Combat Maneuvers, how effective are they?

[rangerjeff]

Looking at my 5th PFS character and thought to change things up by going straight Fighter/Lore Warden and focusing on both doing great damage and being effective with a couple combat maneuvers through level 12.

Was thinking Sunder, Reposition, and Dirty Trick. I've seen a lot of Trip and Grapple builds being played so wanted to stay away from that.

The more I look into combat maneuvers, though, I'm wondering how useful mine will really be. And how useful the other CM's are in comparison.

Sunder looks like it will work great against wooden hafted weapons (hardness 5, 2-10 hp), okay vs metal weapons (hardness 10, 2-20 hp), great against leather armor, okay vs wooden shields, no so good against metal shields (2 rounds to sunder, 1 to break), and downright rubbish against metal armors (4+ rounds to sunder? 2+ to break?) Getting my lucerne hammer in adamantium will certainly help, but sundering metal armor will still be a multi-round effort. Also, haven't found any, but is there any benefit to beating the CMD by 5 or more?

Respostion... I can see it being useful if Quick and Greater so it provokes AoO's and can be used as part of my Full Round Attack. But not sure how really useful it will be even then, having a hard time imagining when a tactical advantage would be gained by putting the guy somewhere else.

Dirty Trick I like, especially since beating the CMD by 5 or more adds rounds to the duration. Not sure if Greater is necessary, but Quick certainly appears to add to its usefulness. Sure, debuff can be removed with a standard action, but that's a round of the debuff being in place, and an action lost by the target. Hmm... question. Does removing the debuff as a standard action provoke AoO's?

And I've seen the effectiveness of Trip and Grapple, though feel free to elaborate on them in response to this post. What about Disarm? Is that better than Sunder? Any other Combat Maneuvers worth considering?

[TarkXT]

Sunder is disgustingly useful in the hands of a creative player who knows how to mess with environments.

Reposition: Snatch foe out of formation and put him into a flanking position with the party rogue or vivisectionist.

[bookrat]

Cast (or have someone else cast) dispel magic on a magic weapon. Then sunder it.

Dispel Magic wrote:

If the object that you target is a magic item, you make a dispel check against the item's caster level (DC = 11 + the item's caster level). If you succeed, all the item's magical properties are suppressed for 1d4 rounds, after which the item recovers its magical properties. A suppressed item becomes nonmagical for the duration of the effect. An interdimensional opening (such as a bag of holding) is temporarily closed. A magic item's physical properties are unchanged: A suppressed magic sword is still a sword (a masterwork sword, in fact).

Pro: you take away their magical items, which can severely weaken your opponent.

Con: You destroyed a magic item that your party could have used or sold.

[Grizzly the Archer]

TarkXT wrote:

Sunder is disgustingly useful in the hands of a creative player who knows how to mess with environments.

Reposition: Snatch foe out of formation and put him into a flanking position with the party rogue or vivisectionist.

How so? on the sunder part.

[Proley]

Sunder you could sunder the door, or the support column holding the bridge up that the army of orcs is crossing perhaps? In an arena fight coming up I was considering going with a sundering focus, but then none of the other combattants are equipment based.

I think my biggest problem with sundering lies in the fact that you'd be smashing up potentially useful loot, but on the upside, someone can pick up a disarmed weapon, but someone can't easily undo their weapon being cut in half, right?

[TarkXT]

Grizzly the Archer wrote:

How so? on the sunder part.

IT depends on the situation.

There's a lot of griping about sundering weapons and armor but those thigns generally aren't worth doing anyway.

Here's a short list of things worth sundering:
Pockets (they hold things)
Holy Symbols
Spell Component Pouches
Certain trap mechanisms
Doors
Objects of relative importance to current evil overlord
Walls
Weak flooring that happens to be below the enemies feet.
BAckpacks
Belts
Boots

[hustonj]

I play a trip/disarm/reposition flails family build as a PFS character.

There have been a couple of mods where he was simply kinda present. There have been far more mods where he was the party hero. Enemy group includes rogues who flank and gank? Strip their weapons, move them out of position, keep them on the ground where they are easier to hit, etc. I had one player complain that my fighter was dealing zero damage. When I asked how much damage he had taken during the same fight, he stopped complaining.

Greater Disarm is far superior to Sunder for dealing with enemy weapons. It is faster, keeps the loot intact, and puts distance between the opponent and their weapon.

Reposition is best if used by a player with tactical sense/knowledge. If you don'thave a reason to move the oponent, don't reveal the ability until you DO see a reason to use it!

[rangerjeff]

Well, I'm PFS so I'm not worried about destroying loot with sunder. That trick with dispel magic could come in handy in a pinch.

I guess I was hoping to sunder a lot of armor so that everybody in the party would be at +8 to hit the BBEG who just went from AC 25 to AC 17. But I'm guessing this is never going to happen since it would take at least 2-3 rounds of sunder, even with dispel magic and an adamantine lucerne hammer doing 1d12+20 damage, and by then the combat should be about over anyway.

So, guess I will swap Disarm for Sunder.

Any opinions from people who have played Dirty Trick? Blinding in particular seems pretty powerful.

Also, I didn't realize sunder was useful for unattended objects. I thought you could always bash away at those things without having to make combat maneuver checks.

[Grizzly the Archer]

Ok, I figured that was about it. I have sundered the roof into a mansion with my sundering barbarian a little bit ago. I think sunder is one of the better options, even though it destroys stuff in the end if you go that far, because there isn't a size limiter like grapple and trip, and as for disarm, not every enemy has a weapon or something similar to disarm. Sunder will work on any item the enemy has on them, and if im a barbarian with spell sunder rage power, I can remove some buff spells they might have on. As for destroying potential loot, just don't go that far. You can always leave it in the broken condition. If not, break it, and have an ally cast make whole on it, if they are a high enough caster level.

The one problem I see with sunder on anything but the enemy, is that sunder has in its description that the combat maneuver is against "an item held or worn by your opponent". Sundering trap mechanisms and doors and the like doesn't seem possible. It seems like it would just be a normal attack, hitting the defending objects AC, bypass hardness enough to deal damage. So that is not sundering.

[Bigtuna]

I my group we stay away from sunder - because then the GM does as well...

But sunder is situational usefull - fighting beasts with no items? Can't be used... (same with disarm).

Dirty trick or trip - you debuff your enemy, make them provoke and AoO. With several of the party threatening the foe you change one of your attack with several... That action economy in a good way.
And worst case you debuff the target and take the AoO yourself.

BUT you have to mean it. CMB isn't gonna raise it self. So you du give up a lot of feats, loot to become decent at it. With is another reason not to take sunder. You don't wanna spend a lot of feats for something you can't use in every fight...