Whips, tiny creatures, and reach


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Tandriniel: I agree it is not consistent with the Balor. This is still in major need of a FAQ.

- Gauss


Posted in the other thread but it is pertinent here so...

Hm. That is weird. He ruled that a Large sized creature wielding a whip would have a reach of 30 ft. I mean, I agree with that as it makes logical and mechanical sense to me. However, as posted earlier, the Balor stat block disagrees with that.

He also posted this:

James Jacobs wrote:
Lune wrote:

3 simple questions:

1. What reach does a Tiny sized creature wielding a Tiny sized whip have and what is his "dead zone"?

2. What reach does a Huge sized creature wielding a Huge sized whip have and what is his "dead zone"?

3. What reach does a Medium sized creature wielding a Huge sized whip have and what is his "dead zone"?

Hopefully this gets simple answers as the rules seem vague (perhaps intentionally?).

Weapon sizes are a bit weird.

A weapon's size does not impact reach. Reach merely extends your normal reach, regardless of the size of the weapon. Which is weird and confusing, and a good reason to not go too far down the rabbit hole of using strangely sized weapons in the first place.

And he has now answered your question:

James Jacobs wrote:
Gauss wrote:

James:

I asked earlier but I think you missed it. :)

Going back to the question I asked earlier about a tiny creature with a longspear is the tiny creature able to attack in his own square? My guess is 'no'.

Thanks again,

- Gauss

Again, reach weapons on unusually sized creatures is weird. In this case, I would say no, though, a Tiny creature with a longspear cannot attack creatures in the square in which the Tiny creature is located.

So I think that answered all our questions, right? Whips triple reach, not double it. This counts for larger creatures as well (despite the Balor entry). Tiny creatures getting reach allows them to attack adjacent foes without provoking. Inappropriately sized weapons do not change the amount of reach that is given.

I had only asked for clarity on these questions by posting this:

Lune wrote:

James, you recently answered a question for Gauss (which was restating my earlier question) regarding reach weapons for smaller or larger creatures. In your answer you had said that for a Large creature using a whip that it would typically have a reach of 30 ft. First of all, I wanted to say that I agree that your answer makes sense (both thematically and mechanically) and thank you for answering that question.

This answer does raise the following question though: We searched for creatures of a size other than Small or Medium using the whip and only found the Balor. It's posted reach with the whip is only 20 ft. rather than your suggested 30 ft. While I agree with your ruling do you have any explanation for the Balor's limited reach?

Also, thank you for answering my earlier question regarding using inappropriately sized reach weapons. The question was specifically in regards to something like a Titan Mauler (who is specifically meant to use inappropriately sized weapons) using a Large sized whip. So from your answer does that mean that a Large sized whip would only grant the Titan Mauler the same reach as a Medium sized whip would grant?


Hmm, this made me wonder about how far a tiny creature needs to travel to qualify for a charge. If its 10ft for medium/small, it must be 5ft for tiny, right?


yeah, i hit FAQ.

the issue is that there is no way to KNOW what the 'formula' for whip is.
it could be 15' reach for everybody, meaning it would be shorter than normal reach weapons for large creatures. it could be 5' beyond what a normal reach weapon deals. it could be 10' beyond normal reach. we don't know if it IS a 'multiplier' at all, or if it is some sort of '+X' formula.

it would be nice to know how normal reach weapons work for 0' natural reach creatures as well. (who knows, maybe it doesn't work the same for all of them, Fine could be different than Tiny for this purpose)

maybe even address the medium reach weapon user trying to do a regular attack against somebody in a diagonal hallway?
where they don't threaten 5' away and they don't threaten 15' away, and there is no square 10' away where they do threaten.


When dealing with larger and smaller opponents I tend to scale the squares. So when fighting Tiny opponents, S/M characters take up 4 2.5 feet squares and if all the characters were size Large then a 10 foot square scale would be used.

Note this change does have an impact on the ability to threaten adjacent squares as Tiny creatures can threaten the next 2.5 foot square. I also scale the 5 foot step to one square for the creature's size.

Using this system a tiny creature using a whip would have a range of 7.5 feet and a large creature would have a range of 30 feet.

I don't scale spells as to me the spell determines the range, area of effect etc. If somebody learned how to cast a Huge sized fireball then it would be identical to an enlarged widened fireball and a 7th level spell.

Dark Archive

9 people marked this as FAQ candidate.

This says answered in the FAQ, but I'm not finding it. If it's not in the FAQ, could we start one?

Question: What is the reach of a tiny creature (0 ft. reach with natural weapons) with a longspear? With a whip?


Actually a new thread needs to be started. And the question should really just include how a whip functions for non small/medium creatures.

Dark Archive

Do you think the longspear question is obvious? Is it 0 ft., 5 ft., or other?


Sorry I missed the spear part. It's honestly needs addressing. Pathfinder and it's ancestors do a horrible job of dealing with sizes beyond small-large. At the smallest sizes spells that might fill a normal room wipe out whole towns and at the largest barely fill a bucket. Massive creatures lack any real additional force to their blows due to mass and can be wounded visiously by thumbtack sized weapons.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Yeah, this is another of those "Answered in the FAQ" posts that is not, in fact, answered in the FAQ. Oh well.


I forget where I saw it, but I recall one of the devs stating that for standard reach, a Tiny character goes from 0' to 5' reach; they can attack someone next to them, but not someone sharing their square. In other words, they go "one step up" in reach categories and 0' reach counts as a step. Diminutive or smaller gains nothing from using a reach weapon as they effectively start at -1 or lower and "one step up" is still only 0' or lower thus they gain nothing they couldn't already do. Since Whips triple your natural reach, a tiny creature goes from 0' reach to 10' reach inclusive while a diminutive creature goes from (mechanical) -1 to 5' inclusive. A fine creature with a whip would still gain no mechanical benefit. But my search-fu doesn't bring up the original post I came across and I forget whether it was SKR or JB that brought it up (but I'm pretty sure it was one of those two).


Another failing of reach and really small things a fine creature under what Kazaan stated who used a standard reach weapon technically can't attack at all. That is if I'm remembering adjacent means anything in your square and the squares next to you


This is exactly why I prefer finer divisions of the grid; that one square should represent diminutive creatures and medium creatures should be a good 4x4 squares with 1 square being about half a meter to a side (aprox. 1.5 feet). This would give a lot more control over tactical movement and better represent tactical positioning as well as opening up various options to better represent the reach and limitations of different weapons. For example, a close weapon like an unarmed strike would work very well in very close quarters while a larger weapon like a Longsword needs a few squares (half meter squares, mind you) of buffer room to be used effectively. I have a detailed post here fully detailing the changes I'd make to accomplish this.


just a bit late on this (and it solves nothing), but ...

The balor example is not 100% consistent with a large creature wielding a medium-sized whip. Although the base damage (1d4) and ability to treat as a light weapon are consistent with a medium-sized whip, the balor is not taking a -2 penalty on whip attack rolls due to using a weapon that is inappropriately sized by one step.

+20(BAB) +1(enhancement) +12(str) -1(size) -2(2WF) = +30


Since this has been Necro'd...

Tiny creatures don't really have 0 ft reach. They have half of small/medium reach, which is 2.5 feet. Since the smallest increment on the grid is 5 ft, this basically is rounded down to 0.

For a tiny whip user, however, they would have a reach of 3 * 2.5, or 7.5 feet. This gets rounded down to 5 feet, meaning it yields no extra benefit compared to a regular reach weapon. But it still increases reach.


So, did this ever get definitively answered? I saw the JJ post, but in my skimming I didn't catch anything that would reconcile what seems to be an error in the balor stat block based on JJ's answer.

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