Telekinesis or Ectoplasmic Hand plus Knowledge is Power or Kinetic Enhancement


Rules Questions


Is there any reason you can't combine the Knowledge is Power arcane discovery or Kinetic Enhancement psitech ability to a combat maneuver performed through the Telekinesis spell or Ectoplasmic Hand spells?

Both spells let you conduct a combat maneuver from a limited menu with your CMB calculated with caster level replacing your BAB and your Intelligence replacing your Strength. Both abilities let you add your Intelligence on top of your usual CMB. Not bad!

Taking it too far, a 20th level caster with +13 optimized Int bonus would have a CMB of 46 with those maneuvers. Then you could add on +2 for Spell Specialization, +1 for Ioun Stone, +1 for a trait, up to +4 (at the cost of three feats) for the Improved/Greater maneuver feats, etc. Using spell perfection, some really questionable feat selections, and a succubus profane gift I see you getting to 20 + 2x2 + 14x2 + 1 + 1 +4 = 58 CMB at level 20 on one particular maneuver and 54 for the rest. It would be a really silly use of a standard action for a 20th level caster and really wasteful of your feats, but you could do it. Toss in a True Strike or Moment of Prescience boost when you really want to surprise something colossal by tripping it.


Congratulations, after mass optimization you have a slightly better than 50/50 chance to actually use a combat maneuver successfully against a level approriate challenge's ~55+ CMD... assuming they don't have other bonuses (4+ legs vs trip ect.) and aren't immune entirely.


Nah, that's a 65% success against a Pit Fiend with base intelligence and no feats, easily boosted to 100% with some of those extra optimizations. It only gets hard against high CR stuff that is also Gargantuan or Colossal. That's when you toss on the True Strike/Moment of Prescience for the (near-)auto success against them, too.

Sorry, martials, you lose out again.

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