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On of the persistant problems I have with mindless creatures is their contardictory reactions to feints and other physical deceptions in combat.
Feint is just about the prime offender. Allow me to explain:
A feint is a false attack that diverts defensive efforts away from the real attack. It is, in essence, a very physical, non-illusory, quite credible threat. Yet constructs (et al.) miraculously never react to fients despite their inability to actually sense your motives or even think about/doubt your obvious intentions.
Now, we know that mindless creatures DO try to thwart your attacks... they DO get their dexterity bonus to AC. They are not unresponsive and perpetually flat footed. Yet, for some bizarre reason they DON'T try to defend against these credible threats and lower their guard to the real threat. It's as if they are not only brilliant, but also have telepathy!
In the real world, feints against programmed, mindless opponents work exceedingly well. The first Gulf War kicked off with a swarm of faux jets (actually refitted missiles) and the Iraqi radar reacted exactly as expected... it did not ignore the feint because radar systems can't think. Quite the opposite in fact. Likewise, hacking feints against systems will dutifully divert processor time and efforts for much the same reasons: the computer is notoriously bad at unilaterally guessing your motives. In fact, as a relatively non-thinking device, it can't!
The mindless immunity to feints ironically does not seem mindless at all... it practically makes them combat savants in this regard!
The main problem here is the linkage of feinting to bluff. A charisma based social interaction very poorly simulates what is going on in these cases.
IMHO there needs to be some provision for this sort of situation. Perhaps this could be addressed in a future bestiary or the next edition of Pathfinder? Any comments, suggestions, and ideas would be greatly appreciated on my end. Thanks in advance for any consideration.
Mindless creatures lack what is needed to fall for a feint. A mind. A feint is not a realistic / going to hit you threat, it's just percieved by the opponent, in his mind, as one. My 2 cp, ymmv.
This should probably be moved to the suggestions or advice forum. It's less a rules question and more a discourse on why you don't agree with the rules as written.
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A pre-progammed system would only fall for a feint IF that was programmed in. Like the radar system. If the radar system couldn't detect the missles, it would do nothing. The feint in real life is a manuver that is slight to cause somebody to mis-step. If the mindless critter can't tell the slight movement as a threatening one...it won't react. And the feint HAS to be slight. If your redirecting a full on attack that was meant to hit and do damage to somewhere else, that is not a feint and honestly you lost a massive butload combat time doing something like that.
In fact, one of the funniest thing about learning to fight is that the newbies don't fall for feints very much. You have to over exagerate the movement to make them fall for it and if you did that against anyone who actual knew how to fight...you'd get killed in short order.