Blind Fight or IBF vs Melee Reach with 50% Concealement ?

[Matt]

UPDATE: My tank has reached level 13, and got the Improved Blind Fight feat. After that, I've had the occasion to fight a Primal Spider Matriarch (the Spider Cave location has one). As a first, I can confirm that its melee attack is a reach attack (in the sense that it has a range greater than 2 ft; precisely, it's 6 ft for the PSM). And secondly, it was now targetting my tank's normal AC rather than his Flat-Footed AC. As a conclusion, it is very likely that:

The game treats melee reach attacks as ranged attacks. In particular, to avoid being Flat-Footed by a monster with total (=50%) concealement, Blind Fight doesn't work but Improved Blind Fight does.


Original post:

I've noticed 2 mobs that target my tank's Flat-Footed AC with their attacks (not only at the beginning of combat): Primal Spider Matriarch and the lone daemon in Vordakai's tomb.

Both those mobs have 50% concealement, which indeed allows to target Flat-Footed AC.

However, my tank has the Blind-Fight feat... which should negate this.

Unless maybe... both mobs have 6 ft reach attacks (I seem to remember that for the spider, and I couldn't check that for the daemon, but his attacks seemed to have some reach).

I'm under the impression that melee reach attacks are treated as ranged attacks by the game on several occasions. That would explain why Blind Fight doesn't work and, if this is so, IBF should work.

Has anybody worked that out and/or tested if IBF does work ?

(as a side note, my tank had 43 Flat-Footed AC thanks to Smite Evil and this was enough to counter the +23 attacks from the daemon, but I'd really like to understand those mechanics).

[Hobocop]

Perhaps the 50% concealment is being treated as a permanent Blink effect which the Blind Fight feat does nothing against.

[Matt]

Originally posted by Hobocop:

Perhaps the 50% concealment is being treated as a permanent Blink effect which the Blind Fight feat does nothing against.

I hope this is not the case, because that would imply that any proper tank would need to dip a few levels in Rogue/Archeo/Barb to get uncanny dodge.

[Matt]

bump!

[Matt]

Second and last bump, in the hope that someone will see this and be able to help.

To make it clear, I'm wondering:

- If I nailed it right when making the assumption that BF isn't working because the mobs have a 6 ft reach attack (in addition to full concealement),
- If BF not working vs Melee Reach with 50% Concealement is a bug or an intended behaviour,
- If IBF would prevent from being FF in those situations.
- And finally, as a bonus question, if there's a spell that would help not being FF in those situations (Echolocation, maybe ?)

[Baahb3]

Might be missing something but in your OP, you mention having 50% concealment allows for the attacker to attack you flat-footed.

I think a 50% concealment due to Invisibility allows that but not for say Displacement.

And maybe this game does, but melee reach attacks should not be treated as ranged attacks in any situation. In PnP, the only 'melee' weapon I can think of that is treated like this is the whip.

IMO, Blind-Fight should prevent this.

[Matt]

Originally posted by Baahb3:

Might be missing something but in your OP, you mention having 50% concealment allows for the attacker to attack you flat-footed.

I think a 50% concealment due to Invisibility allows that but not for say Displacement.

I just googled about that and it seems you're right. Yet, (part of) the reason why my tank was flat-footed to those attacks is likely that the attacker had 50% concealement (even though it was from displacement iirc, and not from invisibility).

Originally posted by Baahb3:

And maybe this game does, but melee reach attacks should not be treated as ranged attacks in any situation. In PnP, the only 'melee' weapon I can think of that is treated like this is the whip.

IMO, Blind-Fight should prevent this.

I remember reading something ingame about reach attack and, at the very least, thinking to myself that they were more or so treated as ranged; but my memory very fuzzy about this can't really recall more precisely.

The fact is, my tank had the Blind Fight feat. So it seems a bug that he was FFed (then again, it wasn't only on the first round, but also every round thereafter). And there may be a 2nd bug, which would be the fact that the mobs could do FF attacks, even tho they didn't have invisibility (the daemon might have had).

I don't really mind that the game doesn't follow exactely the PnP rules (which I'm not very familiar with, anyway) but the fact that such mechanics are so unclear (and there are other examples, like the stealth mechanics, for instance) really downgrades a game that is otherwise really great. Hopefully, the devs will fix/clarify that someday.

I still wonder if Improved Blind Fight would have prevented (ingame, not by PnP rules) being FFed.

Thx for answering :)

[Babbles]

Is your Tank your main character? Because I have noticed my MC being caught flatfooted by certain daemons whereas the rest of the party was fine this despite MC having Blind Fight and other party members not.

[Matt]

Nope. Tank is a merc:

Pala3/SF1/Sorc1/DD6 going for 8/unsure4

He got Blind Fight as a Bloodline Feat.

Unless there's a bug here that will be corrected some day, it would have been a much better option to go for Archeologist instead of Sorcerer: They get Uncanny Dodge at level 2 (among other things).

[Matt]

updated ^^ (see first post if you care ;) )

[=[NK]= Col. Jack O'Neil]

Thanks for the clarification :)