Hey all, I've been playing a Cad Fighter and I'm anticipating getting the Dirty Trick Master feat. The dirty trick maneuver is limited to applying a shortlist of conditions, including entangled. With Dirty Trick Master, the entangled condition can be worsened to the pinned condition. I'm confused how being pinned by a dirty trick should work.
So, dirty tricks are situational attacks that are intended to be creatively implemented by the player. From the Advanced Player's Guide:
Examples include kicking sand into an opponent’s face to blind him for 1 round, pulling down an enemy’s pants to halve his speed, or hitting a foe in a sensitive spot to make him sickened for a round. The GM is the arbiter of what can be accomplished with this maneuver...
If your attack is successful, the target takes a penalty. The penalty is limited to one of the following conditions: blinded, dazzled, deafened, entangled, shaken, or sickened.
So far, my table has ruled that the standard dirty trick conditions can be applied without expending resources or requiring additional actions to make it happen, like dropping your weapon and pulling out a rope to entangle the target. It's reasonable that these conditions could be applied without expending resources or relying on the environment. However it happens, I'm assuming the point of a dirty trick is that the target is hindered and the condition persists independently of the player's subsequent actions.
With Dirty Trick Master, entangled can be worsened to the pinned condition with an additional successful dirty trick. Pinned is described in the rules as a "more severe form of grapple". But this was not started with a grapple and I don't think it should be considered one. If being pinned works like all the other possible dirty trick conditions, the affected creature remains pinned without the player needing to maintain the condition, but that's not how being pinned/grappled normally works.
Questions that came up as I thought about this:
- If the creature is pinned independently of someone grappling with it, isn't that pretty much the same as it being bound and helpless?
- If not, how would a player approach tying it up to make it helpless? Since it's already pinned but independent of a grapple, would the player who made the dirty trick need to make a grapple check to bind it further?
- What was the intention of worsening entangled to pinned if the player is supposed to now be grappled with their target? Isn't that what a grapple maneuver is for?
- If the creature isn't pinned by anyone, but not helpless, then there must be a third action to grapple with it. So isn't pinning through dirty tricks a waste of a round?
- So say we decide pinning works independent of a grapple in this case. Imagine the target is in the middle of a plain room with nothing to pin it to. Would you rule that the creature would not be able to be pinned and the maneuver can't be attempted?
- Should it be entangled --> pinned only if there is a reasonable physical way to pin the target and immobilize it, or does the target just get the effects of being pinned without the normal conditions for being pinned?
It seems to me that this pinned condition should be different than being grappled with the target, since that would be very different from how any of the other conditions caused by a dirty trick work. I would rule this as a sort of pseudo-pinned state. The target takes the negative effects of being pinned, like being unable to move and losing their dex bonus, but they aren't considered grappled by anyone and the player initiating the dirty trick would not be limited as if they were grappling. There wouldn't be any escape checks against the player's CMD as the target could only escape with a standard action or wait until the duration ended.
So, being able to pin a target with a dirty trick could be really useful, but it isn't clear to me how that works, since the pinned condition is considered a more severe state of being grappled and all the other conditions from dirty tricks are straight forward debuffs. Thoughts?
Dirty trick effects can be removed within a round of their being inflicted assuming the target takes the action to do so. Actually tieing someone up leaves them needing both an action and a difficult roll to escape the effect. Those are different situations.
There's no indication that the tricker is grappling or pinned, no.
There's a general rule for dirty tricks that the GM has to approve what you're doing ('The GM is the arbiter of what can be accomplished with this maneuver'). Trying to pin a stark naked lizardman on a smooth stone floor when you aren't grappling said lizardman sounds like a case where it's not going to work.
- If the creature is pinned independently of someone grappling with it, isn't that pretty much the same as it being bound and helpless?
No, because being pinned does not make you helpless.
- If not, how would a player approach tying it up to make it helpless? Since it's already pinned but independent of a grapple, would the player who made the dirty trick need to make a grapple check to bind it further?
You'd need to make grapple checks to Tie Up to make the condition "permanent".
- What was the intention of worsening entangled to pinned if the player is supposed to now be grappled with their target? Isn't that what a grapple maneuver is for?
You do not grapple the target. They have the pinned condition, you do not have any condition.
- If the creature isn't pinned by anyone, but not helpless, then there must be a third action to grapple with it. So isn't pinning through dirty tricks a waste of a round?
They're still Pinned and heavily restricted in their allowed actions. And if you use the Quick Dirty Trick feat you can inflict these debilitating conditions on your enemies while full-attacking. Not a waste.
- So say we decide pinning works independent of a grapple in this case. Imagine the target is in the middle of a plain room with nothing to pin it to. Would you rule that the creature would not be able to be pinned and the maneuver can't be attempted?
Depends on the situation. If you're fighting a colossal spore cloud you must have a pretty good argument to make it work. But if it's a humanoid enemy maybe you hit them in their nerves on the legs/arms so that they are unable to use them for a short while.
- Should it be entangled --> pinned only if there is a reasonable physical way to pin the target and immobilize it, or does the target just get the effects of being pinned without the normal conditions for being pinned?
I'm not sure what you're asking here.
So, being able to pin a target with a dirty trick could be really useful, but it isn't clear to me how that works, since the pinned condition is considered a more severe state of being grappled and all the other conditions from dirty tricks are straight forward debuffs. Thoughts?The main thing about Dirty Trick is you have to come up with some method the GM thinks could work to achieve the debuff you want. This is totally a matter of circumstance. Depending on what you have in hand will have an effect on what you can accomplish.
Like throwing sand in someone's face to blind them. Guess what you need? Yes, you need an explanation of where the sand comes from. And how tossing sand in someone's face results in them being blind.
If you don't think you need to do that because its obvious that sand to the face blinds someone, then how are you going to explain pinning something?
You could explain that you cut your opponents belt and their pants fall down to entangle their legs. The following round you make that worse by pinning their arms by grabbing their cloak, or pulling their coat half way down. But these are all circumstances. It won't work if your opponent doesn't happen to wear a cloak, coat or pants. All of this is you taking advantage of circumstance to do something outside of the normal rules. You need to come up with a cleaver idea of how to make the circumstance work for you.
And if you can't explain how the effect you want will happen without you pulling out a rope, then I guess you better have some rope in hand. The cleaver part of dirty trick is fully on you.
^----- Yep, this. Whenever you perform a Dirty Trick and worsen the condition using Dirty Tricks Master to sicken/nauseate, entangle/pin, dazzle/daze, etc., the method that you actually use is merely part of your roleplaying that helps you and your party, as well as the DM, to envision what you're actually doing in-game, and you can literally use anything in the room or that's on the person to do it. Kicking sand or dirt into the person's eyes, or grabbing a handful of chemical dust from an alchemical workstation, or even catching the light off your blade can Blind, or use the haft of your weapon to kidney shot to Sicken and then next round punch them in the unmentionables to Nauseate, or pull their pants down to Entangle and then next round cinch their belt around their legs to Pin. If the monster has tremorsense but can be Blinded, maybe you grab a handful of small rocks/pebbles and throw them straight up in the air to trick them into "tremorsensing" streams of pebbles and rocks falling around them for the next few seconds.
The method that you use is purely thematic and part of the roleplaying though. Even though you could argue that someone's pants around their ankles with the belt cinched all the way should equate to a "psuedo-Pin" condition (and you're right, it probably should for a normal person doing this), but the mechanics of Dirty Tricks Master says it DOES equate to a "pin" condition. It works because you're a Dirty Tricks Master, dammit!