Stealing Attacks of Opportunity


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


So the main defense against abusing combat maneuvers and easily getting into flanking position is that these things provoke attacks of opportunity, and in order to NOT provoke or better survive a provoking, you have to take feats (improved trip, improved disarm, mobility, etc.)

Just curious, but in order to cut down on your allies' feat taxes, has anyone just played a character who's job was to provoke AoO's? Like, "Don't worry, I'll run stupidly through the enemy formation so the rest of you can safely get into position"?


Yep, back in 3.5, we had a Crusader with Karmic Strike and Mobility.

Karmic Strike gives you a -4 to AC when you activate it (a free action at the start of your turn), and alows you to make an AoO whenever an opponent makes an AoO against you, and Crusader had a feature where they got bonuses to hit and damage based on damage that they stored up in a "buffer" pool that didn't hit their hp until the following turn.

Crusader wades into the fray, smashes face, clears the way for his allies, then for his standard action attack just uses one of his many abilities that heals hp damage to heal back the damage he just took.

Liberty's Edge

Well, he definitely wasn't designed for that exact purpose, but I have a monk in PFS who can buff to nigh unhittable AC. If things look bad and a teammate needs to back out of the fight, he might run in front of the enemies threatening his allies, then try to grapple one of them for good measure. Thing is, a lot of monsters with reach also tend to have combat reflexes, so movement won't always eat up all of their AoOs. You usually need to full attack with disarm, sunder, or trip attacks, if they can be disarmed, have something to sunder, or can be tripped. At that point, I find you might as well just full attack for damage, or grapple, like I said, since it prevents enemies from taking attacks of opportunity.

I know a couple people looking at making similar panther style monks to run interference and deal damage while remaining mobile. But it does carry the problem that it requires enemies taking attacks of opportunity against you not figuring out that if they just leave you alone while moving, you never hit them. So good for low level play, when facing animals and such. Not so good when you're facing highly intelligent enemies like devils and daemons often.


Yes, I had a gnome barbarian who would often deliberately provoke attacks of opportunity for movement. She had the Mobility feat and lots of hit points, so she was the best one to absorb the attack of opportunity from a creature.

Usually, she provoked in order to let her fellow party members safely close in on a creature with reach. Also, the party included a rogue cohort who could not afford much injury, so my barbarian would take the flanking position behind the creature so that the rogue could easily retreat back among the squishy spellcasters if necessary. Third, the party included a reckless melee sorceress who sometimes got into the middle of a crowd of enemies and needed an opening to retreat.

Sometimes, my barbarian would take advantage of having already used up the creature's single attack of opportunity to make a combat maneuver instead of a standard attack, despite having no Improved Combat Maneuver feats.


I did play a high AC Summoner mounted on an Eidolon with Pounce, and we'd often absorb AoOs for charging. Other PCs would often come in behind us, but using up monster AoOs wasn't really the goal (more like forming a tough to hit or bypass melee barrier the rest of the party could work behind)

If drawing AoOs is your thing I guess you might want to check out the various Panther Style feats. A less feat intensive option might be using Total Defense, which you can combine with a Move action. If you happen to have Mobility too this would potentially make you pretty tough to hit (+10 AC total) when you draw AoOs for moving.

I guess a totally different approach might be to use area effects which limit visibility and therefore prevent AoOs. Ideally these would be effects which only last a single round or can be dismissed once your allies are into position.

Silver Crusade

There's a way to make a Monk that revolves entirely on provoking AoO and smashing face doing so. Go Drunken Master archetype and Panther Style. Take a swig of alcohol (standard action) to gain a point of ki, use it to boost your AC (swift action), and then just swerve through enemies (move action) and provoke all of the AoO you can so that you can hit them with Panther Claw. Rinse and repeat each round. What's nice is that Monks get Fast Movement so you have plenty of movement to provoke from as many enemies as possible, or just exit/enter a single enemy's threatened space over and over to soak up all of the AoO.

It comes online pretty early too. If you're Human you can get the main lineup as early as first. Generally though it would look like this:

1st: Panther Style, Combat Reflexes (Bonus)
3rd: Panther Claw

You can also go Master of Many Styles (which gives up Flurry of Blows which will hurt a bit if you're not fighting very many things) which would make it look like this:

1st: Combat Reflexes, Panther Style (Bonus)
2nd: Some style feat that synergizes well or patches weaknesses, like Tiger Style
3rd: Panther Claw.

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