What happens when a large creature stops squeezing in a space that they had to use squeeze to enter?

Question

This is a follow up question relating to What are the advantages and disadvantages of allowing a player to play a large creature?

So far, everything for the player playing the large Minotaur has been balanced. If anything, not being able to move between enemies that had a one square gap between them has shown that the character is actually weaker than a medium sized Defender.

So here's what happened:

The party's rogue ran into a room by himself, jump on a 10x25 foot table, and hit an enemy that was eating. Enemies that had been hiding rushed him from all corners (The players had been very noisy in the previous room). He was surrounded and in one enemy round he was unconscious.

The Minotaur fighter decided to Squeeze to move into the same square as the prone rogue.

After fighting (at a -5 penalty to hit because of the Squeeze) he decided to stop squeezing and push the enemies off the table.

Fortunately, he hadn't only decided to stop using Squeeze, but he had also decided to Jump and smash the table with malicious intent.

We ruled that he broke the table in half and sent one of the enemies flying into the wall after they failed their acrobatics check. This gave the Minotaur space to land at full size to continue fighting the enemies.

Had he not had a table to break, how would a large creature that is being flanked by four enemies that stops using Squeeze work?

We talked about it after, and because he's 10 feet tall and weighs 850 pounds we decided that if he did it again they would all get an attack of opportunity on a successful acrobatics check or be moved one square.

How should this actually go?

Answer 1

By the book, you cannot stop squeezing if doing so would result in an illegal position (i.e. within an enemy's square, or protruding through a wall).

Allowing it as a cinematic effect seems reasonable to me, but beware of allowing it to be incorporated into the character's standard repertoire; it's effectively a free push 1 centered around the character's space. Taking an attack of opportunity may be harsh enough to balance it, but hazardous terrain and AoEs may make it more powerful than it initially seems.

Some questions to consider:

• What happens if the minotaur would push an enemy off of a cliff, but they make their save?

• How does this interact with the dwarven ability to mitigate pushes?

Answer 2

Fortunately, the rules already have two methods (that I'm aware of) outlined for moving other creatures who don't want you to move them. However, if you want to end your squeeze in such a way that you expand into occupied squares, only one of them really works

Grab

You can move a grabbed target with a strength check, but this requires a standard to grab and another standard to move. This does not seem practical in your situation, nor does it fit what is happening descriptively.

Bull Rush

This seems much more like what is actually happening. The minotaur is attempting to use its size and power to force movement. In fact the description is exactly what would have to happen: "Hit: Push the target one square, and shift into the vacated space." It would certainly be an advantage to give free Bull Rush attacks, especially if it is more than one at a time, but perhaps you could mitigate this by giving the targets an Attack of Opportunity.