There are a lot of overlapping feats when it comes to adding Dexterity to Combat Maneuver Bonus. A lot of threads about it too, but I haven't found anything conclusive. There are:
Weapon Finesse: Which lets you replace your Str with Dex for the purposes of CMB.
Agile Maneuvers: Lets you do the above with whatever you want, not just your Weapon Finesse attacks.
Fury's Fall: Lets you ADD Dex to CMB ON TOP OF Str when you attempt a trip.
Now, one of my players plays a Whip-master Archaeologist dude. He has 12 STR and 19 DEX, and he has Weapon Finesse. He's now wondering what, if he anything, he should pick up for feats, and the above overlap is part of his confusion.
Any assistance?
EDIT: He's level 8. His feats so far look like this:
Combat Expertise (1st level)
Improved Trip (Human BF)
Weapon Focus [Whip] (3rd level)
Weapon Finesse (Finesse Rogue, Rogue Talent 4th level)
Whip Mastery (6th level)
Improved Whip Mastery (Combat Trick, Rogue Talent 8th level)
Help would be greatly appreciated.
Benefit to this character is as follows:
Agile Maneuvers
If the character finds himself in a situation where he cannot use his whip, or is trying to perform a combat maneuver other than disarm/sunder/trip, he gets his Dexterity instead of his Strength.
Fury's Fall
By itself, he would get both his DEX(+4) and his STR (+1) to his CMB for trip attacks only.
Now, by RAW, since Fury's Fall is worded "When making a trip attack, add your Dexterity bonus to your CMB", you have three possible interpretations (and currently no errata to clarify). All appear to be equally valid by RAW.
1- Since Weapon Finesse stipulates that you use DEX in lieu of STR, when making a trip attack with both feats and a qualifying weapon, you add your DEX in lieu of STR for weapon finesse, and then you add your DEX as a miscellaneous bonus for fury's fall.
2- Since both feats apply DEX to the roll, you only add DEX once. Furthermore, since one of the feats replaces STR with DEX, you only add DEX, and only once.
3- Fury's Fall overrides weapon finesse for trip attacks, and you calculate CMB as BAB + STR + Size + Dex + Other Misc Mods for trip attacks.
Now, option 2 should be tossed immediately as a "bad idea", since it penalizes players who take feats. I don't like it one bit. In contrast, option 1 heavily rewards this feat combination. It's in a narrow focus of circumstances, so I'm not terribly offended by the relative power. Some might be, so you might apply only DEX*1.5, if you want to limit the cheese. Option 3 would probably be the design intent. Namely, Fury's Fall is meant as a power-boost to narrow focused trippers, hence why it's more powerful than either Agile Maneuvers or Weapon Finesse for only one type of maneuver. And even for this character, it again makes him more effective at tripping in those situations where he is not using his whip or other finesse-able weapons.
OK, thanks. 3 seems the best option. 1 seems at odds with RAW:
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/weapon-finesse-combat---final
"Therefore, if you're attempting a disarm, sunder, or trip maneuver, you can apply your Dex bonus instead of your Str mod on the combat maneuver check (assuming you're using a finessable weapon, of course)."
Emphasis mine.
Moving on, he has a general build question for you guys. Right now he has 12 STR, 19 DEX and 16 INT. He's been pondering switching STR and INT, giving him 16 STR and 19 DEX. With his Belt of Physical Might that would be 18 STR and 21 DEX, and since he hasn't used his ability score point from 8th level, that would be 18STR and 22DEX.
On the one hand, that's more damage for his whip, and he could forego Weapon Finesse and instead pick up Fury's Fall for a total of +10 from his stats (!) to CMB for the purposes of Tripping.
This does, however, mean that he actually reduces his attack roll by 2, since his Strength is again used for attack rolls.
It's quite an awkward situation, I don't know what to recommend him. He has so many skill points already I'm not sure 16 INT is better than 16STR, but with 16STR switching Weapon Finesse for Fury's Fall is attractive, but costs +2 to hit. Hmm.
Maybe the correct play here is to actually switch STR and DEX, so he would have 22STR and 18DEX. That costs him a bit of his skill-powah and Armour Class, but seems pretty good besides. Oh Pathfinder, the options...
Well since he isn't a magus, the loss to normal hit is not what he will neet to worry about...without some sort of rider, a whip will never be a pure damage output weapon so a -2 on his attack rolls is not a great loss. A +2 on his CMB however is a greater boost. Let me add some clarity for you here though:
At level 8 he has a bab of 6, +10 from stats, weapon focus +1, and at best a +2 weapon. If he sings that will add I think +2 bonus? Imp trip is a +2. So roughly a +21 on CMB for trip? Nice. If you went with lower strength it would only be a +18. Doesn't seem like much but for the tripper to really be more effective, they need to be consistent. Also consider that a well built fighter at that level would have a CMD of 27-30 so you would need an 9-12 on your +18 or only a 6-9 with a +21...the greater chance I would think trumps the lesser to hit for your damaging part. If you take my below advice about Greater Trip you are now at a 4-7 to trip an average fighter because you full bonus will be a +23 now.
Also since this is a rules forum you need to fix the feats: You get 1 feat every ODD level...you have them at 1, 3, 6 instead of 1, 3, 5, 7.
So if you pick up Improved whip mastery at level 7, use the combat feat talent to get Greater Trip at level 8....extra +2 and now they provoke when you trip them!
Shfish wrote: Well since he isn't a magus, the loss to normal hit is not what he will neet to worry about...without some sort of rider, a whip will never be a pure damage output weapon so a -2 on his attack rolls is not a great loss. A +2 on his CMB however is a greater boost. Let me add some clarity for you here though:
At level 8 he has a bab of 6, +10 from stats, weapon focus +1, and at best a +2 weapon. If he sings that will add I think +2 bonus? Imp trip is a +2. So roughly a +21 on CMB for trip? Nice. If you went with lower strength it would only be a +18. Doesn't seem like much but for the tripper to really be more effective, they need to be consistent. Also consider that a well built fighter at that level would have a CMD of 27-30 so you would need an 9-12 on your +18 or only a 6-9 with a +21...the greater chance I would think trumps the lesser to hit for your damaging part. If you take my below advice about Greater Trip you are now at a 4-7 to trip an average fighter because you full bonus will be a +23 now.
Also since this is a rules forum you need to fix the feats: You get 1 feat every ODD level...you have them at 1, 3, 6 instead of 1, 3, 5, 7.
So if you pick up Improved whip mastery at level 7, use the combat feat talent to get Greater Trip at level 8....extra +2 and now they provoke when you trip them!
Hmm, interesting thoughts! And yeah, I made a mistake listing the feats, old D&D habits die hard :P
I think I'll be going with the Strength build.
He should get Fury's Fall, which by RAW will let him get 2x dex to his CMB.
It's not broken, he already had to invest a ton of feats into the whip to have a dex-based reach weapon in the first place, and he'll still be unable to trip things more than one size larger than him. He can enlarge himself, but then he's eating penalties for doing so since he's dex-based. I don't really think dex-trippers are practical. Fury's Fall allowing double dex is basically the only thing they have going for them.
On my advice and with the help of the good people here, he went for the Strength build.
He still has 18 Dex though, so he still picked up Fury's Fall.
Casper Gronemann wrote: OK, thanks. 3 seems the best option. 1 seems at odds with RAW:
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/weapon-finesse-combat---final
"Therefore, if you're attempting a disarm, sunder, or trip maneuver, you can apply your Dex bonus instead of your Str mod on the combat maneuver check (assuming you're using a finessable weapon, of course)."
Please be aware that the passage you quoted is from this site's Official FAQ.
The reason I bother to point this out is that you have to watch those boxes/sidebars on d20pfsrd.com. Sometimes they're from the Official FAQ, sometimes they're commentary from Paizo staff (which may or may not have later been overturned or contradicted by other staff members, or even the same staff member), and sometimes they're interpretations written by the players who contribute to the (fan-maintained) SRD site and were never published in any Paizo product ever.
Moral of the story: the SRD contains "RAW", but also contains opinion and conjecture at times, so you have to be careful.
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