No problem that I can see. You sacrifice attack bonus which is more than made up for by the True Strike, and should you get an AoO chance it's heavily penalised because the True Strike won't apply. Probably one of the reasons they nerfed Combat Expertise and Power Attack in Pathfinder (imagine a 5th level fighter/1st level sorcerer with PA and CE by 3.5).
In your example, in round 2 you might also want to move away from combat while still having the bonus for fighting defensively so you can more easily repeat the effect.
Given armour penalties on spell casting, you might want to take sorcerer instead of wizard though since there are limited spells unaffected by armour so you may find you only ever cast True Strike anyway.
|
I see nothing that prevents you from using PA and Fighting Defensively at the same time.
However, True Strike will only apply on the first attack made, and the penalties will remain the rest of the round. You can mitigate this by only making one attack and moving away, but you will still be at a minus to hit on any AoOs you make that round. You will get PA on those AoOs if they hit however.
Perhaps better to just get a magic item that lets you cast True Strike 3/day or so, instead of wasting a level on it.
Unless there's other things you want out of it.
I don't see why it shouldn't be legal... if it's worth it, is another question.
Just full attacking once you have 2 or more attacks might be worth more than this tactic though.
A friend in a 3.5 campaign has this as his main 'trick' and is very effective against high ac high hp enemies (dragons). He had an item of TS 3/day made (nb - I keep meaning to start a thread on 'game breaking magic items' because there are a couple 1st level spells which can be made into permanent items for next to no cost which totally cock play balance - TS isn't one of them I don't think, though our GM might beg to differ) and in a fight with a big bad it's much more effective to guarantee a hit with maximum power attack every other round, than do six full attacks and maybe hit three times. With Pathfinder's nerfed power attack, the cost/benefit is greatly reduced, but if the target's AC is such that you won't hit at least 50% of the time, you are at least breaking even.
For your character, take sorcerer as your spell using class and have expeditious retreat as your other spell...which has the added bonus of meaning you don't dump charisma!
|
There's two sections on 'Fighting Defensively' in the Combat chapter: page 184 'Fighting Defensively as a Standard Action', and page 187 'Fighting Defensively as a Full-Round Action', so you can do either.
When your character starts getting a high enough BAB to use multiple attacks, taking the Vital Strike Feat tree will keep this tactic a particularly effective one - you're only really planning on hitting with the True Strike enhanced blow anyway, so may as well get the extra damage and extra move action that a Vital Strike gets over a Full Attack. Use a big weapon...
This combo would work even better if you were a single classed magus. You would have the added advantage of action economy, spell combat alows you to cast a spell and make a full atack in the same round thanks to their spell combat ability.