I think suffocation works just like underwater, so it would start counting from that moment like if you were underwater and not directly fall unconscious.It bothers me a great deal that the only two interpretations are "completely useless" to "way overpowered."
I must have missed something with the interpretation, why is it either under or over powered?
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How hard is this to understand? I do not balk at them using these maneuvers, I balk at their ease of use and commonality that trivializes fights against powerful opponents.
It's extremely uncommon around my tables (and rather inefficient).
How many characters are there at your tables? And how many martials with Reactive Strike on average?
Because I can clearly see Trip becoming a god maneuver on very big high level parties with tons of martials with Reactive Strike. But that's something that won't happen in most parties.
How can something be fantastic if it is commonplace and easy to accomplish to the point it's probably as commonly taught a maneuver in every fighting school as holding a sword and parrying?Bit late to the party, but I hope you do realise that wrestling is a legitimate martial art that was taught in medieval fighting schools? And that throws and grappling moves totally are part of fighting, even if both combatants have weapons?
See https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Fechtbuch_(Talhoffer)/Kapitel_8
and https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Fechtbuch_(Talhoffer)/Kapitel_3
It would be more fantastic if people would not be using grabs and trips when fighting. If anything, NPCs enemies are not using them enough usually.
Sure, pulling these moves off against mythical creatures many times your size and weight is the fantastical part, but if our heroes can not defeat these critters, how is not every fight against those ends in a TPK? You don't have a problem with the party defeating that six-limbed, fire-breathing lizard, but you balk at them using all the tricks they learned, including unbalancing (don't need to flip the thing on its back to represent a 'trip'!) and hindering it?
How hard is this to understand? I do not balk at them using these maneuvers, I balk at their ease of use and commonality that trivializes fights against powerful opponents.
I have Gortle telling me not to use the best maneuver in the game just to break up the monotony. It is clearly the best maneuver in the game and trivializes fights so often as to reach a point of absurdism.
It would be like watching Star Wars with Darth Vader giving one o his deep voice speeches, then getting tripped by Luke while Han waits to hit him as he stands up over and over again. I could make a comedy video of that.
Or The Witch King of Angmar being Mr. Scary until Aragorn runs up and trips him while Gimli smashes him when he stands up three or four times.
A...
Isn't grappling better?
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Grapple does nothing to inhibit enemy attacks, costs actions to maintain and the opponent attempting to end it doesn't trigger reaction attacks. On the plus side, it slightly inhibits casters. This is more useful now that a silenced caster can still drop a dominate on you.
Trip applies a penalty to attacks, lasts forever until the enemy ends it and doing so triggers reaction attacks. It's better in every situation where the enemy isn't a caster with subtle spells and not much worse in those.
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Grapple does nothing to inhibit enemy attacks, costs actions to maintain and the opponent attempting to end it doesn't trigger reaction attacks. On the plus side, it slightly inhibits casters. This is more useful now that a silenced caster can still drop a dominate on you.
Trip applies a penalty to attacks, lasts forever until the enemy ends it and doing so triggers reaction attacks. It's better in every situation where the enemy isn't a caster with subtle spells and not much worse in those.
Uhhhh.... A good grapple build will eat up two actions pretty reliably with the third action being a 2nd iterative attack.
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It could be interesting to see how the titan wrestler guy now suffocates the huge Hydra or the gargantuan Tarrasque. Seriously, don’t you think this should be revised?
Like with anything there are limits and thats what the first rule is there to do. Its there to say hey the mechanics dont make sense in this situation its making the game less fun for this table were just not going to allow that or make it work in a way that takes more effort and makes more sense.
And tripping does nothing against casters or people with breath weapons other than make them flat footed. At least grappling makes casting harder while also doing that. It's a trade off.
It's certainly not overpowered, though I'd agree it's often better than grappling.
Now, if we want to talk disarm and shove...they just suck
Thing is, you don't really need it to have extra effects vs casting. The moment you hit level 7 you should have rank 4 silence available to someone in the party to shutdown all non-subtle casting. It's just good sense. That's why I mentioned inhibiting something like dominate, which is inherently subtle, as the benefit to grappling over tripping.
In any case, I'm not arguing that it's overpowered. Just that the other options are either too weak or very niche.
Shove though. That at least has a niche in hazardous terrain, kineticist berm and snarecrafter strats.
Uhhhh.... A good grapple build will eat up two actions pretty reliably with the third action being a 2nd iterative attack.
Do tell. In my experience the enemy either doesn't care about escaping and will happily dump 3 actions into attacking the grappler without attempting escape or is a caster and doesn't care about MAP at all (see above about still being nice to maybe disrupt subtle spells).
It could be interesting to see how the titan wrestler guy now suffocates the huge Hydra or the gargantuan Tarrasque. Seriously, don’t you think this should be revised?
Why not!?
Never Watched He-man?In a game where casters can turn into fantastic creatures and call meteor strikes, make a super saiyan monk, an avatar kineticist. Why complain that someone take titan wrestler to do he-man like grabs?
The only point needing to be reviewed here is if suffocates of the APEX item really is right in being so good or so bad.
Does the character bear hug all the heads at once like Hercules?
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Grapple does nothing to inhibit enemy attacks, costs actions to maintain and the opponent attempting to end it doesn't trigger reaction attacks. On the plus side, it slightly inhibits casters. This is more useful now that a silenced caster can still drop a dominate on you.
Trip applies a penalty to attacks, lasts forever until the enemy ends it and doing so triggers reaction attacks. It's better in every situation where the enemy isn't a caster with subtle spells and not much worse in those.
Grappling targets Fortitude DC. Tripping targets Reflex DC.
You trip Ogres and Zombies. You grapple fast and nimble creatures.The difference between the defences is often 5 or more and is typically obvious from the description of the monster.
How hard is this to understand? I do not balk at them using these maneuvers, I balk at their ease of use and commonality that trivializes fights against powerful opponents.It's extremely uncommon around my tables (and rather inefficient).
How many characters are there at your tables? And how many martials with Reactive Strike on average?
Because I can clearly see Trip becoming a god maneuver on very big high level parties with tons of martials with Reactive Strike. But that's something that won't happen in most parties.
We have started building groups around trip and reactive strike once we saw the value of it.
It had been pushed by the poster Exocist. I was skeptical at first. Once I dug into trip, I now saw why Exocist said it was the ultimate destroyer maneuver. Once we started to use it, it works exactly as advertised.
Once we saw that power, we started to design parties around trip martials.
Best trip martials are the fighter (maul being best), barbarian built for athletics, and monk focused on maneuvers. Monk gets the reaction attack Stand Still or can dip into AoO or Champion's reaction depending on build. We usually have a fighter or other martial with AoO since it is fairly easy to acquire.
Even without reaction attacks, Trip is incredibly good. So we use it even if not optimized for reaction attacks.
Trip does the following:
1. Knocks the target prone regardless of their form of movement. This flat-foots them to everyone in the party including ranged strikers and gives them a -2 to hit and prevents them from moving which can be exploited by certain builds with reach or easy movement in and out of battle using something like Mobility.
2. If they stand up, activates reaction attacks.
3. If they don't stand up, -2 to attacks.
4. Cannot move until they stand up.
There are many ways in a group to exploit these advantages.
The surest way against a boss mob to absolutely render them useless is a Trip martial combined with a slow caster. If you land slow and have a trip control martial hammering a boss, it is rendered almost useless. A completely trivial fight where if a win percentage graph were shown went from some reasonable percentage for a challenge to the PCs to a 90 percent plus chance to brutally destroy the enemy.
Why else is trip so good?
1. There are a ton of feats to support trip like Knockdown and Improved Knockdown. Flurry of Maneuver. The barb feat to boost athletics.
2. It is a skill and thus can be built Legendary.
3. It benefits from item bonuses either from a trip weapon or an athletics boosting item.
4. It works against reflex saves, which is often a weaker defense than any other save and at best about on par with AC. Even if it is high for a monster, you can build Trip so high as still give you a good chance to execute a trip on a target with high reflex saves.
5. Knocks fliers out of the air. The monk is particularly good at knocking fliers from the air with their fast movement if you get them flight. They will knock a flier into the ground even going so far as to provoke an AoO forcing the creature to choose to hit them with their reaction, just to piledriver them into the ground for falling damage since their reaction cannot be used for Arrest a Fall.
I have never seen trip as inefficient. It is quite extraordinary if you build around it and know how to use it as a party.
There are very, very few creatures trip doesn't work against. Incorporeal creature being the most notable.
I'm testing a new trip character right now that combines trip with grapple. In essence they trip and grapple the target. So the target cannot stand up until they escape the grapple further action taxing them while getting beatdown.
Grapple does nothing to inhibit enemy attacks, costs actions to maintain and the opponent attempting to end it doesn't trigger reaction attacks. On the plus side, it slightly inhibits casters. This is more useful now that a silenced caster can still drop a dominate on you.
Trip applies a penalty to attacks, lasts forever until the enemy ends it and doing so triggers reaction attacks. It's better in every situation where the enemy isn't a caster with subtle spells and not much worse in those.
Grappling targets Fortitude DC. Tripping targets Reflex DC.
You trip Ogres and Zombies. You grapple fast and nimble creatures.
The difference between the defences is often 5 or more and is typically obvious from the description of the monster.
Grappling is not as effective as trip. All the grappled monster has to do is focus fire on the grappler. It doesn't take any minuses to attack or penalties for being grappled other than having to roll a DC 5 check for manipulate actions, so can be somewhat useful against spellcasters.
It can straight up focus fire the grappler with all attacks with no penalty whatsoever. It can also attack with AoE attacks with no penalty whatsoever.
The only thing grapple does is prevent movement actions, flat-foot the target, and make manipulate actions slightly more difficult. Eve the Escape action should they choose to take it does not activate reaction attacks.
Even against nimble creatures, especially if fliers, trip is still better.
If you want to listen to folks who spend their time debating this stuff, have at it.
I have used Trip across multiple characters and parties. It is the ultimate teamwork maneuver and trivializes fights.
You can build trip to be Legendary plus up to a +3 item bonus, so you're hitting with trip as well as the fighter hits with weapons. You can even work in Circumstance Bonuses with certain feats like Furious Bully and Rippling Wave Stance.
I've tried grappling and shove. Disarm anyone can see is terrible. Trip is better than grappling or shove to build around.
When it comes to PF2 teamwork, Trip is the absolute god maneuver. If you want defeat enemies with relative ease, having a trip martial to build around is the way to go.
Trip works against all forms of movement. It works against nearly every creature. It works for martials and casters, ranged or melee, debuffs the targets attacks and AC, and screws up their movement badly and activates reaction attacks.
I have had a trip martial in every single campaign since Exocist first convinced me to try this tactic years ago. It is the most efficient and effective tactic in the PF2 teamwork paradigm that leads to fairly easy victories and makes your other party members whether casters or martials happy.
I highly recommend any group try it for themselves and see the magic of a Trip martial with their own eyes since some like to debate their effectiveness.
Some of my favorites:
1. The maul fighter with knockdown and improved knockdown.
2. Flurry of Maneuvers Monk using Rippling Wave Stance or a Kusari Gama.
3. Dragon or Giant barbarian with furious bully and an Ogre Hook with the mauler archetype for Knockdown and Improved Knockdown.
Give it a try. Your other party members will love you.
Oh and Trip also works with Heroism, both for the strike and the skill check to trip. Heroism provides a status bonus that stacks with all the other bonuses you get from items and circumstance bonuses.
Grappling is not as effective as trip. All the grappled monster has to do is focus fire on the grappler.
Which is why a character who grapples should be defensive in nature. Grapplers should be fighters, champions, monks - the tougher characters - and they should make an effort to be defensive. But that is the point of a lot of party layouts. If you have 1 martial and 3 soft casters then grappling is exactly what you want to do. There are ways to boost your defences further.
I'm not saying that you wouldn't choose trip to use in some situations either.It doesn't take any minuses to attack or penalties for being grappled other than having to roll a DC 5 check for manipulate actions, so can be somewhat useful against spellcasters.
and creatures with items such as reloadable weapons.
Grapple does nothing to inhibit enemy attacks, costs actions to maintain and the opponent attempting to end it doesn't trigger reaction attacks. On the plus side, it slightly inhibits casters. This is more useful now that a silenced caster can still drop a dominate on you.
Trip applies a penalty to attacks, lasts forever until the enemy ends it and doing so triggers reaction attacks. It's better in every situation where the enemy isn't a caster with subtle spells and not much worse in those.
And tripping does nothing against casters or people with breath weapons other than make them flat footed. At least grappling makes casting harder while also doing that. It's a trade off.
It's certainly not overpowered, though I'd agree it's often better than grappling.
Now, if we want to talk disarm and shove...they just suck
Trip combined with slow absolutely destroys casters.
They cannot move unless they stand up, if they stand up they get wrecked. If they are slowed and tripped and they stand up, they can't even cast a 2 action spell.
I've seen this stuff a bunch of times. I use it every single campaign because there is just a part of my brain that can't help but use the very best option available because it makes me feel like I'm screwing myself not to use it.
So we use the slow combined with trip combo on bosses in every single campaign. In every single campaign it is absolutely brutal. If this combo works of course, which it does the majority of the time.
I've forgotten to add the most important effect of grapple. The critical result. Yes the numbers are often good enough that this is a significant chance. Restrained is a lock. A very powerful condition to inflicit. The extra 1d6 from a critical trip is often fairly minor.
It could be interesting to see how the titan wrestler guy now suffocates the huge Hydra or the gargantuan Tarrasque. Seriously, don’t you think this should be revised?
Are you talking about the size problem or the unconscious cheese?
Personally I always rule holding your breath is automatic (it is IRL a subconscious reflex) even though the rules technically don't say that.
Anyway another nomination for most over powered thing is. The Monks Stunning Fist.
Every turn ready an action to Flurry of Blows for after the start of the enemies turn. After their turns starts Flurry. Neither Strike is effected by MAP as it is not in your own turn. If either hit there is a save to be stunned. If they fail this then the enemy is Stunned 1 before acting. They lose the ability to act. So 3 actions plus a reaction, then they will loses another action on the next turn. Typically 5 total actions gone.
Then there is the fact that a Monk can actually do this with a bow via Monastic Archer Stance.
I think a lot of people severely underestimate grapple.
in a lot of the parties i've been, being able to force an enemy to attack only the toughest martial, and have all the squishies do whatever the hell they want without any fear of retaliation, has been a major boon.
if the grappled tries to escape and switch targets, at most he gets a -5 attack off before being demoted to having his targets picked for it by the grappler next turn again.
---
let alone specialized stuff like grapple+reach weapon/stance that completely shut off enemies.
I've grapple. There is not underestimate. As a DM, I just wreck the grappler. They don't bother to escape.
Why grappling isn't as good:
1. You have to have one hand free to grapple or use a grapple weapon.
2. This bars the use of 2-handed weapons which hit the hardest.
3. Escaping doesn't provoke reactions.
4. Grappled target can just hammer the grappler with no minus to hit.
5. If target has reach can attack anyone in reach with no penalty.
6. You have to expend an additional reaction to extend the grapple and maintain a free hand or use a grapple weapon which can often mean having to use both hands.
It's not nearly as good or as flexible.
It could be interesting to see how the titan wrestler guy now suffocates the huge Hydra or the gargantuan Tarrasque. Seriously, don’t you think this should be revised?
The most effective chokes against a human are arterial chokes, rather than tracheal chokes. I imagine it works similarly against large creatures.
I have used Trip across multiple characters and parties. It is the ultimate teamwork maneuver and trivializes fights.
So... what kind of fights exactly does it trivialise though?
The big level +3/+4 boss because it gets destroyed on action economy?
The +2 mini-boss with a gaggle of -1/-2 minions?
The -1/-2 horde?
Because as good Trip is in some situations, it is not great in all situations. Or does your experience indicate otherwise?
I have used Trip across multiple characters and parties. It is the ultimate teamwork maneuver and trivializes fights.So... what kind of fights exactly does it trivialise though?
The big level +3/+4 boss because it gets destroyed on action economy?
The +2 mini-boss with a gaggle of -1/-2 minions?
The -1/-2 horde?
Because as good Trip is in some situations, it is not great in all situations. Or does your experience indicate otherwise?
What beats Trip?
1. Incorporeal
2. Kip Up which I give to many PC class boss mobs.
3. Anything immune to trip, which I can't think of too much other than incorporeal off the type of my head.
4. Anything that can stand as a free action or as part of an attack action.
Then trip is rendered pointless, better to just hammer.
When Trip isn't really necessary?
1. If you're already able to absolutely destroy what you're fighting in mook battles. If you're fighting a bunch of CR-2 to 4 creatures at higher level and you can destroy them with something like Whirlwind Attack with other Aoe attacks and spells, then trip is pointless.
What is Trip best against?
1. CR-1 to CR+3 or 4 mobs where you want to control their offense. Especially if solo where you can trip them and land slow, then it's a game over fight if they don't have one of the counters.
Even yesterday we were fighting a giant king, the monk kept him tripped while the magus and rogue tore him up. The monk kept the giants tripped as they entered the hallway and we smacked them down.
Often when we have a monk, they are built as a control martial. They have great fighting feats for maneuver control. I've done it with a knockdown fighter and barbarian too.
Trip is great on caster mobs or any mob that relies on a 3 action attack. Trip with Slow is good on almost everything. It really ruins their entire attack sequence.
I think of it in terms of action removal. Trip is a 1 action tax per round or a debuff if they don't spend that action. So is slow by itself. Nice thing about slow and trip is they are additive versus say Stun and Slow which are usually a net zero gain as they both do roughly the same thing and don't stack.
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Anyway another nomination for most over powered thing is. The Monks Stunning Fist.
Every turn ready an action to Flurry of Blows for after the start of the enemies turn. After their turns starts Flurry. Neither Strike is effected by MAP as it is not in your own turn. If either hit there is a save to be stunned. If they fail this then the enemy is Stunned 1 before acting. They lose the ability to act. So 3 actions plus a reaction, then they will loses another action on the next turn. Typically 5 total actions gone.
Then there is the fact that a Monk can actually do this with a bow via Monastic Archer Stance.
Readied attacks suffer MAP normally.
Also it's unclear if stunned mid turn actually works that way.
Stunning Fist also has the incap trait and goes against Fort, a usually high save. Against any monster CR+1 even failure avoids the stun. Only a critical failure causes stun on anything tougher than a CR equal creature.
You certainly aren't going to waste actions prepping a ready action which takes to actions to do a one action ability on an equal or lower CR creature. That's just a waste as they aren't powerful enough to warrant such maneuvers.
If a CR equal creature is against an entire party, they are dead fast anyway. So you're wasting time. If there are multiple equal CR creatures, you don't want to be trading two actions and a reaction for 1 action flurry for a Stun 1. That is a complete waste.
Not even sure why someone would try that given the incap trait on stunning fist and the lack of a challenging enemy for an equal or lower CR against a group.
Readied attacks suffer MAP normally.Anyway another nomination for most over powered thing is. The Monks Stunning Fist.
Every turn ready an action to Flurry of Blows for after the start of the enemies turn. After their turns starts Flurry. Neither Strike is effected by MAP as it is not in your own turn. If either hit there is a save to be stunned. If they fail this then the enemy is Stunned 1 before acting. They lose the ability to act. So 3 actions plus a reaction, then they will loses another action on the next turn. Typically 5 total actions gone.
Then there is the fact that a Monk can actually do this with a bow via Monastic Archer Stance.
The rules are clear, I suggest you check them again. It is a common thing for people to confuse an interpretation for actual rules. If you still disagree with me then please take it to a rules thread and I'll go into detail.
MAP doesn't apply outside your turn. Except in the case of a readied action - that uses your existing MAP. So zero anyway.
Also it's unclear if stunned mid turn actually works that way.
Actually it mostly clear RAW wise that it does. Even the people that disagree with me in the current rules thread do agree on this. However most people also agree that is too strong so it shouldn't be that way. But this thread is about overpowered things, so it is fair game.
Disarm is a lot better now, since it inflicts a persistent debuff until they Interact (and thus provoke) on success. But of course it runs into the issue of "not everything can be disarmed". The critical success on it is better than trip but not as good as grapple (but Restrained is brutal).Grapple does nothing to inhibit enemy attacks, costs actions to maintain and the opponent attempting to end it doesn't trigger reaction attacks. On the plus side, it slightly inhibits casters. This is more useful now that a silenced caster can still drop a dominate on you.
Trip applies a penalty to attacks, lasts forever until the enemy ends it and doing so triggers reaction attacks. It's better in every situation where the enemy isn't a caster with subtle spells and not much worse in those.
And tripping does nothing against casters or people with breath weapons other than make them flat footed. At least grappling makes casting harder while also doing that. It's a trade off.
It's certainly not overpowered, though I'd agree it's often better than grappling.
Now, if we want to talk disarm and shove...they just suck
True. Definitely decent now when an enemy has a weapon.
But useless when they don't. Which is pretty frequently. Hence it kind of sucking.
It's better than Trip when 2 conditions are met due the chance of its critical effect:
When this happens basically it will have the same effects of Trip (the target is already off-guard and will -2 into its attacks while no use a manipulate action to recover the grip and if it usa a manipulate action it will trigger reactions like AoO RS) but if you critical hit the Disarm it will drop the weapon turning it into an unattended object allowing you to get it.
I have used Trip across multiple characters and parties. It is the ultimate teamwork maneuver and trivializes fights.So... what kind of fights exactly does it trivialise though?
The big level +3/+4 boss because it gets destroyed on action economy?
The +2 mini-boss with a gaggle of -1/-2 minions?
The -1/-2 horde?
Because as good Trip is in some situations, it is not great in all situations. Or does your experience indicate otherwise?
What beats Trip?
1. Incorporeal
2. Kip Up which I give to many PC class boss mobs.
3. Anything immune to trip, which I can't think of too much other than incorporeal off the type of my head.
4. Anything that can stand as a free action or as part of an attack action.
Then trip is rendered pointless, better to just hammer.
When Trip isn't really necessary?
1. If you're already able to absolutely destroy what you're fighting in mook battles. If you're fighting a bunch of CR-2 to 4 creatures at higher level and you can destroy them with something like Whirlwind Attack with other Aoe attacks and spells, then trip is pointless.
What is Trip best against?
1. CR-1 to CR+3 or 4 mobs where you want to control their offense. Especially if solo where you can trip them and land slow, then it's a game over fight if they don't have one of the counters.
Even yesterday we were fighting a giant king, the monk kept him tripped while the magus and rogue tore him up. The monk kept the giants tripped as they entered the hallway and we smacked them down.
Often when we have a monk, they are built as a control martial. They have great fighting feats for maneuver control. I've done it with a knockdown fighter and barbarian too.
Trip is great on caster mobs or any mob that relies on a 3 action attack. Trip with Slow is good on almost everything. It really ruins their entire attack sequence.
I think of it in terms of action removal. Trip is a 1 action tax per round or a debuff if...
I think you was goind throug a tangent Deriven Firelion.
If I understand right the point of Lycar was something like "Trip is good but to trivializes maybe is too much" because in most encounter what Trip does is basically give off-guard and -2 to attacks and may trigger an AoO if the target decides to stand up.Off-guard is a pretty easily condition to get. If melees flank they get off-guard without need checks, if you have Gang Up this is even more easier, if you have a good deception you can Feint to get target off-guard in your next attack without waste your MAP, if the target is in an uneven ground it's off-guard, if you use an action to Hide the target is off-guard to you (this is pretty useful to ranged attacks).
So get target off-guard its a pretty common tactic and maybe a game change in a encounter but its not made to trivialize the encounter.
The other point that I agree with Lycar is the numbers. If you are facing a large number of opponents that due the game balance normally are weaklings really worth to use Trip on each of them? Isn't better just try to kill them sooner with your best MAP?
Also if you are facing a big boss alone the Trip really worths more than other ways to get off-guard but it's not so uncommon that this encounter is Severe or more making the target being Party Level +3. Unless you are a Fighter this probably won't give nothing more than 10% of increased hit-rate not changing your critical chance at all and the main benefit is that you will take less critical damage due the -2 to attack if the creature uses an attack action.
So Trip is pretty good but it's not incapacitant to a point of trivialize an encounter. Especially when the dices aren't in your side and you missed a Trip attack.
Readied attacks suffer MAP normally.Anyway another nomination for most over powered thing is. The Monks Stunning Fist.
Every turn ready an action to Flurry of Blows for after the start of the enemies turn. After their turns starts Flurry. Neither Strike is effected by MAP as it is not in your own turn. If either hit there is a save to be stunned. If they fail this then the enemy is Stunned 1 before acting. They lose the ability to act. So 3 actions plus a reaction, then they will loses another action on the next turn. Typically 5 total actions gone.
Then there is the fact that a Monk can actually do this with a bow via Monastic Archer Stance.
The rules are clear, I suggest you check them again. It is a common thing for people to confuse an interpretation for actual rules. If you still disagree with me then please take it to a rules thread and I'll go into detail.
MAP doesn't apply outside your turn. Except in the case of a readied action - that uses your existing MAP. So zero anyway.
As GM I won't allow such kind of cheese to use the second Strike of FoB MAPlessly using Ready activity.
But I agree by RAW it's how it works you don't get MAP improvement outside your turn.
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Disarm is a lot better now, since it inflicts a persistent debuff until they Interact (and thus provoke) on success. But of course it runs into the issue of "not everything can be disarmed". The critical success on it is better than trip but not as good as grapple (but Restrained is brutal).Grapple does nothing to inhibit enemy attacks, costs actions to maintain and the opponent attempting to end it doesn't trigger reaction attacks. On the plus side, it slightly inhibits casters. This is more useful now that a silenced caster can still drop a dominate on you.
Trip applies a penalty to attacks, lasts forever until the enemy ends it and doing so triggers reaction attacks. It's better in every situation where the enemy isn't a caster with subtle spells and not much worse in those.
And tripping does nothing against casters or people with breath weapons other than make them flat footed. At least grappling makes casting harder while also doing that. It's a trade off.
It's certainly not overpowered, though I'd agree it's often better than grappling.
Now, if we want to talk disarm and shove...they just suck
True. Definitely decent now when an enemy has a weapon.
But useless when they don't. Which is pretty frequently. Hence it kind of sucking.
It's better than Trip when 2 conditions are met due the chance of its critical effect:
The target is already off-guard.
The target uses a weapon. When this happens basically it will have the same effects of Trip (the target is already off-guard and will -2 into its attacks while no use a manipulate action to recover the grip and if it usa a manipulate action it will trigger reactions like
AoORS) but if you critical hit the Disarm it will drop the weapon turning it into an unattended object allowing you to get it.
...I
Did you read the entire post? I covered what you mentioned already. Pretty much covered all of it thoroughly when to use and not use trip and what it doesn't work against.
It wasn't a tangent. It was a breakdown of trip.
I don't know how to prove it to you other than letting my group loose in your campaign and ripping it apart. I don't get why this is hard to understand:
1. You can build trip to an even better accuracy than a fighter with Legendary proficiency using a weapon because skills don't have the same limits as weapon proficiency.
Heroism works with it.
Status penalties like sickened and frightened and clumsy make it more effective, so its great with phantasmal killer or synesthesia.
People complain about the fighter's accuracy all the time and Trip is as accurate as a fighter with legendary proficiency.
2. You often do this against a weaker defense like Reflex saves or at best an equal defense to AC.
3. It's off-guard against everything, not just melee opponents but ranged and casters too.
4. When used in conjunction with slow, is an absolute battle ender.
5. The -2 to attack is a circumstance penalty which stacks with status penalties. It's one of the few ways to apply a circumstance penalty to attack rolls for anything. Melee, ranged, spells, -2 circumstance penalty.
It is clearly the most powerful maneuver in the game. Far better than any other maneuver.
Trip gives a laundry list of stackable benefits that when used in conjunction with a group create an absolutely destroyer tactic.
The way you talk, it's like you haven't used to maximal advantage. I have.
I know I don't care for it as a DM. It's too powerful and easy to build for. It gives way too many stackable benefits for everyone. And hits as well as a fighter using their legendary weapon proficiency, which can be build up for any class if you so choose.
You all are way underselling trip. I've seen trip in action. It's the god maneuver, absolutely wrecks bosses and is great in almost any fight if your group is working in an even marginally coordinated manner.
As a DM, I hope they nerf trip myself. As long as its available, I'm going to use it as a player. It's a brutal maneuver that makes fights much, much easier.
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As GM I won't allow such kind of cheese
Agreed.
This is how I rule but by RAW you are ignoring the first part of the Ready text:
If you have a multiple attack penalty and your readied action is an attack action, your readied attack takes the multiple attack penalty you had at the time you used Ready.
So by RAW it's pretty clear that the cheese is possible. If you don't have a MAP your both attacks FoB or any ranger 2 Strikes action don't increase their own MAP.
What we can claim inside RAW is that these actions get "Apply your multiple attack penalty to the Strikes normally" so we can say that this due be more specific overrides the Ready text.
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The text for FoB is
Make two unarmed Strikes. If both hit the same creature, combine their damage for the purpose of resistances and weaknesses. Apply your multiple attack penalty to the Strikes normally. As it has the flourish trait, you can use Flurry of Blows only once per turn.
So I would absolutely increase the MAP for the 2nd strike of a readied FoB just like always.
I'm not sure how useful that is though when it basically relies on the GM consenting to multiple 'please squint at this the right way' rules interpretations in your favor to do anything interesting.
You might as well just ask the GM nicely to have the enemy spontaneously drop dead.
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I'd disallow it not only because it's cheese but also due to the still ambiguous nature and definition of the differences between an "Action" and an "activity" which I believe FoB falls squarely between the crack of. The definitions surrounding "Action" + "An Action" + "Actions" + "Act" + "Actions" + "Activity" are about as murky as stew.
FoB COSTS one Action but it is, in itself more than one Action so I'd rule that it is an Activity since, well, the rules are nowhere near air-tight enough to settle the discussion and it would have to come down to a GM determination on a table by table basis.
The text for FoB is
Make two unarmed Strikes. If both hit the same creature, combine their damage for the purpose of resistances and weaknesses. Apply your multiple attack penalty to the Strikes normally. As it has the flourish trait, you can use Flurry of Blows only once per turn.So I would absolutely increase the MAP for the 2nd strike of a readied FoB just like always.
That is how I understand too. You use the MAP of when readied, but later you are using a skill that increments the MAP for each attack within.
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This is how I rule but by RAW you are ignoring the first part of the Ready text:
If you have a multiple attack penalty and your readied action is an attack action, your readied attack takes the multiple attack penalty you had at the time you used Ready.So by RAW it's pretty clear that the cheese is possible. If you don't have a MAP your both attacks FoB or any ranger 2 Strikes action don't increase their own MAP.
What we can claim inside RAW is that these actions get "Apply your multiple attack penalty to the Strikes normally" so we can say that this due be more specific overrides the Ready text.
Yup this is correct.
Even more revolting is the fact that if you use stunning fist with that readied FoB, and the target gets stunned on their turn, they can't act for the rest of the turn. Because even stunned 1 says "the target can't act". So they can't act for the entire turn and all the way until the start of their NEXT turn when stunned goes away.
Technically, you can (and should) ready an FoB, have it go off after the start of an enemy's turn, and get two MAPless strikes plus rob them of the entire turn if they fail the FoB save.
This is stupid and abusive and no sane GM will allow it though
I would allow it. It's not that good.
Stunning Fist has the incap trait meaning CR+1 or above likely need a 1 to fail.
Using it requires being in position, not having the creature die from other people hitting it, and having the creature fail its save while you trade 2 actions and a reaction to maybe screw up a mook level creature of equal CR for one turn.
If you're willing to play that inefficiently, I say go for it.
I've seen this recommendation more than a few times. I actually tried it in battle given we have a lot of players who like monks for all the nifty stuff they do and this wasn't a very efficient.
It basically requires a set up like the following:
1. Be in position.
2. Not have mob die so you don't want it low on health.
3. CR equal or lower.
4. You spend 2 actions to set up a ready action.
5. Then you use a reaction to attack with Flurry.
So you spend 2 actions and a reaction, have to designate a trigger meaning if the monster does something else they just completely wasted their time, and then hope it doesn't make a Fort save against your class DC. It's only one save even if both attacks hit.
This is one of those theoretical abilities that sounds really good on paper, but in practice it's terrible and inefficient. I would allow it.
I watched the attempts at this. Against mook level creatures, someone else may just kill them or they just move or do something else. Or they just make their save. Bosses pretty much laugh off the stun.
It wasn't a very efficient of use of actions. It didn't work very well. So I would let the player do it if that made them feel good. I think most would find as a standard tactic, it's pretty bad.
Haven't really seen trip being used that much, but that's also because my biggest 2e campaign experience involved mooks being staple in encounters. Trip doesn't really help much when you have to spread attention often
We don't spread our attention. Which is why we funnel to a kill zone using a vertical set up to focus damage.
If you're fighting mostly weak mooks, you won't need trip too much.
Trip is best again bosses and offensively tough monsters you can funnel to the kill zone and set up the trip conveyor belt to that sets them up for death.
We did this in a giant battle a few days ago. Drew them into a hallway, lined them up, tripped them as they came, smashed them as we stacked bodies. Trip is particularly effective against giants due to their weak Reflex saves.
We have two trip monks in this particular group who alternate trip and damage. They're basically control martials who control the frontline, while the rogue and archer and caster damage dealer hammer.
It's why I'm always of a mixed mind with monks. On one the hand they don't deal super high damage, but on the other than they are incredibly efficient and can really do the control martial role better than any other martial. Their versatility is the highest of all the martials.
Yep it has the following rules concerns:
1) Readying an activity as a single action. The rules are loose with the way they use the term action. You can take a one action activity as an action. Most GMs allow this.
2) MAP. It is explicitly zero outside your turn. There is a rule to say for a readied attack to use your in turn MAP if you had one. FoB says to use MAP normally. What is normal? Typically it means it is just reminder text that there is no special rule here - use MAP normally. In turn it would be that the 1st strike increases the MAP for the second strike. - you are outside your turn so normal is no MAP. It is pretty easy at high level to create a build with multiple reactions and get multiple attacks outside your turn. We don't apply MAP to them.
Anyway it is a classic problem with a specific vs general rules set. You can get in a loop trying to work out which is more specific.
3) Timing. There is a rule to say triggers have to be something you can observe in game. But setting a trigger for that creature does anything is legitimate. There are start of turn triggers throughout the rules. This probably means that creature will get to resolve their first action before the FoB happens. That is OK.
It is not unbalanced. 2 Strikes with no MAP is not a terrible turn. It is about right actually. Ruleswise up to here, I am very comfortable with it.
It is just the monk has this stunning rider instead of more damage.
4) Being stunned inside your own turn, and all the "you can't act" issues. Most people think it is RAW but TBTBT and nerf it.
Wizards can do this with the spell Power Word Stun. Quickened Casting doesn't work because it breaks the limitations of the ready action.
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1. Be in position.
??
You have another action to move and you are a mobile Monk. Or you can just use a BOW and do it from range.Shock!! Horror!?! You have to think about when it is appropriate to use.
But you know what is good about it? It costs you nothing. Most Monks are going to take Stunning Fist anyway. It is still good value even in your normal turn. So no net feat cost unless you want a bow (1 level 1 feat), no resource cost. Use it when it makes sense.