only moderate attack) is still a 55% chance.

Pretty much what title says.

Say PC fighter is standing next to a goblin.

Goblin tries to shoot shortbow.

This gives the fighter a Reactive Strike which hits and kills the goblin.

Does the goblin's shot go off still or get disrupted?

The exact trigger is "A creature within your reach uses a manipulate action or a move action, makes a ranged attack, or leaves a square during a move action it’s using."

"Makes a ranged attack" could be potentially argued to mean the ranged attack completes in this case, as opposed to "starts a ranged attack" or something similar.

Wait, I thought the order of operations went Immunities, Weaknesses, then Resistances are accounted for.

You are correct. Was not awake enough yet.

Still a factor for stuff like regeneration being turned off.

Speaking as someone who has played a champion from level 1 to 20, I'm quite happy with the new balance point.

I'm also playing a Fighter in a Free Archetype game with the Champion Archetype. I am also not worried about the balance for the Champion reaction. It's still good.

I do find the decision to apply the resistance to a single chosen damage type, rather than to the total sum of damage, a little curious though. Wouldn't that mean you won't benefit from your full resistance in some edge cases?

Yes. Or in other cases you might have resist 15 but choose to resist 3 damage (rather a 20+ damage portion of the hit) to avoid triggering a weakness (that was an error on my part, weakness triggers before resistance) or avoid regeneration turning off or something and "waste" the other 12.

Those scenarios are what I find problematic.

So you're L16, you've just got your weapon potency +3 rune and chosen which third property rune to add to your sword...and you chose Shock. It used to stink against both ghosts and skeletons, but uh oh now the errata has come out, it only stinks against skeletons. Time to sound the alarm?

It's weird that the ghost is only resisting one type of damage while the skeleton is resisting several, yes. That a Flaming +1 Striking Sword is very close to identical to a Ghost Touch +1 Striking Sword against a Ghost with Resist 5 all. That spelling out a bunch of resistances individually winds up being better than resist all.

Is is the end of the world? Of course not. That doesn't mean it's a good change or an explained change.

Yes any theoretical advantages are gone from a player perspective but those only ever mattered if the creatures had multiple damage types

Prior to the remaster, this seemed to be most common on fiends and similar outsiders doing extra alignment damage, making Champions particularly good at defending against them, which did make thematic sense.

Incorporeals already had a similar defensive statting compared to skeletons but those in practice usually only a single type of damage in most scenarios.

Ah, Skeletons are another problem. Skeletons get "Resistances cold 5, electricity 5, fire 5, piercing 5, slashing 5" (or better).

Meaning if you hit a ghost with resist 5 all with a sword that also deals 3 fire damage, 4 cold damage, and 2 electricity damage it'll reduce the damage by 5 slashing damage.

But if you hit a skeleton it'll ignore not only the 5 slashing damage, but also the fire/cold/electricity damage.

The errata says "a multi-type resistance can be applied to the most beneficial damage type if it could apply more than one."

So if resistances can apply in more than one, the PC victim gets to pick the way to apply it. On the con side, this also means that GMs should be picking the optimal resistance choices for monsters.

Yes, I know. That's why I said you'd have to do the math every hit to figure out which it should be.

Champion reactions specifically are still quite strong, I'm less worried about that and more about all the other ramifications.

Another fun example I thought of!

Say you have 5 resist slashing from Stoneskin and then get 10 resist all for something.

You take 12 slashing damage and 5 fire damage. If you resist the slashing, you take 2 slashing and 5 fire for 7 damage. If you resist the fire, you take 7 slashing damage and 0 fire damage for 7 damage. Identical.

But if it's 12 slashing and 6 fire, then resisting the slashing is 2 slashing and 6 fire for 8 damage while resisting fire is 7 slashing and 0 fire, so you want to resist the slashing.

And if it's 12 slashing and 4 fire, resisting slashing yields 2 slashing/4 fire for 6 vs 7 slashing/0 fire for 7, so you want to resist the fire.

And you'll need to figure out this math on every hit. Which is not impossible or even super hard, but it is an extra complication.

Also if you have like weakness 10 to fire or something like regeneration that's de-activated by fire then you basically always want to block the fire, so stuff like that is also a factor.

At this point I'm probably just going to completely ignore anything Paizo has to say on the matter and run as I see fit.

Alas, this is trickier for people who play at least one game with a VTT like Fantasy Grounds or Foundry.

You will still get more milage out of the new resist all 5 over the course of a campaign than you would with the resist 5 to 4 different kinds of energy damage, simply because majority of creatures deal physical damage.

If the items were equivalent, sure, but something like resist 5 all would be priced massively more expensively and higher level than resist 5 to 4 energy types of damage because it's using the original rules for resist all.

Same when it comes to defensive "budgets" for creatures or character abilities.

There are common alternatives that one could make the same argument about, like Energy Aegis, no GM permission needed there in most games.

Energy Aegis is an excellent example.

"You protect the target with a powerful, long-lasting energy barrier. The target gains resistance 5 to acid, cold, electricity, fire, force, sonic, vitality, and void damage."

If that instead said

"You protect the target with a powerful, long-lasting energy barrier. The target gains resistance 5 to damage (except physical, poison, and mental)."

it would be a straight up nerf now.

If you're thinking "Where would you even see language like that with resist all and exceptions for specific damage?" then look at incorporeals as an easy example:

"Resistances: all damage 10 (except force, ghost touch, spirit, or vitality; double resistance vs. non-magical) "

Yeah, what you're describing is how Hardness works.

And if they made Resist All work like Hardness that's...a decision (why even have both?) but at least it would be better than this new situation.

That's a rare item, it's a campaign-specific item, and it's L15 in a campaign that goes 1-20. The only time it's ever going to be available to PCs is if they're playing that campaign or if the GM explicitly wants them to have it.

It's also very similar to a lot of items I've seen in various RPG video games (though normally those don't have the dragon breath component, it's just resistance to several types of elements), so it's hardly some groundbreaking idea.

So yes. The devs are aware that this is something that is going to change up the balance of various abilities.

It just feels like they didn't make clear about some of those examples. Or didn't consider them, like how they didn't the first round of errata.

For example, a spell that gives you resist 10 to elemental damage can be worse than multiple individual spells that are lower rank giving resist to multiple specific elements, which again feels weird.

Champion reaction and Thaumaturge Amulet reaction are both drinking themselves under the table tonight because they are now both on equal footing of effectiveness with Flamekeeper Witch's Restored Spirit temp HP instead of being strictly better like they used to be.

The resistance can actually be worse. If you get hit by 10 fire and 10 cold damage with resist 20, you take 10 damage. If you get hit by 10 fire and 10 cold damage with 20 temp HP, you take 0 damage.

Previously, 5 resist to all meant you ignored the first 5 damage of each type of damage and was mostly seen on incorporeals or Champion reactions.

Now, it means you only ignore 5 damage of one damage type, period.

Which means a ring giving 5 resist to elemental damage types (acid/cold/electric/fire) similar to a Dragonscale Amulet could reduce 20 damage from a Cataclysm spell while a ring with 5 resist all only reduces 5 damage.

This seems very odd.

Yes athletics can help the whole party, but honestly that's not why I'm doing it. And acrobatics is very much just about yourself.

I mean, it also lets you reach stuff for the party so they don't have to be spending a limited resource like flight or teleportation on it. Or used when fighting in hazardous terrain. If you can't balance, you're literally unable to move, which is not helpful for the party relying on you in combat.

I guess when I'm looking at Acrobatics vs Medicine (unless there's someone else already planning for medicine) I just think that I'd prefer to generally make my character more useful to the group, at least in the way I'm evaluating it.

I'm just pointing out that you're assuming you'll survive the fight by planning on using Medicine to patch people up during Exploration mode.

Acrobatics helps you survive the fight itself.

But arguably you don't want it to be a cleric, who can likely do better with their magic.

Do better, technically, save resources, absolutely. You only get so many spells per day, that's one of the main reasons to get Battle Medicine.

And don't misunderstand me, I see the use case for Kip Up. I just...guess I don't value it that highly.

I suspect if you played melee characters in high difficulty campaigns you'd value it more, it becomes significantly more valuable when it's a common occurrence to be dropped and then healed during a fight.

But if you're never facing more than easy/moderate encounters plus a rare severe encounter it won't seem as useful.

Combing back to this, if my character had 5 skills that I could advance to Legendary proficiency for a generic strength based martial character they would likely be (in no particular order):

1) Athletics
2) Medicine
3) Intimidation
4) Acrobatics
5) Knowledge skill (if taking caster dedication) or other skill for character background development

I think it's fascinating you want to be a legendary medic on all strength martials whereas I've never seen a generic strength based martial with it.

Again, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with it, but things like running off walls or nimbly dodging stuff seem like a lot more martial iconic than being a world renowned surgeon. Especially since wisdom isn't your primary stat.

Athletics/Acrobatics/Intimidation are the three I'm running on my current Elven Fighter, though Intimidation is less significant for me with Intimidating Strike as a class feature.

Plus I have Legendary Elven Lore from an ancestry feat.

If you’re just trying to stabilize the main medicine guy after a fight a soothing tonic is plenty. They can do the medicine themselves.

Or a level 1 healing potion, yeah, good point.

I do think it's also worth noting that skill feat quality heavily influences skill selection, and Kip Up almost makes it worth investing in acrobatics by itself. A lot of other skill choices just have extremely weak feat options.

100% this.

But I suppose you mean, if your character is just that extra person to get the main healer up and working again then you're not wrong.

That would be why I said "patch up the main Medicine person", yep!

I guess I've always just volunteered because "grizzled veteran who knows how to sew himself back together" is a trope I like.

And that's perfectly fair. But in a lot of groups other people may be jumping at the role. In the three campaigns I'm either playing in or GMing, the main medicine person is an Oracle, a Cleric, and a Monk respectively.

Plus, even if you pick Medicine as your secondary skill, you still have a tertiary skill which could be Acrobatics still.

If you're just trying to stabilize or patch up the main Medicine person after battle, being Trained in Medicine is plenty.

Much like NPCs with counterspell or subtle spell vs parties that love silence, GMs will add kip up the more often you frustrate them with trip spam.

I feel like this is saying the equivalent of GMs will avoid sending groups of weaker enemies against the party the more the wizard uses Fireball.

Everything ScooterScoots said.

Sure, the Champion who wants some Charisma based skills will probably skip Acrobatics.

The Dwarf who wants to be a crafter and have another int skill will probably skip Acrobatics.

But there's a lot of Strength based characters who will boost Str/Dex/Con/Wis. And after Athletics, the other two skills are extremely open. Assigning one to Acrobatics for Kip Up is very valuable.

kip up’s pretty great and only gets better in hard fights where I might go down and have to deathloop a bit, exactly when I need it most, so…

I really want to emphasize this point in particular. I put a lot of value in feats/abilities that are extremely powerful when things are going badly. You're already going to win the easy fights. You want to plan for what to do when stuff hits the fan.

And you really don't want something like going down to dying, getting a heal, standing up, and being Reactive Struck back down to dying from a boss crit. "Deathloop" is accurate for what you really want to avoid in those scenarios.

And the added die of damage isn't nothing, either.

There's actually a lot of cases there the added die is nothing, since it's a completely separate bludgeoning instance of damage.

Basically doesn't affect constructs, devils, incorporeals, or anything with damage resistance to physical.

I mean, given how no NPCs I can think of have Kip Up naturally, that's not 'often', that's a GM writings 'screw Trip' into their encounter design.

I mean, I'd be very shocked if I ran into a high level rogue enemy who didn't have it personally.

You're also allowed to give every NPC save upgrades or put Freedom of Movement as an innate spell on everyone, this doesn't make save spells or grapple inherently bad.

You...do realize that there are creatures and NPCs with save upgrades, right? Like search for Evasion on the Archives. Hell, there's at least one NPC with Improved Evasion that I know of.

Meanwhile Freedom of Movement as an innate spell is not nearly on the same page as a high level martial having Kip Up.

Isn't how often PCs take Kip Up irrelevant to the utility of Crashing Slam which is the topic of this thread? No monster has Kip Up

Like Agonarchy said, Kip Up does mean crit failing a Trip attempt means nothing, free action to just stand up without provoking, which means Crashing Slam doesn't give that as an advantage (no risk of crit failing unlike Slam Down or a standard Trip).

But the broader point was that martial-like NPCs can often have Kip Up at level 12+, especially in homebrew campaigns where GMs may design NPCs similar to PCs (though probably with a few key class feats rather than trying to create an entire PC).

Great census. Thank you. Are PCs getting Prone that often?

In my PFS experience, it is rather uncommon.

In the two games I run, it's fairly common, especially the six person campaign which is a pretty high difficulty. A boss getting a crit or two can drop someone dying pretty quickly.

A lot of things, to be fair, are a lot more valuable in a higher difficulty game. Like in-combat healing is kind of useless vs easier encounters but a godsend in harder ones.

Knockdown is a reasonably common monster ability too.

PFS is probably tuned a lot lower given its nature of basically being a PUG with no guaranteed skill level or party synergy.

You said "people" so I was expecting multiple people.

It seemed initially you were also implying the same thing, but I may have been mistaken.

You were also listing an uncommon feat only available to a specific region of the world, incidentally, so that doesn't seem to be a fair comparison.

Crashing slam is 10th level, so that's only the second skill feat you can get from the 7th level ones if you're spending just skill feats.

Right, but a good portion of the thread is people pointing out how Tactical Reflexes and other level 10 feats are better are thus people might not take Crashing Slam until level 12 or 14 anyway...and that was pre-clarification too.

Who's doing that?

Here, literally shortly after I pointed out Kip Up will be taken for a lot of builds around the time Crashing Slam is.

I sure didn't get that as your main point.

I said it here:

"Crashing Slam is when you were supposed to get a major upgrade (especially with Kip Up becoming a lot more common at that level) and your class feats overall are a lot more powerful."

Is there a reason people keep mentioning taking it as a 7th level general feat? Most people wouldn't get it until 8 at the earliest, skill feats are by default on even levels.

And the whole point is that someone might not even pick it up until level 10, 12, or even 14 (same as Crashing Slam) -- especially given Acrobatics is often a secondary or tertiary skill.

Still a huge ratio IMO. I do not think 9% to 25% of Martial PCs have it.

*shrug*

Campaign 1: 67%
Campaign 2: 40% (or more)
Campaign 3: 50% (or more)

That's not counting people I've played with in Dawnsbury Days taking it either, just full TTRPG parties.

Most dex based classes will have it.

Many str based classes will pick it up after Athletics unless they're strongly into another two skills.

Creating a NPC with it is perfectly reasonable. MOST of the NPCs having it is not.

I've literally never said most NPCs have it.

I said most martial-like NPCs have it. That's a huge difference. So like 30-50% of NPCs overall which make up like 30-50% of opponents.

So like 9% to 25% of overall opponents.

Your GM is quite in their rights to make changes to NPCs they feel are best for the story.

But it means your experience with so many enemies having Kip up is definitely not typical.

I said "creating" intentionally there, I'm talking about homebrew campaigns with that last post.

The GM for the game I'm playing in is a different matter. But we're doing Free Archetype so it's kinda whatevs really, we're already stronger than intended.

So yea, if you're GM makes sure a feat stays irrelevant instead of using statblocks as written, then yea, that feat will be irrelevant. Doesn't seem like worthy discussion of game balance, though.

A GM creating a high level NPC who could very reasonably have Kip Up is not a crazy or unfair notion.

How often you fight NPCs like that (as opposed to creatures or NPCs who wouldn't reasonably have Kip Up) is very campaign dependent.

An urban campaign is very different from a dungeon crawl is very different from a wilderness campaign.

The fact that a level 7 feat (Kip Up) which has low feat cost significantly weakens prone is a factor, though. Just like you'd expect a high level NPC to have stats accounting for stuff like Fleet and Toughness.

Only having 3 skills and needing Acrobatics to be one of them is the biggest limiting factor here.

If your going down enough for the free stand to have a big impact you might need a change in tactics.

Depends on the campaign difficulty.

What I'm getting here is that not a lot of GMs use the athletics skill that so many monsters have to put PCs on the floor for debuffing and reaction triggering purposes. If that's the case then a free action to end a debuff you aren't getting hit with will obviously look niche.

Or even just the (Improved) Knockdown ability that a lot of creatures have, yeah.

I don't think those NPCs actually have it in the book, though. It's an extremely rare ability on any NPC, and I don't think either of those have it.

I'm not saying they actually do in the book, I'm saying you're almost certainly right that he's just adding it to most NPCs that could feasibly have it.

And given it's a widely available and fairly easily accessible ability, it doesn't really seem out of line to do so. It's not like a permanent Freedom of Movement on every NPC to avoid grapples or something.

*shrug*

I think that might be your GM making life harder for you hah. I GMed that and can't remember a single npc with kip up, certainly not almost every significant humanoid having it!

Without spoiling anything since you're still playing it, I will say this is 100% down to your GM. No enemy in AoA has an ability equivalent to Kip Up in the entire Adventure Path.

Welp. The

And again, I'm used to most players taking it if they're martialish, and even many non-martials.

Which means it feels like prone is just less significant at higher levels (not a bad thing) but it means Crashing Slam needs to be a bigger improvement to be worth taking given that.

And people accounting for kip up is crazy to me. NPCs aren't built as PCs. You don't need to worry about a PC feat. How often do NPCs have a kip up like ability? I'm sure it exists, but I don't recall encountering it. Which to me says it's very infrequent.

I'm playing in Age of Ashes, and the answer is quite often. Like almost every significant NPC (not necessarily every random guard mook) who's humanoid and martial-like has it past level 12 it's felt like.

And while being tripped is annoying, if the same monster doesn't also have some kind of reactive strike ability then kip up isn't doing anything for you.

1, free action instead of action, that's a big deal.

2, as I mentioned before, it also applies when you get knocked dying from damage. So I guess if you're in a campaign with easier combats, that's less helpful, but if you're getting knocked down a good chunk, it's very powerful.

Do you disagree with my analysis of the options at level 4 for a two handed fighter?

Yes, because you're not looking at level 1 and 2 feats.

Exacting Strike, Sudden Charge, and Vicious Swing (situationally, especially vs Swallow Whole enemies) are all useful at level 1.

Brutish Shove, Intimidating Strike, and Lunge all useful at level 2. Even something like Blade Brake can be situationally usefully to not get shoved off a cliff or out of position or something (if I could pick up Crashing Slam at level 10 without Slam Down at level 4 I'd probably value Blade Brake over Slam Down, just because Slam Down is marginal and Blade Brake is potentially really valuable in bad situations).

If we're claiming "Crashing Slam is fine because you might pick it up at level 14 or 16 if you run out of better feats" then we have to consider the lower level feats we might be taking instead of Slam Down.