Cornugon Smash: When you damage an opponent with a Power Attack, you may make an immediate Intimidate check as a free action to attempt to demoralize your opponent.
Hurtful: When you successfully demoralize an opponent within your melee reach with an Intimidate check, you can make a single melee attack against that creature as a swift action.
Felling Smash: If you use the attack action to make a single melee attack at your highest base attack bonus while using Power Attack and you hit an opponent, you can spend a swift action to attempt a trip combat maneuver against that opponent.
The reason I find this a little confusing is because Cornugon Smash and Hurtful are very open ended effects. All you need to do is to damage an opponent with Power Attack. While Felling Smash is just a little more specific in that it refers to an 'attack action' at your highest BaB while Power Attack is on.
My question is this: Can you wait until after you hit before choosing to go with either Felling Smash or the Cornugon Smash + Hurtful combo, as long as the hit in question is done at the highest BaB? Or do you have to declare that you're using Felling Smash before the attack?
You can't decide to use Felling Smash until after you hit.
when you:
Use the attack action
Make a single attack at your highest BaB
while using Power attack
and you hit an opponent
then and only then can you swift action trip.
you'd have to use the attack action not a full-attack
So if I'm understanding your responses correctly, you can wait until after you hit with Power Attack before deciding how to use your swift action?
Wow....thanks TGMaxMAxer! This combo of feats just keeps getting better and even more versatile than I first thought. Of course I still have to deal with targets that are immune to fear or tripping, but I don't suppose a single build can be good at everything(barring casters with Wish/Miracle).
The only limit I see is that Felling Smash requires you to decide whether or not to spend your swift action to trip, before you get to roll demoralize from Cornugon Smash.
I'm curious to why you think that is, Viking. Care to elaborate for the sake of discussion?
The way I read it the intimidate check will happen regardless, since it's a free action. I don't see how this would impact the timing of Felling Smash or Hurtful unless the free intimidate fails.
Cowdog, TG: The reason I say that Felling Smash has to be used first is because of the different triggers, not something with swift vs. free action. Felling Smash triggers on a hit, Cornugon Smash on doing damage.
I'm not entirely certain that hitting is processed before rolling damage. Reading the combat section of the rules, it says:
An attack roll represents your attempt to strike your opponent on your turn in a round. When you make an attack roll, you roll a d20 and add your attack bonus. (Other modifiers may also apply to this roll.) If your result equals or beats the target's Armor Class, you hit and deal damage.
It seems to me that hitting and dealing damage happen at the same time, not one after another. While it's common to roll to hit first, then roll damage, the wording seems to say that the actual act of hitting and damaging happen at the same time.
I suppose there could be situations involving damage reduction where you can hit, but not damage, a target. That would certainly invalidate the intimidate check from Cornugon Smash. But it raises an interesting question about the trip attempt from Felling Smash due to the wording of only requiring a hit. Damage Reduction says if you don't deal damage, you don't get most effects either. But Tripping doesn't normally do damage anyway, so I'm not certain.
Whenever damage reduction completely negates the damage from an attack, it also negates most special effects that accompany the attack...
On a related note: I've rolled my hit and damage dice all at once since 2nd edition. Different colored dice to denote which is which, and roll them all with a single toss. Saves time in games with lots of players.
As far as I can tell from reading what you linked, there still appears to be a difference between making the rolls and the actual effect caused by those rolls. If you're treating a combat maneuver just like an attack then it goes back to what I quoted earlier in bold about attacks; with the only difference being that instead of the result of (Hit+Damage), you get (Hit+Condition). They still happen at the same time.
But I agree that it would be nice to hear more different points of view. Either way it's a very interesting nuance of the rules.
I wouldn't worry about then. I think the "player chooses order of operations" general rule covers it. Felling Smash doesn't have "gotcha" terms like "after you hit, but before you deal damage".