Hey! This is my first post but I've been thinking about it after a Pathfinder game went south for me last night.
Scenario:
A monster has 20 feet of natural reach. If you were outside of that reach and moving to engage it (charging or just moving towards), would the monster get an attack of opportunity once you get to 15ft away from it? (And if that is true, if it had combat reflexes, would it get multiple attacks of opportunity as you move closer?)
I told my DM in the past that entering a monster's threatened square doesn't provoke an attack of opportunity, just moving out of or through it (he used to think engaging provoked AoOs). Last night when I told him that I thought the monster would get an attack of opportunity because it had such vast natural reach and we were moving THROUGH his threatened space to get to it, he told me I had already told him that entering threatened squares doesn't provoke and said I was contradicting myself. I tried to explain what I meant by "through" a threatened square and he got frustrated with me. I didn't want to argue anymore so I let it go and played by his rules cause he's the DM. But I still want to know if I was right in this scenario because people made me feel bad about it. (Since it was negative outcome for us -- I just thought it was a rule so I brought it up).
If I'm wrong I want to know, if I'm right I want to feel less bad about mentioning it.
Thanks for the help if you can!
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You provoke for leaving a threatened square.
So for your example you can move into the square 20' away and not provoke. as soon as you leave that square (whether backing away, moving forward or even sideways) you will provoke an AoO.
You only provoke once for each action. So you only provoke once for a single move action, no matter how many threatened squares you leave.
Moving out of more than one square threatened by the same opponent in the same round doesn't count as more than one opportunity for that opponent.
Thanks dragon! So I guess in some ways I was wrong cause colloquially in past groups I've been in we've said that leaving threatened squares or "moving through" them provokes AoO. When there's no "moving through" text, but it still functions similarly it sounds.
Oh! This also happened in the same fight. Pretending that he had combat reflexes, if you're knocked prone 10ft away from it, and you stand up: I'm pretty sure standing up in someone's threatened area provokes an attack of opportunity -- so if you stood up the monster could hit you, and if after you stood up in the same turn you moved 10 feet to engage it it could attack you again? Because they're too different actions?
Thanks again dragon. :)
Oh! This also happened in the same fight. Pretending that he had combat reflexes, if you're knocked prone 10ft away from it, and you stand up: I'm pretty sure standing up in someone's threatened area provokes an attack of opportunity -- so if you stood up the monster could hit you, and if after you stood up in the same turn you moved 10 feet to engage it it could attack you again? Because they're too different actions?
Correct. Assuming it had combat reflexes (and a high enough dex to get a bunch of Attacks of Opportunity (AoO)),it could attack once for the target moving, once for standing up, once for casting a spell, once for making a ranged attack, once for drinking a potion, etc. etc.