Elder-Basilisk
First Post
There've been a lot of good suggestions in this thread so far, so I'll start out by looking at it from a different perspective: that of the players.
1. Tripping has opportunity costs. In a campaign I'm playing in, I had the opportunity to get hideously high stats, so I'm playing a paladin with Improved Trip. It works well... against some BBEGs. Against the minions, I really miss not having Weapon Focus, Cleave, and/or great cleave. Sure, I can trip the skeleton, but it's not that impressive when I can kill the thing in one hit anyway. My DM has noticed that I use trip on his BBEGs too, but I generally don't use it on other things.
2. Tripping only works on a select group of opponents. In Living Greyhawk, I play a fighter/wizard with Improved Trip and the tripping stuff. It's great if we've a chance to prep and I enlarge myself, polymorph into a green hag, hit the bad guy with an enervation and a quickened ray of enfeeblement and then trip him. It works well if I just hit a human fighter with a quickened ray of enfeeblement and then trip him. However, it's a waste of time if we're fighting advanced mountain trolls with a 38 strength, large size, and stability. Similarly, it doesn't do much good against an advanced anarchic T-rex or a half-white dragon ettins, or bloodthorn vines, or Air-spirit barbarians. All told, I probably use it an average of once every three battles. Compared to Power Attack (pretty much every round), Arcane Strike (every other round on average), Quicken Spell (every other round on average), it doesn't get a lot of use. So it needs to be good when it actually works. (For my paladin, Extra Smiting, Divine Might, and Power Attack get used a lot; Combat Expertise and Improved Trip rarely get used and about half the time they're counterproductive).
3. In this case, the tactic requires the cooperation of several other players in order to work. He doesn't cast his own Enlarge, etc. If the players are working together to do something, it'd better be good. Otherwise, it's not as good an idea as each character doing their own thing.
So, with that in mind, I would have a few ideas handy.
1. Enlarge Person is a first level spell--and the PCs aren't the only people in the world with it. The BBEG can drink a potion of Enlarge (and if he's not a person, you could provide a 2nd or 3rd level version that works on other creature types) or cast it on himself. This is good for gaining reach (AoOs with a good dex and Combat Reflexes), Tripping (as your players demonstrated), and grappling (another suggested tactic--and one that really has very little downside for low-dex undead facing a party with an archer (note that vampires are high dex undead and that it doesn't help against archers with Improved Precise Shot)).
2. Enlarge Person isn't infallible. Dispelling it has been suggested and is a good idea--(really, bad guys SHOULD be tossing dispels from level 8 on). However, there are other ways to deal with it. Reduce Person automatically negates it. So, a quickened Reduce Person would eliminate the character's size--perhaps even at a time when the party was counting on the PC's size and reach blocking charge lines to the mage, etc. Similarly, a mass reduce person could nerf a whole party of melee types (and make them more vulnerable to trips and grapples) while removing his advantage. Sure, a lot of the PCs will make their saves, but someone is bound to fail.
3. Enlarge Person isn't the only first level spell that can have a big impact on combats. People have mentioned Ray of Enfeeblement before, but I'll mention it again. It's a very good 5th level quickened spell and a very good 3rd level empowered spell. Either way, it's going to dramatically reduce the character's trip success rate, his attak bonus, and his damage and it may even drop his strength to where he doesn't qualify for power attack.
4. Enervation and prayer also affect ability checks--like the trip roll.
5. Flying (without wings) also makes characters invulnerable to tripping. If the bad guy has winged boots or drinks a potion of fly, the party will need to do some adjusting of their tactics.
6. Miss chances (like from displacement and blink) make tripping a much worse deal. A 50% miss chance normally means an average of 50% less damage as half of the attacks that would hit will miss. For a character using Improved Trip, it actually means more like 75% less damage since half of the touch attacks miss and then half of the follow-up attacks miss. At that point, a tripper starts saying (believe me, I've been in the situation) "great, I tripped him--too bad I didn't manage to do anything useful--like damage."
1. Tripping has opportunity costs. In a campaign I'm playing in, I had the opportunity to get hideously high stats, so I'm playing a paladin with Improved Trip. It works well... against some BBEGs. Against the minions, I really miss not having Weapon Focus, Cleave, and/or great cleave. Sure, I can trip the skeleton, but it's not that impressive when I can kill the thing in one hit anyway. My DM has noticed that I use trip on his BBEGs too, but I generally don't use it on other things.
2. Tripping only works on a select group of opponents. In Living Greyhawk, I play a fighter/wizard with Improved Trip and the tripping stuff. It's great if we've a chance to prep and I enlarge myself, polymorph into a green hag, hit the bad guy with an enervation and a quickened ray of enfeeblement and then trip him. It works well if I just hit a human fighter with a quickened ray of enfeeblement and then trip him. However, it's a waste of time if we're fighting advanced mountain trolls with a 38 strength, large size, and stability. Similarly, it doesn't do much good against an advanced anarchic T-rex or a half-white dragon ettins, or bloodthorn vines, or Air-spirit barbarians. All told, I probably use it an average of once every three battles. Compared to Power Attack (pretty much every round), Arcane Strike (every other round on average), Quicken Spell (every other round on average), it doesn't get a lot of use. So it needs to be good when it actually works. (For my paladin, Extra Smiting, Divine Might, and Power Attack get used a lot; Combat Expertise and Improved Trip rarely get used and about half the time they're counterproductive).
3. In this case, the tactic requires the cooperation of several other players in order to work. He doesn't cast his own Enlarge, etc. If the players are working together to do something, it'd better be good. Otherwise, it's not as good an idea as each character doing their own thing.
So, with that in mind, I would have a few ideas handy.
1. Enlarge Person is a first level spell--and the PCs aren't the only people in the world with it. The BBEG can drink a potion of Enlarge (and if he's not a person, you could provide a 2nd or 3rd level version that works on other creature types) or cast it on himself. This is good for gaining reach (AoOs with a good dex and Combat Reflexes), Tripping (as your players demonstrated), and grappling (another suggested tactic--and one that really has very little downside for low-dex undead facing a party with an archer (note that vampires are high dex undead and that it doesn't help against archers with Improved Precise Shot)).
2. Enlarge Person isn't infallible. Dispelling it has been suggested and is a good idea--(really, bad guys SHOULD be tossing dispels from level 8 on). However, there are other ways to deal with it. Reduce Person automatically negates it. So, a quickened Reduce Person would eliminate the character's size--perhaps even at a time when the party was counting on the PC's size and reach blocking charge lines to the mage, etc. Similarly, a mass reduce person could nerf a whole party of melee types (and make them more vulnerable to trips and grapples) while removing his advantage. Sure, a lot of the PCs will make their saves, but someone is bound to fail.
3. Enlarge Person isn't the only first level spell that can have a big impact on combats. People have mentioned Ray of Enfeeblement before, but I'll mention it again. It's a very good 5th level quickened spell and a very good 3rd level empowered spell. Either way, it's going to dramatically reduce the character's trip success rate, his attak bonus, and his damage and it may even drop his strength to where he doesn't qualify for power attack.
4. Enervation and prayer also affect ability checks--like the trip roll.
5. Flying (without wings) also makes characters invulnerable to tripping. If the bad guy has winged boots or drinks a potion of fly, the party will need to do some adjusting of their tactics.
6. Miss chances (like from displacement and blink) make tripping a much worse deal. A 50% miss chance normally means an average of 50% less damage as half of the attacks that would hit will miss. For a character using Improved Trip, it actually means more like 75% less damage since half of the touch attacks miss and then half of the follow-up attacks miss. At that point, a tripper starts saying (believe me, I've been in the situation) "great, I tripped him--too bad I didn't manage to do anything useful--like damage."
