Can you use quick steal as part of a spring attack?

[Partizanski]

I though it would be really funny to give a quickling greater and quick steal so that he is darting around grabbing things from the party without them noticing, but I wonder if it works like I think it does.

Relevant links:

Spring Attack:

Benefit: As a full-round action, you can move up to your speed and make a single melee attack without provoking any attacks of opportunity from the target of your attack. You can move both before and after the attack, but you must move at least 10 feet before the attack and the total distance that you move cannot be greater than your speed. You cannot use this ability to attack a foe that is adjacent to you at the start of your turn.

Quick steal:

On your turn, you can perform a single steal combat maneuver in place of one of your melee attacks. You must choose the melee attack with the highest base attack bonus to make the steal.

Greater Steal:

You receive a +2 bonus on checks made to steal an item from a foe. This bonus stacks with the bonus granted by Improved Steal. If you successfully steal an item from a foe during combat, it does not notice the theft until after combat is over or if it attempts to use the missing item.

[Jiggy]

Yep, Quick Steal combos with Spring Attack just fine.

Just remember with Greater Steal that the only thing they don't notice is that you nabbed an item; they'll still see you dart up to them and away (and probably wonder what you're doing).

[Partizanski]

Unless I misunderstood, if you move past someone, as long as you start and end with cover or conealment, you get a stealth check to not get notcied. That being said, in this case there would be no penalty for distance to notice it coming.

[Jiggy]

Partizanski wrote:

Unless I misunderstood, if you move past someone, as long as you start and end with cover or conealment, you get a stealth check to not get notcied. That being said, in this case there would be no penalty for distance to notice it coming.

Using the Stealth skill can help, but be aware that Combat Maneuver checks are explicitly a type of attack roll, and making an attack roll auto-breaks your Stealth.

EDIT: Though if memory serves, a mere two levels of ninja would let him go invisible as a swift action afterwards...

[Avoron]

Making an attack roll does NOT auto-break stealth. It auto-breaks the spell Invisibility, but nothing else.

What you're thinking of is the rule that says

Invisibility wrote:

If an invisible creature strikes a character, the character struck knows the location of the creature that struck him (until, of course, the invisible creature moves).

Although this is written in the invisibility section of the glossary, it seems intended that this applies to all creatures attacking from Stealth. The way this would function in ordinary combat was discussed somewhat in this thread.

A steal combat maneuver, however, works differently, because you are not striking your opponent, and Greater Steal prevents them from even noticing you took anything. This means they won't necessarily become aware of your presence when you steal from them. And with Natural Invisibility and Supernatural Speed, you always have concealment, so you don't need to worry about that.

So as long as they succeed on their Stealth checks, quicklings could totally use Spring Attack and Quick/Greater Steal to steal things from their enemies without their enemies even noticing that they are there.

Nice idea.

[Bob Bob Bob]

Stealth wrote:

Your Stealth immediately ends after you make an attack roll, whether or not the attack is successful (except when sniping as noted below).

[DM_Blake]

So to put all this together:

You can start your turn with Stealth, use Spring Attack to move to and away from some "mark". You can Quick Steal something but that requires a CMB roll and that IS an attack, therefore your Stealth ends after you make that roll whether or not your Steal was successful. As you finish the Spring Attack, moving away and into cover, your "mark" sees you but probably doesn't know what you did. You can attempt a new stealth check in cover, but that "mark" saw you and knows where you went; he just might walk over there and investigate your strange behavior.

If you have those two levels of ninja and use a swift action to vanish, there could be an argument about whether you can do that in the middle of your Spring Attack - even if you win that argument, which by RAW you should, you will be briefly visible after the attack roll before you vanish, so your opponent will at least see you, though he may not be able to do anything about it.

If you are naturally invisible or more specifically, able to remain invisible while you make attack rolls, then you can easily get away with this whole idea with or without Spring Attack.

[Avoron]

Huh. Funny how that never came up in that last thread.

[Jiggy]

DM_Blake wrote:

If you have those two levels of ninja and use a swift action to vanish, there could be an argument about whether you can do that in the middle of your Spring Attack...

Core Rulebook, Combat chapter, Actions in Combat, Swift Actions wrote:

You can take a swift action anytime you would normally be allowed to take a free action.

Core Rulebook, Combat chapter, Actions in Combat, Action Types, Free Action wrote:

You can perform one or more free actions while taking another action normally.

You can take free actions while taking other actions, and you can take swift actions any time you can take free actions. Ergo, you can take your swift action while taking another action.

Therefore, by definition, you can use Vanishing Trick (swift action) while using Spring Attack (full-round action). There is no argument that it works differently than what it plainly says (at least, no argument that's appropriate for the Rules Questions forum, if we have any respect for how Paizo organizes their messageboards).

Even so, as you mention, the disappearance would have to be either before the Steal (which is pointless, because you're already Stealthed and it'll break when you Steal anyway) or after the Steal (in which case they see you in between Stealing and disappearing, if only for a moment).

[DM_Blake]

Jiggy wrote:

DM_Blake wrote:

If you have those two levels of ninja and use a swift action to vanish, there could be an argument about whether you can do that in the middle of your Spring Attack...

Core Rulebook, Combat chapter, Actions in Combat, Swift Actions wrote:

You can take a swift action anytime you would normally be allowed to take a free action.

Core Rulebook, Combat chapter, Actions in Combat, Action Types, Free Action wrote:

You can perform one or more free actions while taking another action normally.

You can take free actions while taking other actions, and you can take swift actions any time you can take free actions. Ergo, you can take your swift action while taking another action.

Therefore, by definition, you can use Vanishing Trick (swift action) while using Spring Attack (full-round action). There is no argument that it works differently than what it plainly says (at least, no argument that's appropriate for the Rules Questions forum, if we have any respect for how Paizo organizes their messageboards).

Even so, as you mention, the disappearance would have to be either before the Steal (which is pointless, because you're already Stealthed and it'll break when you Steal anyway) or after the Steal (in which case they see you in between Stealing and disappearing, if only for a moment).

Oh, I actually agree. I've just seen too many arguments about whether you can take actions inside other actions to assume that every GM is on board, so I mentioned the possibility.