Before I make any answer, I do need to know. Can a monk FoB a creature he has grappled?
Before I make any answer, I do need to know. Can a monk FoB a creature he has grappled?
You can't take a full round action while maintaining the grapple, which is a standard action
Before I make any answer, I do need to know. Can a monk FoB a creature he has grappled?You can't take a full round action while maintaining the grapple, which is a standard action
Ah thank you. That makes much more sense.
Personally, a good way to beat a monk without killing the entire party is to kite him. A monk can't get his unarmed flurry of blows off if his enemies can keep him away. Use ways to restrict the monks movement, such as stunning him or fighting him in difficult terrain that your monsters can walk (or fly) easily on. That is an effective way to make the fights challenging without outright making the monk useless and killing the party. Making the player feel useless is a good way to start feelings of resentment against you, which is something you don't want. First and foremost talk to him.
The way I understand it, it doesn't matter if it is your unarmed strikes or not, since you aren't using a weapon to do the maneuver you don't add the bonus from weapon enhancement (even if your hands are normally a weapon, they aren't being used as a weapon in the cases of grappling, bull rush, etc).
To the second point, this is what I was referring to:
Q: Does tripping some standing up cause them to stay prone or lose their move-action? This is known as 'Trip Locking' on the paizo forums.
A: (Jason Bulmahn 7/9/10) You can use your AoO to trip a creature that is standing up from prone, but it has no effect, since the AoO is resolved before the action is completed, meaning that the creature is still prone. Once the AoO resolves, the creature would stand up normally.
: When you attempt to perform a combat maneuver, make an attack roll and add your CMB in place of your normal attack bonus. Add any bonuses you currently have on attack rolls due to spells, feats, and other effects. These bonuses must be applicable to the weapon or attack used to perform the maneuver.
Emphasis mine. If you have weapon focus: guisarme and trip someone you get a +1 to that trip attack. If haste is going that's another +1, so is bless, good hope, prayer, divine favor, weapon enhancement, flanking bonus, or bardic performance. Unarmed strike is the weapon you are using to grapple (unless you are using a mancatcher) so if you have weapon focus: unarmed strike you get a +1 on grapple checks. Unarmed strikes are a weapon. They are listed in the weapon section, and you can take weapon focus weapon specialization etc for it, can you not? I have seen nothing stated by anyone at paizo that disputes this.
As for the other point, I never argued that you could trip someone standing up. You said them provoking an AoO is useless, to which I argued doing more damage is never useless.
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YOu can take weapon focus: unarmed strike.
You can also take weapon focus: grapple (this is a specific example the rules give).
I.e. those are distinct weapons, so WF:UAS does not help Grapples.
Now I`m not exactly clear on how Amulet of Might Fist / Magic Fang works here.
It buffs ALL Natural Weapons and Unarmed Strike.
Is Grapple considered a special Natural Weapon in some sense, at least so that Magic Fang aids it?
What about Trip, as delivered without Trip Weapons?
Or is that delivered via Unarmed Strike?
i.e. does Weapon Focus: UAS apply to Trip w/o Trip weapons?
Or can you separately take Weapon Focus: Trip... but that doesn`t apply to Weapon Trips?
James Jacob`s feedback on this is very vague when you look at the details like this, he says (paraphrasing) `Unless you have a Trip weapon, you can`t use weapon bonuses, as you deliver a Trip with a sweep of your legs, etc...` Obviously, `a sweep of your leg, etc` doesn`t seem at all out of line with Unarmed Strike. So when he says no `weapon bonuses apply bar a Trip Weapon`, does that only refer to manufactured/natural weapons, or does it include Unarmed Strike as well, which can indeed involve legs and arms knocking into people...? I`ve asked this multiple times with no answer, which is wierd since it`s just the final clarfication for his words on the subject.
YOu can take weapon focus: unarmed strike.
You can also take weapon focus: grapple (this is a specific example the rules give).
I.e. those are distinct weapons, so WF:UAS does not help Grapples.
I see that in the weapon focus example, but it just seems like copypasta. I know you had to take wf:grapple in 3.5 but as I understood that was no longer necessary. As it's written, if I take wf:grapple it would help me grappling with unarmed strikes OR with a mancatcher, which is nonsensical and goes against the spirit of the rules since it effects multiple weapons. Can I then take weapon focus: bull rush? If you can take weapon focus: grapple that means you can take weapon specialization: grapple, which unfortunately doesn't help you because when you grapple someone you do unarmed strike damage to them.
If I show you a picture of myself, can you show me where my grapple is?
Ask somebody else to do that for you... ;-)
Re: Weapon Spec, I don`t see the problem, your Grapple damage (when you choose that option for Maintain) does +2 damage above normal, which is based on Unarmed Strike base damage. If you have Weapon Spec UAS I wouldnt apply the +2 dmg from that when Grappling... Though I can see how this is unclear. I don`t believe Grapple is given as an option in WSpec like it is in WFocus, so it may well NOT be an option and WSpec:UAS DOES apply to Grapple damage. Clarification here would be nice.
RE: Weapon Focus: Maneuver vs. WF: weapons which can also deliver that maneuver, this is how I look at it:
Some maneuvers are only performed via another attack vector, i.e. Disarm or Sunder. There IS no WF: Disarm for those maneuvers.
For Maneuvers which can be performed via EITHER a special attack mode ala Grapple (to which is unclear to me if Magic Fang applies or not) OR via a weapon (Man Catcher or Trip Weapon, possibly UAS), you only use the WF:Maneuver when NOT delivering the maneuver via a weapon. When doing a Grapple via Mancatcher or Trip via Trip Weapon, you only use WF: Weapon. If Trip is by default delivered via UAS (?), then there ISN`T any WF: Trip.
If you want to house-rule that Grapple is delivered via UAS (it`s Pre-Req), I have no problem with that and it makes sense to me.. Might as well throw non-weapon Trip in there as well (which MAY be the case per RAW/RAI, who knows...)
Ask somebody else to do that for you... ;-)
Re: Weapon Spec, I don`t see the problem, your Grapple damage (when you choose that option for Maintain) does +2 damage above normal, which is based on Unarmed Strike base damage. If you have Weapon Spec UAS I wouldnt apply the +2 dmg from that when Grappling... Though I can see how this is unclear. I don`t believe Grapple is given as an option in WSpec like it is in WFocus, so it may well NOT be an option and WSpec:UAS DOES apply to Grapple damage. Clarification here would be nice.
RE: Weapon Focus: Maneuver vs. WF: weapons which can also deliver that maneuver, this is how I look at it:
Some maneuvers are only performed via another attack vector, i.e. Disarm or Sunder. There IS no WF: Disarm for those maneuvers.For Maneuvers which can be performed via EITHER a special attack mode ala Grapple (to which is unclear to me if Magic Fang applies or not) OR via a weapon (Man Catcher or Trip Weapon, possibly UAS), you only use the WF:Maneuver when NOT delivering the maneuver via a weapon. When doing a Grapple via Mancatcher or Trip via Trip Weapon, you only use WF: Weapon. If Trip is by default delivered via UAS (?), then there ISN`T any WF: Trip.
If you want to house-rule that Grapple is delivered via UAS (it`s Pre-Req), I have no problem with that and it makes sense to me.. Might as well throw non-weapon Trip in there as well (which MAY be the case per RAW/RAI, who knows...)
Those are all fair house rules, but my question is to how they work RAW. RAW you can weapon spec grapple, and you only do +2 damage on damage rolls with that weapon. Since grapple isn't a weapon (draw me a picture of a grapple hanging on someone's belt) you in fact roll unarmed strike damage, you would need WS:UAS to do more damage in a grapple. It's just sloppy rules and don't make sense to me.
Hm, checking the rules Grapple is explicitly given as an option in WS.
And WS clearly DOES consider Grapple to be a weapon.
Grapple:
Damage: You can inflict damage to your target equal to your unarmed strike, a natural attack, or an attack made with armor spikes or a light or one-handed weapon. This damage can be either lethal or nonlethal.
You are inflicting DAMAGE EQUAL TO UAS, not making an UAS attack which qualifies for WS:UAS (or stunning fist)
The rest, disriminating weapon maneuvers from `normal` maneuvers could certainly be cleared up, and how those `normal` weaponles manevuers fit in with Magic Fang could well be related to that clarification.
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I should clarify, monk leapt up to skiff, then ate around of attacks against him before he FoB'd a trip on both of the targets I retardedly had standing one square apart. He wasn't using the endless AOO trip exploit, he simply used trip as his first attack in FoB, along with stunning fist later in the move. When that succeeded, with the caster out for a round, he then moved the remainder of his FoB to the other creature.
The Girallon (stunned for two rounds and dispatched after the party focus-fired it down) being stunned multiple rounds was due to a discussion we're having now, that of Stunning Fist being applied more than once per round (in my opinion, it can't be). I would actually like a Paizo opinion on this one! From Stunning Fist feat, then from the monk skills:
Stunning Fist...You may attempt a stunning attack once per day for every four levels you have attained (but see Special), and no more than once per round.
These effects do not stack with themselves (a creature sickened by Stunning Fist cannot become nauseated if hit by Stunning Fist again), but additional hits do increase the duration.
The player believed the bolded line in the second quote negated the bold in the first, meaning "additional hits increase the stun duration". I think in the second quote "These effects..." means simply the blinded/nauseated/fatigued effects, not stun. I've houseruled it to RAW, lol. So one creature, one stun.
My small edit was in reference directly to OP's post, when he said
Hey GMs.
I am running a campaign for a large group, many of whom have never played an RPG before. The single player who HAS played before is running a Monk, who is pretty much min-maxed to the hilt, and built to grapple and FoB trip trip trip trip (or stunning blow) everything I throw at the group.
No, I was not suggesting AoO's are useless because you have tripped someone and therefore could never do anything useful with an AoO anymore, in the context of the conversation I thought that was pretty clear, but apparently not... common sense is our friend here.
You say all suggested items are fair house rules, yet they are rules from the core rulebook, so those are RAW, and by RAW, magic fang and any other + to unarmed strike does not give + to grapple, only to combat maneuvers that use a weapon, and even though your fist is a weapon as a monk, you aren't using your fist to grapple, you are articulating your hand to grab.
Newp. Sorry. He said the monk tripped everything in sight, he never said anything about tripping them when they got up from being tripped. The monk can easily trip multiple targets if he threatens them with multiple attacks. I didn't assume the same assinine thing you did, that's the crux of the dilemma there.
As for the grapple thing, do you then suggest that tripping someone with an unarmed strike would not benefit from haste or all those other buffs I listed, as well as WF:UAS, because if this is true the monk is so much worse at his specialty (combat maneuvers) than ANY other class that could easily benefit from those modifiers. RAW you do unarmed strike damage with a grapple (sometimes light weapons), not "grapple" amage which is undefined. RAW you use an unarmed strike to trip someone, and it is a weapon. What you suggest is explicitly against RAW.
But I'm done here. It's pointless trying to debate rules with someone who clearly hasn't read them.
Is there an acronym guide for these forums somewhere? Whats is RAW?
I'm just trying to follow along...
Rules as Written
Thanks!
It's ironic that we're trying to come up with advice for dealing with a monk.
It's ironic that we're trying to come up with advice for dealing with a monk.
It's a very sad highlight of everyone's favorite hobby of "OMG, a person in my game is playing a class effectively, how do I nerf IT?!?!"
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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Stunning Fist...You may attempt a stunning attack once per day for every four levels you have attained (but see Special), and no more than once per round.These effects do not stack with themselves (a creature sickened by Stunning Fist cannot become nauseated if hit by Stunning Fist again), but additional hits do increase the duration.
The player believed the bolded line in the second quote negated the bold in the first, meaning "additional hits increase the stun duration". I think in the second quote "These effects..." means simply the blinded/nauseated/fatigued effects, not stun. I've houseruled it to RAW, lol. So one creature, one stun.
You're right about this - stunning fist can only be used once per round. However, if someone ELSE uses stunning fist to stun the same target while it's already stunned, that would increase the duration. Also, as you note, you can increase the duration of other effects a monk can give someone with multiple hits - but still once per round.
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In this case, I don't think it was framed in the OMG effective?! Nerf! type of discussion as much as a "I'm having trouble keeping my group happy/involved because one player is doing something that is too effective, and making the enemies ineffective, what can I do to make it more fun for everyone" sort of thing.
The responses of "kill the monk with X!" are more of the nerf-bat ideology than solid suggestions on encounters or creatures that would give the monk, and therefore the group, more of a challenge without just killing off the group otherwise.
This is the essence of my post, I was (because of my inexperience) unable to deal with the player, and now I think I am equipped to make more satisfying, interesting encounters for my group. I don't think anyone wants to nerf the monk, especially considering late-game that class is considered kind of weak, from what I am reading.
I am more concerned with a player that built a very specific build of character that is starting to annoy the rest of the group (no spotlight time for them), and I am hoping to have humanoid encounters that don't end the same 99% of the time, like I said before, with the most interesting character wrapped in a ball at the end. The group wasn't feeling challenged.
Again, thanks to everyone for their advice!
In this case, I don't think it was framed in the OMG effective?! Nerf! type of discussion as much as a "I'm having trouble keeping my group happy/involved because one player is doing something that is too effective, and making the enemies ineffective, what can I do to make it more fun for everyone" sort of thing.
The responses of "kill the monk with X!" are more of the nerf-bat ideology than solid suggestions on encounters or creatures that would give the monk, and therefore the group, more of a challenge without just killing off the group otherwise.
This is the essence of my post, I was (because of my inexperience) unable to deal with the player, and now I think I am equipped to make more satisfying, interesting encounters for my group. I don't think anyone wants to nerf the monk, especially considering late-game that class is considered kind of weak, from what I am reading.
I am more concerned with a player that built a very specific build of character that is starting to annoy the rest of the group (no spotlight time for them), and I am hoping to have humanoid encounters that don't end the same 99% of the time, like I said before, with the most interesting character wrapped in a ball at the end. The group wasn't feeling challenged.
Again, thanks to everyone for their advice!
What is everyone else playing. A lot of the times when one person has the spotlight it is a combination of that player knowing what he is doing combined with weaker(not optimized) builds by the other players.
This thread is about 2 years old. :)
You're right about this - stunning fist can only be used once per round. However, if someone ELSE uses stunning fist to stun the same target while it's already stunned, that would increase the duration. Also, as you note, you can increase the duration of other effects a monk can give someone with multiple hits - but still once per round.
Stunning Fist...You may attempt a stunning attack once per day for every four levels you have attained (but see Special), and no more than once per round.These effects do not stack with themselves (a creature sickened by Stunning Fist cannot become nauseated if hit by Stunning Fist again), but additional hits do increase the duration.
The player believed the bolded line in the second quote negated the bold in the first, meaning "additional hits increase the stun duration". I think in the second quote "These effects..." means simply the blinded/nauseated/fatigued effects, not stun. I've houseruled it to RAW, lol. So one creature, one stun.
Yes I know it's an old thread but my question relates. So you can add to the duration of a condition...can you add multiple conditons? Ie: staggered, sickend and fatigued? Then drop crushing blow on the same target? Thanks.