Surprised that some attacks are made against Flat-Footed AC. Need help

[Matt]

Hey everybody,

While fighting a Primal Spider Matriarch in the Other World, I noticed that all of her attacks were made against my tank's flat-footed AC; not only on the first round of combat, but also each and every round after.

What's even more surprising is that my tank has the Blind Fight feat, and he also had a See Invisibility buff (from spell) active.

I inspected the monster (full inspect, including abilities) and couldn't find anything that would justify that behaviour.

It looks like this is just an hidden property of the Primal Spider Matriach: all of it's attacks target Flat-Footed AC, no matter what. Am I wrong ?

Also, I'd really like to counter that, since a tank that can be caught Flat-Footed on a regular basis isn't a good tank, imo. I'm seriously thinking about taking 4 Rogue levels (this would work: my Rogue wasn't Flat-Footed against the PSM attacks during that fight) or Barb2/Archeo2/SD3 (but Rogue4 has the advantage of DI for virtually +4 AC), but I'm wondering if there would be other ways. For now, I can think of none. Any idea ?

Edit: True Seeing or Echolocation, maybe ?

Edit2: Oh, and that tank also has Blindsense (from DD5). Doesn't help.

[Astareal]

Were they under the effects of web?

[wendigo211]

That enemy has 50% concealment from something (don't think it's a spell). Anyway, all its attacks are treated as if it's attacking from invisibility and the target is flat-footed. Blind Fight should have negated the flat-footed effect (IIRC, Blind Fight is the only thing that works, not True Seeing or Blindsense). Blind Fight has always let me keep my Dodge/Dex AC against the monsters with the "Displaced" VFX. Are you playing on the Beta branch or the regular game?

[Morgian]

She probably denies you your DEX bonus to AC, which is not the same as being flatfooted. Is the difference between your normal and your flatfooted AC just that bonus (it often is)?

[Matt]

Publicado originalmente por wendigo211:

That enemy has 50% concealment from something (don't think it's a spell). Anyway, all its attacks are treated as if it's attacking from invisibility and the target is flat-footed. Blind Fight should have negated the flat-footed effect (IIRC, Blind Fight is the only thing that works, not True Seeing or Blindsense). Blind Fight has always let me keep my Dodge/Dex AC against the monsters with the "Displaced" VFX. Are you playing on the Beta branch or the regular game?

Regular game, 1.1.6d to be precise. She had some concealment, indeed. This was displayed in the tooltip, in the form of a +2 bonus [concealment]. I'm wondering if she could be blinking ? (I'm not familiar with Pathfinder). For now, it somehow looks as if my tank's Blind Fight feat wasn't taken into account, for some reason.

Publicado originalmente por Morgian:

She probably denies you your DEX bonus to AC, which is not the same as being flatfooted. Is the difference between your normal and your flatfooted AC just that bonus (it often is)?

The tooltip was clearly stating that she was targetting flat-footed AC (35 or so) while regular AC would have been in the 55-60 range, so the tank was losing much more than the DEX bonus. I should have made a screenshot, but since I'm playing on last azlanti, this isn't possible anymore. Out of memory, I'd say he was losing DEX(7), Dodge(1), Arcane Protector(3), Fight Defensively (3), Crane Style (1), Crane Wing (4), Combat Expertise (2).

[wendigo211]

Publicado originalmente por Matt:

Regular game, 1.1.6d to be precise. She had some concealment, indeed. This was displayed in the tooltip, in the form of a +2 bonus [concealment]. I'm wondering if she could be blinking ? (I'm not familiar with Pathfinder).

I'm running the same version and I cleared the Castle of Knives area not too long ago. There are two Primal Spider Matriach's near the centre of that map and they didn't touch my characters (although, my characters all had greater invisibility and mirror image). Maybe you should make a bug report about this, because under the circumstances you described you should not have been flat-footed.

[Matt]

Publicado originalmente por wendigo211:

Publicado originalmente por Matt:

Regular game, 1.1.6d to be precise. She had some concealment, indeed. This was displayed in the tooltip, in the form of a +2 bonus [concealment]. I'm wondering if she could be blinking ? (I'm not familiar with Pathfinder).

I'm running the same version and I cleared the Castle of Knives area not too long ago. There are two Primal Spider Matriach's near the centre of that map and they didn't touch my characters (although, my characters all had greater invisibility and mirror image). Maybe you should make a bug report about this, because under the circumstances you described you should not have been flat-footed.

Will do. That's done via F11 while playing the game, right ? Too bad they won't be able to reproduce the fight (I'm out of the womb now).

Edit: Bug report sent. Hope that helps.

[Matt]

I'm wondering if Blindsense could be overriding Blind Fight somehow...

Since Blindsense doesn't protect against being Flat-Footed when attacked by a monster with 50% concealment, that could be the reason why.

[Matt]

Hmmm, maybe I've found an answer to my question:

IIrc, the Spider's attack has a reach of 6. So, maybe this attack is treated as ranged rather than melee. If that's the case, then vanilla Blind Fight wouldn't protect about being Flat-Footed (Improved Blind Fight would).

Can't test that right now (both Spider's reach and IBF), but will do it later.