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Come and Get Me -- the barbarian rage power -- states:
"Enemies gain a +4 bonus on attack and damage rolls against the barbarian until the beginning of her next turn, but every attack against the barbarian provokes an attack of opportunity from her, which is resolved prior to resolving each enemy attack."
Spring Attack states:
"As a full-round action, you can move up to your speed and make a single melee attack without provoking any attacks of opportunity from the target of your attack."
So, I attack with spring attack, versus a barbarian that has activated Come and Get Me on her last turn.
I'm immune to provoking AoOs from the barbarian ...
... except if I hit the barbarian, she gets a free AoO ...
.. except that I'm immune to AoOs from the barbarian ...
And on and on and on.
What's the answer? Which one wins out, the feat or the rage power?
There are many different activities that provoke attacks of opportunity and spring attack does not need to call out each one specifically. It avoids the AoO from Come and Get Me.
I would say that the Spring Attack Feat was set up to avoid AoOs from movement, not other actions performed within the Spring attack sequence (Such as Disarm without the Improved Disarm feat).
The Barbarian generates the AoO by use of their rage power and is triggered by the Attack Action, so I would allow it.
One takes three feats to set up.
One takes a single rage power.
I think the three feat chain trumps the rage power.
Would the rage power allow an AoO against something the barbarian couldn't reach, like someone Lunging?
My guess is that the RAI of Spring Attack is that it only avoids AoOs due to moving.
On the other hand, Come and Get Me is already powerful enough. Especially when combined with Titan Mauler to deny enemies their reach (so no Lunge, etc.)
Bull rush, disarm, sunder, or trip instead of a melee action. Typically unless you "have the Improved (Maneuver Name) feat, or a similar ability, attempting to {Maneuver Name) provokes an attack of opportunity from the target of your maneuver."
I don't think Spring Attack counts as "similar ability" (I think that's more for monster abilities, nor for several Improved Maneuver feats. Spring Attack should just be avoiding AoO provoked by movement, such as attacking a target who has reach.
Also Come and Get Me seems to be situation where specific trumps general situation.
Is there a document somewhere, or is there text in the PRD or core rulebook, that provides information about this? What I mean is, in the D&D Miniatures game, for instance, there are clear rules.
1) The game is exceptions-based.
2) Restrictive text (i.e. "can't") always trumps permissive text (i.e. "can").
3) The matter of degree counts (i.e. "never" trumps "always").
Etc.
So, in the case of "can't" trumps "can" we'd say that the Spring Attack wins because the person with that feat "can't" be the target of opportunity attacks.
But, if there were another power or feat or something, and it said "Possessors of this feat deny those with Spring Attack the ability to move without provoking attacks of opportunity." So, this is a higher level of "can't" (i.e the word "deny" and the specificity of naming the feat "Spring Attack"), which then trumps the "can" of Spring Attack (i.e. "you can move w/o provoking").
Or something like that.
Come and Get Me says an attack vs. the Barbarian triggers an AoO.
So does the Core Rules for moving out of a threatened area, or trying an un-improved Maneuver.
So there is no big difference there.
It seems like per RAW, Spring Attack says that everything you do during it´s action doesn´t provoke an AoO,
which applies to movement, un-improved Maneuvers, and Come and Get Me.
IMHO, Spring Attack is meant to only negate AoO´s from movement, not from un-improved Maneuvers or Come and Get Me, but that´s not RAW. (I´ve never seen this brought up before, and have always seen it played as merely protecting vs. the Movement AoO´s, which applies to wierd stuff like threat ENTRY AoOs from Unexpected Strike but nothing else, i.e. everything it protects against could be avoided with a high Tumble check)
I wouldn´t get hung up over ´can´t´ and ´can´, because the exact same rules function can be re-phrased with a change of perspective to use the opposite phrase (´when using X action, enemies can´t take AoO´s against you´ and ´when using X action, you can avoid provoking all AoO´s´ are identical). The game does function by general rules and exceptions to those, because that´s how the grammar and game rules structure works, it doesn´t need to be labelled as such for that to be the case.
If some ability (´Reliable Defence´) specifically said that the AoO cannot be evaded by any means (either specifically mentioning Spring Attack or not, since ´any means´ should include Feats like Spring Attack), that would suffice to prevent the AoO negation from functioning (thus allowing the AoO). In the current rules you can look at it as Come and Get Me (and movement provocation and/or un-improved maneuver provocation) potentially provoking an AoO, but Spring Attack cancelling it before it can be used. Not much different than rolling a Natural 20 but having your Fortification Armor kick in.
Spring Attack could probably ideally be worded like ´enemies can´t TAKE AoO´s vs. you´, but this is how it works.
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So, in the case of "can't" trumps "can" we'd say that the Spring Attack wins because the person with that feat "can't" be the target of opportunity attacks.
But, if there were another power or feat or something, and it said "Possessors of this feat deny those with Spring Attack the ability to move without provoking attacks of opportunity." So, this is a higher level of "can't" (i.e the word "deny" and the specificity of naming the feat "Spring Attack"), which then trumps the "can" of Spring Attack (i.e. "you can move w/o provoking").
Or something like that.
So, if you choose to do a trip attack (CM that can replace a normal melee attack) with out the improved feat while using spring attack, you avoid the attack of opportunity? I think that it makes Spring attack pretty powerful, don't you? And the person who can make the best use out of it, a monk, can get it without prereqs at level 10.
I read it like this:
movement through threatened areas causes AoO's.
without that statement in Spring Attack, it would provoke AoO's
the "Come and get me" causes the Spring attacker to provoke another AoO for attacking the barbarian. This is a separate AoO from the movement AoO that would have been provoked with out the statement in Spring attack and needs to be resolved separately.
Also, while the spring attacker has to either be a level 10 monk, or have a dex of 14, dodge, mobility, and bab of +4, the barbarian is also giving stuff up. They are giving every attacker a +4 to hit and a +4 damage to them until the beginning of their next turn. And they also must be level 12+. At best the Barb is going to get to make 3-4 (with combat reflexes) AoO's, while many more hits could be coming in.
Thanks for the responses, everyone. They helped us figure out how we were going to handle this in our group -- though it'd really be nice to hear an official ruling on just how much Spring Attack immunizes you from.
