Are the new trip rules broken?

[Gaiden]

If I understand the new rules correctly:

You normally provoke an AoO for standing
You normally provoke an AoO for moving while prone

You take a -4 penalty to attack while prone.
Opponents get a +4 to hit prone targets.

You cannot take a 5' step while prone (or at least you provoke an AoO for doing so).

You can't kneel from prone without provoking an AoO.

If all of this is true, tripping (not to mention improved trip) is the most broken maneuver out there. It certainly resembles real life more, but at the cost of extreme game imbalance.

 

[Pagan priest]

How so? You put yourself at risk to perform the trip. As a DM, if the party is getting out of hand with this maneuver, just start throwing more multi-legged creatures, or no legged creature (kind of hard to trip a snake). When you do hit them with bipeds, make sure that there are more of them than there are party members.

Or worse, make the bad guys all be part of a monestary.

 

[Gaiden]

You put yourself at risk to perform the trip.

What do you mean? You don't provoke an AoO for making a trip...do you - did they change that too?

 

[FrankTrollman]

Improved Trip - especially in the hands of Druids - is completely overpowered now.

They adjusted it too far in 3.5. It used to be that Tripping was a valid tactic for very low level characters and for tripping specialists - who had invested in Improved Trip, the Wolf's Trip ability or even Knockdown. Tripping was an invalid tactic for everyone else.

In 3.5, they made it so that Tripping was a valid tactic for mid-to-high level characters with no feat investment at all. But the changes they made were cumulative with the feats, which you can still take.

So now anyone who performs a trip is in about the same place as people who had improved trip in 3rd edition. People with Improved Trip are obscene. Improved Trip Fighters were not underpowered before - and now they are overpowered.

How "broken" that is will depend entirely upon what sorts of monsters you face. For example: enemy wizards don't care whether they are standing up or lying down, so tripping is a pretty pointless tactic against them; and gargantuan dragons are still pretty much impossible to knock over, regardless of who you are.

-Frank

 

[Storm Raven]

What do you mean? You don't provoke an AoO for making a trip...do you - did they change that too?

If you are not using a "tripping weapon" and don't have the Improved Trip feat then yes, you do.

 

[Thanee]

At least kipup is a fairly powerful (counter-)ability now (assuming it doesn't provoke attacks of opportunity, otherwise it's just nice)!

Bye
Thanee

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Improved Trip - especially in the hands of Druids - is completely overpowered now.

They adjusted it too far in 3.5. It used to be that Tripping was a valid tactic for very low level characters and for tripping specialists - who had invested in Improved Trip, the Wolf's Trip ability or even Knockdown. Tripping was an invalid tactic for everyone else.

Tripping has always been a valid tactic for those with the right reach weapon.

I can't get too excited about this "problem".

The Improved Trip feat has stiff prereqs from the POV of a Druid. If he goes that route either he has paid an appropriate opportunity cost or he is high enough level that this is not abusive in context.

A Druid who picks up a level of Monk could cause comparable havoc with Improved Grapple.

But as you said, how "broken" things are depends a lot on what you face. Trip/Grapple/Stun tactics are pretty efficient against humanoids, but are fairly hopeless against typical monsters. In the campaigns I play in, these tactics are not useful ~60% of the time.

 

[MeepoTheMighty]

There's been some argument back on forth on what the right way to handle tripping is. On the one hand, it seems like you should be able to take your AoO to trip your opponent again when he tries to rise from prone. This makes trip pretty powerful, since you can essentially keep him on the ground.

On the other hand, the case can be made that at the point where the AoO is provoked, the defender is *still prone.* Since AoOs interrupt the normal flow of events and are resolved just before the action that provokes them, the defender would take an AoO, and then complete his standing up action. This makes the tripping tactic a little less overpowered.

The arguments on both sides are pretty valid, and I'm not sure which one is technically correct.

 

[Gaiden]

If you are not using a "tripping weapon" and don't have the Improved Trip feat then yes, you do.

Is this true? I do not recall this being true in 3.0. Rather, the only downside to not using a trip weapon was that if you failed they could attempt to trip you back (because you could not drop your weapon).

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

It was true in 3.0; it was just poorly defined then.

They clarified it for 3.5 -- a trip attack without a tripping weapon (or Improved Trip) is an unarmed attack, and hence draws an AoO.