Feign dead after receiving healing in an uncomfortable position


Homebrew and House Rules


Imagine a situation, where you only have a 5" corridor. A player fighting in that corridor drops to negative hitpoints but receives healing from an ally right behind him in the same round. He is now prone, the enemy thinks he is dead (assuming the enemy did not recognize/understand the healing effect). The enemy now wants to attack the "healer", but the field is blocked, so he can't move there... (see discussion at http://paizo.com/forums/dmtz657m?Occupying-a-Dying-Creatures-Square#4

This situation gets even worse if the prone player is still so weak, that he can't take a single attack again if he wants to stay alive. So he will not stand up and risk an AoO, nor will he try to attack the enemy from his prone position (which is unlikely with -4 to attack) and risk being attacked the next round. But neither his ally, nor the enemy can go on with melee fighting because of the blocked field.

So my question is: how do you (other GMs) rule the situation? Will you let him die? Or do you allow him to feign death? Especially if it wasn't his choice to receive the healing right away in this tactically bad position. (Another possibility would be dragging your friend out of the area, but there are no rules for dragging allies I could find.)
The whole problem would not arise, if the prone character would declare himself helpless, because then positioning on his field would be allowed and as long as the enemy thinks he is dead, he would not get attacked.

Recently, we decided to let him feign death, but there are no rules. We came up with something like this:
The enemy standing above the lying creature would get an immediate AoO whenever the lying creature acts. Even actions that do not provoke AoO would trigger an attack because of the very supreme position of the attacker. The lying creature can only wait and think (and thus concentrate on effects or active effects mentally). Even perception by vision is limited, because the open lids would reveal that he is alive.

The whole thing could be ruled out more, like making a bluff check with a bonus of a believable lie (+5, if the enemy took the player down) and/or the enemy being distracted (+5, if he is still in combat).

What are your suggestions?


I'd say allow him to feign death. In a real life situation that's probably what you'd do. A simple Perception check against a Bluff or Disguise check might work? Bluff might be the best.

And your ruling on allowing an AoO against the lying creature sounds fair and I would probably use a similar method in my own game.

This is the character trying to stay alive, not abuse rules to sneak attack the enemy.


Worldheart Design wrote:
This is the character trying to stay alive, not abuse rules to sneak attack the enemy.

I see, you got the point. For the skill to use for the check: maybe Perform(act) would be the better choice, because to me Disguise needs preparation:

PRD, Core Rule Book wrote:
Action: Creating a disguise requires 1d3 × 10 minutes of work. Using magic (such as the disguise self spell) reduces this action to the time required to cast the spell or trigger the effect.

I suppose the best and easiest way would be, to apply the rules for Feint, because both (Feign death and Feint) are "lies in combat" so to say (with some modifications to bonuses that apply as stated above) and maybe with the modification to allow a Perform(act) check instead of the bluff, if that bonus is higher. (The later is mainly for bards that focus on performing/acting to respect their ability to do so.)


Bluff vs. Perception


Bluff then.

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