Fix Your Flanking Rules

[FiauraTheTankGirl]

Seriously.
Just had an encounter with 2 Babau, who are fighting me both from in front of me and somehow, every single attack gets flanking about Full AC (no-flat footed) targets.
Why?
Because it says they are flanking when you are outnumbered, surrounded, and fighting all targets from in front of them with no one behind or beside them.\


Fix this^^.

[Astral Projection]

AFAIK that's been the flanking rules since Kingmaker. If two targets engage it is flanking. No positional requirement. It will probably not be changed.

Remember this also works for you though.

[FiauraTheTankGirl]

Originally posted by Astral Projection:

AFAIK that's been the flanking rules since Kingmaker. If two targets engage it is flanking. No positional requirement. It will probably not be changed.

Remember this also works for you though.

Yeah but when you are level 4 and you have demons that are techncially CR 7 doing, Attack from the front, every attack has 3 sneak attack dice, you really can't win except by cheese.

[Combat Wombat]

Originally posted by FiauraTheTankGirl:

Originally posted by Astral Projection:

AFAIK that's been the flanking rules since Kingmaker. If two targets engage it is flanking. No positional requirement. It will probably not be changed.

Remember this also works for you though.

Yeah but when you are level 4 and you have demons that are techncially CR 7 doing, Attack from the front, every attack has 3 sneak attack dice, you really can't win except by cheese.

The trip combat maneuver is not cheese. The Grease and hold spells are not cheese. Putting dual-welding sneak-attacking Woljif up front with your tank to flank the baddies is not cheese. Putting full plate, heavy shield, ring of deflection, amulet of natural armor, and other AC boosting items on Sleena is not cheese. Putting the Evil Eye hex on those things is not cheese.

How is it that you need to cheese to win such a fight?

[Sexorcista]

why do people think mechanics from the game are "cheese" there was another guy making a post where he said using dispel magic was "cheese" lol

[Jauhis]

Dont forget to buy some cheese

[darkholyPL]

There was (still is?) something screwy with this tho. I remember fighing a Babau, 1 on 1 in melee, no other mobs there, and the Babau would still get sneak attacks every attack. And no, I wasn't flat footed.
The rules for sneak attacks seem to be... dodgy sometimes.

[ope84]

Originally posted by darkholyPL:

There was (still is?) something screwy with this tho. I remember fighing a Babau, 1 on 1 in melee, no other mobs there, and the Babau would still get sneak attacks every attack. And no, I wasn't flat footed.
The rules for sneak attacks seem to be... dodgy sometimes.

I noticed that too, but in my case the babau were attacking crusaders npc.

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by Astral Projection:

AFAIK that's been the flanking rules since Kingmaker. If two targets engage it is flanking. No positional requirement. It will probably not be changed.

I would think the reason Owlcat have implemented it the way they have is because of the immense complexity of following rules involving precise positioning.

In the first place the enemy AI would need to take into account where the NPC headed for to attack their target to gain flanking advantage. As far as the program is concenred all it has to dso at the moment is have the NPCs head for the current coordinate of the party character designated to attack. If positional flanking rules were in effect it couldn't do that, it would have to calculate a separate coordinate via rule formulae and geometry. A massive overhead and prone to an endless list of possible bugs.

For the player the question would always be "OK, game, were do I need to be exactly so I am flanking this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥". The demand would be for a on screen prompts to show the required positions to effect a flank. This does not sit well in a fast paced RTwP combat game.

In short for this game it would be a nightmare for many reasons. Not least 'cos we got enough bugs already. Instead we get a system that just works and...

Originally posted by Astral Projection:

Remember this also works for you though.

....so it's fine.

[seeker1]

Positioning ... so, this made me reminisce. Back in the day (2E) thieves/rogues got backstab, which required you stealth up and you had to hit the enemy from behind. Well, in CRPGs, since many enemies stand by a wall until they see you, how do you get behind them. And what about from the side?

Sneak attack removes the "from behind" requirement, doesn't even have to be used from stealth, just opportunity, and unlike backstab doesn't have to be done only at the start of the encounter. All in all it's obviously better.

Which bring me back to assassination. I've been obsessed with trying it out with Greybor who is - after all - an assassin. So, you can wait till most of the game is over, he's lvl20, and he gets Master Slayer. Or make him an Executioner archetype, and he gets Assassinate at lvl10. (In another playthrough, I messed with giving him Assassin prestige class so he could take Death Attack. Forget it. It's less reliable. You can change it up to be a Paralyzing Attack, but why?)

Again "back in the day" the assassin who was a subclass of thief in order to pull it off had to strike from behind. No longer there. The requirement is that "the victim must be unaware". So, basically stealth or invisibility. Now what folks have said is absolutely true, a lot of mini-minibosses have pretty high Perception. It usually doesn't work. I will only add it seems to matter zero if you come up on them frontally, the side, or from behind. (You would figure it might work better from behind, but that honestly doesn't seem to matter. The Perception check doesn't seem to care about what angle you come from. Demons truly have eyes in the back of their head.)

However, one cool thing the assassin gets is Hide in Plain Sight, the ability to re-stealth in combat even though he's in full view of everybody. Can you do that, and still assassinate a target? Answer is yes. I tried it. It works. Gloriously. Again, of course, not always. It's of course harder to set up once everything else is in motion.

Anyway, results were mixed as I would expect, but if you make Greybor the assassin a real assassin, sometimes it's fun to watch. In one case, he snuck up on a Retriever Spider that was gigantic. Studied target. Sneak up. Assassinate. It's weird, the animation looks like he's sitting there for a moment getting ready to empty his bowels. There's a "windup" but it doesn't look like he's preparing to stab. But anyway ... as with most things, it will either work or it doesn't.

It did. Something like 140 HP damage, and it exploded into glorious chunks. A sight to behold.

I had to try it, and yes it can work. P.S. as I would expect, I NEVER found it to do so on anything with a name. They obviously have plot armor against it.

[darkholyPL]

Originally posted by seeker1:

and unlike backstab doesn't have to be done only at the start of the encounter.

Backstab doesn't have to be only done at the start. It can be done at any point, over and over... tho I imagine my thief barfing invisibility potion after that for like a week. But still, can be done. Or you can just be thief/wizard and cast invis. spells.

[seeker1]

Well, yes, but backstab per se doesn't exist in 3.5E or Parthfinder. And thus this game. Just sneak attack.

You have a certain eldritch scoundrel with invisibility spells he doesn't even need potions ... all I will say is coming up invisible increases his chance of getting sneak attacks, but he can score them without being invisible too. It actually has to do with the thread because it relates to ... flanking.

Arcane trickster lets you sneak attack with ... spells. Now that changes things up in interesting ways. Also BTW there were one or two times where it seemed to me it really could help to disarm a trap from 30ft away.

And going back to positioning, doesn't matter if he's behind the enemy, or not.

[Gorwe]

It's been like that ever since Kingmaker. And, yes, this makes Rogues, Babau in specific, one of the most dangerous enemies. Can't be certain, but I think that a Marilith Sneak Attacked something. Which would be stupid(6 arms, that size...not certain whether it should even be eligible for flanking tbh). But meh. :)

It's not the only thing they adapted. If we were to be RAW, Sneak Attack does not exist. It's simply an alternate condition for a Critical. And as such, everything that's immune to crits, should also be immune to sneak attack. But, in order to not make Rogues(etc) arbitrarily weak(Rogue + Beggar's Nest{NWN 1} = /gulp), they adapted this rule. Afaik. Maybe it's already been adapted in Pathfinder from 3,5 , wouldn't be the first time(pray tell, what does Persistent Metamagic do again? :) ).

[pangoulas]

Game was made with the scope of real time with pause and flanking was poorly implemented due to that making outflank the most broken feat in kingmaker. Even if AI is not smart enough to go for flanks, although enemy rogues should be coded that way, they could implement an 180 area front where flanking won't work (similar to games like desperados etc). You could toggle this on and off to improve positioning. That would improve upon discusting sneak attacks and multiclass in these classes. Don't know how wrath of the righteous works, but in kingmaker half the builds would multiclass to a sneak attack variant or boost ac to the sky.

[AzureTheGamerKobold]

It's busted because of real time, there was a mod for kingmaker that fixed it but as far as i know its never been ported over.

[Gorwe]

Originally posted by AzureTheGamerKobold:

It's busted because of real time, there was a mod for kingmaker that fixed it but as far as i know its never been ported over.

Charging was also much better in Kingmaker, what exactly happened between there and here?