Only been back to 3.5/pathfinder for a few months after years off. Please pardon if these are newbish questions. I googled around as much as I could.
Are there any feats, shallow dips, magic items that help one beat feint? I know raising Wis and skill focus: sense motive, but we're not yet level 10, so it's pretty easy for a same level opponent to have a higher bluff... Making my odds of keeping my Dex and dodge bonuses significantly less than 50/50.
My multi class Swashbuckling Adventures fighter can pull off a 38 AC before magic items, but it drops to 17 if Dex/dodge is gone. I can't be caught flat footed, but if I'm reading it right, that's no protection from feint.
Also, my dex/dodge is only gone to that attacker, and only on the next attack? Are there any ways to be "feinted" twice in the same turn from a single opponent or for another attacker to benefit from the others feint? Honor duels and such are somewhat common and fairly brutal in our excellent homebrew campaign, and I'd rather not lose anymore than I have too. I've exhausted the AEG books, which are really the only third party sources we're using.
Thanks in advance.
You can go to http://www.d20pfsrd.com/ and search for Sense Motive. There are plenty of magic items that give a bonus. For feints specifically, there a lot of ways to improve it, but not much to resist it.
Usually, you're only flat-footed to the person who feints you. However, there are some teamwork feats (Feint Partner, Improved Feint Partner) that will let other people benefit from Feint. You're usually only flat-footed to the next single attack, unless the person feinting has a feat tree like Greater Feint, Improved Two-weapon Feint, or Improved Feinting Flurry.
There is the Shrewd Tactician feat, which gives an typed bonus to resist Feint. Other than that, Casual Viking's suggestion on boosting your sense motive is good. Things like Parry, Crane Wing, Snake Style, etc., are also good options to avoid being attacked.
Feint tactics are not all that common, unless your GM happens to like them. Feint is a standard action or a move action with Improved Feint, which sacrifices your full-round attack. Even with Two Weapon Feint or Feinting Flurry, the attacker is giving up an attack to feint, and there's a string of feat investments to make it work, and if you run into a feinter, just back off and attack them at range.
In your position, I'd probably focus on other ways to increase my flat-footed AC (Barkskin, Shield, monk dip, etc.), or work on ways to get miss chances (Blur, Displacement, etc.).
First of all, that sentence is referring to the fact that flying does not cause you to become flat-footed, not that flying makes you immune to the condition.
Second of all, feinting doesn't even cause the target to become flat-footed, it denies them their Dexterity bonus to AC. There's a big difference.
Bingo!
Right on both counts.
It's a very bad idea to get in the habit of calling someone flat-footed just because they're denied their DEX bonus to AC.
Flat-Footed ONLY happens at the start of combat when each combatant is flat-footed until their first turn. After that, they're never flat-footed again for the whole combat.
Sadly, even the Devs forgot this a few times and have created spells or feats that for some reason cause an opponent to lose their Dex bonus but they wrote "become flat-footed". I don't remember the examples; maybe they're fixed by now.
Each to their own.
How would that sentence be any different if it said "Unarmed opponents are denied their Dex bonus to their AC ..."
Answer, no different, except they would have used the correct terminology. Oh, and they might be able to make AoOs if appropriate. Or do you think using Catch Off Guard is intended to completely take them out of Combat so it's like a new combat is starting for them on their next initiative count?
Is your GM using this tactic regularly? Feint takes a lot to get to the point where it's worth it, and I don't think there are any monsters in the bestiary that really use it. You'd be better off using those resources to pump your initiative and perception; not going first in combat is by far the most common way of losing your dex bonus to AC.
Thanks all. Very helpful! Good tips and meta advice. Much appreciated.
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The biggest way to reduce the usefulness of feinting is to move.
Improved Two Weapon Feint - You must give up an attack at your highest BAB to get feinting on all subsequent attacks. This mean it requires a full round action, but you must TWF. He can't use TWF if you are not adjacent to him, he must move and give up his trick to feint.
Improved Feint requires a move action. Again move away from him. Now he must use a move action to follow you. Which means he can either attack you with a standard without feinting or, if he happens to have Greater Feint he can feint you so that his next attack against you is denied dex to AC.
However, by having a high acrobatics (which should be easy since you're playing a dex based class) you can avoid attacks of opportunity and just deny him the chance to make attacks use feint. Basically, keeping mobile and not trading full attacks will deny him the ability to use feint particularly well.
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Curious - how did you get a dodge/dex AC bonus of +21 before level 10?
The biggest way to reduce the usefulness of feinting is to move.
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You forgot about Moonlight Stalker Feint. With that you can Feint as a swift action, though you need concealment to do it. (Blur anyone? Smoke pellets work too - though there's debate over how easy they are to break.) Admittedly - it isn't as common as the two you mentioned, but it's still a possibility.
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Each to their own.
How would that sentence be any different if it said "Unarmed opponents are denied their Dex bonus to their AC ..."
Answer, no different, except they would have used the correct terminology. Oh, and they might be able to make AoOs if appropriate. Or do you think using Catch Off Guard is intended to completely take them out of Combat so it's like a new combat is starting for them on their next initiative count?
The difference between Flat-footed and Denied their Dex bonus to AC is that you cannot take Attacks of Opportunity while Flat-footed (excepting Combat Reflexes). So, there is a mechanical difference, and the phrasing is important. With Catch Off Guard, that probably doesn't matter, but with the Acrobatics example, it would. If you're balancing and someone provokes, it would appear that you would not get an Attack of Opportunity. Feinting doesn't create such a situation.
To the original question, I don't know of anything that makes you immune to a feint except being unintelligent/mindless. As others have said, boosting Sense Motive is your best option. Keep in mind, you're essentially taking 10 for the DC, but the feinter has to roll, so if your Sense Motive is equal to their Bluff to feint, they'll only succeed on a 10 or better. That's still 55% of the time, and there are more items to boost feint than to boost Sense Motive, but it's far from automatic.
Claxon's strategy is probably the best one.
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Curious - how did you get a dodge/dex AC bonus of +21 before level 10?
You forgot about Moonlight Stalker Feint. With that you can Feint as a swift action, though you need concealment to do it. (Blur anyone? Smoke pellets work too - though there's debate over how easy they are to break.) Admittedly - it isn't as common as the two you mentioned, but it's still a possibility.The biggest way to reduce the usefulness of feinting is to move.
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There is at least one item (Headband of the Ninjitsu) that lets you feint 1/day as a swift action. Also fairly limited and uncommon, though.
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There is at least one item (Headband of the Ninjitsu) that lets you feint 1/day as a swift action. Also fairly limited and uncommon, though.
I forgot about that one.
It's a very good item for characters with much SA (except maybe unchained rogues) - but the swift action feint isn't the main reason. It's great if you don't want to burn a feat in order to get SA when the target has concealment. The +2 to attack rolls when you get SA is rather nice too.
Admittedly - at 15k it's rather pricey - so not generally used until rather high levels. (Reason I forgot - usually well out of my price range.)
Yeah, there's not much to be done about Moonlight Stalker Feint, but no strategy is perfect. Simply moving away from the enemy is effective against the most common methods of feinting an enemy so it works pretty well and requires 0 investment.
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Best defense against Moonlight Stalker feint is blindsight or greater blind fight. If you don't have concealment, you can't moonlight stalker feint.
Greater Blind-Fight doesn't beat Moonlight Stalker feint.
Benefit: Your melee attacks ignore the miss chance for less than total concealment, and you treat opponents with total concealment as if they had normal concealment (20% miss chance instead of 50%). You may still reroll a miss chance percentile roll as normal.
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It only ignores concealment for your melee attacks - it doesn't ignore it entirely.
But at higher levels - if I'd invested in a Moonlight Stalker Feint build (at least 6 feats to work properly) - I'd have likely invested in a Ring of Blink. A 4% miss chance is a small price to pay to get for Blink style defense & making sure that you can Feint every round.
But frankly - with said 6 feat investment, it isn't a common build.
Also consider becoming an Outsider or Animal. Another +4 to avoid feints!
How exactly does being an outsider give you +4 to resist feints? Are you referencing the 'non-humanoid' part of the Feint description? Because you'd have to be some kind of monstrous outsider that doesn't fit into the vaguely human-shaped type for that to work.
A humanoid usually has two arms, two legs, and one head, or a human-like torso, arms, and a head.
Just being a tiefling or something doesn't cut it. However, a druid shapeshifting into an actual animal would(although you could make an argument against apes being immune).
Can you point me to where the rule for that is? Because I'm not seeing it under Wild Shape, the Beast Shape spell that Wildshape uses, or the Polymorph section in the rules.
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Actually, you point to a rule that say it does change type.
You wont find a rule saying that creature doesn't change, because that's not how the system works. The system tells you what you can do, and what happens. It doesn't tell you what you can't do.
In 3.5 the rules for wildshape explicitly said you changed creature type. That line was (purposefully) removed from Pathfinder.
Yep, if you polymorph into a bear, you're really just a guy in a foam-rubber bear suit. If that guy is human, then he's still human in the bear suit. If that guy is a sickly little 6 STR weakling, he's still a weakling in the bear suit (but might have gained a little STR from the spell, but all the real bears still laugh at how pathetic he is).
In short, whatever you are before you cast the spell, you're still the same after the spell, but you look different and you get the bonuses that are explicitly written in the spell. Nothing more. And by "nothing more" I am including changing your base creature Type since that is not explicitly stated.
Let me explain my reasoning. I wasn't really asking Imbacatus to prove what he said, I just wanted to read it for myself because I thought I missed it somewhere and was ready to be corrected.
However, since you brought it up Claxon:
At 4th level, a druid gains the ability to turn herself into any small or Medium animal and back again once per day.
That's the first line of Wildshape, and nowhere in the rest of the description of the ability does it ever reference or suggest that you keep your original type while using Wildshape. In fact it literally says "turn herself into a small or medium animal"!!! It goes on to say that it functions like the Beast Shape spell, however. So lets go take a look at that. Beast Shape is a polymorph effect, and we'll get to that after.
When you cast this spell, you can assume the form of any Small or Medium creature of the animal type.
Once again, nowhere in the spell does it suggest or point towards retaining your original creature type. So lets move on to polymorph and see if any light is shed from that point.
a polymorph spell transforms your physical body to take on the shape of another creature. While these spells make you appear to be the creature, granting you a +10 bonus on Disguise skill checks, they do not grant you all of the abilities and powers of the creature. Each polymorph spell allows you to assume the form of a creature of a specific type......
The rest of the description covers special abilities and sizes of creatures which aren't relevant to the topic at hand. While there's some ambiguity involved in the wording of "take the form of...", there's nothing that suggests that your original type is maintained through a polymorph. In fact, a little further down in the Polymorph section it says:
When you cast a polymorph spell that changes you into a creature of the animal, dragon, elemental, magical beast, plant, or vermin type,
In every step of the Wildshape/Beast Shape/Polymorph it constantly references changing to a creature type. The only place I was ever able to find any reference to maintaining your original type was in the 3rd edition rules. Pathfinder, while similar, is not actually the same as 3rd ed.
If I am wrong in this, please explain where my logic has failed me. I want to know how it's actually supposed to be done. If my interpretation of the rules is faulty, I WANT to be corrected.
Also, I apologies to the rest of the thread, as this is kind of a derail/hijack. ;)
Simple.
These spells/abilities change you into something else. What else? A creature of specific types. They mention "type" to tell you what type of creature you can select. So, clearly, your generic Wildshape doesn't let you select a creature of the Aberration type.
Nowhere does it say you actually become that type; it only says that you can choose creatures of that type.
For a real life example, you could walk into a costume store:
You: I'm looking for a certain type of costume.
Clerk: What type of costume.
You: I was thinking of some type of undead, maybe a vampire or a zombie.
Clerk: Here, try this on...
And now that you have put on your undead type costume, have you actually become the undead type yourself, or are you still human?
Of course you're human. Your type did not change when you put on your costume.
And it works the same way for the human druid who wildshapes into a an animal type.
Yeah, all of your quotes are about telling you what types of creature types you can select to change into.
You will note that none of them actually tell you that your creature type changes.
They all basically say "assume the form of a specific creature type". Which is not the same as changing your actual creature type.
Else, you would be subject to spells like dominate animal while wildshaped, but immune to dominate person. But that is not the case. You are affected as your creature type (usually humanoid(X), which is never changed.
Except the final piece of polymorph that I quoted, which literally says:
"When you cast a polymorph spell that changes you into a creature of the animal, dragon, elemental, magical beast, plant, or vermin type..."
And the original Wildshape ability which says:
"... turn herself into any small or Medium animal..."
I think that it's ambiguous enough to be ruled either way. I see the points you guys are making, and I concede that it is a perfectly legitimate way to interpret the rules. I'm not personally convinced, but I can accept that either way is legitimate.
But to get back to the original topic of the thread, if you Wildshape into a fish, are you really still considered a humanoid type for the sake of being subject to 'Feint'? For the sake of argument I'll assume that your actual creature type is still humanoid. However, I would also rule that unless the person attempting the feint KNEW that the fish was actually a humanoid, he wouldn't know to feint as such, and would still take the -4 penalty. You could apply the disguise bonus for being polymorphed against a perception test, or sense motive maybe.
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But to get back to the original topic of the thread, if you Wildshape into a fish, are you really still considered a humanoid type for the sake of being subject to 'Feint'? For the sake of argument I'll assume that your actual creature type is still humanoid. However, I would also rule that unless the person attempting the feint KNEW that the fish was actually a humanoid, he wouldn't know to feint as such, and would still take the -4 penalty. You could apply the disguise bonus for being polymorphed against a perception test, or sense motive maybe.
Except - he's not feinting as if they were a fish - he's feinting the same either way. Hence the common -4 if it's a different type.
Besides - you're well into houserule territory there anyway.
Aren't house rules the natural result of ambiguous wording or unclear intent of the RAW? :)
Not always.
Most of my house rules come from fully understanding but not liking an official rule.
If I don't understand a rule, I research it. If the rule is ambiguous or unclear, I make a ruling (arguably a house rule but for me, that's just deciding what the real rule is meant to be).
Once I understand a rule, I decide whether I like it. If not, THEN I make a house rule to replace it.
(Other house rules exist to create something that just doesn't exist in the official rules).