I had this pretty typical situation in my game yesterday: the PCs open a door and find two large, burly monsters with animal-level intelligence.
After trying to scare the party away for a moment, the monsters attack. They win initiative, and having no ranged option, they engage the two PCs standing directly behind the door (which is two squares wide, like the corridor behind it). So far, everything is working fine.
One round later, one character is standing one square back from the door, with a Protector Tree behind him; another is beside the tree; and the third PC is further back. The two monsters get in each other's way, and end up with one moving a little back and the other advancing into the doorway to keep attacking. I find it fitting for the situation, and it also works giving the group a moment of relative respite after a really unlucky first round (basically, four crits received).
But another round later, with everyone still standing in the same spots, I don't want to still keep one of the monsters idle. What are my options, though? The only thing the one still inside the room could do is trying to Tumble Through two PC (and a tree), which isn't even exactly RAW. Even assuming better pack tactics and having the one in the front wanting to make space for its companion, how could it do it? Again, there's Tumble Through. Or Shove, I guess, but the only PC it can reach can't be pushed back because other things stand in the way. Reposition doesn't work, it should allow for a 15ft movement to let the monster move the PC on the other side of itself. Retreating inside the room means that the PCs can pelt them at range with impunity.
A monster with high Athletics and low Acrobatics shouldn't simply be out of luck. It's big, it's strong, it should be able to pass by pushing the enemies aside. I know Trample exists as a monster ability, but it's a different thing: I want it to move through the enemies, not stomp them. PF1 had Overrun, but it doesn't exist here.
Would you allow for such a monster to attempt something with a similar effect to Tumble Through, but using Athletics? Would you allow it to "squeeze" (not the activity, but the rule meant for large PCs who treat one-square spaces as difficult terrain), reaching into the square beside the first PC so it can try to Shove the second, and then continue to "squeeze" ahead?
The tree doesn't impede movement through its square, but you still can't stop there, as far as I know. Which means that anything short of a critical success with Shove won't do a thing. And even then, you still have the corridor blocked, just a little further.
Jumping is a good idea I had not thought about. The fun part is that the two characters who recalled knowledge rolled quite bad, and I told them both that the monsters could fly (one was a mixed correct/erroneous answer due to Dubious Knowledge). Jumping would have been a great fit for the situation. Even though the distance was quite long: 20ft to clear, 30 total to move. 25% chance of actually doing it, but I wish I would have tried even if just for show.
Attacking and retreating feels a little too... refined for some brutes.
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The tree doesn't impede movement through its square, but you still can't stop there, as far as I know. Which means that anything short of a critical success with Shove won't do a thing. And even then, you still have the corridor blocked, just a little further.
Jumping is a good idea I had not thought about. The fun part is that the two characters who recalled knowledge rolled quite bad, and I told them both that the monsters could fly (one was a mixed correct/erroneous answer due to Dubious Knowledge). Jumping would have been a great fit for the situation. Even though the distance was quite long: 20ft to clear, 30 total to move. 25% chance of actually doing it, but I wish I would have tried even if just for show.
Attacking and retreating feels a little too... refined for some brutes.
I have never seen the tree as actually occupying its space but I get what you mean.
For the last part, the monster in the back is waiting for an opening, maybe even growling at its mate to leave it some space so that it can join the fray. And the one at the front might just withdraw when it has taken damage or been alarmed by spellcasting or similar, even if it attacked first as its first instinct. And when this happens, the one in the back takes advantage of the opening to take its place and attack the PCs.
Agreed, the rules for Tumble Through and Shove are susceptible to chokepoint tactics from experienced players who know that they should set up situations like this.
What I would do is relax the rules for these abilities - for both sides (the party can do this too if they end up fighting their way through multiple enemies in a narrow corridor). The basic idea being that if during one of these actions you run into another enemy, you can use the same action on that enemy too.
So for Tumble Through, if you tumble through one enemy and would end up in the square of another enemy, you can use Tumble Through against that enemy too. If you succeed at the second Tumble Through, you move through that creature's space too. If not, you fall prone in the space where the first enemy was. (Attempting the Tumble Through implies that you are willing to share the space with the first enemy if you fall prone.)
Same with Shove. If you Shove one enemy and it would move that enemy into the space of another creature, you can make a Shove attempt against that second enemy(?) too. If you succeed at shoving the second enemy, it gets moved back 5 feet, making room for the first enemy to be moved to that space. If you fail at the second check, the second enemy doesn't move, and so the first enemy can't move to that space. Which is a bit harsh and I would probably put in some effect against that first enemy, such as having them fall prone (I actually thought that was the normal rules for shove when the check succeeds, but the enemy can't actually be moved - they end up falling prone in their space. Maybe that was a 1e thing.)
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Smart players will try to do clever things with chokepoints, and that's cool - players engaging with the specific battlefield makes the game interesting. But that doesn't mean that everything they try should always work smoothly. It's more interesting if there's some wrinkles here and there.
A while back my players were investigating an abandoned building, opened a door, and found an emperor cobra. They fired a shot at it and closed the door again. Next round, opened the door again, fired another shot, closed the door again.
Then I had the cobra Force Open the door and attack them. They hadn't seen that coming, and it made for a cool "here's Johnny" moment.
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In this situation, it could also be interesting to use Reposition to actually drag one of the melee PCs into the monster room, and then shut the door on the rest of the party. Not sure if the monsters would be clever enough for it of course. But it's definitely something that should startle the players, in a fun way.
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I do agree that some sort of push-through move here is appropriate, even when the rules don't normally model that really well. The rules after all are only a MODEL of the game world, and sometimes just don't work well. As a GM you can say "this is exceptional, this calls for a different approach".
Two groups of creatures trying to push each other back is certainly something that could happen in the world, but the rules don't have an answer on how to handle it.
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Dragging it back with a reverse Shove could work too, given that I allowed one player to do pretty much the same. Not with Reposition, because being large, the monster would have to move the PC 15ft to get it to the other side of itself, which is more than the action allows.
I do think that such actions in general should increase their effective distances as their results get higher in numbers (it's silly that the Tarrasque with +50 Athletics can only push you back 10ft tops), but that's a different matter.