Had a situation come in our game last night fighting a couple of Hill Giants, and was surprised at exactly how difficult it was to determine what was supposed to happen. What it boils down to is that one Hill Giant was blinded and then the fighter attempted to close in to attack. Normally this would provoke an AoO due to the Giant's reach. How does the Giant being blind change things? I want to see what the community's thoughts are, unbiased by how we handled it. :)
All opponents are considered to have total concealment (50% miss chance) against the blinded character.
You can't execute an attack of opportunity against an opponent with total concealment, even if you know what square or squares the opponent occupies.
Seems simple.
Hah, should've known. And here we were trying to figure out the proper DCs for pinpointing squares for invisible creatures, etc. Oops.
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Well, Hill Giants don't have scent, but if they did the situation changes somewhat.
The description of scent says that you can pinpoint an opponent's square if they are within 5 feet. That doesn't help in terms of providing an AOO.
But the rules are a little vague, as the scent description talks about detecting someone within 30 feet ("detect", not "pinpoint") but uses different ranges based on which way the wind is blowing. (Clearly that last part is to include some GM fiat into the RAW.)
If a creature with 10 foot reach also had scent, I'd be inclined to give then the ability to pinpoint a creature out to 10 feet with a Perception(Smell) check. From the viewpoint of natural selection, and most creature's inherent instinct for self-preservation, I think that's reasonable. Although the 50% miss chance would still apply to the AOO as the target still has full concealment (at least as far as the RAW define "concealment").
Scent is powerful enough as essentially an auto-detect without giving scent creatures AoOs that they clearly don't get RAW.
Yeah, scent wouldn't do it, but blindisght certainly would though. Blindsense might as well, though I'm not too sure on that point.
Setting aside the AoO question, I want to check my understanding of how a blinded creature can fight. My underlying assumption is that a blind creature treats all opponents as invisible. Also assuming no special abilities like blindfight/sense/sight or scent. Thus:
1. To attack, a blinded creature must first pick a square. It can use Perception (move action), make touch attacks into 2 adjacent squares to grope for a target (one standard action), or simply choose randomly.
2. If using Perception, the DCs as I understand them would be as follows:
Pinpoint non-moving creature: DC60
Pinpoint moving creature: DC40
Pinpoint creature using stealth: Stealth check +20, -4 to Perception for opposed roll (as per blindness)
3. Once a square is chosen and an attack is made, a 50% miss chance applies.
Is this correct?
Yeah, scent wouldn't do it, but blindisght certainly would though. Blindsense might as well, though I'm not too sure on that point.
Blindsight certainly. Blindsense merely tells you which square they are in, thus they would still get no AOO.
No.
Does Blind-Fight allow AoO when blinded at least or no?
Does the target still have total concealment? That is the question to ask for all of your corner cases.