Most everyone’s heard of someone playing a trip-heavy fighter. It can be a potentially devastating build in the right circumstances, but it’s far from foolproof. Let’s look at some of the major ways to build and buff your tripper and what obstacles you should avoid.

Building The Tripper

The obvious stat that we need to focus on here is Strength, since it will modify the trip attempts. Keep in mind, however, that we need at least a 13 Intelligence to qualify for Improved Trip – which is something that every tripping build should have. Having a higher Intelligence isn’t a bad thing anyway. Fighters get squat for skill points, so every little bit helps.

Luckily, a fighter can have Improved Trip as early as level one if they meet the Int. pre-reqs. But the feats and ability scores are just the first part. The next thing that needs to be asked is, what weapon will our tripper take?

Arming Yourself

The most frequently used weapon for the tripper is the Spiked Chain. The spiked chain is a marvelous weapon and I hope to write up something about it in the near future.

Chain, Spiked
A spiked chain has reach, so you can strike opponents 10 feet away with it. In addition, unlike most other weapons with reach, it can be used against an adjacent foe.

You can make trip attacks with the chain. If you are tripped during your own trip attempt, you can drop the chain to avoid being tripped.

When using a spiked chain, you get a +2 bonus on opposed attack rolls made to disarm an opponent (including the roll to avoid being disarmed if such an attempt fails).

You can use the Weapon Finesse feat to apply your Dexterity modifier instead of your Strength modifier to attack rolls with a spiked chain sized for you, even though it isn’t a light weapon for you.

Marvelous!

With all that greatness, why doesn’t everyone use the spiked chain – because it requires an Exotic Weapon Proficiency feat to make it work. For the most part, the fighter’s the only class with “feats to burn” on Exotic Weapon Proficiencies. Occasionally, you may get a monk that’s going the Weapon Finesse & Combat Reflexes route – with which the spiked chain works exceptionally well.

But for the most part, it’s just our friend the tripper that masters this strange weapon.

Alternate Weapons

Three other good tripping weapons are the whip (most specifically the whip dagger version from the Arms & Equipment Guide), the gnome hooked hammer (serious – it’s a great weapon!) and the scythe. Unfortunately, all three also take an EWP to wield effectively (unless you’re a gnome wielding the hammer). Despite that, if you’re going to burn the EWP, the spiked chain is the way to go.

In my opinion, for core weapons, the halberd’s the best martial weapon to trip with. And it’s important to point out that the halberd is NOT a reach weapon. Many people assume it is for some reason, but it’s just got standard reach. Just file this away somewhere for later when it comes up – because it always does.

Buffing The Tripper

The first thing you’ll want with a tripper is a high Strength. The higher your strength modifier, the higher your bonus to your opposed strength check. Anything that buffs your strength will be desirable. The easiest to come by would probably be getting someone to cast Bull’s Strength on you on get a potion of it.

Another very popular option is to get enlarged. If you get Enlarge Person cast on you or use a potion of it, then you not only get the benefit of reach, but a +2 size bonus to strength. This is a good bonus because there’s no many things that grant size bonuses, so the buff will likely stack with any other buffs you have on you. On top of that, you get a +4 bonus for every size category you’re larger than your opponent. This can add up quickly. One may want to go and trip the smallest thing it can find, but keep in mind that smaller creatures tend to have a higher dex score.
In addition to those, there’s another way of buffing your weapon directly. There’s a +1 weapon ability called Sweeping from the Arms & Equipment Guide. The effect is fairly simple – you place the ability on a melee weapon and it grants +4 on strength checks made while tripping an opponent.

Your Tactics

So you got your buffs and you got your weapon, now what? Well, we need to start tripping people. The question is – which people? We want to target people that are both weak and less agile. In other words – low strength and low dex. Remember, your opposed strength check can be opposed by either a strength OR dex check from the target of the trip.

Wizards, Sorcerers and sometimes Bards are the usual best targets to focus on. If you’re enlarged, have a high strength modifier and have the Improved Trip feat, you should be able to safely trip a smaller-sized fighter types – but be careful. These are going to be the opponents that’ll possibly be able to beat your opposed roll and may try to trip you back.

Now that we know who we’re looking for, when do we want to spring the trip on them? Quite frankly, the best time to trip someone is if you’re given an attack of opportunity against them. Here’s a list why attacks of opportunity are the best times to try to trip someone.

1. It’s a free attack, so even if it fails, you’ve not lost anything – and if you have Improved Trip, you still get your free follow-up attack. Win-win.
2. If you’re attacking someone that was moving through your threatened area (which is hopefully larger due to you being enlarged), you’ve now put them on their back and ruined whatever plans they just had.
3. By the time your turn comes around again, the person is probably still prone – and thus you get a bonus on all of your full attack action.
4. When they do stand up from prone (a move-equivalent action), that draws an attack of opportunity as well.

Here’s an important thing to note. You can NOT make a trip attack against someone that’s standing up from prone according to the rules. Why? Because a prone character is not a valid target to be tripped. Remember, attacks of opportunity resolve before the action that triggered them, so that person is still on the ground when you’re attacking them – not in the process of standing up or actually up. The good news is that standing up is a move-equivalent action, so they’ll still be in threatened range, so you can just trip them on your turn again.

Tripping Synergies

Here’s a few feats that work well with a tripper:

1. Combat Reflexes – gives you more attacks of opportunity, which all could be trips.
2. Combat Stability – This feat from Player’s Handbook II gives you a +4 bonus to resist trip attacks against you (along with bull rush, disarm, grapple and overrun checks). It can also scale to +8.
3. Cunning Sidestep – This also gives you a bonus to avoid being tripped, but only in certain circumstances. You can find this in the Draconomicon.
4. Curling Wave Strike – This feat is from Stormwrack and lets you use your free bonus attack from Improved Trip to make an immediate trip attack against someone you threaten once per round. Nice!

Who Not To Trip

There’s plenty of times you won’t want to trip people.

1. The target’s larger than you
2. The target has more than 2 legs
3. You believe the target has a high dex or strength
4. The target is a race like Dwarf that’s more stable than other races

A DM should keep these situations in mind when they’re faced with a tripping-heavy PC. Incorporeal undead also offer no real target to be tripped, as well as certain monsters like oozes. In addition to choosing the targets wisely, also remember anything that offers a miss chance, such as cover and spells like blur or mirror image, can help. Just remember that your player has probably pumped a lot of resources into being a good tripper – so it’s important that you give them perfectly viable targets so they don’t feel that their character path is pointless.

There’s some disagreement as to if a flying or levitating creature can be tripped. Immediate common sense says no, but there’s no reason why a trip doesn’t need to actually result on the target ending up on their back on the ground. A trip could simply be disorienting a character to the point where they have to spend a move action righting themselves. That aside, since there’s no clear ruling on tripping a flying or levitating opponent, this will have to be something each DM decides for themselves.

Wrapping It Up

Tripping is a very effective tactic and can greatly change the course of a given encounter. To become a great tripper, however, it takes some planning, a couple of feats and the right buffs to focus all of that power. Despite all this, the tripper is not an unstoppable force and shouldn’t be the center of attention each battle.

Posted by Mike on Saturday, September 2nd, 2006 at 10:36 pm.
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