Trip is an Encounter Power now

[AZRogue]

They probably wanted to keep people more mobile and on the ground less. I think that I would prefer Trip as a maneuver, not a Power. I like Disarm as a Power, since I could see that being difficult; same with Sunder. Trip, though, seems pretty basic.

Ah, well. If this is the worst complaint I have.

 

[Stalker0]

I can understand why people are disappointed about trip being a per-encounter power. I mean, theoretically, someone in real life could try a 'trip' whenever they wanted.

But they've already tried the 'theoretical' approach in the 3E rules. What we ended up seeing is fighters that either never tried a trip, which is unrealistic, or fighters that built their skills around tripping and did it nearly every round, which is also unrealistic.

So for 4E, they're trying the more 'practical' approach. Due to a number of overly complex reasons that they don't want to replicate in the rules, in real life you only get trip attempts every few minutes. So they're replicating that by making it a per-encounter power.

Like I said, I think that's a pretty elegant solution to a tricky problem. There's a million reasons why that theoretically shouldn't work like that, but practically, if you're willing to fine even one reason why it does work, I think it'll be a good mechanic. Not perfect, but good enough, and certainly better than what was in 3E.

Completely agree. The reality is it is hard to balance special maneuvers. Make them too hard and no one uses them. Too easy and everyone uses them all the time. So instead you make it useful, but limited in use.

Further, we don't all know what feats do yet, for example you could have this one:

Improved Trip
Prereq: Trip Power
Benefit: You can refresh your trip power whenever you gain combat advantage against an opponent.

Something of this nature maybe be possible in the game.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

It seems kinda odd that you can shove someone back all day, but you can't shove them _on_ their back more than once.

It doesn't take any special training to grab someone or run up and push someone. A leg sweep (or other "tripping" move) would require some training.

Also, GEE I DIDN'T KNOW SOME PEOPLE FOUND IT SO ESSENTIAL THAT YOU BE ABLE TO TRIP REALISTICALLY WHILE PRETENDING TO BE ELVES oooh no he didn't

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

I would also like to point out that real fighting is NOT like Mortal Kombat I where you could win by slide-kicking 753 times in a row.

 

[Khelzor]

The only thing I haven't seen taken into consideration here is game balance issues. It is quite possible that Trip started out at one level and during playtesting it was quickly revealed that it needed to be adjusted to the current power status. There really is no way of knowing until all the rules are released and it gets used in play. Keep in mind that the way other abilities and powers could possibly interact with someone prone has as much affect on balance as things like damage. Perhaps a character constantly tripping an opponent at will giving, I would assume, combat advantage to everyone else was deemed too be to much to be done without limitations.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I hold a 4th degree black belt in an art that ALL ABOUT knocking the other guy on the ground, and I don't see a problem with the trip being a per encounter power. The fight is ALL BUT over when the other guy hits the ground (unless he's a ground grappling expert).

Those stating that "You should be able to attempt a trip at any time" are missing the fact that you can ONLY attempt a trip when your opponent gives you the opportunity, or you risk it all (IE failure is death), so you simply have to wait, or be prepared to abandon an attempt as soon as it is clear that it will fail, which is often well before the attempt is even started.

It's perfectly realistic that the tripper will only be able to find a good opportunity to give it a shot once in an encounter. Heck, I might like it even better as a fighter DAILY power, if only for the "recharge if the attempt fails" mechanic (this would be a case where the fighter reached in to attempt it but abandoned the attempt when it was clear it would fail and before it got him killed.)

Fitz

 

[Surgoshan]

Think of it this way:

Have you ever been to a concert for a really popular band? One where there weren't seats? I'm not talking about an arena for Aerosmith, but an open venue for Flogging Molly.

What you end up with is a dispersed group of people at the back and then a sea of humanity at the front. Everyone who's near the front is pushing hard to get closer to the front. You don't move; the crowd moves. You randomly shifty slowly within the crowd. You have to use all your strength to maintain a little space to breathe. If you fall down, forget it. People are so densely packed that enthusiasts can actually surf over the crowd!

That's a melee.

The analogy between a concert and a pitched battle became clear to me after I went to a Flogging Molly concert and then, shortly afterward, reread the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian.

O'Brian was a genius of an author who managed to recreated some of the grandest naval battles of the early 19th century. As he said, [paraphrase]"As an author I find it difficult not to understate the actions I'm writing about. After all, how can one reasonably expect to recreate Nelson's action as follows 'I boarded the deck of the French 74 and, accepting her surrender, leapt across to the deck of the 54 beside her and, her colours coming down, took her captain's sword which I passed to my lieutenant who put it under his arm with the greatest sang-froid". The action which struck it home was when O'Brian actually described the melee in which British sailors on one hand faced off against Muslim ("musselman") sailors on the other. Both sides were packed as close as could be, swords and pistols in hand, and the line of battle surged backward and forward like the motion of the sea.

Now, a D&D encounter involves just a few PCs against, say, a few dozen NPCs at once. Still, the action for a Defender is always going to be up close and personal, right in your face. This isn't a duel between heavily duck-clothed Olympic fencers where physical contact is a no-no. We're talking the original meaning of corp à corp. Now it's a fencing term where the sword blades are braced against one another, nearly hilt to hilt. The actual meaning of the term means "body to body". People shoving.

Which brings us to the original meaning of the term "melee". "A confused pushing and shoving". Like a concert. Or two Greek phalanges* face to face stabbing each other with spears. Or a few hundred sailors slashing with cutlasses**.

In the end, I can really understand someone shoving someone with a little*** effort. I can also understand how it would be somewhat rarer to hit someone's feet when you're right up in his face and all you can really see is sweat, moustache, shield, and grimace.

* The plural of "phalanx", four or five rows of spearmen with large wooden shields and heavy bronze armor.
** Technically "cutli", oddly enough. Perhaps "cutlery" would be clearer.
*** At earlier levels, a lot of effort. When you get better at shoving, it gets easier.

 

[Demigonis]

Completely agree. The reality is it is hard to balance special maneuvers. Make them too hard and no one uses them. Too easy and everyone uses them all the time. So instead you make it useful, but limited in use.

Agreed completely.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

What annoys me is yet another assumption that the people currently playing 3e are absolute morons. I can't speak for the players at WotC headquarters or their playtesters, but I know I needed to pull out the book exactly once to figure out how the 3.x trip mechanic worked. (For that matter, the basic grapple rules of 3.x are also quite clear, concise, and easy to remember--the big issues come with the monster grappling rules and that's primarily an issue of organization and clarification since there are seemingly contradictary rules scattered through several ability descriptions and a couple glossary entries. As usual, the FAQ also manages to make it worse by removing all modifiers except Prone from grapple (and I'll be generous and assume that the FAQ entries since they started work on 4th edition haven't been deliberately unhelpful in order to create problems and justify a new edition)). "The player who can trip knows exactly how it works and what its limitations are" is a classic example of this. Any player who used the trip rules in 3.x knew how they worked and what their limitations are.

Curiously, it is also a classic statement of the magic wall of inability problem. Apparently in 4e if you don't have a power, you can't trip anyone at all no matter what risks you're willing to take. So, if players who don't have any special tripping ability don't stop the game to look up the rules for a creative "I trip him" idea they had in 4.0, it's only because the DM gets to say "sorry, you don't have that power so you can't even try to trip him. Do your 1dX+ability bonus damage and like it. That's what you're allowed to do"

I suspect I'd be far more open to some of the 4e mechanics if the new editions proponents didn't insist on talking to me like I'm a blithering idiot incapable of grasping or remembering a system that involves two steps or an opposed roll.

There's room for argument about the 3e trip system, but the main complaint should be that it's too effective--not that it's too hard to use or remember.

 

[Li Shenron]

While I can certainly understand people being annoyed by Trip (and, I suspect, Disarm) being moved from basic combat tactics to special per encounter exploits, I am glad they've gone and done it. While tripping and disarming actions are OK once in a while, I find a diet of them annoys me as a DM. It's actually a bit weird, but I find Trip and Disarm focused PCs very irritating. I guess it's because you don't really find those tactics that commonly in fantasy fiction outside of cases where one character completely outclasses the other or at the end of a long conflict. Characters able to Trip, Trip, Trip round after round just set my teeth on edge. It just doesn't simulate the kind of fantasy action I'd like to see at the table.

Very different strokes...

To me the idea that something as natural as trying to trip someone is restricted by the rules, is something I really dislike, and consider it a flaw.

If the trip action is too good tactically, then it should be toned down.

But there's a million way to nerf something, and limiting it to 1/encounter (plus limiting it to only characters that have a special power) is just wrong to my ears. Much like forbidding to jump or grapple, if they were too powerful. I simply don't care if now is more balanced than before...

Tripping is just too mundane to me, to be limited this way.