I'm putting together a character for an upcoming RotRL campaign, and he's going to be a Halfling Archeologist. He's really going to be a trap-spotter, skill monkey and jack of all trades more than any major combat threat (he's a classic '5th character'), and I'm trying to find ways of having him fill various niches and ways to have him contribute even in combat without necessarily being optimized to the hilt. It occurred to me that going the Dirty Trick route might be a fun RP way to do just that. I have room for all four feats (Improved, Greater, Expertise and Quick) thanks to Rogue talents but the more I read the more concerned I am that it just might not be a very practical use of those slots.
Correct me if I'm wrong:
By using a character with an average BAB and a below average strength I'm unlikely to be able to use the maneuver very successfully.
I'm spending two feats (Improved, Greater) in the hopes that I might be able to spend a standard action to impose a penalty my foe can remove with a move action.
I really like the concept of Dirty Trick, but right now its looking like I'd be much better off just putting those feats into the bow. Am I missing something about how it all works?
Take Agile Maneuvers to add your Dex bonus instead of Str.
I think Dirty Trick is under-rated, so even trying to use it is cool in my book.
edit: another way to look at is the chance to Blind and make the enemy flat-footed, even if it doesn't "take" every time, is probably more useful than the pitiful damage you'd do with a bow if your strength is under 10. Your 3/4 BAB applies to both situations, and with Agile Maneuvers you'll "hit" at the same frequency as with a bow - but making them Flat-Footed will be better than d8-1 damage or whatever you'd be doing.
I also love the idea of Dirty Trick, but I don't think it really becomes delicious until you have Greater.
Let me say first off, that it's sometimes worth it to deny an opponent full attacks. And that's what Dirty Trick and Improved Dirty Trick do. You blind'em, they have to Move + Attack to get a single, un-debuffed attack off.
And if you're simply trying to screw with one single opponent in combat, it can be useful. Wasting opponents actions like this can be great, especially against casters and whatnot.
It really shines when you have Greater, though. Greater forces the affected creature to remove the condition with a STANDARD action... which is gravy.
Archaeologist: I blind him. (rolls dice: success!)
Baddie: "DAMMIT!" (standard action to remove condition, move action to grumble at the wasted round)
Once you have Greater Dirty Trick, it takes them a standard action to remove the debuff.
Agile Maneuvers is really a must have though, I suppose.
But you're right, removing the condition isn't hard, but it means they can't full-attack if they remove it.
Another idea:
1 level dip into Maneuver Master monk. You can take Improved Dirty Tricks as bonus feat, and you can take an additional CM check in addition to all your attacks, though at a -2 penalty. The -2 is only for the CM though, not the attacks.
Personally I like blinded best, as it gives a penalty to AC and they lose Dex to AC making them a lot easier to hit. Also any rogue will love it since they now get to do a sneak attack. Also they can't take AoO anymore.
However if you want to pick up Greater Dirty Trick eventually you'll have to get Combat Expertise too, but just for the Improved version via monk bonus feat, you don't.
I didn't initially catch the standard action requirement of Greater, so that's definitely an improvement over what I thought... still, having to take Improved Dirty Trick, Agile Maneuvers, Combat Expertise, Greater Dirty Trick and possibly Quick Dirty Trick - that's an awful lot of feats for a feat-starved build.
Thanks for the responses.
maybe trhee levels in lore warden. It would give 2 extra feats and +2 and a aditional +2 to CMB.
That's a thought if I decide to go that route. Heck, just 2 levels would give me 3 feats if you include the needed Combat Expertise.
It's a useful CM that only really comes into play successfully after +6 BAB. That is, if the enemies happen to know that they can just move-action it away. Granted, I think a lot of enemies would just swallow the penalty rather than use the move action. It only lasts for a round until you get Greater Dirty Trick, so either they spend a move action or just take the penalty.
Could be useful if you are the second guy on the enemy. Have someone else do all the damage, but you can either make it suck for the enemy, or make it so he can't full attack.
If you are somehow able to get into Skulking Slayer half-orc rogue archetype, (skulking fits tomb raiders...really, it does) then you can replace sneak attacks with dirty tricks, and get the SA number of dice as damage.
Improved Dirty Trick as a rogue talent sounds fine (and I've done it before). And maybe one for that Greater Dirty Trick too, due to that pesky Combat Expertise requirement there...
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It is really easy for everyone else to hit the enemy when he's blind. It becomes even better when you're wasting their standard action to remove it.
So dirty trick is good at low levels, and excellent at higher levels. It's certainly better than trip against many monsters. The versatility is amazing as well; if an enemy is immune to trip, no tripping. If an enemy is immune to blind, you can sicken or entangle them instead.
I've used it to great effect (affect? Why can't I remember!) once I started encountering enemies with multiple legs that are much harder to trip. I had a Gnome Alchemist who loved to nail down anyone's boots to the floor, tongue-tying wizards, blinding, any other flavorful "dirty" trick you can think of.
Also, it makes for great cinematic moments.
maybe trhee levels in lore warden. It would give 2 extra feats and +2 and a aditional +2 to CMB.That's a thought if I decide to go that route. Heck, just 2 levels would give me 3 feats if you include the needed Combat Expertise.
If you are multiclassing to Fighter, I would suggest multiclassing to the Cad (archetype in Ultimate Combat). Bravery replacement ability is to provide bonuses to Dirty Trick, Disarm, and Steal -- in addition to the bonuses you get from the BAB increase and bonus feats.
Although you probably wouldn't want to take that many levels in Cad, if you go out to 7th, they get an ability that allows them to make a dirty trick versus an opponent denied their Dex bonus to AC as an immediate action along with their normal actions.
The gnome bard player in the group just dropped his idea of dirty tricks for a crossbow. The problem is that his CMB was incapable of scaling with monster CMD.
In the beginning it was pretty solid, but by level 8 he was only tossing around a 13 CMB. Your average CR 8 monster has a CMD in the high 20s/low 30s, giving a less-than-50% chance of hitting. And it gets worse from there because CMB for non-physical characters just doesn't grow all that quickly. You get 3/4 BAB but generally no increase to strength or dex (usually spending points and items on spell casting stats).
I suggested Lore Warden; 3 levels for +5 CMB and two bonus feats, but ultimately he decided it wasn't worth losing the bard progression. He switched his feats to crossbow related ones for the goal by 9th to be a crossbow master.
Combat Maneuvers are rather neat, but way things scale upwards makes it harder and harder for it to be useful as a secondary option for a non-physical character class.
Thanks again for the input. I juggled the numbers around and put up the actual build I'm considering here, just in case anyone has any additional advice...
Possibly Major Magic rogue talent and use Vanish so you can go invisible for a round?
Possibly Major Magic rogue talent and use Vanish so you can go invisible for a round?
If he's playing an archaeologist, he can cast spells anyway. IIRC vanish is on the bard spell list.
As per the FAQ, you don't need agile maneuvers if you take weapon finesse, and are using an applicable weapon to perform the maneuver.
I recommend whips, you can snap the groin to sicken, flip the cloak up to blind, spin the helm to blind, pop their ears to dazzle/deafen, entangle is self explanatory, pop in their face to shaken, tons of things, and bards are proficient with it. Grab an agile one, and you can even do some damage with it.
I don't think you're gonna get the whole snapshot/ranged chain with the maneuver chain, a bard to boot, and such. You needa drop the expectations of being optimized for anything, and be optimized for generalizing. Unless the standard party doesn't have a rogue to begin with, and they -need- you to be the trapper, go with Archivist bard instead, bonuses to hit/ac/saves vs anything you identify, and it also helps your friends, which the archaelogist only helps you. You'll have plenty of skills to keep the big 4 maxed, planes, religion, nature, dungeons, and still scatter around the good ones. now you buff everyone with performance, debuff enemies, do a lil ranged combat, do a lil casting, activate pretty much anything, Know everything, and have a fair chance of hitting it for -some- damage.
Also note, unless it's homeruled otherwise, archaeologists never get more than 4 + cha rounds of luck, no matter how many levels they get without taking extra perform. Per the FAQ in another thread, it replaces bardic musics, but never in its description unlike the other things that do so does it increase. It does benefit from feats, spells, and abilities that give bonuses to bardic music tho.
Nah, the character works fine - ranged attacks and dirty tricks to help out in combat, high perception and disable device skills as well as trap spotter to handle traps, a hodge podge of other skills (including linguistics and stealth), spell casting ability for buffs and heals, and so on... there was never any intent to optimize for anything and every intent to offer a variety of options which looks like will be the case..
As an aside, I can't imagine for one second that Archeologist's Luck was ever intended not to progress with level. You lose ALL of the Bardic Performance abilities AND the ability to affect every ally around you, I find it hard to believe that they'd also reduce its duration to nothing as well. That's just too absurd to consider in my opinion, regardless of how it might technically be worded. 'Technically' speaking, Magical Lineage won't help a Fighter 1/Wizard 3 at all, but its pretty obvious what the intent was. If that were the case, then Lingering Performance would be an absolute requirement for the class.|
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As per the FAQ, you don't need agile maneuvers if you take weapon finesse, and are using an applicable weapon to perform the maneuver.
I recommend whips, you can snap the groin to sicken, flip the cloak up to blind, spin the helm to blind, pop their ears to dazzle/deafen, entangle is self explanatory, pop in their face to shaken, tons of things, and bards are proficient with it. Grab an agile one, and you can even do some damage with it.
Sorry, but you can't dirty trick with a whip. You can disarm, trip, or sunder with a weapon. If the weapon has the 'trip' property (like a whip), you can also drag or reposition with it. Dirty trick, which a dex build, requires Agile Manoeuvres.
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Dirty Trick plainly is not worth using until you get Greater Dirty Trick. Until then, it costs you the same or greater action to maybe inflict a mild condition on the enemy that he can either spend equal or less of an action than you did to 100% guaranteed remove it, or just deal with it for 1 round.
And as a Bard, you won't get Greater till 9th, by which point monster CMDs start exploding.
I suggest you try something else.
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Stream, I disagree. There's quite a lot to be said over blinding an enemy for everyone else's turn, especially if you delay until right after the enemy turn. It's also the only non-magical way I know of short of staggering critical to prevent an enemy's full attack. Lots of tentacles? Dirty trick has you covered: just tie them into a blindfold for your enemy!
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Bards get great debuff spells you would be better off saving your feats for things like; spell focus x, metamagic feats and expanded arcana. Use gear like tanglefoot bags, thunderstones, and Net's and use Spells or the UMD skill to impose what ever penalty you want on an oppenent from range and leave the up-close stuff to the full Bab classes.
Dirty Trick is Fun but it's not worth the feat investment you will need to make it workout, and even then it's to situational to rely on. By being creative with gear and spell selection you can RP the "Dirty Trick" without using the CMD system.
At the time of writing, it was fully intended to not give additional uses per day. The author now thinks they probably should've made it +1 per Level. Musician of the Society gives +3 rounds too, as a trait.
At the time of writing, it was fully intended to not give additional uses per day. The author now thinks they probably should've made it +1 per Level. Musician of the Society gives +3 rounds too, as a trait.
If true that would make the ability pretty craptacular in comparison to what you give up for it.
Stream, I disagree. There's quite a lot to be said over blinding an enemy for everyone else's turn, especially if you delay until right after the enemy turn. It's also the only non-magical way I know of short of staggering critical to prevent an enemy's full attack. Lots of tentacles? Dirty trick has you covered: just tie them into a blindfold for your enemy!
Stunning Fist? Dazing Assault?
It is useful when you can overwhelm the enemy with sheer ratio of combat actions, I agree. Of course, there are plenty of other options, especially magical, for that situation. No party really needs a guy with dirty trick to take advantage of this, unless it was very un-balanced/similar (like an all archer fighter party or something).
At the time of writing, it was fully intended to not give additional uses per day. The author now thinks they probably should've made it +1 per Level. Musician of the Society gives +3 rounds too, as a trait.If true that would make the ability pretty craptacular in comparison to what you give up for it.
It's true! I don't lie about that stuff :p
In any event, the swift action activation is huge, and it also adds to damage. While it's true that the author erred on the side of conservative balance, that's never a bad thing.
Oh wait, it turns out he just recommended Cha + 1 / level, not 4 + cha.
At the time of writing, it was fully intended to not give additional uses per day. The author now thinks they probably should've made it +1 per Level. Musician of the Society gives +3 rounds too, as a trait.If true that would make the ability pretty craptacular in comparison to what you give up for it.It's true! I don't lie about that stuff :p
In any event, the swift action activation is huge, and it also adds to damage. While it's true that the author erred on the side of conservative balance, that's never a bad thing.
Oh wait, it turns out he just recommended Cha + 1 / level, not 4 + cha.
I've reworked the build to compensate for 4 + Cha, but that's made me drop the Lore Warden and Dirty Trick components entirely. I'm happy enough with the result...
What was that you linked me to?
let see, more or less, how high (in normal circumstances) the bard CMB for dirty trick could be at level 10
+7(BAB) + 5 (ability score) + 4 (improved and greater feats) + 1(WF) + 2 weapon +2 (inspire courage) +2 (good hope) +2 (flanking) = +25
Not that good but certainly not bat taking into account that the CMD of a CR 10 fire giant is 31.
So best case against fire giants, you have a 75% to hit, but you'd have to be adjacent to the monster for flanking and you'll have to use a level 3 bard spell. So most of the time, you'll be at 55% chance to work against the fire giant.
I'd recommend a dueling (from Pathfinder Society Field Guide, not the one from the APG) enchanted whip to get double the enchant bonus to CMB (so +4 instead 2) as a luck bonus, though this replaces the enchantment bonus to CMB (so a +2 dueling whip provides +4 luck bonus and +0 enchantment bonus to CMB for most maneuvers including dirty trick).
Link has been fixed. It's the original author confirming what I said.
Not getting Disable Device as a class skill was also fully intentional so to give the rogue at least one leg, however small, up on one aspect of the guy.
Link has been fixed. It's the original author confirming what I said.
Not getting Disable Device as a class skill was also fully intentional so to give the rogue at least one leg, however small, up on one aspect of the guy.
With Perception that high and the Rogue Talent Trapspotter, I'm fine with DD not being a class skill - at least until Jack of All Trades eventually kicks in.
Thanks for the link and the responses. The character didn't turn out as I'd originally planned - too many feats to make Dirty Trick viable - but I'm REALLY going to like adding this character to our RotRL campaign. With solid ranged support, a good bit of healing, trap-finding and disarming abilities, knowledge skills, catch-all type spells and the ability to serve as a local 'hook', he's exactly what the rest of the party is missing and looks like he'll be a lot of fun to play.
Gish Fighter/ Wizard or Fighter/soc with True Stike spell You can CMB any one then.
Was there a link to the final build? Halfling archeologists are a favored character staple of mine, I'd like to see the end result.
Edit: Ack, nevermind. I found it.
And...?
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I suggest using Halflings of Golarion, maybe go for the Halfling Opportunist prestige class. You might be better off going for aiding others than just Dirty Trick, I believe its a trait in HoG that increases Aid another to +3? the Prestige Class boosts that further up to two more points.
The other opportunist abilities are pretty fun to work with too.
Just a thought.