I tripped one of my players twice in the last session, and they are really cross about like, combat maneuvers in general.
Where can I point them to improve their CMD or otherwise upgrade their characters against all the mean Greater Trip NPCs they presume they will be fighting for the next three calendar years?
Make sure they are calculating CMD correctly. Any Dodge or Deflection bonuses to AC also add to CMD.
If your players are cross, that using other less penalizing maneuvers. Bullrush does nothing at all technically but can get people away from an enemy caster, giving him some breathing room. Steal can temporarily take away their favorite weapon. (Make sure they aren't stupid and do have some sort of back up weapon).
Combat Maneuvers are part of the game and QUICKLY phase out from being useful. Players naturally get better at it every level, with their BAB increasing.
I think this is about like grab monsters which are quite annoying to casters.
Ok, a couple complicating factors that are relevant:
1- It's an E6 game, so we are walking a less known path than normal. For those not familiar, E6 is a D&D 3.X variant where you hit level 6 and then gain feats from XP instead of levels. The last game this group played was E6 in 3.5, so they haven't seen CMB / CMD. At the moment the crew is only 3rd level so we aren't running into any issue that could be related to that yet, but they won't level into the stratosphere, meaning if this is an issue for low level play, it will remain so until modified.
2- The only combat maneuver they've seen in play is trip, but they are generally just worried about them.
I don't want to make it so that no one knows how to use maneuvers or anything. Basically, I think they need to know that they have agency when it comes to defending against these things, just like they do other things in the game.
Improved and Greater combat maneuver feats grant +2s to the CMD of the appropriate Combat Maneuvers.
There are Teamwork Feats, Coordinated Defense, +2 if everyone in the party takes it.
There is a Rogue Talent that lets you get up from Prone as a Free Action.
The Grease Spell gives you a +10 to escape a Grapple.
Anything that increases your ST or DEX increases your CMD.
Tripping and Bull Rushing has a Size Limit.
Tell your players to go to d20pfsrd.com, Archives of Nethys, and do their homework.
Coordinated Defense has merit for sure, as does Grease.
Honestly, I'm not seeing many items that specifically increase CMD. It looks like most CMD buffs come from levelling, and the fact that attribute increases and deflection bonuses combine to a higher cap at a given medium or high level than the appropriate competing enhancement bonus on weapons.
I'll likely have to add an item or something for when the players actually hit E6. I'm expecting to need house rules to run E6 properly, as E6 is a pretty serious nest of house rules to begin with (mostly we have this worked out for 3.X, but for Pathfinder different ones will be needed I'm sure), and I'm comfortable with that- but it looks like it is something that players eventually gain other serious bonuses against in a full game, and as such there's not a lot of CMD-buffing things.
Improve their tactics to counter the enemies using maneuvers.
If they aren't going to increase beyond where maneuvers are still effective, then it's on them to improve their tactics and strategies to make maneuvers in general less appealing to use on the group.
CMD is increase in pretty specific ways, and if they aren't going to gain access to those ways or don't invest properly in what is available to them, the better play smarter.
As stated earlier, the Improved/Greater maneuver feats also grant defensive bonuses against those maneuvers. Don't want to be tripped? Take the feats to get the defensive bonuses. Or don't but also don't complain about why you still get tripped.
> Improve their tactics to counter the enemies using maneuvers
This they absolutely can do. But given all the ways in the game to improve AC and various saves, it is odd that CMD boosting items and feats are exceptionally hard to come by- I just guess it doesn't matter in a full game.
> Don't want to be tripped? Take the feats to get the defensive bonuses.
I mean, I can't really demand that of them. That's paying full price to be a tripper just to not get tripped. It would be as if iron will was as expensive as spell focus or whatever.
Overall, I think they'll need to improve their tactics and I'll definitely have something that will help them out around 6th level or slightly before, for when the game diverges from the normal path.
I think the reason that CMD items don't really exist is because so many different types of things inherently boost CMD and they don't want to give players an additional way to just become immune to maneuvers.
Yes, that's conclusion as well.
As a result of the E6 ruleset, I'll need to add them. Off to homebrew for some of that I guess.
....I mean, they still shouldn't be all QQ at level three tho.
|
