Assault Leader intentionally misses


Rules Questions


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Can a rogue using Assault Leader intentionally miss to grant his ally an extra attack?


I don't believe you can intentionally miss, but you can give yourself all manner of penalties on the roll if desired.

eg, attack with an improvised weapon, fight defensively, close your eyes while attacking, etc.


What about just forfeiting your attack that round?


You can always just make one attack, but not attacking is not a "miss".


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You can't "purposefully" miss. You can't forfeit the attack to grant the extra attack.

But as mentioned you can load up on penalties to do it.

Use your weapon in an improvised way. -4 penalty. TWF, even with unarmed strikes, count your weapon as your off-hand weapon. If it's not light and you don't have the two weapon fighting feat you take a -6 (primary) and - 10 (off-hand) penalty to hit.


I suppose you can also fight defensively to get a penalty to help you miss?


There's always falling prone (-4 to attack), and then attacking with two weapons (if you don't have TWF, that's -6/-10, on top of the prone penalties).


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hahaha so I'm just imagining a rogue running up to something, dropping to the ground, and then attacking with two longswords as bludgeon damage to be able to purposefully miss so he can shout out, "Look! I'm HELPING! :D"

also you could be blind, giving them a miss chance to avoid if you happened to roll a nat 20.

Wear heavy armor you're not proficient with.
Use a tower shield, especially if you're not proficient.

combined that's a -6 and a -10 and -2 for a -18 to attack rolls normally. Then add defensively. Now you can only hit on a 20, and you have awesome AC too. (I had a cleric do this since he wasn't ever going to fight with a weapon, I called him the cleric in a can)


All this piling on penalties seems like it is getting very silly. Can't you just cut right to it and say you intentionally miss?


darth_borehd wrote:
All this piling on penalties seems like it is getting very silly. Can't you just cut right to it and say you intentionally miss?

No because you might actually roll a nat 20 and hit by accident.

Pretends we are out of the rules thread: Well in a home game a GM could say that happens, but he may also make you follow the intent of the feat which is for it to work only when you try to hurt someone, so he may say your penalties don't matter, and not allow the feat on a miss(due to intentional penalties).


OK. How about the GM can just assume that the character is doing everything possible to miss but sometimes in combat it just can't be avoided, so therefore the player must roll and misses on any result other than natural 20?


darth_borehd wrote:
OK. How about the GM can just assume that the character is doing everything possible to miss but sometimes in combat it just can't be avoided, so therefore the player must roll and misses on any result other than natural 20?

No; if you want something to fail on purpose, you have to do your damnedest to purposefully fail PROPERLY.

Look, if you're going to try and munchkin your way into forcing an ability to activate by "intentionally" missing, then the DM has every right to either say "no, that doesn't work" and throw a d20 at your head for the idea, or at least make your life so absolutely miserable as to force you to use any and all ridiculous means necessary to make every possible outcome of a roll on a d20 a miss except for a Critical Hit.

In my case, I'd throw a d20 at your head, AND say "drop to prone and make a two-weapon full attack with a large Shortsword in your mainhand and a longsword in your offhand if you even want to TRY that".

It's pretty unreasonable to ask the DM to bend over backwards so you can do something that's patently not legal.

YOU want to twist the rules like a Twizzlers stick - I see no reason why the DM shouldn't make doing so as painful as pulling teeth while fire ants are poured down your pants.

---

The other thing is: you need to be Flanking in order to use that Rogue Talent - WHY would you purposefully miss and not just hit the enemy with your Sneak Attack that you can make?

Your attempt at being clever is both never going to work and idiotic in the truest sense of the term. Smack the flanked foe for +Xd6 Sneak Attack and move on with your life.


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Assault Leader is a 1/day ability. Hardly worth a talent even if you allow for intentional misses. It's a trap talent, I'd suggest pretending it doesn't exist.


chbgraphicarts wrote:


It's pretty unreasonable to ask the DM to bend over backwards so you can do something that's patently not legal.

If it was patently not legal, it would actually say "You cannot intentionally miss".

Quote:
The other thing is: you need to be Flanking in order to use that Rogue Talent - WHY would you purposefully miss and not just hit the enemy

Because like you, the designers didn't seem to foresee situations where you would want to give up your attack so another can get one.

Let me give you an example: If you, as a rogue, and your party member are fighting a creature that has high DR and you don't have a weapon that can bypass the DR, but your party member does. It would be better to "give" your attack to your friend in that case.


What so hard about giving yourself penalties to hit, such that you are almost certain to miss? It's really not that hard to do. Equip a gauntlet and any one-handed weapon. On your turn two weapon fight with the gauntlet as your main hand weapon and your one-handed weapon as your off-hand (for extra penalties). Use both of them in an improvised manner (for extra penalties). Between those two, it's a -8 penalty to hit, even if you do have TWF feat. If you don't, then it's even larger. Throw in Power Attack and you're looking at a -10 or more penalty. You are going to miss. You're a rogue. You have crappy BAB and no innate method of increasing your to hit.

You will miss more than you want.


Unlike saving throws there is nothing say you can choose to simply fail an attack roll.

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