Can someone with a natural reach greater than 5 feet make a combat maneuver at said distance?
For example, can a troll grapple a PC from 10 feet away? Or could a PC trip someone, unarmed, from 10 feet away while using the Lunge feat?
I always thought that you could use an maneuver against anyone within your threatened squares, whether they were 5 feet away or 30, since they are considered "attacks." However, as someone pointed out to me earlier today, it appears you could make a combat maneuver even when you don't threaten any squares (such as when disarming someone while unarmed yourself). So that's obviously not a good gauge for determining when you can and can't do it.
I'm still inclined to believe that you can use a combat maneuver against anyone within your natural reach, now I'm just looking for rules to support it.
Can someone with a natural reach greater than 5 feet make a combat maneuver at said distance?
For example, can a troll grapple a PC from 10 feet away? Or could a PC trip someone, unarmed, from 10 feet away while using the Lunge feat?
I always thought that you could use an maneuver against anyone within your threatened squares, whether they were 5 feet away or 30, since they are considered "attacks." However, as someone pointed out to me earlier today, it appears you could make a combat maneuver even when you don't threaten any squares (such as when disarming someone while unarmed yourself). So that's obviously not a good gauge for determining when you can and can't do it.
I'm still inclined to believe that you can use a combat maneuver against anyone within your natural reach, now I'm just looking for rules to support it.
Not threatening while unarmed is a specific exception to definition of threatened squares:
Threatened Squares: You threaten all squares into which you can make a melee attack, even when it is not your turn. Generally, that means everything in all squares adjacent to your space (including diagonally). An enemy that takes certain actions while in a threatened square provokes an attack of opportunity from you. If you're unarmed, you don't normally threaten any squares and thus can't make attacks of opportunity.
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/combat.html
You can make unarmed melee attacks into squares within your reach, its just the only listed exception to the definition.
Since combat maneuvers use attack rolls, normal rules for determine what you can attack should apply in the absence of specific contradictory rules.
Grapple, for example, has language that only makes sense if it can be used by a creature with reach:
If you successfully grapple a creature that is not adjacent to you, move that creature to an adjacent open space (if no space is available, your grapple fails).
So it's not that you no longer have threatened squares when unarmed, just that you can't make unarmed attacks of opportunity under normal circumstances? That makes sense.
So it's not that you no longer have threatened squares when unarmed, just that you can't make unarmed attacks of opportunity under normal circumstances? That makes sense.
You don't have threatened squares while unarmed.
but
You do have squares into which you can make melee attacks.
The definition of threatened squares is, rephrased, "any square into which you can make a melee attack with anything other than a basic unarmed strike."
Since you can only make AoOs into threatened squares, I interpret this as their first idea for making unarmed strikes give no AoOs before they just went ahead and specifically noted it, but then they forgot to edit the exception to the definition back out.
I guess that because I can't think of any other situation besides where it matters you don't threaten with basic unarmed attacks in situations where you can still make melee attacks into squares within reach.
For your question you could still attack into the square with natural reach and an unarmed attack (despite not threatening) so I'd need to see a rule that says you CAN'T make CM attack rolls.