Are Combat Maneuvers good?

[morimoto]

Feats like trip, disarm, dirty trick. They seemed good to me but i don't want to waste a feat on one just to find out they are pretty useless. Can someone experienced with the ruleset give me his opinion?

[RunicLibrarian]

Some of these work differently in the game than from the tabletop, which makes them better or worse than before.

Trip: Pretty good in the game as opponents have lower Armor Class (easier to hit) while on the ground and always have to stand back up afterwards. The action of standing up provokes an AoO (free attack) from anyone in melee range of that enemy. This is better and different than the tabletop where a character could choose to remain prone, but fight with the same penalty to their attacks as the penalty to their AC (-4). Downside of Trip is that not every enemy can be tripped and some that can are extremely hard to trip depending on their size, strength, dexterity, BAB (base attack bonus), and number of legs (or lack thereof).

Disarm: Similar to above, works great against some opponents, not so great against others. Causes the opponent to sheathe their weapon for some period of time depending on how high you roll. While their weapon is sheathed, they will punch at you with 0 skill, causing them to provoke an AoO from anyone engaged in melee with them unless they are a monk, have a natural weapon (like claws), or the improved unarmed strike feat. Downside is that not every enemy in the game carries a weapon meaning this feat wont do anything to them (bears, elementals, animals). The same problem with an opponents size, strength, BAB, and dexterity also apply to how difficult the check is to disarm

Dirty Trick: Probably one of the best maneuver options in the game currently. Works on every enemy type barring maybe 1 or 2 very unusual creatures. Can inflict blindness, entangled, or sickened conditions to an enemy. Blindness is BAD NEWS for something that has it, it makes you lose any Dex bonus to AC that you have, makes you vulnerable to sneak attacks, and makes half of all your attacks miss on top of giving you a penalty to hit in the first place. Downside is that not every creature will care that it is blind because it doesn't rely on eyesight to see. Entangled is pretty meh, it gives some minor penalties to AC and attacks and slows the opponent down (which doesn't matter much since dirty trick is melee range), best feature is that it is supposed to make casters attempt concentration checks to cast spells with the condition, but I'm not sure if this was brought over to the game. This condition works on pretty much everything although effects like freedom of movement should make you immune. Finally, sickened, the boring, but good one. Works on pretty much everything, even undead in the tabletop humorously, but I'm not sure if that carried over to the game. Makes the opponent take a -2 to basically every roll in the game, from rolling to hit to damage to saves. Overall has the same task of beating an opponents size, strength, BAB, and dexterity in order to succeed. The more you beat the DC of an opponent, the longer the condition applies, just like the rest of the maneuvers.

Honorable Mention: Stunning Fist. Mainly a monk thing since they get it for free, but anyone with improved unarmed strike (and hopefully some good wisdom) can take and use this feat. It has limited uses per day, especially for non-monks, with only 1 use per day per 4 levels (monks get 1 per level). As long as you hit a targets normal AC they have to make a Fortitude save or be stunned for 1 round, this causes them to lose Dex to AC, meaning you can sneak attack them, supposedly disarms them (although for 1 round, the length of the stun so pretty much irrelevant), makes them take an additional -2 AC, and makes them miss a turn. Some things are immune, pretty much anything without a brain like undead. Pretty meh unless you are a monk with massive Wisdom in order to make the save really difficult. Main upside is that this applies to any unarmed strike you make meaning you don't lose any attacks while I'm pretty sure all the above maneuvers take a standard action to use, even though disarm and trip can be used in place of attacks in the tabletop, but I haven't been able to tell if this carried over.

Recommendations: Being forced to take Combat Expertise sucks, but that's just how Pathfinder is sometimes, especially to martials. Dirty Trick makes an excellent melee support character as a neat little extra thing to do. Trip and disarm can be used with a combat reflexes build to cause enemies to give you tons of AoOs (especially if you are a high level sword saint with good Dex and Int as they stack for the number of AoOs you can take per turn).

Warning: All of these options affect a single target, the game almost never throws a single enemy at you. Solo enemy fights tend to go pretty poorly for the lone enemy so this is likely for the best. Granted there are a handful of obvious "boss" enemies with some support of trash mobs, but in my experience, they aren't extremely durable, so just swinging and killing them is probably better.

[Space]

Originally posted by morimoto:

Feats like trip, disarm, dirty trick. They seemed good to me but i don't want to waste a feat on one just to find out they are pretty useless. Can someone experienced with the ruleset give me his opinion?

For which difficulty, because the answer depends hugely on what difficulty you're playing.

[Hex: Onii-Chan]

TL;DR - no. Combat maneuvers in the original are already somewhat of a joke, because the CMD of your opponents scales too fast to be effective at overcoming it. Same as with most spells that allow a DC save - they simply will fail half the time, even if you specialize in them.

[RunicLibrarian]

Originally posted by Murf_This!:

TL;DR - no. Combat maneuvers in the original are already somewhat of a joke, because the CMD of your opponents scales too fast to be effective at overcoming it. Same as with most spells that allow a DC save - they simply will fail half the time, even if you specialize in them.

I can tell you that this has been an inaccurate perception in the tabletop version of the game held by many people, choosing to optimize a single maneuver makes it land nearly 100% of the time. One of my favorite characters of all time is the Tetori monk, which at level 9, is running around with about +36 to grapple and easily grabs enormous enemies on a 2. The caveat here is that being good at more than 1 maneuver is difficult and using nearly on core rulebook stuff makes it even harder to be good at even a single maneuver.

I won't make much of a comment about spells except to say that I'm a big fan of pathfinder 2nd editions version of saving throws vs spells. The range is from critical success to critical failure depending on what you roll, allowing for more variation instead of simply pass/fail.

[Hex: Onii-Chan]

Originally posted by Zer0darkfire:

Originally posted by Murf_This!:

TL;DR - no. Combat maneuvers in the original are already somewhat of a joke, because the CMD of your opponents scales too fast to be effective at overcoming it. Same as with most spells that allow a DC save - they simply will fail half the time, even if you specialize in them.

I can tell you that this has been an inaccurate perception in the tabletop version of the game held by many people, choosing to optimize a single maneuver makes it land nearly 100% of the time. One of my favorite characters of all time is the Tetori monk, which at level 9, is running around with about +36 to grapple and easily grabs enormous enemies on a 2. The caveat here is that being good at more than 1 maneuver is difficult and using nearly on core rulebook stuff makes it even harder to be good at even a single maneuver.

I won't make much of a comment about spells except to say that I'm a big fan of pathfinder 2nd editions version of saving throws vs spells. The range is from critical success to critical failure depending on what you roll, allowing for more variation instead of simply pass/fail.

Yeah, great, one class, that is specifically meant to excell at CM, can with all the possible feats & features manage to do just that. And barely anything else.

The "caveat" here is that a pretty much no other class can utilize those properly, nor do we have access to custom-made wondrous items / magic equipment, that would allow us to tailor extreme builds.

And on top of that we are utterly ignoring that MANY creatures are utterly immune to specific combat maneuvers. Now let's see what the CMD on your level can reach:

Behir: CR8, CMD 29
Bulette: CR7, CMD 28
Chuul: CR7, CMD 28
Barbed Demon: CR11, CMD 34
Erinyes: CR8, CMD 31

That's roundabout what you should encounter at Lv9, depending on party size, enemy numbers and so on. Now let's see how it goes up from there:

Horned Devil: CR16, CMD 44
Ice Devil: CR13, CMD 36
Pit Fiend Devil: CR20, CMD 53
Froghemoth: CR11, CMD 35
Crag Linnorm: CR 14, CMD 45
Ice Linnorm: CR17, CMD 56
Tarn Linnorm: CR20, CMD 64

And we both know that CMB falls off with higher levels. Meaning that eventually you are - even as a specialized character - somewhere around 10-15% of success, need to spend your full round and can't do anything else that would be useful for anybody.

[RunicLibrarian]

If we are specifically talking about the video game adaptation, then yes, I agree that combat maneuvers are not that great versues many creatures and that some are immune. If you read my initial post, I literally list that under every single manuevers downside. On the other hand, you do fight a metric ton of humanoid enemies in this game making them useful and effective in many combats.

[nome22]

don't mine me just practicing Necromancy
I'm a level 9 Inquisitor and i trip just about everything with out much of a problem
23 base with feats so 24-44 taking the best of 2 rolls (from feat)

For boss fights that is easy also just cast true strike on my self for an extra +20
that is 44-64... i can trip anything in the game at level 9 with out any gear or buffs besides true strike

It is kinda funny when you trip things like Huge water and air elementals with a long spear