Combat Maneuvers with a whip

[arvernian]

According to my reading of the rules a 1st level bard with Agile Maneuvers as their first level feat, and an 18 Dex can make disarm attempts at targets 15' away at a +6 bonus (+2 from the
Whip's disarm trait and +4) while the target of the disarm doesn't get an AoO since the attack is at range. Does this sound correct? Does agile maneuvers apply to maneuvers like disarm or trip that make use of a melee weapon even if the character doesn't also have weapon finesse for the appropriate weapon? Seems to me this could be a bit broken.

[Drakkiel]

You are correct...Agile Maneuvers applies to ALL your combat maneuvers, where as if you had weapon finesse you can only apply it to those done with the weapon in hand(one that is finesse-able), typically only trip,disarm, and sunder.

As for the AoO...unless the target is threatening you then you do not provoke from them

The whip can be a good weapon for flavor, alot of people will tell you that its useless, but if its what your character would use then go for it, I will warn you to make it even halfway viable you gotta burn alot of feats

[Roberta Yang]

arvernian wrote:

Seems to me this could be a bit broken.

Why?

[Shfish]

Actually with that high of a dex you probably already have weapon finesse which applies dex to cmb for maneuvers done with a weapon that is finessable.

[blackbloodtroll]

arvernian wrote:

Seems to me this could be a bit broken.

You must be new here.

Not even close to broken.

[arvernian]

Drakkiel wrote:

You are correct...Agile Maneuvers applies to ALL your combat maneuvers, where as if you had weapon finesse you can only apply it to those done with the weapon in hand(one that is finesse-able), typically only trip,disarm, and sunder.

As for the AoO...unless the target is threatening you then you do not provoke from them

The whip can be a good weapon for flavor, alot of people will tell you that its useless, but if its what your character would use then go for it, I will warn you to make it even halfway viable you gotta burn alot of feats

Are you saying that if I get Weapon Finesse (Whip) and Agile Maneuvers I get a +8 to disarms, and trips (I'd argue you can't sunder items with a whip since it does non-lethal damage to almost everything)? That doesn't seem right, especially since there's no way to "double dip" regular Strength based maneuvers with similar feats.

I'd also argue that given the relatively low value of CMD when compared to AC a first level Bard with Agile Maneuvers alone will pretty effective using his whip to knock the opponents flat or pull the weapons out of their hands while the other combatants take advantage and make attacks.

[Roberta Yang]

arvernian wrote:

Are you saying that if I get Weapon Finesse (Whip) and Agile Maneuvers I get a +8 to disarms, and trips (I'd argue you can't sunder items with a whip since it does non-lethal damage to almost everything)? That doesn't seem right, especially since there's no way to "double dip" regular Strength based maneuvers with similar feats.

No, both replace Str, so they can't stack. (Combining Fury's Fall with Weapon Finesse or Agile Maneuvers arguably lets you add Dex+Dex to trip attempts instead of Str+Dex, though.)

arvernian wrote:

I'd also argue that given the relatively low value of CMD when compared to AC a first level Bard with Agile Maneuvers alone will pretty effective using his whip to knock the opponents flat or pull the weapons out of their hands while the other combatants take advantage and make attacks.

Unless you're mostly fighting opponents in heavy armor or really bad Str, CMD isn't going to compare unfavorably to AC even at low levels. Whips also come with a lot of drawbacks you may be overlooking. You can't make attacks of opportunity (without heavy investment in a long feat chain), which is half the fun of performing maneuvers with reach weapons. If you're relying on a martial to stand between you and your target, then you're suffering a -4 to hit due to soft cover; if not, then your opponent is close enough to hit you next turn anyhow and all you've really done is avoid the normal attack of opportunity for not having the appropriate Improved feat (which is fine since the Improved feats are a stupid feat tax to be able to perform maneuvers anyhow).

[TGMaxMaxer]

Sunder, Trip, and Disarm use the weapon to perform the maneuver (if you wish) so if you are using a finessable weapon and have weapon finesse, you already use dex instead of str. Adding in Agile maneuvers just gives you the dex option on -all- maneuvers, even those that don't use a weapon. So a bard with 18 dex and either weapon finesse or agile maneuvers at 1st level has a +4, (+5 if he's performing).

Note, if you can use a whip, you can use a scorpion whip, and don't have to worry about the non-lethal and do 1d4 instead of 1d3. That is much better. And the text says, treat it as a whip, so all the things a whip does it can do.

CMD being 10+Str+Dex+BAB+special mods vs Dex+BaB+d20+special mods

At 1st level, looking at average CMD of around 15-18. Bard with 18 dex and weapon finesse or agile maneuvers and a whip is rolling d20+4, 5 performing, 2 more if disarming. Around a 50% success rate.

At later levels, CMD scales much faster than you can keep up unless it is a very focused character, the sweet spot is when you have imp/gr in your chosen maneuver in the 5-9 level range from what I can tell.

(Note, you can make a super optimized character for one purpose, and they will be pretty ineffective for anything else, and hit a 80-90% success rate, but that's a whole other argument. I personally have a 12 level monk build that can grapple and take out a CR 14 red dragon in 1 round so long as he rolls no 1s on his checks, doing an average of 220 pts of damage and pinning it in case he rolls low and it's not quite dead, however, that's single target DPR and you are grappling so not really doing anything else, plus there are things you cant/dont want to grapple.)

[Drakkiel]

No where in my statement does it say anything about adding DEX twice...I don't see how you got that lol...