“Pathfinder – Personal Portfolio” by BiPiCado, CC Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
How often has your character been nearly useless in combat? We build our characters to deal the maximum amount of damage, only to face impossible situations where all we can do is minimum damage.
Let’s look at a few scenarios where this can happen:
- The big bad boss is invisible. You try to attack him, but you can’t pinpoint his location.
- Your team is fighting over one hundred low-CR monsters. One attack will instantly kill a creature, but there are just so many, and you have so few attacks per round.
- Your target is resistant to physical damage, which is all you have.
- An enemy wizard creates a toxic gas cloud that is quickly approaching your team!
- A cyclops hits hard and accurately.
- You’re fighting on a rickety bridge over a canyon. You’re trapped in all directions.
Dealing regular damage to creatures in any of these scenarios will slowly give the desired result, but at what cost? You may lose half your team by then. You could fight. Or, you could fight smart.
In the “Actions in Combat” section of the Player’s Handbook, there is a list of 10 basic actions a character can take in battle:
Attack, Cast Spell, Dash, Disengage, Dodge, Help, Hide, Ready, Search, Use ObjectWe’re going to focus on the actions on this list that don’t deal damage, like certain attacks or spellcasting. In fact, we’re going to avoid spellcasting altogether. In this guide, we want to list actions any character can take in battle when all other options fail. Remember that not all of these ideas have RAW rules to back them up, so talk to your DM about what he or she will allow, or what effects you can expect. Let’s get started!
Actions to Take in Battle Besides Weapon Attacks or Spellcasting
Push/Shove/Pull
The first item on our list is an attack. But pushing doesn’t inherently deal damage. Rather, pushing is a super-effective action depending on environmental factors, battle layout, and tag-team opportunities. Here are some ways to use push successfully:
- Remember that rickety bridge scenario? It may take several turns of stabbing to take down an enemy, or you could push them over the bridge in one action to get rid of them forever. Problem solved! This tactic is great for fighting on any high ground: a cliff, a tower, a two-story building, a wall, etc.
- Trying to escape during a chase? Pushing over your enemy will force them prone, requiring them to take half of their movement to get up. Imagine pushing them into some sort of thorny bush or hole. You may give your allies an edge. Bonus, if you’re a Rogue, you can then bonus action dash to catch up to your party.
- When a creature is prone, attacks against this creature have advantage. If you push a foe who just had his turn, the rest of your team can get advantage against him. This is a great example of teamwork in combat.
- Shoving a creature successfully will move it five feet. You could push it into an Area of Effect, into range of a player who has more effective means to deal damage, out from behind cover, or, if your DM will give bonuses for teamwork, you could shove a foe onto your teammate’s sword.
Blind the Creature
Is your enemy kicking your butt, and you just need a way to slow it down? Finding a way to blind him will give him disadvantage on attacks AND any attacks against him will have advantage AND ability checks that require sight are auto-failed. Need to stop that cyclops from chucking rocks at your party? Try these tactics to blind your foe:
- Pocket sand
- Arrow to the eye
- Throw burning ash
- Tie his cloak over his face
- Shine a blinding light in his eye (if it’s dark)
- Put a bag over his head (if you have one big enough)
- Pull his hat down over his eyes
All of these things will create blindness for at least one round and may take the creature’s action to remove the blinding effect.
Environmental Leverage
Sometimes your greatest ally is the environment around you. How can you utilize it to help you in combat?
- Start a wall of fire to separate you from your enemies
- Hide in mud to avoid combat with a horde
- Climb a tree for better cover against melee attackers
- Hold a spellcaster under water so they can’t use verbal components
- Throw a jar of oil at an enemy near a campfire to ignite him
- Push a dying tree onto a sleeping camp
- Open a dam to wash away your foes
- Start an avalanche, Mulan style
- Cut the ropes of a bridge
Set Traps
This may be tricky to set up in-combat, but a sneaky Rogue who hasn’t been spotted can do anything. Here are some examples of quick traps in battle:
- Cover a hole of pikes and taunt your enemy to approach you
- Push rocks from the cliffside onto your foes
- Throw a net onto a bunched-up group
- Drop some caltrops and wait for an enemy to approach
- Tag-team a trip rope with an ally, or clothesline some foes
- Drop ball-bearings in a retreat
Assist Allies (Help)
The help rules in 5e are that, when you help an ally, they gain advantage on their next ability check. However, there is a second part to this rule:
But there are other ways to “help” an ally without taking the help action:
- Have a smaller ally ride on a larger ally’s back to help provide cover or to move faster.
- Ready a grapple or shield against anyone who comes near a concentrating spellcaster.
- Administer healing potions to allies. If you can’t attack, you might as well heal!
- Make a human ladder to get to a ledge
- Toss an ally into the air
- Carry light for an ally so they can see their target
Take Cover
Sometimes, all you can do is reposition yourself such that you don’t get yourself killed. Take the burden of healing off your allies who are effective against an enemy and stay out of battle. Maybe you’ll find a way to be helpful, and if that takes a few turns, that’s okay.
Grapple
To get an edge in combat, sometimes you’ve got to hold your enemy tight. This may:
- Stop a wizard from casting a somatic spell.
- Force an enemy to stop whatever he’s doing with his hands, like untying a rope or opening a box containing.
- Help an ally tie a grappled enemy’s feet together or shackle their arms.
Use an Object
Our inventories don’t get the love they deserve. Sometimes we get in the hoarder’s mindset and want to keep our items for a perfect situation. Don’t be that guy. Use your items when you can’t attack effectively.
- Throw dust into the wind to find an invisible enemy.
- Toss alchemist fire onto a green tree to create massive amounts of smoke, allowing you to hide or get away.
- Throw a vial of poison or acid or a potion.
- Tie rope to an arrow to anchor it into whatever you hit
- Sneak up behind a foe and blow a bagpipe in their ears to disorient them
- Toss a slab of meat away from your party to distract wild beasts
- Throw valuable gems into a bush to tempt greedy thieves
Disarm a Foe
According to the Dungeon Master Guide (p. 271),
“…a creature can use a weapon attack to knock a weapon or another item from a target’s grasp.”If you know you can’t deal a lot of damage, this might be a good alternative. Render your opponent useless:
- Steal the component pouch and/or arcane focus from the wizard so they can’t cast spells (disarm)
- Knock vials out of an alchemists’ hands
- Take back an item so you can escape instead of fight
- Knock their weapon out of their hands. Bonus, if you are a Battle Master Fighter, you can use your maneuver to deal extra damage and use another attack to push the creature away from their weapon so they can’t just pick it up.
Bait a Reaction
(Hi, I’m Flutes, and I’ll be writing this part!)
I have a trick that is handy in the right situation. You can bait enemies into using reactions in ways that are advantageous to you. This can be defensive or offensive. I’ll give examples for each.
The defensive version is when your Fighter is next to the party’s Wizard and an enemy ogre. You know the ogre has plentiful hitpoints remaining. The Wizard is out of spell slots and low on health. You can set up the Wizard to not need to Disengage, freeing up the Wizard’s action while still retreating. Move away from the ogre’s melee range to bait its Opportunity Attack. After the Opportunity Attack has been resolved, move back to the ogre and use your attacks against it. The ogre now lacks a reaction to attack the Wizard, which can now move away without fear of a club to the head. This only works if the Wizard takes a turn before the ogre’s next turn since the ogre’s reaction economy will refresh on its turn.
Offensive reaction baiting can work similarly. Let’s imagine you’re fighting against an enemy that possesses a defensive reaction. An example of defensive reactions could be Evasion to halve damage, casting the Shield spell, or parrying an attack to boost Armor Class. To bait the enemy’s reaction, move away from them to provoke an Opportunity Attack. If they use their reaction to attack you, assuming you’re running away and they’re safe, you’ve removed their reaction that they could use to defend against your attack. At this point, you’ll move back to attack the reaction-less stooge. That enemy made a huge mistake when it made that Opportunity Attack. I’m assuming you can afford to be attacked once by the enemy to benefit from unobstructed attacks.
An alternative way to bait a reaction is to attack a Wizard who uses Shield. If there are other targets that you can attack, you can bid farewell to that Wizard’s spell slot as you attack someone else with your other attacks. Doing this will discourage the Wizard because Shield is best for protecting against multiple attacks, not one. You will successfully devalue the Wizard’s spell slot by defying the expectation that you would attack the Wizard multiple times.
Conclusion
Combat deserves more than just weapon attacks. With creativity and luck, a character can wrap up battle efficiently and effectively through non-combat actions. Ask your DM for descriptions about the terrain, what effects actions may have, and how you and a party member can utilize teamwork better in battle. You may be surprised how much more you enjoy combat!
How would one build a character optimised for creative actions?
More of a state of mind than an optimized ‘build’. 🙂