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Message: <blockquote data-quote="robertliguori" data-source="post: 4093619" data-attributes="member: 47776">Point the first: They don't happen at your table.  You never have to adjucate the result of a cat or catlike creature (possibly a wildshaped halfing druid) facing off against a commoner (because you choose to wave it away).Likewise, there have been examples in my games of scenarios in which the optimal move had been for one party to accept the temporary badness of the untrained trip attempt (namely, he was facing a high-AC foe who could only be hit by 19+s by the high-accuracy members of the group, but could be touch-attacked, and could be pounced upon by the group all at once if his AC was lowered (by being group-flanked and prone, for instance).But more to the point, a person should be able to walk up and try to knock another person over.  They might get a sword in the gut for their troubles, and they might not have a terribly good chance of success if they haven't practiced, but it's something that I think is important enough to have rules for.Point the second: You know, I'm just going to go ahead and name it the Kamikaze Midget fallacy, since he's explained it so many times.  The fact that 3.XE does something poorly does not excuse 4E for also doing it poorly, or especially for doing it poorly in a different and horrible way.  The 4E trip mechanic was broken by spiked chains and Improved Trip offering free attacks; remove these two problem elements (heck, even remove one of them) and you limit the problem.  Plus, if you have the level of mechanical optimization that leads to a gatling-tripper build, then you should be thankful that the player isn't playing a primary caster (or a druid).Point the third: Abilities that cause unexplained narrative editing are poor communicative tools to allow the characters to understand the universe.  Phrasing a martial trip power as always trying to trip but only getting the opportunity implies that if the opponent ceases to ward himself, you should get another one.  Now, if you don't care overmuch about characters being able to logically reach conclusions about the world based on the evidence presented, sure, go ahead.  However, a lot of us think that it's important for characters, hero and non, to have the ability to ask "If this applied to that is like so, what is this applied to those like?", and get meaningful, predictable answers.</blockquote>

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