Say I want to unhorse a mounted foe with a guisarme...
How do I do this? Is it just a normal trip attack?
Don't know what the rules are, but I'd make it a regular trip, but give the mounted person a bonus to CMD based on his saddle. Seems reasonable to me at least.
hmm.. how about using your entire body as some sort of interception tool for tripping ? forcing the horse to rear and throw of the rider? opposed trip/riding checks?
maybe use another skill instead of trip... like if its a person who has knowledge of animals and knows that if you turn your body like so and so use a related knowledge skill and so on and so forth :)
Say I want to unhorse a mounted foe with a guisarme...
How do I do this? Is it just a normal trip attack?
Hi,
From what you say you're trying to unseat your opponent. As per the Unseat feat, it's a Bull Rush and not a Trip you're actually trying to perform. To my mind if you Trip, it's the mount you're tripping and not the rider.
From PF SRD :
Unseat (Combat)
You are skilled at unseating your mounted opponents.
Prerequisites: Str 13, Ride 1 rank, Mounted Combat, Power Attack, Improved Bull Rush, base attack bonus +1.
Benefits: When charging an opponent while mounted and wielding a lance, resolve the attack as normal. If it hits, you may immediately make a free bull rush attempt in addition to the normal damage. If successful, the target is knocked off his horse and lands prone in a space adjacent to his mount that is directly away from you.
As a DM I would enforce the following :
If you want to unhorse (ie unseat) your opponent with a guisarme when on foot (it's a foot soldier polearm after all), if your opponent doesn't have a reach weapon himself, you may attack him with your CMB. If your attack hits his CMD he falls off his saddle except if he makes a Ride skill check whose DC is equal to 5+ your CMB (see Ride skill in PF SRD Stay in Saddle)and takes 1d6 damage. If your opponent has a reach weapon your attack provokes an attack of opportunity resolved as usual. If the AoO hits you apply the damage taken as a penalty to your CMB roll as usual (see PF SRD Combat/Combat Maneuvers/Performing a Combat Maneuver).
If you're mounted, whether you have the Unseat feat which provides you the rules to resolve the situation or you don't in which case you provoke an AoO and do not cause damage except 1d6 for the fall.
Otherwise you might try to Trip the mount but if it's a quadruped it has a bonus on CMD to avoid being tripped. Apply normal Trip rules then.
Hope this helps.
Bran.
My proposition above is just a first draft so you must be able to improve it. For instance, I let down the charge as prerequisite for performing the Bull Rush/Unseat thing. I assumed you're a foot soldier charged by some knight you want to put down in the reach of your "mercy dagger" (don't know the English for the French "Miséricorde", a long dagger used to finish off the knights between the joints of their full plates).
And as per Bull Rush rules if you exceed the CMD of the rider by five or more, maybe you could add damage (1d6 per 5 feet of Bull Rush feels right).
It also gives idea for a new combat feat doesn't it ? :o)
Bran.
The Unseat Feat is clearly meant for jousting; Bull Rush makes sense there, but doesn't for hooking somebody off a horse.
I like your generic CMB vs. CMD roll mechanically, but it would mean you could unhorse a foe with /any/ weapon. That seems a bit much. I also don't think the Ride check would apply, per the wording of Ride's "Stay in Saddle" just preventing you from being unhorsed due to damage or a scared horse.
Interestingly the Ride Skill implies you have to roll "Stay in Saddle" whenever you take damage, but I don't see any actual rule to that effect...
If pressed, I'd go with a CMB vs. CMD check like you describe, and fall back on a vague "but you can only do it with a weapon that makes sense!". Which would be a guisarme, halberd, whip, net, and... I guess that's it?
Oops ninja'd :o)
Yeah you're right "any weapon" seems too much. However I wrote this as part of "guisarme against rider" case and not as a general rule. I remember there was a rule to make someone fall off a saddle in 3.X, I'll try to find to which Combat maneuver it was related. I'm at work right now and don't have access to my books or 3.5 SRD.
And you're also right on the Bull Rush. It's more jousting with tournament lances than hooking down a knight to finish him off. A grapple check then ? Or you stick with Trip and make it a special case.
Bran.
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Hang on a sec. Let's look at what the RAW says before we start 'ruling' things, a ruling might not be necessary!
First of all, if what you really want to do is unseat a mounted opponent, there is a feat for that, as the posters above have pointed out.
However! By RAW (and for all we know, by RAI), nothing mechanically precludes a character from simply being prone while mounted.
A prone attacker has a –4 penalty on melee attack rolls and cannot use a ranged weapon (except for a crossbow). A prone defender gains a +4 bonus to Armor Class against ranged attacks, but takes a –4 penalty to AC against melee attacks.
We can imagine that a character is knocked flat on his back while his horse runs obediantly along, or that he is clutching the reigns on his stomach while still riding, struggling to pull himself up.
Nothing about using the Ride skill is at odds with the prone condition.
Similarly, nothing in the 'trip' entry suggests that it cannot be used against a mounted opponent.
You could actually get pretty cinematic with this! Your opponent charges past on his steed, and you use your gurisarme to hook his leg, yanking his rear end out of the saddle! Clutching at the reigns with one hand as his mount charges onward, your enemy struggles to pull himself upright again.
You could actually get pretty cinematic with this! Your opponent charges past on his steed, and you use your gurisarme to hook his leg, yanking his rear end out of the saddle! Clutching at the reigns with one hand as his mount charges onward, your enemy struggles to pull himself upright again.
Well Jasper said the guisarme wielder would want to "unhorse" his opponent, that is flat on the ground, eating dirt, while his mount flees like Hell :o)
The kusarigama was actually a weapon designed for tripping mounted foes. Basically a scythe-sized kama (call it a scythe) with a long weighted chain attached to the base of the handle, you used the weighted chain to trip a charging horseman by snaring the horse's front legs, then move in and finish the ride while he is still on the ground with the scythe end.
I would give the weapon a bonus when used to trip a mount, as it is specifically designed to do so (the chain weight 'locks' onto the chain when it wraps around the front legs so it relies less on the strength of the user than the strength of the chain).
In the more specific case of 'tripping' the rider as opposed to the mount, I would imagine any reach weapon able to trip should be able to do so by snaring the rider and pulling him from the saddle.
There are some feats (Unhorse) for taking a rider off a horse, or you could make a grapple attack and pull them off the horse - different description but the same effect.
The kusarigama is a very awkward weapon to use (exotic weapon proficiency required, definitely), trust me on this. I'd treat it as what it is: a 'spiked chain' usable on one end (only able to do bludgeoning damage (say 1d6), though, or trip) and a scythe on the other. Use one or the other in combat as your choice, but not usable as a true double-weapon.
A grapple totally doesn't fit. For one thing, you can't grapple someone at 10' reach with a polearm. For another, grappling also leaves you grappled, and would more likely just result in you being dragged along by the horse.
Sorry, I wasn't clear there that this is as an alternative to using a reach weapon to trip, this is if you don't have such a weapon and want to haul somebody off their mount.
Sorry for the delay, but my weekend has been quite busy as well as the beginning of the week. In 3.5 there was a special paragraph on tripping mounted opponent.
Tripping a Mounted Opponent
You may make a trip attack against a mounted opponent. The defender may make a Ride check in place of his Dexterity or Strength check. If you succeed, you pull the rider from his mount.
So, Jasper, to answer your original question, as a guisarme is a Trip weapon,per RAW it's just a normal Trip attack to unseat an opponent. I would allow the rider to use his Ride skill instead of his CMD (10+Ride skill instead of 10+strengh bonus+dex bonus+size mod).
To be honest I prefer my first take on the rule.
Bran.
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Necroing this post to get an answer on magical tripping.
What happens in this situation:
Mounted enemy is hit with a Magic Missile spell under the meta-magic effect of Toppling Spell.
What happens then? What defenses does the rider apply to avoid being tripped? Does it effect him at all?
Necroing this post to get an answer on magical tripping.
What happens in this situation:
Mounted enemy is hit with a Magic Missile spell under the meta-magic effect of Toppling Spell.
What happens then? What defenses does the rider apply to avoid being tripped? Does it effect him at all?
Bran's answer is what I'd do. He can use his ride skill, or his CMD.