| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
... only benefits certain classes that have an AoO and are in melee range at the right time...
Tripping bad guys benefits everybody. AoO is not the end-all-be-all of Tripping. Prone targets are -2 to attack rolls and Flat-Footed, or the target burns an action to Stand. Messing with an enemy's Action Economy is one of the best debuffs in the game.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The fact that you can get away with playing badly does not actually refute anything I said. A trip is an objectively...Not my experience.
We don't bother with trip unless part of a guaranteed attack seqeuence. Gave up on tripping as a skill check a long time ago
You can build a party to take full advantage of tripping if you so feel like it and it will be an effective tactic when it sets up right.
But it isn't necessary and only benefits certain classes that have an AoO and are in melee range at the right time. Since that is not how we tend to build parties, we usually like the hammer martial to just hit the monster initially, draw the aggro, and we heal through it.
Another thing not noted in the above post is a trip usually does no damage and doesn't add any of your special attacks like striking runes, energy runes, barbarian rage damage, specialization damage, sneak attack, or any of the damage boosters that make your class hit harder. So you're basically giving up your best attack for a trip with no guarantee of an AoO unless you're built for it or have a party built for it.
We have found over time that tripping as your class abilities grow more powerful and useful is not a particularly great use of actions unless a natural part of your attack sequence that will benefit from all your built up damage boosters and class enhancers.
Healing is so powerful in PF2 with the two action heal, if for some reason you can't withstand its attacks you can just heal through the damage with one two action spell from some party caster. At higher level you don't usually need healing until after the fight.
We tend to build parties with two melee martials, an archer, and two casters. Only the melee martials may benefit from trip, but we have lot of rogues who prefer to get Opportunistic Backstab or Champions who sit on their reaction for defense. Tripping isn't particularly interesting when you have other things you can do that don't align well with the tactic.
It is not objectively better. I explained why it wasn't. It is costly to use a skill instead of weapon based class ability at higher level when you have very powerful class abilities that do huge damage. As an ideal example, a single giant barbarian at a hit is an average of 29 plus 3d12 plus 2d6 damage at around 15th level or around 54 points. If the giant instinct barbarian is using an Ogre Hook or a Pick, you double that add some more dice for around a 100 point hit.
Barbarian at that level is usually hasted, so he's going to get an extra attack. The target will be affected by synesthesia or fear and flanked. Then you might have a bard buff up or a heroism on boosting hit chances.
So you're getting a -2 penalty to AC for flank, a -3 due to synesthesia, and a +1 or 2 status bonus to hit for an AC shift of 6 to 7 points.
So you can trip doing no damage using a skill roll knocking the monster to the ground to gain the same benefit as flanking which is no additional bonus to hit that will require a single action to stand up provoking AoOs from one or two characters or you can have the hasted barbarian swing a bunch making his first and second attacks have a real good chance to hit and even his third and fourth hit pretty good too.
So you're giving up 54 points of damage or a 100 points to cause the enemy to spend one action to stand up hoping to provoke an AoO from two characters if they aren't using their reactions for something else.
If you have a rogue, he's going to use his action for Opportunistic Backstab setting up so when the Barbarian hits, he hits again. A champion is going to sit on his reaction for defense.
We can stack a lot of damage fast by simply flanking, debuffing, buffing, and then healing with a 2 action heal or medicine after the fight if needed that we don't bother setting up the trip unless it is part of our normal attack sequence.
I love the attempt at playing down the difficulty of our games. If your best option is still using Athletics to trip by the time you reach high level, you're doing something wrong. You should have a ton more options in focus spells, class abilities, and a large number of options from casters and other skills like Intimidate to get the job done.
You should also be fighting enemies that make life real hard on melee martial fighters with high mobility, invisibility, auras, and lots of other special attacks that a trip doesn't quite cover well or even affect. Which is why you build a balanced party and why we always like to have an archer for those times when we need to land damage while a target is moving around until we bring it under control while not letting the martial get so far out of range he has no heals with him.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
... only benefits certain classes that have an AoO and are in melee range at the right time...Tripping bad guys benefits everybody. AoO is not the end-all-be-all of Tripping. Prone targets are -2 to attack rolls and Flat-Footed, or the target burns an action to Stand. Messing with an enemy's Action Economy is one of the best debuffs in the game.
It is. And at high level we usually mess with action economy with slow or AoE slow. It is best to let the casters mess with action economy while the martials bring pain unless they can trip the target as part of their normal attack sequence with no chance of failure while still gaining the powerful damage from their magic weapons and class abilities.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
My home group didn’t have too much difficulty with those hags. We stalled in Book 3 (player changes), but as GM running the game hardcore RAW (typos and all) we never had a PC death in all of AoA.
I think you need to flip your mentality away from “this game is impossible” to “how can I be successful at this game”. You can do it! It will be challenge, but you’ll enjoy and appreciate the game much more after you succeed.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
It is not objectively better. I explained why it wasn't. It is costly to use a skill instead of weapon based class ability at higher level when you have very powerful class abilities that do huge damage. As an ideal example, a single giant barbarian at a hit is an average of 29 plus 3d12 plus 2d6 damage at around 15th level or around 54 points. If the giant instinct barbarian is using an Ogre Hook or a Pick, you double that add some more dice for around a 100 point hit.
Barbarian at that level is usually hasted, so he's going to get an extra attack. The target will be affected by synesthesia or fear and flanked. Then you might have a bard buff up or a heroism on boosting hit
Applying a bunch of buffs which change the situation also doesn't refute what I'm saying, especially given that almost everything you listed also helps improve the trip odds.
You also don't give up damage by tripping if the barbarian has AoO. (And why would you take giant instinct and skip AoO?) If they use that ogre hook to trip, then when the creature stands they get to take the same attack with the same damage they would have taken with that first action. If the barbarian is fighting the enemy solo, they actually improve their damage because the enemy is still technically prone when AoO triggers. If the barbarian is flanking with another melee character, an optimized melee character should also have an AoO reaction.
Tripping also provides flatfooted for the ranged characters as well, which flanking no longer does. And it provides flat-footed when flanking won't work due to terrain restraints or all around vision.
The only way you're losing damage is if the enemy would have already provoked a reaction, but usually they only do that once a fight and then play more cautiously. Well, or if the enemy chooses to just fight from prone, but then you've seriously reduced their DPR for the rest of the fight.
And again, in some cases, including your buffed example, you just have significantly better odds to trip than hit. Being so crit hungry you refuse to lose an action to generate two MAPless shots to roll nat 20s is just silly.
You can say tripping isn't something you should rely on or use every fight, but to say there are no situations you should bother tripping doesn't make sense. To pick a similar but extreme example, Shove normally isn't very helpful. But if your great axe wielding opponent is standing adjacent to the edge of the Cliffs of Insanity, you can remove them from the encounter with a single shove.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
While I overall after with you Captain Morgan, you're incorrect on one bit:
If the barbarian is fighting the enemy solo, they actually improve their damage because the enemy is still technically prone when AoO triggers.As Stand doesn't leave the square the trigger is after they are standing, so no flat-footed.
If you use a move action but don’t move out of a square, the trigger instead happens at the end of that action or ability.
Thanks for the correction there. :) You're technically correct. The best kind of correct.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
It is not objectively better. I explained why it wasn't. It is costly to use a skill instead of weapon based class ability at higher level when you have very powerful class abilities that do huge damage. As an ideal example, a single giant barbarian at a hit is an average of 29 plus 3d12 plus 2d6 damage at around 15th level or around 54 points. If the giant instinct barbarian is using an Ogre Hook or a Pick, you double that add some more dice for around a 100 point hit.
Barbarian at that level is usually hasted, so he's going to get an extra attack. The target will be affected by synesthesia or fear and flanked. Then you might have a bard buff up or a heroism on boosting hit
Applying a bunch of buffs which change the situation also doesn't refute what I'm saying, especially given that almost everything you listed also helps improve the trip odds.
You also don't give up damage by tripping if the barbarian has AoO. (And why would you take giant instinct and skip AoO?) If they use that ogre hook to trip, then when the creature stands they get to take the same attack with the same damage they would have taken with that first action. If the barbarian is fighting the enemy solo, they actually improve their damage because the enemy is still technically prone when AoO triggers. If the barbarian is flanking with another melee character, an optimized melee character should also have an AoO reaction.
Tripping also provides flatfooted for the ranged characters as well, which flanking no longer does. And it provides flat-footed when flanking won't work due to terrain restraints or all around vision.
The only way you're losing damage is if the enemy would have already provoked a reaction, but usually they only do that once a fight and then play more cautiously. Well, or if the enemy chooses to just fight from prone, but then you've seriously reduced their DPR for the rest of the fight.
And again, in some cases, including your buffed example, you just have...
I said the classes that can build best to trip.
I made it clear if you can trip as part of a MAPless routine it is good.
I don't think it is good as a skill check.
I don't think it is necessary or particularly useful past a certain level. It's mostly a low level tactic when you don't have feats like Knockdown or Wolf Drag or something.
If our party builds certain classes like a Maul Fighter or Wolf Drag monk, we use trip. If we don't have a guy who trips, then we don't bother with it and still do fine.
I think Trip like many other tactics is something you build for, but there are plenty of other ways to win as well.
My biggest gripe when trip is brought up is a class should not be balanced around Trip. If a class can trip, it doesn't suddenly make the class viable and cool.
I certainly don't want to play a summoner or any class for that matter because they can trip real well. That's not my motivation for playing a class. If I play a wizard, I want to be a badass at casting spells. If I play a class called the Summoner, I want to be badass using summons whether I make a dragon or an angel or a plant. Some PF2 classes do a pretty good job of giving the class fantasy while also being good in battle and some classes give you the class fantasy cosmetically while mechanically being pretty lacking.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
The value of tripping is the value of flat footed when you can't or can't easily reposition or an ally doesnt have enough speed to get around them, have ranged characters, dont have enough melee to comfortably flank, and so forth, its also the wasted action of standing, which as gravy can provoke OA which is the most consistently available source of reaction damage and represents another attack of full MAP the enemy may not have otherwise been hit by for every PC that has it and a reaction to spend ln it.
If the trip means theyre flat footed when they otherwise wouldnt have been, its a 10% hit increase and a 10% crit increase. As soon as one attack falls within those four die faces, you earn back the value of your turn, potentially more if they do more on a hit than you do. If two or more attacks do, you pull way ahead and if your first hit was a succesful trip, youll make up a portion of your second strike's MAP as well and still contribute to damage.
Since martials like to make at least two attacks a turn and might use reroll effects like hero points, its not crazy unlikely to pull ahead due to your boost. The key to it is that you have to have the expectation that other players can capitalize on it to get hits where they would have missed or get crits where they would have hit.
Occasionally creatures will have Deny Advantage as well, and tripping becomes the easiest way of flat footing them. Some creatures (like Dragons!) are disproportionately more dangerous if they have three actions rather than two due to activities and such- so tripping means a dragon cant move to your healer before unloading frenzy and potentially recharging their breath weapon, instead maybe they have to stay parked near the Champion and their raised shield AC to try and recharge it.
Feats that make trip better, like knockdown are def upgrades for characters that take them.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Fighters are, of course, well equipped to trip with the Knockdown and Improved Knockdown feats. While the latter is a lv. 10 feat, the Trip is automatic on a melee hit.
Knockdown itself offers a MAP-free trip attempt after an initial melee hit. Since Fighters gravitate towards having a good Athletics score, this is worth a consideration.
Knockdown is pretty good at low level. I made a goblin fighter with knockdown and improved knockdown. Very good strategy with a fighter. Fighter and barbarian are the two classes I've seen take the best advantage of tripping or knocking down because it is so easy to build as part of your attack sequence where you get to use your highest attack hit with all your bonuses while tripping as part of the same action. That is a very useful feat combination.
If you're a fighter, barbarian, or monk, I would definitely looking into building a trip specialist as it is an optimal build for those classes.
There is also the fact that, say, a ranged Rogue doesn't need to spend any actions making his target flat-footed when his Fighter buddy does it for him. And the damage from a Rogue's sneak attack makes up for the attack you sacrifice. Never mind the other party members also having an easier time hitting.
Combat Grab also flat-foots the enemy, and if you combine a Trip with a Combat Grab, you can really mess up an enemy's turn, or have another chance to flat-foot the enemy if the trip fails.
Basically, Fighters can chose between attacking AC or Saves to Trip/Grapple, which can make all the difference.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
