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Lunge (Combat)
Prerequisites: Base attack bonus +6.
Benefit: You can increase the reach of your melee attacks by 5 feet until the end of your turn by taking a –2 penalty to your AC until your next turn. You must decide to use this ability before any attacks are made.
When can you activate this? Do you have to do it on your turn? or just at any point that you are going to make a melee attack?
FOR EXAMPLE:
Fighter takes no attacks on his turn, and instead uses a full round action to set up a combat patrol (APG). Turn ends.
Opponent provokes in his threatened patrol. At this point the fighter has not made any attacks. Can he activate lunge? Then his patrol gets bigger, assuming he has reflexs and can take advantage of that.
As per RAW, no action is listed to activate the feat, and the conditions are : No attacks have been made [check].
It says
You can increase the reach of your melee attacks by 5 feet until the end of your turn
You don't use Combat Patrol during your own turn, so no reach bonus. Seems clear to me.
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Prerequisites: Combat reflexes, Mobility, base attack bonus +5.
Combat patrol is used on your turn. What I need to know is when can you activate lunge? Can it be used on your opponents turn? Then its effects would expire the next time "the end of your turn" comes around. Or am I wrong?
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The action for "Use a feat" is varies, and the note to the entry says that the action is defined in the feat description. I don't see an action defined in the description. The only thing I can see that would allow you to use this ability is that you make a melee attack. An AoO can be a melee attack, and if you have not made any attacks, the first AoO would allow you to trigger lunge, allowing other attacks until you experience the next "end of your turn" to have +5 ft. reach.
You do activate Combat Patrol on your turn, but the AoOs happen AFTER your turn. Pretty much all kinds of AoOs happen on turns that are not yours. Since Lounge clearly states you get the bonus only "until the end of your [current] turn", you can't use Lounge with Combat Patrol or any other AoOs.
Well, unless an enemy somehow manages to provoke an AoO while it is still your turn, anyway. but that doesn't happen too often.
At level 6 (when this combo is available), a normal maximum threatened area is 24 squares (reach weapon and spiked gauntlet), a maximum combat patrol area is 36 squares and a maximum lunge+combat patrol threatened area is 60 squares. With a non-reach weapon, these threatened areas are 8, 24 and 36 squares respectively. At this level, a fighter probably still only have a 30 foot move (a barbarian might have kept a 40 foot move) and will likely only be able to make 2-4 AoOs. If there are lots of stupid mooks who are charging through the fighter's threatened area, this will wreck an encounter. But...it's still an encounter full of stupid mooks. If there are only one or two more powerful monsters, then it's not that bad. Keep in mind that movement through a threatened area only provokes once and not for each square moved through, so unless an archer or spellcaster gets stuck in the area, a single AoO isn't that bad. Against a polearm wielder, you ought to be expecting AoOs from the character anyway. I still don't think I'd allow it at my table, but I don't think it's hugely game breaking to do so.
I know this is an old thread, but I found something that makes it sounds as though lunge is something that affects your AoOs
"LUNGE (MYTHIC)
Your reaching strikes aid your defenses against those you hit.
Prerequisite: Lunge.
Benefit: Whenever you use Lunge and hit a creature with the melee attack, you no longer take a –2 penalty to AC against that creature. You can expend one use of mythic power when you use Lunge to negate the –2 penalty to AC whether you hit or miss, and gain a +2 bonus on attacks of opportunity you make while Lunge is in effect."
Kraytar: The penalty part of Lunge (the -2 AC) lasts until your next turn (meaning Lunge is in effect the entire round). However, the benefit part of Lunge only works during your turn.
The Mythic Lunge benefit of spending one mythic power negates the penalty, instead granting a +2 bonus to AoOs during the round. The reach benefit is not affected by this, and still only works during your turn.
Now that I've thought about it for a bit...
Enemies draw an AoO when they enter a square threatened by you. Lunge is activated BEFORE you decide to attack an enemy. Do you threaten the square a baddie walks into before you decide to use Lunge? Because if you don't use lunge, you can't normally attack him in that square. Since lunge doesn't say anything about increasing your threatened area... I'm inclined to think this...
Using lunge doesn't increase the area you threaten, it just enables you to attack outside where your normal threatened area is. That being the case, I don't think it would be something to extend the area you can perform AoOs.
That would be pretty broken if you had a reach weapon, as a Polearm Master (Fighter). As a polearm master you can attack adjacent squares and your reach squares. You add combat patrol to that and your threatened area is huge. If you were to add Lunge to that mix, it would be a bit crazy OP.