For more context, I’m thinking of playing a centaur barbarian which means with the practiced brawn ancestry feat I can get +1 to athletic checks to shove and any succesful shove is a critical success.
Despite the potential for cool Trip just seems better though? it targets a save which most monsters are worse at than fortitude, also steals a movement action and puts the enemy off-guard until their turn. Is there something I’m missing or is trip just a better option every time that doesn’t involve a convenient cliff or river of lava?
They attack different stats. Your assumption about reflex versus fortitude won’t survive contact with the enemy. If you’re battling a nest of basilisks, your party members aren’t going to accept “but most monsters have a better fort save!” as an excuse when they are all turned to stone. You asked when one is better, and the answer is when their reflex is weaker than their fortitude.
Shove steals a movement action too, since the enemy has to walk back to you. It doesn’t make them off-guard, but it does potentially get them out of position. If you have Reactive Strike and a Reach weapon, a shove can be devastating, particularly a 10ft shove where it requires a stride rather than a step to undo.
Also, since you upgrade success to critical success, that means you can push further. Positioning matters a lot in pf. You could fuck with the enemy’s attempts to set up a flank or otherwise do something powerful that requires good positioning. Trip makes the enemy vulnerable, but Shove can be a defensive tool.
Thanks for the explanation, is there anyway to learn a monsters save DCs without either trial and error or metagaming?
The Recall Knowledge action. It’s why INT and WIS are such strong stats in this system.
You can get an approximate DC without metagaming based on how the creature is described.
If the creature is slow, big, or tough, it probably has a higher Fortitude than Reflex.
If the creature is small, fast, or wily, it probably has a higher Reflex than Fortitude.
I don’t know if they carried it over to 2e, but in 1e a creature that has more than two legs is more resistant to being tripped. Creatures with no legs or who are flying/swimming/burrowing are probably immune to being tripped.