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James Risner
(Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, Adventure Path, Campaign Setting, Companion, Modules Subscriber)
With thanks and respect to the designers for their replies (so cool to have ongoing boards input from them!), I think there is a range of attack action terminology which it would be useful to have clarified here, and which Vital Strike highlights:
Issue 1: Vital Strike runs off 'attack action'. I'm not sure this is used anywhere else in Pathfinder. In 3.5 I recall divergent readings of grapple re what you could do with 'an attack' if you had multiples, but Pathfinder has cleaned that up. It has introduced Vital Strike as an 'attack action', though. Simplest thing? If you want it to be a standard action, reword it as standard action. Lose 'attack action' altogether. It's confusing.
(nb: personally I'm allowing VS 'once each round'. Want to use it once on a full attack, charge, spring attack? Fine, not overpowered if you lose 1+ iteratives, as per the Beta. Want to use it on an AoO? Go for it - but it's still only once per round. Also simple, I reckon.)
Issue 2: Full Round Attacks: charge, full attack, spring attack, shot on the run: what kind of attack is carried out within each of these? If it isn't a standard (and I don't think it is), then it would be great to have that spelt out. Even better would be to have a definition of what kind of attack it then is...more on which below.
Issue 3: Standard Attacks: can you use more than one 'standard attack' feat on a single standard attack? I know not, but it isn't clear. As a separate point, in a complete definition of attack types, it would become clearer that standard attacks aren't the defeault. They only normally occur when you move and attack. Attacks of Opportunity, Full Attacks, charges, spring attacks and shots on the run are using other kinds of attack action...which it would be excellent to have defined.
Issue 4: Attacks of Opportunity: clearly these aren't standard action attacks (otherwise you would lose your standard elsewhere). So by the PF RAI you can't use standard action feats (including VS, since that's basically how you've got it), or combat maneuevers. That's fine, but again, it's not entirely clear. It would be clear if the type of attack action involved in an AoO was defined.
The upshot is that it would be marvellous to have clear definitions of three types of attack action: (1) the standard attack; this is clear, in fact, if the VS reference to 'attack action' is changed to 'standard'; (2) the much quicker attack involved in an AoO; (3) the attack action, also rapid, involved in a full attack, charge, spring attack or shot on the run.
Does that make sense? Hope so.
I don't have a precise definition for (3). I would suggest something like this for (2):
* Immediate Attack Action:
"An Attack of Opportunity is an Immediate Attack Action. This is a special type of Immediate Action. Like an Immediate Action, an Immediate Attack can be taken out of turn and takes up less time than a Move Action or Standard Action. Like an Immediate Action, an Immediate Attack cannot be made more than once per round unless a feat, spell or other special ability allows you to do otherwise. By default, you can make one Immediate Action and one Immediate Attack each round. You cannot take a non-attack action during an Immediate Attack, nor can you use any attack option that requires a Standard Action."
By this logic, the definition for (3) might be a special type of Swift attack action, one which the Full Attack option allows to be executed more than once per round.
Anyway, point is, the Vital Strike unclarity is actually part of a larger muddiness with attack actions. Clear it all up and we'll all love ya. :)
Addendum:
Alternatively, charge, Spring Attack and Shot on the Run could contain standard attack actions. I quite like this, but given Jason's recent comments on Vital Strike that isn't the intention.
(ie Vital Strike is an attack action, which equals a standard action, and this can't be used on a charge, which is a special full round attack action. If a charge doesn't contain a standard attack, then other special full round attacks, like spring and shot-on-the-run, probably don't either - though this isn't clear, because the attack action types in many of these cases have never been clearly defined).
Personally, I'd be all for charge/spring/shot on the run containing standard attacks. I think the more dynamic and movement-rich combat becomes the more exciting it is, and so the more decent alternatives there are to full attacking the better.
We've been playing that an "attack action" is any action that allows you to attack. To us that's what we though it meant. Simple as that."Attack Action" is a Standard Action and not "any action that provides an attack."
I know that. Just saying it wasn't that clear at the start and we took it as any attack. It worked well so we so no reason to change it. But again that's house rule in our game.
Hey there everybody,
Let me see if I can clean this up a bit.
Cleave is a standard action, which means you can use it anytime you can take a standard action. It cannot be used as part of a full-attack action, which is a full round action. You cannot use Cleave as part of a charge, since that is a special full-round action (partial charge not withstanding). The same applies to Great Cleave.
Vital Strike can be used in place of an attack action. This means that whenever you take an attack action, you can use Vital Strike instead. An attack action is a type of standard action. While this is nearly identical to Cleave, there are a few subtle differences. Anything that applies to an attack action would apply to a Vital Strike attack, whereas it would not, necessarily, apply to Cleave. The two feats cannot be used in conjunction.
I am not sure that answers all the questions here.. but I will check back later to see if there is anything I have missed.
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing
I have a request that may clear some of the confusion up. Could you give us some examples of things that would apply with vital strike but wouldn't apply to cleave? Maybe seeing it from a different perspective will make it more clear.
Until further errata, I'm going to interpret Spring Attack as allowing you to take a melee Attack Action at any point during your Move Action. So, no cleaves or deadly strokes that are their own type of Standard Action, but okay on vital strikes or sunders or other abilities that modify an Attack Action or an attack.
I'm thinking about house ruling the Spring Attack feat further. As modified above, but adding that if the character also has Point Blank Shot, they can choose to take a ranged Attack Action instead (I'm okay with skirmishing archers being able to VS on the run), and/or if they also have Combat Casting to take a Cast A Spell Action instead. Only one feat for the 3 mobility options makes sense to me.
Instead of letting them get double duty out of one feat (spring attack) I would probably just houserule that shot on the run could be combined with VS if that's what you want to do. That's probably what I'll be doing. It's a single attack, getting an extra d8 isn't game breaking and it makes the feat option useful for something other than heavy crossbow sniper.