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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tomBitonti" data-source="post: 5639009" data-attributes="member: 13107">Sorry to put out an undefined term.Here is an example:In 3E, an actor may have a state, either of "erect" or "prone".  While a coarse model (can one take a singe knee, or crouch?), the two terms do actually model a state of real people and creatures.Then "trip" is used as a special attack which changes the targets state from "erect" to "prone".There have been various discussions about what does it mean to trip a, say, a flying creature, or a snake.My understanding is that trip when used against a flying creature, puts them into a stall, and I have heard either that some creatures should be considered untrippable, or (I think more officially) that even a snake can be tripped, and it just means something different (I'm not sure what) for a snake.For some creatures, say, a gelatenous cube, being tripped doesn't make sense to me, and I would rule that a gelatenous cube just cannot be tripped.  The same for various oozes.  If you animated a bean-bag chair, that would seem to be untrippable.The actual mechanics of the trip are largely unstated: Did you hook their legs?  Push them over a small obstruction?Trip is made as an unarmed attack, or with special weapons (flail, guisarme, gnome hooked hammer, kama, sickle, whip).  That certain weapons are usable for tripping (generally, they can be used to "hook" or, in the case of the whip, "grab and pull"), that provides a space to have a creature natural attack be used for trips, if the natural attack has these properties.The effectiveness of trip is varied in several ways: It's harder to trip someone larger than you, or stronger than you, or that is more stable, say, because of an innate property (Dwarf) or because of having more legs.Trip is also more effect for someone who has put in an extra effort to train and practice.All of these details provide a process by which a player and GM can understand a trip attack.  That process includes a step where the trip attack is mapped to an imagined action, and the result is viewed as a mapping back of the imagined result to game terms.That is to say, the mapping to an imagined action and the mapping back to the result are a part of the resolution process.For many cases, the actual mapping is not done: The rules provide a guarantee to the player of a result for normal cases.  However, the mapping is still there for unusual cases.I could say, for example, that turtles should have dwarven stability, and the rules provide some justification for this ruling.The point here is that the player and GM have a presence in the space where the stated action is envisioned, and that this presence may be used to adjust the result of unusual cases relative to the usual result.TomBitonti</blockquote>

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