Knockdown & Improved Trip

[Philip]

Simple question: do you get an extra attack from Improved Trip after tripping someone with the Knockdown feat in 3.5?

Improved Trip
You do not provoke an attack of opportunity when you attempt to trip an opponent while you are unarmed. You also gain a +4 bonus on your Strength check to trip your opponent.

If you trip an opponent in melee combat, you immediately get a melee attack against that opponent as if you hadn’t used your attack for the trip attempt.

Knockdown
Whenever you deal 10 or more points of damage to your opponent in melee, you make a trip attack as a free action against the same target.

And from the 3.0 Sword and Fist Errata concerning Knockdown:

Use of this feat cannot be combined with Improved Trip to generate an extra attack

 

[shilsen]

IIRC, the Knockdown feat hasn't been updated in any book but has simply been added to the SRD in its original 3.0 form. Hence, I'd say the errata to the feat from 3.0 still applies.

Personally, I wouldn't allow the feat as written in my game even with the errata. 10 pts of damage is far too easy to cause, and it would be a serious pain to have to check whether the enemy is knocked down on every hit.

 

[KarinsDad]

Personally, I wouldn't allow the feat as written in my game even with the errata. 10 pts of damage is far too easy to cause, and it would be a serious pain to have to check whether the enemy is knocked down on every hit.

Agreed.

This was one of the Sword and Fist feats that shouted out that it was broken. In fact, about a third of the Sword and Fist feats were seriously questionable on balance.


Btw, where did you find this in the SRD? I looked in several different 3E and 3.5 SRD links I have and could not find it in any of them?

 

[RigaMortus2]

How was it broken? If anything, it was weaker than Improved Trip. All it was is a different way of tripping. Imp Trip, you make the Trip attempt first then get a free attack. Knockdown you do damage first (which had to be at least 10 points) then get a free trip attack. There is really no difference. It is a matter of, what do you want to do first, damage a person or trip them? The reason I say it is weaker than Improved Trip is because, if you Trip somone first, you are getting a +4 to hit them with your follow up attack due to them being prone.

I had a character who had Knockdown (a Spiked Chain wielder, go figure), but the only reason I got the feat was for flavor. Knockdown suggests that you are so strong, you "trip" or knockdown your opponent from your great strenght. Normal tripping is for the "dextrous" people, it suggest more finesse than knockdown does. All it is is flavor.

I can't see where this is unbalanced, especailly since you have to make both trip attempts no matter which one you go with (knockdown or Imp trip) AND if you fail in either case, you get a chance to get tripped yourself (in 3.0 anyway).

 

[KarinsDad]

How was it broken? If anything, it was weaker than Improved Trip. All it was is a different way of tripping. Imp Trip, you make the Trip attempt first then get a free attack. Knockdown you do damage first (which had to be at least 10 points) then get a free trip attack. There is really no difference. It is a matter of, what do you want to do first, damage a person or trip them? The reason I say it is weaker than Improved Trip is because, if you Trip somone first, you are getting a +4 to hit them with your follow up attack due to them being prone.

I had a character who had Knockdown (a Spiked Chain wielder, go figure), but the only reason I got the feat was for flavor. Knockdown suggests that you are so strong, you "trip" or knockdown your opponent from your great strenght. Normal tripping is for the "dextrous" people, it suggest more finesse than knockdown does. All it is is flavor.

I can't see where this is unbalanced, especailly since you have to make both trip attempts no matter which one you go with (knockdown or Imp trip) AND if you fail in either case, you get a chance to get tripped yourself (in 3.0 anyway).

First off, it's unbalanced because you can do it with any weapon, not just tripping weapons.

That means you can take the mega-Greatsword and do trip attacks with it.

Not only that, but since you need a 15+ Strength to do this, an average hit with a Greatsword does 10 points of damage. At low level, you do this the majority of the time. At high level, you do this virtually every time you hit.

Secondly, it was broken (until errataed) that you could damage/trip/damage all with one attack. The errata took that away, but when first written, it was broken because of this.

Third, with Improved Trip, if you fail the trip, you do not get to damage your opponent. Tripping is HUGE in 3.5 due to the difficulty of getting back up without taking damage from one or more AoOs. If you are fighting with Improved Trip against a high Dex opponent, it is a conscious decision to trip them knowing that you might often fail at it. That effectively wastes attacks. Doing it with Knockdown allows you to damage them and still have a chance of tripping them.

In other words, in situations where your chance to trip is low, Improved Trip is a bad option. Knockdown is never a bad option because you can always choose to not trip. Granted, the feat states that you trip whenever you do that much damage, but I don't know of a DM who would rule that way. You don't have to use a feat, just because you have it.


So, before the errata, it was definitely broken (and a pain for DMs to roll opposed trip rolls nearly every round). After the errata, it was merely questionable with regard to balance.

Any feat that gives you two attacks in place of one is questionable. There should be downsides to them. Improved Trip is a questionable feat. Knockdown is even more questionable with regard to balance.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

The feat in question was left out of new books for a reason.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Btw, where did you find this in the SRD? I looked in several different 3E and 3.5 SRD links I have and could not find it in any of them?

3.5, in the Divine section of the SRD.

Certain of the splatbook feats were made open content when the Deities and Demigods material was added to the SRD, because some of the gods used them, I believe.

-Hyp.

 

[Legildur]

YEs, but the lazy so-an-sos at WotC could have at least included the Sword and Fist errata before including it in the SRD!!

 

[Sejs]

No, you do not.

Works like this:

Use Improved Trip - your primary effort is to trip them. If you are successful, you can smack 'em.

Use Knockdown (or, rather, just make a normal attack) - your primary effort is to smack 'em. If you are successful by a certain margin (deal 10+ points of damage), you can trip them.

What it does not do is let you smack 'em, do enough damage to trip them, then smack 'em again because they were tripped.

Knockdown is nice because it expands your options. For instance, normally to trip things you either need to be using a tripping-capable weapon, or you're using your body. With Knockdown you can use anything, you just need to smack 'em hard enough. But no, it doesn't let you effectivly double-up on attacks. That would be just a wee bit broken.

 

[Legildur]

If you use the Knockdown feat, does your opponent get an opportunity to counter-trip you if you fail the trip check? Can you drop your weapon in order to avoid being counter-tripped? The feat in the SRD lacks some critical explanations (and Errata).