Spiked chain + Imp. Trip + Combat Reflexes + Enlarge Person

[Hypersmurf]

I remember reading something once about someone mistaking '4 armed kobolds' for a '4 armed kobold'...(

Heh.

This reminds me of a story from one of the episodes of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, where Hercules was off in Scandinavia hanging around with the Norse gods.

The stunt coordinator - who had a very mild speech impediment - was explaining to the stunt crew what was going to be happening in a particular scene.

"Okay, so Hercules runs in. After that, we've got four coming down from the tree..."

At this point, the rigger broke in. "Uh, Pete? I was going off the call sheet - I've only got one harness here."

"So?"

"Well, if you want four guys coming down out of the tree...?"

"What? No, For! The God of Funder!"

-Hyp.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

For truly evil villains, have zombies or skeletons move forward to do the grappling. They can't be sneak attacked and ignore the first five points of arrow damage making the risk of hitting them almost irrelevant.

I know that while grappling, you are denied your dex modifier to AC against anyone you aren't grappeling, but ranged attacks also randomize among grappeling combatants to detemine who was attacked after the attack roll is made. As sneak attack is precision based damage, I'd have to say that it wouldnt really work, but that's your GM's call. It wouldnt work in my game, is all.

 

[K-2]

In my case, it was the 30+ Derro that were supposed to be a scripted event for them to watch to gain a useful clue that they couldnt otherwise have gotten, and instead the party charged them, trip-boy in the lead. As the eight 5th lvl characters had been having problems getting ambushed by 3, yes three Derro, I assumed that they would get it. Well, you know what happenes when u ass-u-me things. Only, I didnt make as ass out of myself.

As one of the players in this particular campaign, “trip-boy”, as you call him, WAS NOT the one to lead the charge. While the rest of the party was debating what to do, a new player decided he was tired of waiting and charged. The rest reluctantly followed. That was our mistake, I doubt it will happen again.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

The only character of that kind I had in my campaigns lasted one session.

Well, he wasn't lucky, but the campaign was level 10 or so by that point. A lot of the opponent he was facing weren't very tripable. Oh, he wasn't underpowered, just nothing special. I think the first major encounter involved a huge ghostly dragon and the second a half/dragon-giant of some kind. He certainly managed to use trip a few time in the adventure but nothing out of the ordinary was going on. In the end he drowned in a pool of acid I think.

The point of this rambling is; it's not so bad if this kind of build rule at low level. I don't think it's optimal in the long haul. Or at least, I don't think it's overpowered.