Smallberries's page

Here's the tactic: Alice is fighting Bob, who is invisible. Alice uses her movement to run through as many squares as she can, because if she encounters an enemy square, she must stop - because you cannot run through an enemy square. This allows her to identify the square Bob is in, and if she happened to do it on her first move action, she can now attack Bob as a standard action.

My thinking is, Alice's movement is tantamount to an overrun. Bob is entitled to step aside, as per the overrun rules, and let her through. I think she should be allowed a perception check, perhaps with a bonus, to notice that she passed through an enemy square, and alter her action accordingly (i.e., if she makes the perception check, she can stop and attack Bob's square).

One player in my group has a real problem with this. His argument is that since Alice did not declare an overrun, she is not doing an overrun, and none of those rules should apply - Bob should not be able to step aside and let her through. She moves, encounters an illegal space (Bob's square), and stops, thus identifying his square.

My thinking is that Bob does not know that Alice has not declared an overrun. All he knows is that she's trying to move through his space. He should be allowed to let her move through his space as if it were an overrun, even though she didn't intend one.

I've looked at a number of Pathfinder forums and this question comes up every so often, but I have not seen a clear, rules-based answer to this question.

There is a rule in the core book that outlines how you go about finding an invisible creature: it takes a standard action, it only checks two squares at a time, and there's a 50% chance of failure each time. This says to me that it's supposed to be really hard to find invisible creatures. The "run around until you bump into something" tactic seems to circumvent that difficulty, which I don't like. My view is you're not supposed to be able to thwart a spell with a move action.

I'd like to allow the tactic, but treat it as an overrun and give Bob the option of letting Alice pass through his square. I'd consider giving Alice a free perception check to notice that she did so (although I'm not sure what bonus to give to the check). I'd also consider that "overrun" a move action rather than a standard, because from Alice's perspective, that's exactly what it was.

Is there a clear answer on this?