What you add together to perform a maneuver with a weapon with maneuver with a weapon with maneuver trait, for example a rapier which has the disarm trait, has never seemed clear.
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So let's take the rapier for doing disarm. You have:
* Your level.
* Since it has finesse, a dexterity or strength modifier.
* A potential weapon potency rune to give an item bonus.
* Potentially a skill boosting item, like armbands of athleticism, to give an item bonus to skill checks.
* Your weapons proficiency bonus, in this case for martial weapons.
* Your athletics proficiency bonus.
* If it's not a reaction, the multiple attack penalty.
You can only add dexterity or strength, not both.
You can only add one item bonus to a roll.
Is it always the one from the weapon, or is it the largest of the two?
Can a non-weapon skill boosting item ever improve a maneuver with a weapon?
I'm assuming that you can only use one proficiency bonus.
Can you use the largest of the weapon proficiency or skill proficiency?
Does the skill proficiency bonus ever get used for a maneuver with a weapon?
If you aren't trained in the skill associated with the maneuver weapon trait, can you do the maneuver with the weapon?
If the maneuver check with the weapon
= die roll + relevant ability modifier + level + weapon proficiency bonus + weapon potency item bonus + MAP,
then it's really just a standard weapon attack roll labelled something else.
If you can swap bonuses associated from the skill from skill proficiency or an item, that changes things.
Why aren't there more formulas and examples of the math?
You do only get one attribute bonus (Strength, or Dexterity, or such) to any proficiency type check.
You also only get one bonus of the same type to any check. It is always the highest one that you have available.
If you are regularly using disarm (or even if you aren't) you likely already have your standard Athletics proficiency bonus calculated.
level + proficiency rating number + Strength attribute.
If you have a weapon or other ability that lets you use your Dexterity attribute for Disarm instead, then you might have that calculated separately specifically for Disarm checks instead of other uses of Athletics such as Climb or Swim or Trip.
level + proficiency rating number + Dexterity attribute.
You might even add in your item bonus from a permanent item or a Disarm weapon that you always or nearly always use.
But even with all of that, you may still find that when it comes time to actually roll a Disarm check, you have to add in a stray circumstance or status bonus to the check. And of course, Multiple Attack Penalty - but that is something that has to be accounted for regularly anyway.
So end result example for this particular retired character:
I have a pre-calculated Athletics bonus of +7 . I have a note in my attacks that if I am using Devise a Strategem (combined with Athletic Strategist) then for Grapple, Shove, and Trip I have a pre-calculated bonus of +10 . (I don't have any Athletics boosting items at level 4)
And when I actually use Trip on a particular round, I would have to account for someone using Aid or casting Guidance on me on the fly during that round. I would just need to add the +1 or so to the pre-calculated skill bonus.
Why aren't there more formulas and examples of the math?
Page space, probably.
I'm assuming that you can only use one proficiency bonus.
Can you use the largest of the weapon proficiency or skill proficiency?
Oh, missed this one in the mix.
a Disarm action (or other combat maneuver) always uses the skill proficiency. Using the weapon to do it lets you add the item bonus of the weapon and you can usually drop the weapon if you crit-fail instead of taking the regular crit-fail result that the maneuver lists.
You don't use your Strike attack roll bonus for combat maneuvers. Which can be good or bad depending on the character. Martial characters may wish that they could use their weapon proficiency. Spellcasters who want to use Trip or Disarm appreciate being able to boost their skill proficiency since they can't easily boost their weapon proficiency.
If you aren't trained in the skill associated with the maneuver weapon trait, can you do the maneuver with the weapon?
One more.
The weapon having the trait doesn't give you the ability to use the maneuver action. That still depends entirely on the maneuver action you are using.
So Disarm is a trained-only Athletics skill action. You do need to be trained in Athletics in order to disarm someone even if you are using a rapier to do it.
Trip and Grapple are untrained actions. You can do them even if you are untrained in Athletics (though be aware that it won't work well at levels much higher than about level 3). If you use a weapon with the Trip or Grapple traits, you could still use the weapon's item bonus on the Athletics check.
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So let's take the rapier for doing disarm. You have:
* Your level.
* Since it has finesse, a dexterity or strength modifier.
* A potential weapon potency rune to give an item bonus.
* Potentially a skill boosting item, like armbands of athleticism, to give an item bonus to skill checks.
* Your weapons proficiency bonus, in this case for martial weapons.
* Your athletics proficiency bonus.
* If it's not a reaction, the multiple attack penalty.
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A few corrections.
• You can't use dexterity to make an athletics check. It doesn't matter that a rapier is a finesse weapon because finesse only lets you "use your Dexterity modifier instead of your Strength modifier on attack rolls," and athletics checks aren't attack rolls.
• Since this is a skill check rather than an attack roll, your weapon proficiency bonus is not used here at all. You only use your athletics proficiency bonus.
• You don't add in your level in addition to your athletics proficiency bonus. It's just your athletics proficiency bonus. If you are Trained or better then your level is already included in your proficiency bonus. If you are untrained then you don't get your level added at all.
That's why the formula is just:
Skill modifier = skill’s key attribute modifier + proficiency bonus + other bonuses + penalties
It's not nearly as complicated as you seem to fear it is.
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So let's consider a level 12 Wizard who is Expert in Athletics, has a +1 Str and +3 Dex, is wearing a Lifting Belt (+1 item bonus to athletics checks), and is wielding a +2 rapier with which they are Untrained.
The skill's key attribute is Str so they get +1 from Str. Dex can't be used despite the finesse trait.
As an Expert in Athletics, their proficiency bonus is their level+4 which is +16. It doesn't matter what their proficiency level is for martial weapons.
They have two sources of item bonuses: the athletics check bonus of +1 from the belt and (because a rapier has the disarm trait) the +2 bonus from the potency rune. Only the highest counts, so that's another +2.
So their Skill Modifier for disarming with that rapier will be:
+1 (Str)
+16 (Athletics proficiency bonus)
+2 (Item bonus)
= +19
Of course, they might sometimes have additional modifiers like a MAP penalty or a Circumstance bonus, but those usually get added on the fly. The basic number that you would likely want to note on your character sheet would be the +19.
I'll also note that your disarm action is opposing your target's Reflex DC, rather than their AC.
• You can't use dexterity to make an athletics check. It doesn't matter that a rapier is a finesse weapon because finesse only lets you "use your Dexterity modifier instead of your Strength modifier on attack rolls," and athletics checks aren't attack rolls.
I'm accepting what you and Finoan are saying with regard to using the skill proficiency instead of the weapon proficiency for the check when using the weapon with a maneuver trait for the maneuver.
However, the issue of finesse allowing dexterity to be used is long and heavily debated on these and Reddit forums.
What does appear to be the case is that Stephen Radney-Macfarland gave the sole game developer input on the issue way back in the Playtest as noted in:
re: Debates on if Trip / Shove / etc. Traits plus Finesse trait allow Dex for maneuvers.
Errata (what do you expect most? )
Finesse weapons with trip / disarm
2nd Ed Pathfinder Playtest
The game developer supported being able to use dexterity for maneuvers with finesse weapons with the maneuver trait associated with one being attempted.
The issue boils down to that with Finesse "You can use your Dexterity modifier instead of your Strength modifier on attack rolls using this melee weapon."
The key there is using Dexterity with "attack rolls" and the debate about whether a maneuver with a weapon is an "attack roll" or not.
Most maneuvers in the skill descriptions have the Attack trait. By definition, that only says "An ability with this trait involves an attack", so it's not clear from that alone whether a maneuver involves and "attack roll" or not.
This is clarified in the Trip weapon trait description where it says "This uses the weapon's reach (if different from your own) and adds the weapon's item bonus to attack rolls as an item bonus to the Athletics check." The description clearly identifies the Athletics check as and "attack roll". The Finesse trait allows the Dexterity modifier to be used with "attack rolls", and the Trip weapon trait indicates that the maneuver skill check is indeed an "attack roll", meaning that the Finesse trait applies to the skill check when the weapon is used for the maneuver.
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That was true when the game first published, but there wasn't consensus among the Paizo staff. Stephen left Paizo shortly after PF2 was published and Paizo published errata creating the distinction between attacks and attack rolls pretty much just to eliminate Dexterity to maneuvers.
I hate that rule, personally, but it isn't contested.
Edit: to further complicate this, you're not even referencing the most up to date BOOK now. Archive of Nethys doesn't have the remaster yet. I'm not sure if any of the rules you find confusing are laid out clearer in Player Core or GM Core, but if the question is "why wasn't this clearer" the answer might be they hadn't figured out how to make it clearer yet. But that's a big part of the remaster objective.
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That was true when the game first published, but there wasn't consensus among the Paizo staff. Stephen left Paizo shortly after PF2 was published and Paizo published errata creating the distinction between attacks and attack rolls pretty much just to eliminate Dexterity to maneuvers.
I hate that rule, personally, but it isn't contested.
To be a completionist, the errata referenced is posted on the FAQ and reads as follows:
Page 446: Attack Rolls. There was some confusion as to whether skill checks with the attack trait (such as Grapple or Trip) are also attack rolls at the same time. They are not. To make this clear, add this sentence to the beginning of the definition of attack roll "When you use a Strike action or make a spell attack, you attempt a check called an attack roll."
To clarify the different rules elements involved:
An attack is any check that has the attack trait. It applies and increases the multiple attack penalty.
An attack roll is one of the core types of checks in the game (along with saving throws, skill checks, and Perception checks). They are used for Strikes and spell attacks, and traditionally target Armor Class.
Some skill actions have the attack trait, specifically Athletics actions such as Grapple and Trip. You still make a skill check with these skills, not an attack roll.
The multiple attack penalty applies on those skill actions as well. As it says later on in the definition of attack roll "Striking multiple times in a turn has diminishing returns. The multiple attack penalty (detailed on page 446) applies to each attack after the first, whether those attacks are Strikes, special attacks like the Grapple action of the Athletics skill, or spell attack rolls." There is inaccurate language in the Multiple Attack Penalty section implying it applies only to attack rolls that will be receiving errata.
• You can't use dexterity to make an athletics check. It doesn't matter that a rapier is a finesse weapon because finesse only lets you "use your Dexterity modifier instead of your Strength modifier on attack rolls," and athletics checks aren't attack rolls.
I'm accepting what you and Finoan are saying with regard to using the skill proficiency instead of the weapon proficiency for the check when using the weapon with a maneuver trait for the maneuver.
However, the issue of finesse allowing dexterity to be used is long and heavily debated on these and Reddit forums.
What does appear to be the case is that Stephen Radney-Macfarland gave the sole game developer input on the issue way back in the Playtest as noted in:
re: Debates on if Trip / Shove / etc. Traits plus Finesse trait allow Dex for maneuvers.
Errata (what do you expect most? )
Finesse weapons with trip / disarm
2nd Ed Pathfinder PlaytestThe game developer supported being able to use dexterity for maneuvers with finesse weapons with the maneuver trait associated with one being attempted.
The issue boils down to that with Finesse "You can use your Dexterity modifier instead of your Strength modifier on attack rolls using this melee weapon."
The key there is using Dexterity with "attack rolls" and the debate about whether a maneuver with a weapon is an "attack roll" or not.
Most maneuvers in the skill descriptions have the Attack trait. By definition, that only says "An ability with this trait involves an attack", so it's not clear...
Yes, I know the history. I was here for all of those debates, and I was arguing that you *can* use dex if you are using a finesse weapon.
Then Paizo issued the errata quoted by Finoan above and all of the debate ended. You can't use dex instead of strength for athletics attacks.
There is currently only one option for substituting out strength for athletics attacks. Investigators with the Athletic Strategist feat can use their Intelligence in place of strength for a disarm, grapple, shove, or trip if they use Devise a Stratagem.
Now a weird corner case. Can you make a manoeuvre with a weapon you’re not proficient in? Like, say, a monk who is carrying a magic whip as loot finds themself ten feet from someone who needs to be tripped. Said monk is trained in Athletics but needed to be told which end of the whip to hold.
Now a weird corner case. Can you make a manoeuvre with a weapon you’re not proficient in? Like, say, a monk who is carrying a magic whip as loot finds themself ten feet from someone who needs to be tripped. Said monk is trained in Athletics but needed to be told which end of the whip to hold.
If what everyone is saying here in the thread is correct, then it appears that the monk would be able to Trip with the whip and wouldn't be hindered by the non-proficiency for the weapon. The Trip with the skill check using the weapon doesn't use the weapon proficiency, which would be +0 for being untrained for a Strike, but the Athletics proficiency is used instead for the skill check for the weapon.
In real life, a whip is very difficult to use and takes a lot of practice to master, probably much more so than most other weapons. A trip with a whip is also a hugely different task than an unarmed trip using something like judo where you are using your whole body for the task and you drill a specific set of movement steps to master the task. The similarity to a trip with a whip and a judo trip has more to do with understanding the physics of where someone's support base defined by their feet interacting with the position of their center of mass than the athletics of it. There is a degree of applied force in either case, which is strength based athletics, but if you take judo as an example, teenagers all over every day demonstrate trips and flips of people three times their weight while exerting very little force to do it. A trip with a whip involves a complex action of entangling a limb and then applying enough force to destabilize the target. If you catch someone by surprise, it might be fairly easy to apply enough force, but if someone is aware of what is a possibility and they can brace themself and lower their center of mass, then it's probably much harder and a much more strength based task tripping someone with a whip than either catching someone unaware with a whip to trip them or doing a judo trip.
To be satisfying from a simulation standpoint, you want the mechanic to have weapon and skill proficiency interact, but, RAW, they don't appear to.
Now a weird corner case. Can you make a manoeuvre with a weapon you’re not proficient in? Like, say, a monk who is carrying a magic whip as loot finds themself ten feet from someone who needs to be tripped. Said monk is trained in Athletics but needed to be told which end of the whip to hold.
There are only four things that change for that Monk if they trip with the Whip:
- They do not need a free hand
- They can use the Whip's reach
- They can add the Whip's item bonuses to attack rolls (if any) as an item bonus to the Athletics check to trip.
- If they Critically Fail, they can drop the Whip to instead suffer the effects of a Failure.
Proficiency with the weapon doesn't matter here, the Trip attempt is still a Strength-based Athletics check, you just get some nice buffs. This is further reinforced by the errata, which states that these maneuvers are not attack rolls. Proficiency with weapons applies only to attack rolls. They have no bearing here, strange as it sounds.
For extra fun, as a monk, you can do this in whatever stance you want, because stances only restrict your Strikes and the Trip attempt isn't a Strike.
If what everyone is saying here in the thread is correct, then it appears that the monk would be able to Trip with the whip and wouldn't be hindered by the non-proficiency for the weapon. The Trip with the skill check using the weapon doesn't use the weapon proficiency, which would be +0 for being untrained for a Strike, but the Athletics proficiency is used instead for the skill check for the weapon.
To be satisfying from a simulation standpoint, you want the mechanic to have weapon and skill proficiency interact, but, RAW, they don't appear to.
Yup. I vaguely remember something hinting that you could only use the traits of a weapon that you are proficient with - but I can't find it and I half expect that I am hallucinating.
And also yes, no one accuses Pathfinder2e of being too simulationist.
Now a weird corner case. Can you make a manoeuvre with a weapon you’re not proficient in?
Yes, as long as that weapon has the trait for that particular athletics action. Note that in my example earlier, the Wizard was untrained with martial weapons such as the rapier that he was using to disarm.
That's not the only unintuitive result of the athletics rules.
Consider that throwing a bola uses Dex for an attack roll, but only uses Str if you want to trip them with it.
So both weapon proficiency and Dex are completely irrelevant if you want to use a bola to perform a ranged trip.
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Yup. I vaguely remember something hinting that you could only use the traits of a weapon that you are proficient with - but I can't find it and I half expect that I am hallucinating.
...
You might be thinking of the Parry trait which specifically requires you to be Trained or better with the weapon.
Parry: This weapon can be used defensively to block attacks. While wielding this weapon, if your proficiency with it is trained or better, you can spend a single action to position your weapon defensively, gaining a +1 circumstance bonus to AC until the start of your next turn.
There is no such language for Disarm, Shove, Trip, Ranged Trip, or Grapple.