Trip is an Encounter Power now

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

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.

We like to call this power "auto-trip", first coined with Wolf Animal Companions. "I make an attack - haha, hit. 23 points of damage. And I get a free trip attempt" - "Success - Auto Trip - the enemy died from your attack anyway..."

It won't anyone that dislikes too many abstraction in combat, but here's my take:
Tripping without the use of encounter powers is flavour text of a regular attack. The enemy is unbalanced, drops down, but is up quick enough that nobody has a direct chance to "abuse" his tripped state. Any combat disadvantage he had is represented by the hit point damage.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

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.

Yeah...in other words it wasn't worth attempting. Trip was generally a straight roll that was often equal on both sides. You were trying to use your 20 strength against their 20 stength or 20 dex and it was completely random if it succeeded. If it did, it didn't have much effect on the combat(a large potion of the time). In exchange, you got a free attack against you.

Most of the time you have a greater than 50% chance to hit the enemies and doing damage was almost always a better option due to the Damage is King rule in 3e. Plus you didn't get hit.

It was basically a non-option that LOOKED like a good choice sometimes. Which did lure some players who didn't know what they were doing into using it, I'll admit.

 

[FourthBear]

Trip and disarm as combat options really can be punishing to the players since there are many more foes to go around in 4E. Maneuvers were one of the few things big groups of weak foes could do in 3E to bone PCs. If a 4e minion can trip a PC, players might as well kiss their move actions goodbye.

Good point, but I should note that I dislike it very much from the other side of the screen. I've occasionally "fought fire with fire" and created Trip and Disarm focused monsters and NPCs to bedevil the party. Can't say I particularly liked the results and I know the players didn't.

There's actually a weak parallel with my feelings about powerful wizard magics in the game. Much of the time in arguments, it may come across that I'm arguing against too much power in the hands of PCs. But my players don't really use high powered magic that effectively, frankly. My more frequent problem with abusable rules is that more often I end up having to explain in my own head why my villains won't use these powers to stomp the party to the curb, particularly when I'm using prewritten adventures or campaigns.

 

[Danzauker]

Just some random thoughts:

1) In the (not many, I admit) martial arts combats I saw, I rarely saw anyone trying to trip his opponents more than once in the fight. Basically, like someone else more expert than me altready said, it was much like a) the trip worked, then fight was over because the fallen opponent was in clear disadvantage b) the trip failed, the fight was over because the guy trying to trip was in clear disadvantage. This seems to make it a per encounter ability.

2) We are now talking of melee combat, not bare hands combat. I've only seen trips and grapples in unarmed combat. I don't think there are many armed martial arts styles that emphasize tripping over bashing your opponent in some more efficient way. Frankly, I think that trying to trip or grapple someone wielding a double handed axe or a longsword should be nearly suicidal. Expecially if you have not had specific training in it.

I admit that in Steven Seagal movies you see people being tripped and back jump all the time, and being D&D a cinematic combat game those sort of stunts should be representable in the game.

But I'd like them reserved for the Monk class when it comes out. Honestly, making the Monk a class well focused in Bruce Lee stunts like trips, jumps, throws and grapples, both armed and unarmed, instead than concentrating on damage, would be an interesting way to model the class without stealing the light to Fighters and Rogues.

I'd like to see trip or something similar as per will powers for a Monk, while I'm not concerned in having Fighters tripping just once per encounter.

 

[IceFractal]

Several people have said that since trip (without a feat) was a suboptimal option, that made it a nonoption and there's no point even having it. But I think that's missing an important point ...

Not all battles are in normal circumstances against equally-matched foes. Sure, disarming someone without the Improved Disarm feat was usually a bad idea. If you were fighting an ally that was possessed by a cursed sword, it became a good idea. Tripping without the feat was likewise not generally useful. But if you were trying to capture a foe alive, or facing someone with magical defenses you could barely penetrate, it became a better solution.

So sure, make "effective trip attack that also does damage" a per-encounter power. But give us the basic, usually non-optimal, option - because sometimes the situation warrants it.


And I don't see how the fact that it can be done ad-hoc helps anything. Sure, you can ad-hoc anything ... if you're the DM. But it won't help when you're a player in RPGA games, or convention games, or simply games with a modification-wary DM. And since you have no idea how exactly the DM will adjucate basic manuevers, forget making a strategy ahead of time.

 

[delericho]

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. Which, I think, is the perfect place for a trip-like power.

Until, of course, the characters find themselves in the rare encounter where that power should be applied more than once.

Perhaps the group find themselves fighting a trio of Turtlemen (who cannot stand up from prone). However, the whole situation same about because of a diplomatic misunderstanding - the PCs want to incapacitate but not kill these guys.

So, they hit on the strategy of having the Fighter, the Rogue and the Barbarian each tripping one of these guys, buying time for them to sort out the whole mess.

Unfortunately, in 4e, they can't do this. Only the Fighter was able to learn the Trip power, and he can do it only once in the encounter - and that's assuming he learnt it at all.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Actually, yeah, you've summed it up pretty well.

There's two common ways to 'trip' someone in a mixed martial arts fight. A fighter can try and shoot for the legs, essentially almost diving head-first towards his opponent's legs trying to gets his arms around a leg or two and trip him up.

Don't leg sweeps come into it at all?

 

[hong]

Until, of course, the characters find themselves in the rare encounter where that power should be applied more than one.

Perhaps the group find themselves fighting a trio of Turtlemen (who cannot stand up from prone). However, the whole situation same about because of a diplomatic misunderstanding - the PCs want to incapacitate but not kill these guys.

So, they hit on the strategy of having the Fighter, the Rogue and the Barbarian each tripping one of these guys, buying time for them to sort out the whole mess.

You've been waiting YEARS to bring up this scenario, haven't you?

 

[Imp]

I'm generally fine with the trip-as-encounter-power business, since it was overpowered in 3e. It seems like knocking foes on their butts as a routine power should be the domain of monks and maybe halberd and whip users. It's interesting to see what trips whose sense of disbelief though.

Perhaps the group find themselves fighting a trio of Turtlemen (who cannot stand up from prone). However, the whole situation same about because of a diplomatic misunderstanding - the PCs want to incapacitate but not kill these guys.

Or, fighting kappa!

 

[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.

But the aggregate effect is that people get tripped occasionally, which is what will happen in 4e, but not what happens in 3e.


glass.