Pushing Assault + awesome blow (2 questions)

[Jeff Clem]

Can you stack Pushing Assault + awesome blow feats?

Second part question.
Can you knock a creature upwards using these feats.

[Bran Towerfall]

Jeff Clem wrote:

Can you stack Pushing Assault + awesome blow feats?

Second part question.
Can you knock a creature upwards using these feats.

weird combo but....if you meet the prerequisites for awesome blow monster feat than no problem

pushing/awesome blow upwards to cause falling damage?....ask your gm about that i guess

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

Jeff Clem wrote:

Can you stack Pushing Assault + awesome blow feats?

One, the Awesome Blow feat provides you with a combat maneuver, not a melee attack (not even a maneuver that can be subbed in for an attack). Pushing Assault only affects attacks, so it doesn't push foes you trip, disarm, grapple... or awesome blow.

Two, Pushing Assault only kicks in when you make a two-handed weapon attack (with Power Attack). Awesome Blow is not made with a weapon.

If you are a 20th-level Brawler you have their improved awesome blow ability (unrelated to the feat of the same name (sigh)) which turns AB into an attack, but it still isn't made with a weapon AFAICT.

Jeff Clem wrote:

Can you knock a creature upwards using these feats.

Well, Pushing Assault specifies that you push the creature directly away from you, so the answer for that would seem to be "yes, if it is currently above you."

AB does not have that stipulation. OTOH, Pathfinder is generally two-dimensional. So IMO the GM would need to make a call on using AB to toss floor-level foes upward. (If the foe is above you already the GM has clearly decided to work with three-dimensionality and you should be fine.)

[Aydin D'Ampfer]

More to the point, Pushing Assault requires that you are using Power Attack, and you cannot power attack a Combat Maneuver Check. This means that you cannot ever trigger Pushing Assault.

Direction is defined based on position in 3D space, but directly away means just that, putting the target the farthest away you can. Going up is not farthest away if you are standing next to them on a flat surface.

[Jeff Merola]

Aydin D'Ampfer wrote:

More to the point, Pushing Assault requires that you are using Power Attack, and you cannot power attack a Combat Maneuver Check. This means that you cannot ever trigger Pushing Assault.

Not technically correct. Lemme quote Power Attack:

Quote:

You can choose to take a –1 penalty on all melee attack rolls and combat maneuver checks to gain a +2 bonus on all melee damage rolls

It doesn't help most combat maneuvers (it pretty much just helps Sunder, barring other abilities), but you can definitely power attack with them.

[Aydin D'Ampfer]

Man that is less than helpful. But true, it appears you can power attack even when there is no point. I guess this makes it so that you can get Power Attack on AoOs even if you trip during your turn?

I guess, to be more clear, the way the wording on Awesome Blow goes:

Awesome Blow wrote:

As a standard action, the creature may perform an awesome blow combat maneuver. If the creature's maneuver succeeds against a corporeal opponent smaller than itself, its opponent takes damage (typically slam damage plus Strength bonus) and is knocked flying 10 feet in a direction of the attacking creature's choice and falls prone.

While Pushing Assault says:

Pushing Assault wrote:

When you hit a creature your size or smaller with a two-handed weapon attack modified by the Power Attack feat, you can choose to push the target 5 feet directly away from you instead of dealing the extra damage from Power Attack.

The Awesome Blow damage does not appear to be Power Attack modified, as they 'take damage' instead of the combat maneuver 'dealing damage'. Because you do not get the extra power attack damage, you can't sacrifice it to trigger Pushing Assault.

That said, Awesome Blow is poorly worded. On the plus side, it looks like I can Power Attack Grapple, which makes little to no sense.