How often does the trip mechanic come up in your game?

[Shallown]

We actually use it a lot without anyone being specialized in it. The front line fighters tend to use it during AofO when someone is trying to penetrate to the wizard or archer. They only hope their decently high Ac allows them to get away with it.

My back up character is a spiked chain trip monkey so if my wizard dies then It will be used every combat.

later

 

[JoeGKushner]

Shackled City has goblins riding worgs.

Also has a vampie who can summon wolves.

Trip attack is good!

 

[devilbat]

It rarely comes up in our games. The players never use it, so it's relegated to use by creatures and such.

 

[Eye Tyrant]

I voted ocassionally, but that is not nearly as much as it should be, considering I have a player running a Druid with a wolf animal companion. Not only that, she is *constantly* summoning wolves to combat badguys. The player almost never utilizes the Trip ability of the wolves, even when I have suggested it. Hopefully (for the party) that changes tonight, they are infiltrating a citadel *full* of Orcs and will be seriously outnumbered (see Sons of Gruumsh).

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

In my Modern campaign, I have a martial artist who uses Improved Trip. In Modern, the feat doesn't give you the +4 bonus to the ability check, but there's a feat called Combat Throw that gives a +2 bonus to this check, and he has that feat, too. Finally, he has a feat called Improved Combat Throw that lets you trip an opponent who just missed you in melee combat - a feat that is balanced in Modern but would be horribly broken in DnD. You get lots of feats in Modern.

It's a very powerful technique. For starters, it's a non-FX campaign, so no monsters (virtually nothing Large with high Strength). The opponents are usually humans, occasionally animals, or maybe remote-controlled robots - no Terminators. It's rare to run into an opponent with a +5 stat modifier to Strength or Dex (the PC has a +5 bonus on his Strength check when tripping) or an opponent specifically designed to resist being tripped.

But the real problem was the "trip loop". You trip an opponent, you get an AoO on them when they try to get up, then trip them again. Sometimes opponents would just give up and fight from prone - this happened to a SWAT team at one point. (The SWAT won, however.)

At one point I house-ruled that getting up from prone doesn't draw AoOs, and the PC stopped tripping, basically wasting two feats. Now I changed the house rule so getting up draws an AoO, but you can't use this AoO to trip the opponent. I've only had one combat since implementing the house rule, but for some reason the martial artist player avoided close combat that encounter (which he has never done before), using grenades and even a whip. He only tripped one character, but got a crit on him when hurling him to the ground which killed him, so he never actually reached the point when the house rule would have come into effect.

They don't have the various Improved feats and they're still willing to suck up the AoOs.

The only such trick I've seen PCs try to pull without the appropriate Improved feat is bull rushing. When your opponent is at the edge of a 5th-story building, the temptation can be irresistable.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Now I changed the house rule so getting up draws an AoO, but you can't use this AoO to trip the opponent.

That's not actually a house rule, BTW. AoOs are resolved before the action that provokes them, so your target is still considered prone when you take your AoO. You can't trip something that's already prone, so you just get the bonus on your attack roll.

What this tactic *does* however, is do a good job of preventing full attacks.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

The only time I've seen it, is from a wolf or other critter with the feat. Never from a pc.

 

[KB9JMQ]

It has never come up but I may introduce it myself to see how my players react.

 

[Thia Halmades]

My Paladin is evidently tasty for Worgs. When the Worgs show up, they tend to make use of every tool at their disposal. TRIP.

 

[maggot]

In two groups: one has a dire wolf, one has a fighter with Improved Trip. Both trip every combat.