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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wolfen" data-source="post: 1225584" data-attributes="member: 12717">Painfully obvious.  You can trip despite the presence of anything in your hands.  Hold a can of soup in one and your favorite Elvis album in the other.  It doesn't matter.  Pick up objects at random if you like -- you're not assumed to be using them for the trip.  Therefore their presence is incidental, like the color of your armor or the coat of arms tattooed on your...you get the idea.  You're not assumed to be tripping specifically with any particular limb, you are assumed to be tripping with an UNARMED limb.  The fact that it isn't mentioned in TWF fighting and that it is popular among the Monk literature tends to lean one toward the conclusion that the legs are considered the prime mode of tripping another.  Logical, no?   I've yet to witness a fighting style that features the use of one's hands to trip someone.  And it's not supported by the rules.  Your alternative is to use a weapon which can specifically be used to trip.If you wanna claim you're tripping USING the long sword, well (A) there aren't any rules for that and (B) it simply is not a tripping weapon.  Therefore, the DM would have to make a house rule for using random objects to trip a person -- and I'd rule that a long sword is worthless as a trip weapon.  In this context, the fact that the sword is normally considered a weapon is irrelevant.  Unless it strikes a wounding hit on my legs, I could walk right through a long sword.  The same cannot be said of a flail (my grandfather has both, and that flail is a heavy, nasty weapon.  It wouldn't take much to drop someone on their butt).  A casual circular motion could bring you down even if you were in full armor without so much as breaking the skin.The down side of a flail is that it's easier to lose the weapon, and this is reflected specifically by your option to release it during a trip.  It's like holding on to a bowling ball and deciding at the last moment you don't want to throw it -- either you let go or you're going on your butt.  Despite other shortcomings, the rules handle this weapon/rule combo quite well, I think.wolfen</blockquote>

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