Ok, I have been playing the Runelord' s AP for almost a year with my friends. I have just now come to light on the rules regarding attacks of opportunity. I know the general rules around it, but my one question is about it, does a player's character suffer a penalty to his attack roll during his turn when he moves into an opponent's threatened area and basically gets hit with a AOO while trying to make an attack and the AOO succeeds. The penalty being the damage he takes from the AOO. For example a fighter with a nonreach weapon charges at a large opponent with a natural reach trying to make an attack and triggers AOO and gets hit and takes 21 damage before getting to actually make his attack and suffers a penalty of -21 yo his attack roll. Is this supported in any of the rules in pathfinder, because I can't find it anywhere. This may have been a custom rule that my gm set up, but I want to know if it is in the official rules. My group does not like it when I question the rules of our AP.
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House rule.
If you try to perform a combat maneuver, provoke an opportunity attack and get hit, you suffer a penalty equal to the damage taken. But that only applies to combat maneuvers.
A houserule. And it shifts the power balance even more to casters by giving melees a nasty, unnecessary drawback.
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It sounds like a very common misunderstanding combined with a bit of rules from maneuvers applied to everything else.
An attack of opportunity is triggered not by moving INTO, but by LEAVING a threatened square. In your example, you don't get an AoO for moving into the square adjacent to the giant, but for leaving the square a little farther off that he was also threatening with his big arms.
Taking a penalty on your to-hit check for damage from an AoO, only applies in once circumstance: maneuvers that you're not skilled at. You trigger an AoO if you try a maneuver that you don't have the Improved Something feat for.
So if you trigger an AoO for any other reason, that rule doesn't apply. If you move closer to the giant you trigger an AoO, but that one doesn't cause any penalties (just pain). Then when you next decide to grapple the giant, and don't have Improved Grapple, you trigger a second AoO, but only from the giant you're targeting. On this second one, if the giant hits you, you get a penalty.
However, normally you only get one AoO atttempt per round. So maybe the giant already used it on you when you were getting closer, and now you actually have the opportunity to grapple him without him taking that AoO and hindering you.
Just be careful with monsters that look like they were made for taking advantage of AoOs. They often have the Combat Reflexes feat.