So, I have been looking over some of the classes with the idea of making a maneuver master, specifically with Disarm, Trip, and Grapple. Of course, any other maneuver's that get added in would be icing on the cake.
The vast majority of baddies in the game have been humanoids, and I don't see anything to suggest that will change any time soon, so these maneuver's seem to be the best to focus on.
So, my quandary is, like most people on these forums, is what class to take? Fighter is a good choice for the sheer number of feats, and might be the better choice for damage out-put in the end.
But the Barbarian might just be the one to edge out the fighter. He would have to be more focused on the types he can get "improved", but his damage, at least while raging, would be higher. Not to mention, his CMB benefits from rage.
For similar reason's, the Bloodrager is a good choice, with the added benefit of some spells. They certainly have some good spells to help out with maneuver's, so this may be a better option.
But then there is the Monk, which in my mind, is well known as a grappler and tripper. Tripping, disarming, or grappling a stunned opponent is vastly easier then otherwise, too. So, not a bad option.
Which brings us to the Brawler, with the maneuver training. This class looks like it might be the best of them all for what I am looking for, here.
So what have your experiences been with this sort of character? What class worked best in your opinion? Is there certain weapons that helped in this? I was looking through the UEG, and there are a bunch of weapons that would give bonuses to several of these. have any of them served you well with this type of character? I eagerly await your ideas!!
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Lore warden fighter dip 1 lv maneuver master monk. I suggest you take improved grapple but don't focus on it too much as grappling gives you the grappled condition which you need to spend a standard/move action(with greater grapple) each round to maintain, which limits the number of attacks you have to perform combat maneuvers. Also it is quite hard to threaten while grappling (you need special archtypes, and several levels), and combat reflexes combined with reach weapon fuels your source of aoos which can be converted into funky combat mameuvers.
If you want a full grapple build, go tetori and be done with it. Forget about any other combat maneuvers.
If it's for a home game, Android Barbarians with Strength Surge are stupid good at combat maneuvers due do natural fatigue immunity letting them rage-cycle right out of the gate. Also, the Android's Nanite Surge can pump the result even higher, allowing you to get a 2xlevel+3 bonus to the roll if you use both Strength Surge and Nanite Surge. Of course, you won't get the strength bonus to hit or damage from raging since that's a morale bonus, but the surges are totally fair game and more than make up for it if you're trying to just perform the maneuvers and don't care as much about damage output.
Armor Master 2/Maneuver Master X is a pretty cool build. Flurry of Maneuvers lets you flurry even in full plate, which is just cool.
Here's an idea of what it could look like:
Whip Maneuver Master
Half-Elf (Ancestral Arms (whip))
strength 20, dexterity 14, constitution 12, intelligence 13, wisdom 12, charisma 8
traits: Threatening Defender, Elven Reflexes
1: (Armor Master Fighter) Improved Trip, Combat Expertise
2: (Fighter) Weapon Focus (whip), Deflective Shield
3: (Maneuver Master, Qinggong Monk) Whip Mastery, Improved Unarmed Strike, Improved Disarm, Stunning Fist
4: Combat Reflexes
5: Whip Mastery, Maneuver Training, Maneuver Defense
6: Ki Pool, Reliable Maneuver
7: Improved Whip Mastery, High Jump, Meditative Maneuver
8: Greater Trip
9: Bodyguard
Highly suggest Dirty Trick, since it works on enemies of any size.
If you want to really stack up a bonus on a single maneuver, a Battle Oracle who uses Aasimar or Elf (or Half-Elf) can use their favored class bonus on the Maneuver Mastery Revelation. This means that 1)You're using your class level as your BAB for that maneuver, 2)Your class level is actually 50% higher than it really is for both the BAB used and the bonuses of the Revelation, and 3)You're a Battle Oracle, so you can cast Divine Favor/Power with Fate's Favored to add another nice bonus. You may only have 3/4 BAB, but your bonus from Oracle stuff at level 9, for example, is +11; and of course there are ways to grab a little more from Heroism and maybe other things.
You can of course splice in a level of Maneuver Master Monk quite nicely; Surprise Charge means pouncing with a free maneuver. As opposed to a straight 'maneuverer', using this to build a dirty-trick-spamming Battle Oracle is pretty cool; you don't even need to have Combat Expertise or spend any feats to do it, so you can focus on building to beat the crap out of whatever you're blinding and entangling.
RumpinRufus, I can't help but notice you have Whip Mastery at level 3 and level 5. Perhaps the level 5 was supposed to be improved, and the level 7 is Greater? LOL, the image of a guy (your using a human, I think?) in full plate with a whip is kinda funny. Is a shield viable, or would I be wielding two whips? Looks awesome, though.
Bad Bird, that is a nice idea, there. Battle Oracle... going to check that out right now!
Petty Alchemy, I will look at the Dirty Trick again, but I think that would be one of the nice "extra" maneuvers I mentioned in the OP. Along with sunder, bull rush, and all the rest.
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Lore warden fighter dip 1 lv maneuver master monk. I suggest you take improved grapple but don't focus on it too much as grappling gives you the grappled condition which you need to spend a standard/move action(with greater grapple) each round to maintain, which limits the number of attacks you have to perform combat maneuvers. Also it is quite hard to threaten while grappling (you need special archtypes, and several levels), and combat reflexes combined with reach weapon fuels your source of aoos which can be converted into funky combat mameuvers.
If you want a full grapple build, go tetori and be done with it. Forget about any other combat maneuvers.
You don't stop threatening while grappling, you only stop being able to make attacks of opportunities.
I'm going to be a troll and say this is a good one for a caster!
Go Sylvan blooded sorc and pick up a wolf (you now have a boss tripper.)
Eldritch Heritage feat to gain the Verdant bloodline power because why not?
Hydrolic push/pit trap combo among your favorite spells.
Grease which can be disarm or trip.
Better than a grapple master? Black Tentacles spell.
You can pull tons of different "maneuvers" with relatively low level spells.
Could someone explain to me the benefit of the 1 level Maneuver Master monk dip? You get Maneuver Flurry, but your extra attack made made using your monk level (effectively a +1) in place of your BAB. So... after 2nd level you are already behind the curve. Perhaps there is something I'm missing??
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Could someone explain to me the benefit of the 1 level Maneuver Master monk dip? You get Maneuver Flurry, but your extra attack made made using your monk level (effectively a +1) in place of your BAB. So... after 2nd level you are already behind the curve. Perhaps there is something I'm missing??
Maneuver Master monks get a bonus improved maneuver feat, which if you're focusing on maneuvers works really well.
Also, when you make your full attack, the part you're talking about, means "instead of the lvl 1 monk bab of 0, use your actual level instead." That adds to whatever other bab you also have from other classes. So if you're a Maneuver Master monk and a 5th level fighter, your, your BaB for your combat maneuvers is normally just 5. But for your bonus combat maneuver that you get to do for free whenever you do a full attack, it's a 6 (minus 2 so 4). But it's completely free that you get to also do. It's an extra action per turn when you get to full attack.
I forgot about the bonus feat (good call there!).
See? I knew I had to have been missing something. Thanks for clearing that up, that makes so much more sense than the way I was reading the ability. Not sure what the heck I was thinking lol.
Personally, I always look at combat maneuvers as a powerful back up option, rather than a primary goal. You a can trip a guy as many times as you want, if you don't kill him, he's just going to get back up and keep wailing on you. That said, consider what you want your primary objective to be. Do you want to deal damage? If so, the variants you posted are good options, and I'd say you should look into which one of them will get the most mileage out of a Guisarme (they're really good at letting you trip and disarm without AOOs). If you're party already has enough bruisers, and you want to play more of a divine caster role, I built this guy for a homebrew campaign and I had a lot of fun with him:
Race - Half-Orc with City Raised Alt Trait for Whip, Long Sword Proficiency
Class - Oracle
Mystery - Stone
Curse - Any
Ability Scores:
STR 10
DEX 17 (With Half-Orc Bonus)
CON 14
INT 8
WIS 10
CHA 16
(STR, INT, or WIS could all be the 8, none are that important)
Revelations: (whatever order you want)
Stone Stability (Nets you both improved and greater trip without Combat expertise)
Crystal Sight
Earth Glide
Shard Explosion
Feats: Take Weapon Finesse (lets you use DEX instead of STR on CMB using the whip), Weapon Focus (Whip), Whip Mastery, Improved Whip Mastery, and whatever else you have room for.
Traits:
Reactionary
Gifted Adept (or, if available, the better version from the APG) giving Dispel Magic a CL boost.
Equipment:
Best Whip you can afford (enhancment bonus adds to your CMB)
Best shield you can afford with no ACP (ACP applies to Weapon Finesse attack and CMB rolls)
Breast Plate
Gauntlets of the Skilled Maneuver (Trip) if available
Play Style:
Play party buffer with your oracle spells. Use your mystery spells and shard explosion for battlefield control. Use Dispel Magic to make sure your party stays debuff free. When you don't need to cast a spell, make ranged trip attempts (or disarm attempts) against opponents. With a shield, high dex, and medium armor (preferably a mithral breastplate), you'll have a very solid AC. You won't do much physical damage, but between a barb, a ranger, and a zen archer, you're probably covered for damage anyway.
I only played with this guy a few nights as a guest spot in another campaign, but he was a lot of fun.
Edit: Oh, and the Dual Cursed Archetype adds a powerful effect with the misfortune revelation, but it replaces stone call with Oracle's burden, which I am not a fan of.
Finally, if you don't want to be locked into a class that has to spend ton's of feats to pull off combat maneuvers, play a druid or druid 4/barb X. There are animals with Grab (like having improved and greater grapple), and trip, and you can either stack those abilities with rage as a barb, or go full druid to be a powerful spell caster in addition to a maneuver master. If you go barb, be sure to pick up shaping focus to let you get lvl 8 shaping with 4 levels of druid.
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because dirty trick was purposefully designed to bring the worse out of your dm.
Yeah - I had a manuver master monk based on dirty trick once. (Only level 1 and I ended up changing to an entirely different character due to such issues.) The GM insisted that my dirty trick could only blind a single head of the hydra at a time due to my earlier fluff description of using a burlap sack over someone's head.
Alright, I should have been a bit more clear. Basically, like I stated in the OP, most of the baddies are human(oid). So, tripping, disarming, and grapple are all good, but I begin to think grapple is the best. Mostly because it would make it far easier to capture them. Tying someone up isn't even a roll anymore, its just a DC of 20+ your CMB that they have to make a CMB check to beat. So, I just need to focus on disarming them, and then grappling and pinning them, then tying them up. So, I want a nice, high CMB, disarm, and grapple. Trip would be nice to immobilize them.
So, with that in mind, what is the verdict? Again, the dirty trick maneuver is one that sounds like fun to have just in case. Wouldn't mind a good sunder as well. Nothing quite as cool as kicking the door in!
You could adjust the build. But basically, move into the party, Slow Time, use your three standard actions to perform two dirty tricks (thanks to the extraordinary maneuver master ability that lets you perform two CM on a standard action) on each of three targets, possibly rendering them pinned or nauseated, and they can't remove the condition because they can't take a standard action.
If you want access to all the maneuvers, the Greater/Improved/Whip Mastery feat-chain lets you use a whip to make Disarm attempts, Trip Attempts, and Grapple attempts at range. This is a great option since adding an enhancement bonus to your whip, and or adding feats like Weapon focus, will pump up your CMB for both Disarm and Trip (and if your GM is okay with it, grapple as well, since the whip is involved). Don't forget, half-orcs and half-elves get whip proficiency with an alternate racial trait so you don't have to burn a feat on it.
Otherwise, play a druid. As a tiger, dire tiger, or allosaurus you'll have pounce, rake, and grab. Charge in, make all of your attacks, make grapple attempts with a +4 bonus without AOOs due to your Grab ability, and enjoy the benefits of size bonuses to strength and CMB. They'll have trouble breaking your grapple because of your enormous CMD, so you can pin them the next turn and then have your buddies do the tying up. That's a really effective grapple build that requires zero feat investment. You won't be able to disarm them well, but if you can grapple and pin someone with ease, you don't need to swat their sword away too. You can mix with barb levels for a better BAB and the Rage class feature, which both make your grapples more potent.