What Is The Best Combat Maneuver To Build A Character Around?

[John and KARSG!!!]

What Is The Best Combat Maneuver To Build A Character Around? And how exactly would you recommend doing it? For example, if you said Bull Rush, then would you recommend using the Siegebreaker archetype instead of just using a fighter, if you chose to use fighter at all? Or if you say disarm, would you recommend using the archer archetype, again, for the fighter, or something more standard, i'm curious of your opinion, all ideas are welcome

[avr]

Dirty trick. There's no size limit and no hard limit on what can be affected, tho' I don't recommend trying it on an ooze. I made a dirty tricking ninja for someone else and he was satisfied with the result.

[Ryan Freire]

Probably tied for first is dirty trick or grapple. Grapple has a few significant weaknesses (barring tetori which fills those in pretty well) but dirty trick is pretty universal.

Dont waste time with reposition drag or steal.

You can do well with trip depending on the campaign, disarm is the same way, but they both pretty much need you to have some sort of idea what you can generally expect.

[Scott Wilhelm]

To make a broken character that shamelessly exploits game mechanics, I go with Grappling.

For shutting down single opponents, I really like the Cavalier Order of the Penitent Ability Expert Captor. It lets you Tie Up an opponent you have Grappled, not Pinned, and you don't take the -10 you normally do. So combine that with Greater Grapple, and you can Initiate a Grapple with a Standard Action then Tie Up your Opponent as a Move Action, done and dusted in 1 Round.

Another possibility would be combining a level in White Haired Witch with a level in Maneuver Master Monk. White Haired Witches get a Natural Attack, a Hair Attack, and if it hits, you get to make a Grapple Check as a Free Action. Maneuver Master Monks get a special ability called Flurry of Maneuvers that lets them add a Combat Maneuver to a Full Attack, even Maneuvers that normally take a Standard Action like Grappling. So if you have White Hair, Flurry of Maneuvers, and Expert Captor, you can hit someone with your White Hair as an Attack Action, Grapple them as a Free Action, then use Flurry of Maneuvers Grapple them again, Tying them Up with Expert Captor. This routine requires more successive successful Attack Rolls than just Greater Grapple + Expert Captor, but you can achieve this at a lower level.

Grappling doesn't normally work on multiple opponents. When I want a character than can Grapple multiple opponents, I like to combine White Hair with Cleave or Great Cleave. There isn't any limit set on the number of opponents you can Grapple, but you normally can't Grapple more than 1 opponent at a time because of the Action Cost to do it. Well, Cleave or Great Cleave takes a Standard Action. Each Grapple that triggers from use of your White Hair is a Free Action. So if you have Greater Grapple and Expert Captor, you can take a Move Action to Tie Up one of your Grappled opponents. If you have the Rapid Grappler Feat, you can spend a Swift Action to Grapple a second. When you have an opponent Grappled in your White Hair, only your opponent is Grappled: you are not. That means that if you have a Feat like Snake Fang (found with Style Feats) or Broken Wing Gambit (a Teamwork Feat), any opponents that make Grapple Checks to escape trigger Attacks of Opportunity from you, which can be with your 'Hair, triggering Free Action Grapples and then you can Tie them Up. There are other Feats and/or Class Abilities involved with implementing SF & BWG.

Grapple Mods can get shockingly high. I had a Grappler Pathfinder Society Character that had a Full Time +30 GMB at level 9. I worked out a method of nova'ing it up to +50. A Balor Demon has a CMD of 54.

A shockingly large number of creatures can be Grappled, technically even Oozes and Air Elementals and creatures in Gaseous Form. But the bane of a Grappler is the Freedom of Movement Spell (or ring). Level 9 Tetoris can negate FoM, but personally, I prefer to just have ponies that have more than 1 trick. One of the fastest ways of increasing your Grapple Mod is through a few levels in Alchemist. The Tentacle Alchemal Discovery gives you a +4 on your Grapple Checks. The King Crab (Tumor) Familiar gives you a +2. As long as I'm taking levels in Alchemist, I like being a Grenadier or Gunchemist Alchemist, so when I encounter a creature that I can't or don't want to Grapple, I shoot them with Exploding Arrows or Exploding Bullets. If there is anything cooler than Exploding Arrows, it's Exploding Bullets.

Another nifty use of Grappling is catch-and-release. If you are wearing Armor Spikes, then every successful Grapple Attack inflicts Armor Spike Damage. If you take the Hamatula Strike Feat, then every hit with a Piercing Weapon give you a Free Grapple Attack. So if you were like 2 weapon fighting with say Morning Star and a Spiked Shield, you can take Hamatula Strike, and every hit gives you a free Grapple that does extra Armor Spike Damage, sort of Doubling your Attacks/Round. This can be even sillier if you have like a Druidzilla Build charging into battle as an Allosaurus wearing Rhino Hide Spiked Barding, Size Huge with Bite, Claws, White Hair, and Gore (Helm of the Mammoth Lord), and Grab, Pounce, and Rake!

[Scott Wilhelm]

There are 2 things I think are really cool about Tripping. The Fury's Fall Feat lets you combine your Strength and Dex Mods in your CMB. The Vicious Stomp Feat gives you an Attack of Opportunity when an opponents falls Prone in one of your Threatened Squares, and that is a different AoO Triggern than Tripping your Opponents such as with Greater Trip. In other words Vicious Stomp and Greater Trip allow you to make 2 Attacks of Opportunity against the same opponent when you Trip them.

The downside to Vicious Stomp is that that AoO has to be an Unarmed Strike. There are ways to mitigate this, though. If you are a Monk or Warpriest something, then your Unarmed Strikes do a respectable amount of damage anyway. One of the "or somethings" is if you are a Fighter, and you take the Focused Weapon Advanced Weapon Training and Weapon Focus Unarmed. That lets your Unarmed Strikes inflict damage as if it were your Warpriest Sacred Weapon. There is the Ascetic Style Feat that lets you apply Unarmed Strike Feats to some other weapon.

[Scott Wilhelm]

An idea I really like for Bull Rushing is combining it with a Shield Bash via the Shield Slam Feat.

[Ryan Freire]

Scott Wilhelm wrote:

An idea I really like for Bull Rushing is combining it with a Shield Bash via the Shield Slam Feat.

I'd really like to see if itd be possible to use smashing impact from the martial arts handbook to kool aid man people through walls.

[*Khan*]

Ryan Freire wrote:

Scott Wilhelm wrote:

An idea I really like for Bull Rushing is combining it with a Shield Bash via the Shield Slam Feat.

I'd really like to see if itd be possible to use smashing impact from the martial arts handbook to kool aid man people through walls.

That is a feat I would like to use on Huge monsters as a GM bonus feat!!!

[Scott Wilhelm]

Ryan Freire wrote:

Scott Wilhelm wrote:

An idea I really like for Bull Rushing is combining it with a Shield Bash via the Shield Slam Feat.

I'd really like to see if itd be possible to use smashing impact from the martial arts handbook to kool aid man people through walls.

I wasn't previously familiar with Crushing and Smashing impact. They are pretty cool. I definietly need to work those into my builds!

*Khan* wrote:

That is a feat I would like to use on Huge monsters as a GM bonus feat!!!

For PCs using it on monsters, remember that you can't normally Bull (or Trip) Rush opponents 2 or more Sizes bigger than you. The way I like to get around that is to take the Harder they Fall Teamwork Feat. Since it is a Teamwork Feat, I like to take it with some Class with an Ability that helps you actualize Teamwork Feats such a level in Cavalier or 3 levels in Inquisitor or Paladin with the Holy Tactician Archeype or 3 levels in Warpriest with the Divine Commander Archetype.

My favorite of these is Inquisitor. Solo Tactics lets you use Teamwork Feats as if all your Allies had the Feat. So in addition to Harder they Fall to make sure you can get by the size limit, you can also take Paired Opportunist so that when you give all your Allies Attacks of Opportunity through Greater Bull Rush, you also get one for yourself. You can take Coordinated Maneuvers for a +2 on all your Combat Maneuver Checks, and you can take Broken Wing Gambit and get an Attack of Opportunity just for people Attacking you.

I like the idea taking PO or BWG through a level in Cavalier because Cavaliers actually give other allies a Teamwork Feat so that your characters give out Attacks of Opportunity like crazy.

Another option to consider is to Enlarge Person. I really like doing this through a level of Living Monolith, which lets you EP as a Swift Action. The problem here is that Enlarging lowers your Dex by 2, and that means 1 fewer Attacks of opportunity. On one character build of mine, I found the loss of Dex resulted in a lower DPR in spite of the increased Strength and Damage Dice.

[*Khan*]

Hi Scott
I’m the GM at the current campaign. I was just thinking of how memorable an encounter could be if the monster had that feat. A nice way to boost a huge monster without making it much deadlier.

[Wonderstell]

Dirty Trick is great against anything that can be blinded, but at higher levels you definitely want to work in Dirty Trick Master to completely shut down opponents.
The best starting point is Skulking Slayer UnRogue to replace all of your attacks with maneuvers, but Maneuver Master Monk or the Kitsune Style feat path are both good. Keep in mind that thanks to the order of operations Skulking Slayer works perfectly fine against enemies immune to sneak attack.

Reposition may not be the best (or even second best) maneuver but it is one of the more reliable maneuvers to invest into at higher levels thanks to the Dueling(PSFG) + Leveraging combo. It also helps that you don't need to spend movement like with Bull Rush or Drag, so doing it as part of a full-attack is smoother.