Bug about trip

Hello everyone, I am new to the forum and bought TOEE from gog earlier to try out the coe mod, I found that when u use trip on opponents, if your DEX is higher than opponents' STR, they will use your DEX instead of their STR in their defending roll, which is very annoying if u have high DEX, anyone know there is a fix for this bug?

 

Hey dune, welcome to the forums.

I have found that trip, prior to having the 2nd tier Feat, is largely useless. I seem to trip myself as often as I trip the target.

Perhaps this is a result of the bug to which you refer, but I haven't examined it that closely. How did you establish what you are saying, i.e., that the calculations are using your own Dex against you?

 

The bug was signaled last year
http://www.co8.org/forum/showthread.php?t=10922&highlight=trip+dexterity

 

So in short, trip attacks are broken and useless?

 

No, they're just bad when you have high dex. For a high strength character trip attack is amazing. A single character can trip multiple enemies in a single turn, including follow-up attacks on all of them (with improved trip). While they lie there you get a bonus to hit and when they stand up everyone in range gets an attack of opportunity, plus standing up counts as movement so they lose the option to do a full attack that round. I think it's easily one of the best combat feats.

 

What if you are playing a rogue/fighter with high scores in both?

 

That does sound pretty badass.

So as long as the tripper has a Dex less than (or equal to??) Str, it functions effectively?

Have to say, I tried it a bit, noticed I tended to trip myself a lot, and just gave up on it. Knowing how to use it effectively would be sweet. I have two melee combatants in my current 3 person squad (Fighter, Druid, Rogue/Mage) who both have Dex 1 or 2 pts less than strength.

 

You'll still find he lands on his back more often than he should.

And at all costs resist the tempation to make a high-dex Improved Trip fighter/rogue with Spike Chain focus and Weapon Finesse. Won't perform nearly as impressive as you might think he should.

 

By the rules the attacker uses his strength score and the defender defends with the highest of his strength and dexterity. When implementing this in the game they messed up and the defender defends with the highest of his strength and the attacker's (should be defender's) dexterity.

What this means in practice is that if your characters have high dex scores it will be used against you when tripping an enemy with less strength than you have dex. If you keep your dex scores moderate this isn't a problem, because either the defender uses his own strength score (as they're supposed to) or he uses your moderate dex score. High dex enemies suffer just like you do, though. They can't defend with their high dex.

If you want to be a badass tripper then make a high strength, low/moderate dex dwarf with improved trip and ideally a reach weapon. Dwarf is not necessary if you choose your targets carefully, but dwarves get a +4 stability bonus when defending against trips. This is very useful when your own attempt fails and the enemy gets a chance to trip you back. Improved trip gives +4 on trip attempts. The spell Enlarge Person (and a few others) is always useful, but it's even more useful for trippers as you get a +4 size bonus. With 18 strength this is a total bonus of +12 on your trip attempts (+16 when defending). Against most enemies this is a huge advantage. Of course, some enemies have bonuses of their own so pay attention to the rolls. Four legged animals have stability bonus like the dwarf, large creatures get size bonus, some monsters (like bugbears) have the improved trip feat and so on.

If you have multiple attacks then remember to always choose the Full Attack options first, then select Trip Attack for individual attacks. As far as I know that is the only way to make multiple trip attacks in a round.

 

This is a bug I tested extensively some time ago. A critical one that makes the whole feat so bad that I'd rather see it gone completely from the game than have it so broken.

It's in fact ludicrous to think a player must "prepare and counteract" the presence of this bug by creating a character with low dexterity!

I am only hoping some engine wiz might eventually come up with a fix.

 

Shiningted,

I can only wish you guys best of luck and I am sorry I can only be of limited/no help to you. I can only offer to do testing whenever you need grunt work to test possible remedies/fixes.

It's the least I can do...

 

I may be in the minority here, but I don't think this bug matters much at all unless you do a weird build or cheat/roll like crazy. A typical trip character has high strength, possibly high wisdom (for some classes), decent constitution and a minimum of 13 int. After all that you'll most likely have a dex score in in the range 8-14. The vast majority of enemies in the game have a dex score between 10 and 20, with lower dex numbers typically meaning high strength (where the bug is not relevant) or just a weak enemy overall. While wearing your +6 item your dex score this means you're defending against roughly the same dex score anyway, with a variation of maybe one or two points in either direction that probably evens out in the long run. With your high strength, feat and size you should have a significant advantage.

I'm not defending the presence of the bug, of course. I just don't think it makes a significant difference in the game or makes it not worth taking. From experience it's an extremely useful feat. It's only unbearable when your dex is abnormally high.

 

There is in fact an obvious build that is hurt badly by this bug, and this is a rogue with spike chain proficiency. Spike chain is both finesse-able and one of the few trip weapons, so making this a high-dex character and giving him Improved Trip is not so absurd (even if the trip attacks are based on strength, which makes this a less than perfect build in the end).

 

I guess that's true, but I'm pretty sure trip weapons are not implemented in ToEE, or at least that was my impression. You can trip with any weapon in this game.