An oft asked but never FAQ'd question relates to Trample, its function, movement allowed, etc relating to other threads. Trample refers to Overrun but has a different action type, Trample is full round, Overrun is standard. Trample involves no success check to knock prone, other than for the defender to avoid via a reflex save or make an AOO. So here is my story:
Summoner casting SMIV for 1d3+1 Aurochs each round. Round 1-3: net total 7 aurochs summoned, one is slain by AOOs. Combat is aboard a ship with 15' wide access to enemies standing in a line along the rail of the ship in a 60' path. The Aurochs move at 40 feet as its not straight line. 9 bad guys are lined up, and I move the cows through them the full 40'. Trample means they move through, but dont otherwise knock prone, displace or knock overboard, doing damage to the first 6 enemies in round one. The enemies respond by making futile AOOs and reflex saves for half damage. The cows do roughly 60 points per enemy in damage PER ROUND, and I lose one cow to AOOs. That's 12d6 + 66 base damage. I achieved a new all time high damage total for damage done of 484 damage dealt. I felt embarrassed and immediately asked the GM to forgive me as I was trashing his encounter. By simple use of 3 SMIV spells, I had created a Monstrous Herd, and cleared the table. I suppose the GM could have moved or ran away from his positions, jumped overboard, or simply killed cows, but it was if I cast a 7 minute cowstorm, and I could still cast SMIV 8 times more for the day.
This created a whole game slowing discussion on Trample, Overrun, model positioning during and after the trample, etc. And this all got started because I promised I would summon something other than Hound Archons this time.
Not looking for house rules, just a justification and order of logic on how the existing ones work.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
I guess conceptually I don't see it. 9 guys should make a 45' foot line making it impossible to trample the entire line with 1 auroch. Even in a 3x3 formation, in a 15' wide hallway, starting immediately in front of the 3x3 formation, it seem to take 35' movement to trample everything and end in a legal space. And since no other auroch would be in as close of a starting position (or even if they were) find a legal position to end in, if the first auroch still existed.
Trample does not, in fact, use any of the rules from Overrun. Trampling Aurochs is a very efficient way to use summoned monsters.
The bad guys are the XX's the cows are the MOs. The XX's are in 5" squares
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| x
| xx
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| xx
| M O
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| M O O O O
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As they are large, they occupy a space that cant fit all the Moos in less than disorder, but from what I've read, that would return them to start of movement, but not eliminate the ability to trample, so the proposed movement becomes a Moote point as they trample anyways and get a free teleport back to start. The trample doesnt require a running start of a charge, and in theory, the cows could rotate through the bad guys in a clockwise pattern to keep trampling them.
From a "realism" standpoint, a 1500# cow is going to stand wherever he wants and you better get out of his way if you're a 200# human.
So from what I can discern, all is legal and right with the tactic.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
The rules explicitly state you can't end your movement in the same square as another creature unless its helpless.
Trying to leverage the "accidentally ending in an illegal square" rule to get a free teleport and then repeat the "accidental" movement over and over again is a bit much.
I accept that the rules dont allow the ending location (and disbelieve in the free teleport), but in this case the rules dont cover the common sense of a herd of trampling cows charging through a crowd of smaller beings either. If you compare it to any other larger versus smaller collision, even in fantasy movies (Lord of the Rings elephants come to mind) they can and certainly did overpenetrate into a wall of infantry. At that point its a question of mass and momentum versus one man with a sword stopping 8 tons of cow. Its broken.
I can also manipulate the use of squares to maximize trampling, by using some cows used and not others, but then its a chessmatch and I'm slowing the game down by using my suddenly clever dancing cows to avoid obstacles.
It feels like the rules implicitly (from rules such as overrun, trample, and crush) allow creatures to occupy the same space if one of them is prone. It also feels like Bull Rush should operate this way, though it doesn't say anything, if you bull rush an opponent into another opponent when you don't or can't bull rush the second opponent.
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