Trip is an Encounter Power now

[Tuft]

I'm looking at one of the earlier playtest reports:


http://www.aintitcool.com/node/35799

During our first game, my intrepid game designer buddy decided to throw a monkey wrench into the works by having his character dive under a table and kick it out from under two guys fighting on top of it. He smiled devilishly, looked at me and asked “How are you gonna rule that…DM?” I glanced at the book for a moment and realized “Strength check against their reflexes.” Huh. He shook his head. Made sense. He made the attack, hit the numbers and all of a sudden he had two opponents prone on the floor. The rules are so straight forward now, on the fly decisions are total cake.

Isn't what is described above really a trip in disguise, so that the table-kicking character would have needed to purchase the Trip power before he did that particular stunt?

 

[Li Shenron]

Except, as several people in this thread have pointed out (including some with martial-arts experience), making it a per encounter power is much more like what happens in real life than tripping someone every round (or never). Does real life give you SoD problems?


glass.

The martial art expert explained very well why trying to trip someone is WORTH once per encounter. But he did not prove that it CAN ONLY be done once per encounter, because that simply isn't the truth.

As a matter of fact, I did some martial arts to at a very low level. Being physically weak (anyone can easily grapple or hurt me), I usually tried to trip my opponent prone. The black belt poster eventually knows that it's a bad tactic, but certainly that doesn't mean you cannot physically do it.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

The problem is that for magic-type characters this is very easy to design. But the game also has characters whose concept is non-magical (at least at the start of their career and for a while). Fighters, rogues, barbarians are characters who do "normal" things, but much better than the average person. Spellcasters do "abnormal" things.

And that's EXACTLY the problem. As a 20th level Fighter in 3e, my options are pretty much: Attack, Walk on the ground. I could trip if I took the feat, I could disarm if I took the feat, I could sunder if I took the feat...but without them my option was to basic attack. I could also do some basic human things like jump, run, climb, talk, etc.

As a 20th level Wizard I can attack and walk as well as all the basic human things as well. I might not be as good at jumping and climbing...but oh well. In exchange I get the ability to level entire towns, stop and reverse time, imprison enemies with no way to resist it, teleport anywhere on the planet, fly, turn invisible, make myself resistant(or immune) to the enemies attacks, make anyone do whatever I want them to, and so on.

And the reason given why the wizard gets to completely outclass the fighter is simple: Wizards have Magic which can do anything, Fighters don't. So, unless you add restrictions to what magic does or give Fighters magic, nothing will change.

While there is no problem in making spells simply unavailable to everybody else (and limited daily, for arcane reasons), doing so for fighting or roguish skills is a big blow to suspension of disbelief. Some people can easily play with SoD in every case, but other people like me cannot go too far.

I can't argue SoD, since it's different for each person. Some people have a strange need to make everything make sense in terms of real life.

To me the idea that there is a world where fighting techniques that are above average need to be "prepared" in the same way that spells are and are used up after you use them the same way spells are is completely plausible in the same way that a world where spells that work that way is. My answer to both is extremely simple: In this world it works that way.

Sure, I actually PREFER to visualize the restriction as simply not existing for martial types. As people have pointed out in other threads, it is easy to envision a world where the fighter tries a trip, followed by a shield slam, followed by a solid blow to the head that knocks the enemy out. It is difficult to envision a world where the fighter attempts a trip and then winds up to try the trip again and finds himself unable to aim at people's legs anymore.

The second example is what happens when you concentrate on the game rules as the physics of the world. In 4th, they are explicitly NOT the physics of the world. Instead, powers are a bit of narrativistic control given to the players. They are the player saying "I've been looking for a chance to trip him all combat, but he's been blocking his legs pretty well. Right about now, he makes a mistake and gives me an opening. I will use it to try and trip him."

3ed had a brilliantly simple way to address special fighting manoeuvres. Everything you could possibly think about, you could do, but it was by default unconvenient unless you had special training. The -4 penalty to tripping, disarming, sundering is effective to make the manouevre not-worth. The specific feats which remove the penalty change it to worth it.

Why is this brilliant? We've now wasted large amounts of pages of a book with information useless to almost everyone without a feat. Meanwhile, we've opened up a bunch of options to every monster in the game who may not need a feat for the option to be worthwhile for them. This means that when a DM is deciding what a monster does every round he has to consider Bull Rush, Trip, Disarm, Sunder, Grapple, Basic Attack...all in addition to the options actually listed in the monster's stat block.

At the same time we've managed to lure new players or players who just aren't that good tactically into trying to disarm a monster instead of attacking it. Essentially making their action completely useless in any round they attempt it.

Meanwhile it ALSO causes the one person in the party who DID specialize in tripping to do nothing but that option every single round since they spent so many of their character options choosing to be good at it.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Isn't what is described above really a trip in disguise, so that the table-kicking character would have needed to purchase the Trip power before he did that particular stunt?

Yeah, it basically is. I probably wouldn't have a problem with people tripping in 4e. It's a decidedly BAD option mechanically.

 

[Li Shenron]

The idea is that if you want someone to do something every round no matter what class they are, you make it a basic combat action.

...

If you think it is the sort of thing that only one class should do, you give it to that class as a power.

...

If you envision it as something that, say a fighter type would use every once in a while, you make it a per encounter power.

All these are questions you think about when designing any game.

The difference is what prompts your answer. Eventually the 3e designers answered about trip that it should be available to everyone every round, and even more per round. The 4e designers answered once per combat and fighters only (but multiclassing allows everyone).

How is one of the designer right and the other wrong? Neither is wrong in fact!

The difference comes from more basic design guidelines and general targets: maybe the 3e designer wanted a higher threshold of believability at the expense of other things, and the 4e designers decided to work with a lower threshold to get benefits somewhere else.

Once you've set you basic design guidelines, then both of them are still working to "get the results they want", only within different boundaries. I don't see anything fundamentally better in one way or the other, but can I at least say which one I personally prefer in my games?

The idea is the design the ruleset so that you get the results you want.

 

[frankthedm]

And that's EXACTLY the problem. As a 20th level Fighter in 3e, my options are pretty much: Attack, Walk on the ground. I could trip if I took the feat, I could disarm if I took the feat, I could sunder if I took the feat...but without them my option was to basic attack.

That is untrue. You could attempt to trip a foe, it just gave your foe one free attack. Same with sunder, same with bull rush. Disarming and grapple could also be attempted in the same manner, but were more chancy since being hit on the AoO did ruin the attempt. For all these maneuvers, the feat just prevented the AoO and added 4 points to an opposed roll that would fluctuate wildly.

 

[Li Shenron]

And that's EXACTLY the problem. As a 20th level Fighter in 3e, my options are pretty much: Attack, Walk on the ground. I could trip if I took the feat, I could disarm if I took the feat, I could sunder if I took the feat...but without them my option was to basic attack. I could also do some basic human things like jump, run, climb, talk, etc.

As a 20th level Wizard I can attack and walk as well as all the basic human things as well. I might not be as good at jumping and climbing...but oh well. In exchange I get the ability to level entire towns, stop and reverse time, imprison enemies with no way to resist it, teleport anywhere on the planet, fly, turn invisible, make myself resistant(or immune) to the enemies attacks, make anyone do whatever I want them to, and so on.

And the reason given why the wizard gets to completely outclass the fighter is simple: Wizards have Magic which can do anything, Fighters don't. So, unless you add restrictions to what magic does or give Fighters magic, nothing will change.

...eh, but it looks to me like instead of creating special things for the fighter-types, they are solving this problem by making normal things exclusive.

It just doesn't satify me, to be honest... and I'm even one of the extremely few people who prefer certain skills in 3e to be class-exclusive

Why is this brilliant? We've now wasted large amounts of pages of a book with information useless to almost everyone without a feat. Meanwhile, we've opened up a bunch of options to every monster in the game who may not need a feat for the option to be worthwhile for them. This means that when a DM is deciding what a monster does every round he has to consider Bull Rush, Trip, Disarm, Sunder, Grapple, Basic Attack...all in addition to the options actually listed in the monster's stat block.

At the same time we've managed to lure new players or players who just aren't that good tactically into trying to disarm a monster instead of attacking it. Essentially making their action completely useless in any round they attempt it.

Meanwhile it ALSO causes the one person in the party who DID specialize in tripping to do nothing but that option every single round since they spent so many of their character options choosing to be good at it.

To me it's brilliant the fact that the -4 rule is so simple you can never forget it. You only need to write/read it once, and apply to a lot of things.

I don't get the point about wasted pages... the info about Trip is as "wasted" in 3e as it is in 4e, because in both cases only someone with that specific feat (3e) or power (4e) will use it.

The problem of DM/player wasting time with too many options is a problem that the DM/player creates by himself. You don't have to use them. When I play a Fighter, I spend my thoughts thinking about the various manoeuvres I can do, and how to use them better. When I play a Wizard I ignore them and spend the same time thinking about my spells. When I run a monster, I only think about its available abilities: if it has Improved Trip (or something similar) I will think about using it, otherwise I won't. I guess 4e is quite the same actually... it's not a problem unless the player chooses to make it a problem.

Maybe you have a point when you say that if a 3e PC is too much specialized in one thing that isn't limited, he'll be doing that all the time. Apart the fact that 4e prevents this for encounter abilities, but not for at-will abilities, so I doubt that 4e will get us rid of "powerplayers"... But yes, limiting per encounter does reduce the problem. It's not something that concerns myself particularly, because I've been playing 3ed with just a small bunch of books with players' stuff (hence fewer chances of breaking it), and I intend to stick to that habit in every future edition.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Once you've set you basic design guidelines, then both of them are still working to "get the results they want", only within different boundaries. I don't see anything fundamentally better in one way or the other, but can I at least say which one I personally prefer in my games?

This is where I disagree. I do not believe the 3rd Edition designers were TRYING to get the results they did.

They approached game design from a very simulationist point of view. The idea before was "create rules that simulate real life and then end up with results that look like real life".

So when you approach rules design from that point of view you end up with a line of thinking that goes like this:

"Anyone can attempt a trip in real life, they just might not be good at it. So, we give them all the ability to do it but we make it hard unless they are specifically trained at it. In real life, even people who are specifically trained at tripping don't do it every attack during a combat, so that's likely what will happen with these rules."

However, the results were that people with improved trip who made their character to do it tried it almost every attack. So, it was a different result than they expected.

Now, there are two ways of solving this if you want to model what happens in real life:
1. Adjust the numbers so that Trip is not longer an attractive option every round.
2. Adjust the rules so you aren't allowed to Trip every round.

The first option is EXTREMELY hard to get right as shown in 3e. Even when you think you have the numbers just right people surprise you by stacking bonuses or feats or tactics together in a way that makes the option more attractive than you expected and they do it every round again.

 

[vagabundo]

So a skilled, high-level fighter or martial artist finds it a simple matter to trip an untrained mook, but no matter how easy he finds it and no matter how numerous and inept his enemies might be, he can still only trip one per encounter. Bruce Lee is surrounded by 3054 blindfolded 1-legged drunks with middle-ear problems, and he can only trip one of them.

That's my main concern about 4e combat. Arbitrary limitations on the martial classes' actions because of the at-will/encounter/daily paradigm, with no in-character justification. Really eats at the suspension of disbelief for me. I suppose there may be a way of getting extra uses of a limited-use power through action points or similar, but it's still pretty suboptimal in my book. Here's hoping there's some way of converting daily powers to encounter powers or encounter powers to at-wills, as the PC levels up. That'd make a bit more sense as far as I'm concerned.

Bruce has has 10th levels in Jeet-Kung-Do, he gets trips as an at will power and is highly proficient in Nun-Chaku...

Your bog standard fighter can only do it once or at most a hand full of time per fight (unsure if there is a special rider on that Trip encounter power)...

And the trip power is not simply pushing someone over your leg so they fall down, it will be a power with special conditions. So a DM would probably allow anybody to push over the one legged monks but they would not get the benefits of the trip power.

 

[FourthBear]

To me the idea that something as natural as trying to trip someone is restricted by the rules, is something I really dislike, and consider it a flaw.

Oh, I'd consider the lack of basic trip rules a flaw as well. I think that it's a flaw that currently I am willing to accept as a trade off for rules that promote a table game that I want to see.

As others have said, there are several ways I can see to resolve this:

1) Add Trip back to the basic rules as a powerful, useful option in combat, similar to 3e. Problem: Trip, Trip, Tripping characters that can bypass hit points to shut down opponents.

2) Add Trip back to the basic rules, but greatly limit its power and usefulness in combat. Problem: why bother leaving it in the rules if you weaken it to the point no one uses it?

3) Add Trip back to the basic rules very weakened, but allow characters to focus their characters on Tripping to make it an option. Problem: You can be guaranteed that the Trip optimized character will be Trip, Trip, Tripping round after round after round.

4) Work out a new Trip system that works out opportunity and opponent skill in some unknown way that keep Trip a viable combat option, but prevents it from becoming a combat tactic with greater frequency than would be seen in real world combat or fantasy fiction. Problem: all systems I've thought of would significantly complicate the game or be tedious to keep track of. If someone has a good idea, I'm all for it, though.