Trip is an Encounter Power now

[Bishmon]

For a given value of wildly-ineffective, yes indeed. Again, I'd like the untrained version to represent that the circumstances in which you want to do it are rare; simply making the opportunities in which you can do it rare strikes me as poor design.

So your hangup is on the idea that there might not be a rarely effective trip option explicitly outlined in the rules for everyone to use any time they want?

Isn't that something you can easily hand-wave, and allow the designers to use the book space for more important things? Are there other rarely effective options you would like to see space in the PHB devoted to?

 

[Remathilis]

There is three major issues all in conflict here:

1.) Tripping is a valid combat tactic anyone should be able to try.
2.) Tripping should be powerful enough to make it a valid combat tactic.
3.) Tripping should be difficult enough to use so that its not prone to abuse.

3e did 1 and 2 well, and failed 3 poorly. Ask anyone who has seen a imp trip/spiked chain/OA trip-monkey about that. If you disagree with this point (trip is easily broken) your out of the discussion, please move on.

Now, what can we do to fix this?

The first option is to limit is ability to be re-used (spammed) over and over in a combat. The Trip/attack/full-attack/attack of opportunities/re-trip method cannot stand. So setting it as a once-per-encounter options (fool me once, shame on you...) would fix the problem of spamming without making it a sub-optimal choice. As KM has pointed out, it breaks some believability to make a trip work once per encounter.

Next, you could try to break the trip-monkey method by nerfing trip. You could remove Improved Trip, you could turn it into a standard action (no OAs, no full-attack). You could do a number things to "fix" it, but then it becomes a sub-optimal choice vs. a full-attack or another maneuver like disarm or sunder.

Fourth Edition has gone with the 2 and 3, but with the side effect of losing 1. For some, its no big deal (no one trips without the Imp Trip feat, and no wizard really tries to trip in combat so its a null-sum loss) but it does create an artificial "wall" on PC actions. That is unacceptable for others.

Is there a way to do all three? I'm not sure. Any repeatable effect would have to be weak enough to be unspammable, making the whole point worthless. Any ability reaching is current potential must be limited to prevent abuse. I'd personally would rather it be limited but potent rather than constantly available but weak compared to just making a standard attack. And I'm sure most characters who use trips (monks, fighters, rogues) will still have the ability, and I need not fear spiked-chain-trip-monkeys.

 

[Imp]

Oh, and the law of diminishing returns doesn't mitigate that, either, because I'm ignoring it. You see, that's not believable, either. It's ridiculous to think that there's one single way to trip someone, so that if you trip someone once, any further attempt is going to be hampered by the fact that the defender can now anticipate your one technique. Like I said, that's ridiculous. Being clinched and brought down by a quick trip isn't going to help defend against a hip toss, nor is it going to help defend against a quick shot and a single- or double-leg takedown.

Eh? The defender still knows what his adversary is trying to do, which aids him a whole lot – sure, there are multiple ways to take somebody down, but that rules out a whole lot more they could be trying to do. It's a complete advantage in a combat situation if one guy has, in general, figured the other guy out.

Though looking at the diminishing returns rule as KM has proposed, I don't think 4e is quite granular enough with its combat moves to support it in all instances. It is believable for trips, disarms, sunder attempts and bull rushes, to use 3e terms, but not, say, Fighter Power Sword or other relatively straight attack moves. I dunno how I'd implement such a thing if I found it necessary.

 

[Bishmon]

Eh? The defender still knows what his adversary is trying to do, which aids him a whole lot – sure, there are multiple ways to take somebody down, but that rules out a whole lot more they could be trying to do. It's a complete advantage in a combat situation if one guy has, in general, figured the other guy out.

I don't get that. An attacker trips a defender once, so now the defender has figured the attacker out? The defender ignores the possibility of other combat maneuvers because he's convinced the attacker is only trying to trip him now since he tripped him once before?

Now we're gonna need a mechanic in the attacker's favor if he does something different. We can call it the Law of Idiotic Defenders. If, for example, the attacker trips a defender once so that defender becomes convinced he's figured the attacker out and is ready to defend against his sole combat technique, a trip, the attacker gets a bonus to his attack roll if he does something other than a trip attempt. After all, while it's an indisputable advantage to defend a trip when you're anticipating a trip, it's an indisputable disadvantage to defend a punch when you're anticipating a trip.

So now we've made the mechanics even more complex, and solved none of the prevalent issues. I don't think we're taking this in the right direction.

 

[Kunimatyu]

Seeing paragraph after paragraph of complicated house rules and ways to avoid tripspamming makes me think the 4e designers got it right.

I also have this feeling that there won't be only one "knock enemy prone" manuever, especially after Martial Power comes out.

 

[Moochava]

The fact that D&D models tripping like this is not exactly unbelievable, but it is lame. Heroic characters should be able to do at least what we in our unheroic capacity can attempt; rules that let them try and fail are much, much better than rules that don't let them try at all.

The thing is, 4E's model might be lame in theory--when we argue about it here on the Internet--but 3E's model is lame in practice--what actually happens at the table when you get a trip-spammer. I don't care how many arguments I can generate on ENWorld or RPGnet or DarpaNet about how dumb it is for a cat to kill a commoner, because in my games a cat has never fought a commoner. It's never happened. I can comfortably say it never will happen. Nor will I ever, ever have a fight against turtle-men that can't get up once they've been knocked down, but since they're mind-controlled you can't just kill them.

These contrived events, these gamer gedankenexperiments, don't happen at the table, and all I care about is what happens at the table. Likewise, I don't care if, here on ENWorld, we can come up with all sorts of "wacky tripping scenarios" for 4E (or "wacky falling then getting poisoned and then healing naturally scenarios" in every edition of the game)--I only care if I can make it sound good at the table. From everything I've gathered, it sounds like I can, so I'm not going to worry about the philosophical purity of the rules.

 

[Moochava]

Seeing paragraph after paragraph of complicated house rules and ways to avoid tripspamming makes me think the 4e designers got it right.

And they probably got it right after generating, not paragraph after paragraph, but VOLUME AFTER VOLUME of variant rules, and then playtesting them. Though I'm not going to put forth the argument that we should blindly trust the WotC guys, they're pros with good track records, and figuring this stuff out is their day job. I'm generally willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, and to ask "How does that make sense?" when I see a weird new rule, rather than declaring "That doesn't make any sense."

 

[Imp]

I don't get that. An attacker trips a defender once, so now the defender has figured the attacker out? The defender ignores the possibility of other combat maneuvers because he's convinced the attacker is only trying to trip him now since he tripped him once before?

Now we're gonna need a mechanic in the attacker's favor if he does something different. We can call it the Law of Idiotic Defenders

Ok fine. Make the penalty kick in after two attempts. Despite your sneering it is logical as a counter-strategy to lull the defender into defending against one set of moves, so yeah, the attacker could rack up some bonuses from doing this, at the cost of time. I don't think that would be very wise in a 4e game since it does not appear to be based on great big hits or trying to hit foes that are very hard to land a sword on.

I said initially that I'm not sure how generally implementable KM's diminishing returns mechanic is, but you're really off-base in the assertion that it's wildly unrealistic.

 

[pemerton]

Come up with an In-character reason to explain the meta-reason. The game doesn't simulate every aspect of combat, perhaps you use your once an encounter trip at that point because, at that moment your opponent was off balance, after stumbling on loose ground. That was the only chance to use it optimally. The stumbling isn't covered by a rules mechanic it doesn't need to be it's still in character and the game effect is you get to use your trip power. Your opponent doesn't stumble again for the rest of the fight so you don't get you use the power.

Thanks for a series of good posts on this issue.

It's really unsatisfying for me to offer an excuse for the rules. The character I play should be determining the rules I use, not the other way around.

I don't understand "excuse for the rules". In Bagpuss's example, the rules tell you that you can't narrate a certain event (eg you can't narrate that your PC tripped the Orc). Narrating an event that explains why your PC can't trip the Orc isn't making excuses for the rules. Its using the rules as a framework to support a narrative about your PC - that is, as a framework for roleplaying (in at least one sense of that word).

I don't understand why I loose the ability to trip after trying to trip someone.

Your PC is not losing the ability to trip. Your PC is losing the possibility of tripping. The in-game explanation for that loss of possibility is something that it is up to the player and GM to collectively narrate. Various examples have been given. Most do not involve your PC losing the ability, but rather the opportunity. Some do appeal to a loss of ability (eg the PC's chi is temporarily expended). From round to round and combat to combat and game to game, pick the explanation that fits with your PC and the campaign as a whole.

This is the sort of roleplaying that 4e encourages - making up stories about the PCs, using the rules as a mechanical framework on which to hang those stories.

It is no longer about the mechanics dictating the story.

"Believability" and "verisimilitude" are to be inputted by the players and GM in the course of their narration; they are not to be read off the rules as if the rules were a model of ingame causal processes.

Whether or not one likes this way of playing an RPG, it is hardly incoherent, absurd or something that's not been successfully tried before by other systems.

 

[Bishmon]

Ok fine. Make the penalty kick in after two attempts. Despite your sneering it is logical as a counter-strategy to lull the defender into defending against one set of moves, so yeah, the attacker could rack up some bonuses from doing this, at the cost of time. I don't think that would be very wise in a 4e game since it does not appear to be based on great big hits or trying to hit foes that are very hard to land a sword on.

I said initially that I'm not sure how generally implementable KM's diminishing returns mechanic is, but you're really off-base in the assertion that it's wildly unrealistic.

I don't really want to continue with a discussion of fighting techniques and strategies, especially because I think you're mistaking some of my points (and my tone), no offense.

All I'll leave it at is that they've already tried a reasonably complex, theoretical approach to trip in 3E. We saw the results. And adding in some of the suggested layers of complexity from this thread have done nothing to make the mechanic more believable, as I've tried to point out.

So they've gone to a more practical, playable approach in 4E. Sure, they're expecting you to provide a sensible narrative, but I think that's better than trying to derive narrative from clunky mechanics that are either ignored or abused, like 3E trip.

If you've got a better mechanic, I'd love to see it. The 4E mechanic isn't my baby, so I'm not opposed to abandoning it for something better. But so far none of the few proposed solutions have really done anything to mitigate the problems of 3E trip in a believable way.