Body Shield


Rules Questions


Just wondering about the mechanics of the Body Shield feat. Specifically, I am wondering if the user of this feat should declare it before the incoming attack roll is made. It seems to me that it should be declared (otherwise you could just wait until you got hit and declare it), but it doesn't actually say that. Some other immediate actions DO say this (Duelist/Parry says it must be declared before the attack roll).

I figure it will go down like this at my table: Enemy successfully grapples PC caster. PC warrior declares he will attack the enemy. Before he rolls, I declare the enemy will use its Body Shield feat and put the caster in the way of the attack. The warrior will then say "well I will do something else then".

Now, you could go back and forth about whether the warrior would or would not know this was happening and could react to it, and whether or not this was metagaming, so I think this is best resolved as a rules mechanics issue:

It seems to me that once someone has declared an attack, and an opponent has expended his immediate action to react to it, even if the roll hasn't yet been made, the attack must proceed as normal. But I don't see this in the rules anywhere.

Thoughts?


It states that You do this in response to an attack which means that the roll has already been made but the results have not been determined. This is shown in the wording. It says the immediate action is made and then you find out if you were hit(with your cover bonus) if not then your shield gets attacked. There is no way the fighter is going to be able to stop his attack after he declares it.


Thanks for replying to my post.

Let me start off by saying that I agree with your interpretation. However it doesn't actually read so clearly, which is why I've posted.

Shizzle69 wrote:
It states that You do this in response to an attack

Actually it says you do it "to gain cover against a single attack". It doesn't say when.

Shizzle69 wrote:
It says the immediate action is made and then you find out if you were hit

It doesn't really say that either. It says: "If you are successful and the attack misses you.."

Does anyone know of any text in the rules that might clarify this?


I think the answer is not in the body shield description but in what an attack is. An attack requires a roll otherwise it is not an attack just intent. Therefore you cannot respond to an attack if it hasn't happened(through rolling a d20 for example.)

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